A farfetched but entertaining blend of mysticism, romance, and adventure.
Long’s historical novel combines fanciful, romantic adventure with occult themes.
The tale begins in 1940 with a young couple, English heiress Marian Graves and Montenegrin scholar Stevan Romanov, setting out in a hand-built flying boat to support Stevan’s relatives against the Axis powers. On the way, they encounter Festus Griveaux, a minor despot who harbors demonic servants and plans for nothing less than world domination. The narrative shifts to Egypt in 1945, where Amon-Ra and Dodi, two poor brothers, find a mysterious cache of books while searching for ancient artifacts they can sell. The books are sacred Gnostic texts from the lost Nag Hammadi Library, and are sought after by many, including Stevan and Festus. The story then jumps forward to California in 1973, where Claremont professor of antiquities Griffin MacRobbin is fascinated by a new grad student, the brilliant, beautiful heiress Anastasia Romanov, who has provocative ideas about Gnosticism and the mystical content of the texts. Griffin and Anastasia set off on a globe-trotting adventure through New York City, Yugoslavia, England, and Ireland in search of a sacred object. Aided by friends and relatives, they face hair-raising challenges and bizarre mystical experiences together and separately. The narrative’s opening sections are told in the third person; the characters aren’t well-rounded, and the dialogue often feels artificial (“Stevan said, ‘It seems, Marian, your little exploration underground will be of benefit. You say the passage is adjacent to this garage?’”) For the rest of the novel, the point of view shifts to first person in the quirky voice of Griffin, who combines matter-of-factness with whimsy and snark. The other characters, including Griffin’s colleague Dr. Moe Littlejohn, Anastasia’s aunt and uncle, a Wagner-loving spelunker, and Dick McBride, an Irish mechanic and bishop, are eccentric and colorful. The story fancifully combines elements such as ancient standing stones, runes and hieroglyphs, shapeshifting demons, snippets of poetry and song, antique and modern aircraft, and psychedelic experiments into an implausible but entertaining saga.
A farfetched but entertaining blend of mysticism, romance, and adventure.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798988817604
Page Count: 502
Publisher: North House Creative Arts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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