A flawed but fun narrative that will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse saga.
The first installment in Damore’s Mystic Inn Mystery saga follows a nonpracticing witch as she returns to her hometown after 13 years away.
A successful events planner living in Chicago, Angelica Nightingale seems to be living a life gone right. Her career is taking off, and she’s dating a well-to-do (albeit boring) accountant. But when she gets notified that her beloved aunt Thelma is close to death, she’s compelled to return to Silverlake, Georgia, a community of magical beings located in the Deep South where Angelica grew up, fell in love for the first time, and got her heart broken (“Silverlake was enchanted. No, really. You wouldn’t find the town on a map or listed on any tourist website. That is, unless you were a witch”). Returning to Silverlake dredges up memories she would rather not revisit—particularly those surrounding Vance, her ex-boyfriend. It turns out that her manipulative aunt isn’t gravely ill at all—her hotel is struggling to stay afloat, as are most of the businesses in Silverlake, and she needs her niece’s expertise to help save the magical place. As Angelica plans a fall festival to kick-start the town’s economy, her aunt becomes entangled in a murder mystery, and the young witch—who hasn’t used her powers since she left home—is forced to work with Vance, now a lawyer, to clear Thelma’s name. Blending elements of paranormal fantasy, cozy mystery, and a hint of romance, the novel is light in tone and often humorous. The mystery and romance elements are adeptly deployed, and Angelica makes for an effortlessly endearing Everywoman hero. The flaws lie in the fantasy elements, particularly the flimsy worldbuilding—if “normal folk” can’t enter Silverlake, who is supposed to attend the fall festival?
A flawed but fun narrative that will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse saga.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2021
ISBN: 979-8777461353
Page Count: 194
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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