A darkly thrilling paranormal murder mystery with high stakes and a lackluster romance.
A resurrectionist involved in a police hunt for a serial killer might become a target herself.
Selene Shade is a resurrectionist, a woman able to raise the dead, but only for the right price. While her ability is rare enough to earn her the nickname “Zombie Queen,”she’s not the only supernatural being existing among a wary human population. Goat Hill is just one of numerous towns forced to coexist with the witches, vampires, elementals, and other creatures since they revealed themselves decades ago. When a brutal serial killer begins to terrorize the town, local police ask the resurrectionist to assist on the case by reviving the latest victim. Although she’s reluctant to help, the recent death of her colleague and only friend, Dot, has increased Selene’s loneliness and desire to feel useful. The discovery that one of the lead investigators, Det. William Marlow, is a vampire, a group that has a complicated history with resurrectionists, leaves Selene more intrigued than she expected. As the investigation progresses, however, a doorway may be opening that will allow the entry of powerful, malevolent beings. As Selene reaches out to old contacts, forges new connections, and tries to avoid becoming the next victim, she’ll have to adjust to working with others again and learn to understand how her powers fit into these gruesome events. Will she be able to trust Marlow? In Dalpe’s thriller, the immersive worldbuilding brings to life a realm not that different from our own (despite the omnipresent otherworldly beings). The novel, told mostly through Selene’s perspective, gets a slow start as readers learn about the lead and her universe in a long infodump. Once the stakes are introduced, however, the pace accelerates, especially when Selene begins interviewing her network, and we learn more about her. The romance doesn’t progress as naturally as the clue-gathering, but Dalpe’s storytelling compensates for a so-so love connection. Overall, this is a strong, charismatic series opener.
Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781960988324
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Clash Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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