A beautifully written fantasy that takes its time.
In the late McIntyre’s alternate-history novel, leaders in a matriarchal community set sail to reunite their foster children with their families of origin.
On the Fair Island, the Idaean people live and thrive. A matriarchal society, the Idaeans value close community bonds and peaceful relations with others, including the People, with whom they trade. They engage in the practice of temporarily fostering children from other societies and sending their own off to strengthen alliances. Former bull dancer turner ambassador Iakinthu’s “given” (foster) child, Rhenthizu, goes through an initiation rite and is officially considered an adult man. Rhenthizu’s given-child status wasn’t acquired through diplomacy—he was kidnapped by pirates from his homeland and then later rescued and taken in by Iakinthu. No one, including Rhenthizu, knows where he was born or who his family of origin is—he was so young when he was stolen that he only has vague memories. Iakinthu, who bears the epithet of “Gephyra” (bridge-between-people), prepares to set sail on her ship, Flying Fish, with the now-adult given child Kilinkizu to reunite her with her mother; Iakinthu brings Rhenthizu along on the journey, hoping to find his family. Along the way, the voyagers encounter a plethora of different societies, from the People, who habitually give away male children to keep their society all-female, to the Egyptians, who are led by a woman pharaoh, to the violent, male-dominated Northerner pirates who have been raising the stolen son of Kilinkizu. McIntyre’s final novel, published posthumously, is a sprawling exploration of gender, community, and family in a historical fantasy setting. The pacing is leisurely and steady, and the characters are all deeply compelling. A few mythical beasts, like the kraken and a gryphon, are even included to add interest. Readers will be enthralled by the author’s worldbuilding, and even more captivated by the lush prose: “Iakinthu stood at the prow; striped porpoises played in the bow wave, riding it as birds ride the wind, hardly moving but for a flick of fin or fluke.”
A beautifully written fantasy that takes its time.Pub Date: April 22, 2026
ISBN: 9781619762800
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2026
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
A learned, literary manifesto on academia—and its darkness.
A Ph.D. candidate in Analytical Magick tackles a new academic challenge: rescuing her advisor from Hell.
Alice Law is about to complete her graduate program at Cambridge under the auspices of Jacob Grimes, one of the foremost Magick scholars in the world. There’s just one problem: A spell gone wrong has led to Grimes’ sudden demise, and it may have been her fault. Alice feels bad about that, plus she needs Grimes to approve her dissertation and help her get a job, so she starts researching ways to travel to Hell. Her plans are interrupted by Peter Murdoch, one of Grimes' other students—"He was simply born brilliant…Alice couldn't stand him"—and she reluctantly agrees to join forces. Despite the accounts of Dante and the like, Hell is full of surprises, including (sometimes) a remarkable resemblance to a college campus. As Alice and Peter journey deeper, they encounter nefarious deities; twisted, once-human enemies; and Shades from Grimes’ past with their own agendas. Hell will test Alice and Peter in ways their academic careers have not, dredging up their pasts at Cambridge, their messy relationships with their advisor, and their distrust of each other—after all, academia is a cutthroat game. The stakes are high, with mortal souls on the line, as Alice grapples with the question of whether academia even matters. Kuang melds a fantasy adventure (don’t look too closely at the magic—that’s not the point) with a rumination on academia’s problems to create a new take on the journey through the underworld. Alice is deeply flawed but also deeply understandable, stuck in a system that damages her while making questionable choices that feed into the same system; this is a tightly constructed novel that aims a clear lens on academia, with both its faults and its virtues. The heady draw of discovery is ever-present, even if what Alice is discovering is Hell.
A learned, literary manifesto on academia—and its darkness.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9780063021471
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
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