A novel that successfully trades fantasy spectacle for a study on maternal sacrifice and the battle with one’s destiny.
The warrior Rowan must face an unforgiving curse in this prequel to Cotta’s Iron Kingdom series.
Naja and her best friend Sylda witness a shipwreck one stormy night near their jungle village of Karahvel, discovering a lone survivor: an albino woman in the throes of childbirth. The child who emerges is Rowan, who brings not joy but terror when a mysterious red crescent mark on his neck leads his mother to abandon him. While the village turns its back, a midwife named Kialla claims Rowan as her own before Naja does, despite the shaman Isakora’s rants that Rowan is cursed. Naja, a skeptic of the shaman and her predictions, eventually takes Rowan in only after her father and friends have all died. Crushed by grief, Naja is determined to teach Rowan to take care of himself before she dies. Told through the eyes of Naja, Rowan’s fourth guardian-mother, the narrative deftly pivots from a simple origin story into a complex exploration of society and motherhood imbued with strains of feminism. The author explores the costs of social ostracism, both forcefully inflicted and self-imposed, on an innocent child and the people who have chosen to be his protectors. Grief over death is ever-present within the story and frequently drives the life-altering decisions the characters make. The burdens and joys—sometimes inextricably intertwined—of being a woman and a mother are a consistent theme as well. The novel’s sympathetic characters and its implicit messages about finding a purpose in life promise a series that a general readership will enjoy. Readers see Rowan’s experiences threatening to shape him into a figure of vengeance, a temptation only avoided by the careful teachings of his mother figures and Naja’s mantra from her father: “Still water, steady heart.”
A novel that successfully trades fantasy spectacle for a study on maternal sacrifice and the battle with one’s destiny.Pub Date: June 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781971855042
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Monarch Educational Services, L.L.C.
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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