A keen, absorbing, character-driven tale of a sleuth and his remarkable supernatural allies.
A private eye reconnects with his werewolf ex-boyfriend while tracking down a client’s cheating spouse in this LGBTQ+ fantasy.
Much of Korean American detective Jae Kim’s work keeps him in Chicago. This includes Wolftown, a walled-in neighborhood. It’s one of the numerous Wolftowns in cities around the globe. Despite the name, Wolftowns are not just for werewolves, but for other extra-human creatures (or “extras”) like vampires as well. Kim isn’t an extra but his partner is—Sergei, a 7-foot Russian ghost bear. The private investigators’ latest job takes them to Detroit’s Wolftown, where Kim’s old Army captain wants to know if his wife is having an affair. Seems like a simple gig, except that Czoltan, Kim’s ex, lives there. They fell in love years ago when Army liaison Kim worked in Germany with Czoltan, a refugee adviser and werewolf. But things in present-day Detroit get even more complicated. Warrant officers suddenly chase Kim, suspecting him of a crime so abominable they’d just as soon shoot him in the street. Kim lies low with help from his ex and his ghostly partner, but someone in unexpected danger may take precedence over his own safety. Susman’s engrossing detective story centers on the cast. The extras in this book are primarily werewolves, who come across as regular people with abundant fur. This opens up effective parallelisms involving discrimination; some callously deem werewolves as monsters, not unlike the bigotry that Kim has seen in his life. The author digs deep into bonds, from the working relationship of Kim and Sergei (bound together by a spell that makes the ghost a helpful partner) to the romance of Kim and Czoltan, whose meet-cute and breakup both eventually come to light. The story nevertheless boasts tight action scenes, such as the innocent Kim sprinting from trigger-happy, lycanthrope warrant officers. Instances of humor are likewise abundant, largely from relentlessly cynical but still endearing Sergei. There’s plenty of material for a potential series, including other extras, like kumiho, Korean nine-tailed fox spirits.
A keen, absorbing, character-driven tale of a sleuth and his remarkable supernatural allies.Pub Date: July 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-61450-559-4
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Argyll Productions
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.
In this long-awaited fifth installment of Shannon’s Bone Season series, the threat to the clairvoyant community spreads like a plague across Europe.
After extending her fight against the Republic of Scion to Paris, Paige Mahoney, leader of London’s clairvoyant underworld and a spy for the resistance movement, finds herself further outside her comfort zone when she wakes up in a foreign place with no recollection of getting there. More disturbing than her last definitive memory, in which her ally-turned-lover Arcturus seems to betray her, is that her dreamscape—the very soul of her clairvoyance—has been altered, as if there’s a veil shrouding both her memories and abilities. Paige manages to escape and learns she’s been missing and presumed dead for six months. Even more shocking is that she’s somehow outside of Scion’s borders, in the free world where clairvoyants are accepted citizens. She gets in touch with other resistance fighters and journeys to Italy to reconnect with the Domino Programme intelligence network. In stark contrast to the potential of life in the free world is the reality that Scion continues to stretch its influence, with Norway recently falling and Italy a likely next target. Paige is enlisted to discover how Scion is bending free-world political leaders to its will, but before Paige can commit to her mission, she has her own mystery to solve: Where in the world is Arcturus? Paige’s loyalty to Arcturus is tested as she decides how much to trust in their connection and how much information to reveal to the Domino Programme about the Rephaite—the race of immortals from the Netherworld, Arcturus’ people—and their connection to the founding of Scion, as well as the presence of clairvoyant abilities on Earth. While the book is impressively multilayered, the matter-of-fact way in which details from the past are sprinkled throughout will have readers constantly flipping to the glossary. As the series’ scope and the implications of the war against Scion expand, Shannon’s narrative style reads more action-thriller than fantasy. Paige’s powers as a dreamwalker are rarely used here, but when clairvoyance is at play, the story shines.
Though it falters a bit under its own weight, this series still has plenty of fight left.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9781639733965
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.
A doughboy makes a curious discovery at the front in this inventive metaphysical horror tale.
This novel by Kraus centers on Private Cyril Bagger, a U.S. soldier during World War I and the son of a bishop who died on the Lusitania; he’s taken his father’s Bible with him into the Army as a remembrance. He’s also a confidence man and shirker relegated to burial duty in the French countryside, which is fine with him: The work is grotesque (Kraus depicts wartime deaths in visceral detail) but keeps him from becoming a corpse himself. Alas, his commander has hand-picked him and four other “disreputable” soldiers for a suicide mission to rescue what sounds like an incessantly shrieking soldier. Cyril finds the source of the shrieking, which turns out to be—well, that’s tricky. Cyril sees her as a vaguely familiar woman, clothed in red and blue, bathed in bright light, and capable of magically rescuing him from the worst of German gunfire; members of his cohort see a mother, a former lover, and other women. So for the purposes of Kraus’ novel, the shrieker is a metaphor for the ways war stands in contrast to our deepest needs for care and safety. It’s a sweet sentiment, albeit one that Kraus coats in a lot of ugliness, particularly the seemingly endless human carnage. Kraus structures the novel as an extended run-on sentence (with paragraph breaks), giving the story a relentless and intense rhythm. As a veteran horror writer, he’s gifted at depictions of blood and guts and knows how to keep a story moving, but in its latter stages the novel is a philosophical one as well, concerned with humanity’s seemingly inborn need to wage war and what might counter it. The identity of the woman Cyril calls an angel is vague, but Kraus has a clear grasp on our worst impulses.
An impressive and surprising take on war-story tropes.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781668068458
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 20, 2025
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