Come for the early steps in one hero’s journey, stay for the puppylike dragons and princes in exile.
Following a coup, two teenage survivors on the lam join magical forces to fight their way back to their respective kingdoms.
Jai and his brothers have spent the last decade serving the Sabine dynasty faithfully, far from the Great Steppe and cut off from their native culture. Their father, the high khan of the Kidara tribe, lost his head to the former emperor Leonid’s axe. A royal wedding between Leonid’s grandson, Prince Titus, and Princess Erica of the Dansk promises to unite two of the world’s great powers and net the Empire a new weapon in its conquering arsenal. Powerful as the Sabine Empire’s soulbound—warriors granted superhuman abilities and magical powers as the result of their “soulbond” with legendary creatures—are, their Gryphon Guard are hardly a match for the noble Dansk soulbound, who forge psychic connections to dragons. Welcoming the Dansk princess and her father into the capital is just the opening the opportunistic Titus needs to usurp his father’s throne. The prince and his cronies kidnap the princess and massacre all foreign citizens in the Sabine court, including Erica’s father, Jai’s brothers, and the soulbound dragons belonging to the Dansk nobles. Jai escapes with an exceedingly rare, powerful artifact—a dragon egg, cut from its mother’s corpse—and soon finds himself with powers he does not understand as he soulbonds with the beast inside. Thankfully, he has Frida, herself a soulbound, to help guide him—at least until they must part ways at the end of the road, that is. As magical epics go, Matharu isn’t reinventing the wheel here. Still, fantasy fans will find much to love in this series starter. The author describes the interior aspects of Jai’s magic—such as refilling his mana core and grasping hold of the invisible threads binding him to his hatchling—so deftly, readers will forgive him if these sequences run just a little too long at times. Jai is a mixed-race person of color, and Frida’s pale features set her apart in the Sabine Empire.
Come for the early steps in one hero’s journey, stay for the puppylike dragons and princes in exile.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780063227576
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.
In a distant future, after the Last War when the human population became endangered, a new society formed from the ashes, strictly to optimize procreation.
But not procreation between just anyone. This society, ruled by the Illum—a mysterious authoritarian group—assigns mates to select for the best traits and to breed out defects, to grow the Elite population living in the clouds. Protagonist Emeline is a stubborn and bored young woman, working her days away on the ground as a Minor Defect—one of the class of women waiting to be approved for mating with an Elite, and hoping to never be banished further from society. Emeline’s instincts are apparently to reject the rigid decorum of her society, but she spends years trying to follow the rules set out for her, or at least dissociates enough not to challenge her way of life, until one day an elusive and charming man, Hal, walks into her office to talk about art. The same day, she is approved for mating and matched with Collin, the youngest member of the Illum, in the sort of pairing that hasn’t happened in decades. Courtship with Collin is full of luxury—fancy dinners and balls in the clouds—but also lies and days of discovering secrets kept from her, while trying to keep the Elite’s rumors and malicious Press at bay. Caught between these two men, with their own agendas, and so many unanswered questions, Emeline must decide what she wants, if she can want anything at all. With a rebellion rising in secret and the repression of the Illum close at hand, she’ll find what she’s willing to lose for the ability to choose for herself. The dystopian worldbuilding is underdeveloped at best, so get swept up in discovering truth from lies quickly before it starts to fall apart in your hands.
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217090990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
