A haunting fantasy that, while occasionally melodramatic, strikingly illuminates the cycles of familial violence.
An unnamed protagonist runs away and joins the circus, only to discover that his magical powers hold as much potential for freedom as for destruction.
Raised by a brutal mother who forces him to carry out her cruelties alongside a constantly shifting cast of shadowy “uncles,” the Boy dreams of finding a home and a place to belong. After a particularly harrowing experience at his mother’s hands, he flees into the woods, where he encounters a mysterious orb that contains a traveling carnival. The Boy begins to feel at home among the ragtag carnival family, which includes the berobed leader, Terminus; a pair of conjoined sisters, Morningside and Eveningside; a menagerie of exotic animals including jaguarundi and Siberian tigers; and especially the magician, Sullivan, who takes the Boy under his wing as an apprentice. As the Boy becomes the Young Man, he learns at Sullivan’s side and, as his powers grow, he begins developing ambitions of his own—but then his ideas about how to make the show bigger and more powerful ignite a rivalry between him and his mentor. After a betrayal, what the Young Man believes will be his crowning achievement yields catastrophic results, and he’s cast out from his found family to wander alone. He drifts, haunted by his past, until he encounters a woman: Her, whose lightness promises to chase away his darkness. Just as he begins to feel he has finally escaped his violent past, he is forced to reckon with it once and for all. The writing is lush and sumptuous, and at its best, it conjures the Magician’s world with haunting vividness. Occasionally, however, the prose tips into an overwrought style that dulls rather than deepens the novel’s enchantment: “His body...lies in scant writhe,” for example.
A haunting fantasy that, while occasionally melodramatic, strikingly illuminates the cycles of familial violence.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9780802167187
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Roxane Gay Books/Grove
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
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
SEEN & HEARD
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