Realistic, character-driven fantasy that manages to both sever limbs and warm the heart.
In this dark YA fantasy debut, teenage twins are swept up in a prince’s quest for a legendary blade.
Seventeen-year-old twins Noraya and Owen Smith, the adopted children of a blacksmith named Rannoch, have left their home at the Ridge to cross the Plains. Owen dreams of becoming a pilgrim—a scholarly nomad—while Nora simply wants to escape the path of marriage, children, and boredom. With three weeks of travel ahead and winter approaching, they venture forth and soon meet Master Telen Diaz, a half-wight pilgrim with all-black eyes, who’s escorting the exiled Prince Bashan, the seeker of the Living Blade. Bashan, by using a sword that can “meld with its wielder to unleash a power so great it can change the course of the world,” hopes to take the throne back from his half sister. The Kandarin Empire, meanwhile, is overrun by marauders, and the twins see from the road that the Ridge is burning. Owen continues on with the Hunted Company—which, aside from Diaz, is full of thieves and murderers—to the Temple of the Wind, and Nora returns home. She finds the Ridge a charred wasteland, with everyone she knows dead or enslaved. She always carries a knife that brings her a “Touch of iron” and a “Touch of home,” and, with it, she itches for vengeance. Author Whitecastle’s debut offers a rigorous critique of the mythic-quest fantasy trope, portraying Prince Bashan as a sleazy powermonger who’s willing to burn ancient libraries to get the knowledge he seeks. As the narrative gallops between blood-drenched battles and character-driven stretches, Whitecastle conservatively introduces magical elements, maintaining a grim realism throughout. The dialogue, particularly Nora’s, often seems to wink at modern readers, as when Diaz says that “Wights can endure extreme temperatures,” and Nora replies, “That explains why you’re always so hot.” The many genuinely romantic moments between Diaz and Nora are like breaks of blue sky amid the carnage, which aren’t easily found in this genre. The excellent pacing and organic plotting will bring audiences back for the sequel.
Realistic, character-driven fantasy that manages to both sever limbs and warm the heart.Pub Date: May 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5330-8043-1
Page Count: 354
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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