A thought-provoking metaphysical adventure.
In Goldie’s novel, a young woman embarks on a mysterious journey that may have world-changing consequences.
While burying her beloved cat, Maya Burke unearths a journal containing mysterious messages from her long-missing father, Ben Ambrose. His writings warn her of “a global change…of such magnitude that every human system—nations, governments, cultures—will be transformed. Societies will be rocked…But this is not what you may think, Maya. The change will be internal. It will come from the inside of man, not from without.” She sets out to find her father and the answers to the questions his warning raised. Along the way, she meets various people who knew (or knew of) Ben and slowly introduce her to a new way of thinking. Maya learns to identify “energy vortex[es]” that help her channel her strange visions; meets a man who explains the metaphysics behind cultural change; and speaks with a woman who used the collective unconscious to help transform the medical field through mind-body healing. Meanwhile, a mysterious group known as the Mandala has its own agenda for the upcoming global changes—and Maya just may be the missing piece of the puzzle. Goldie crafts a compelling, trippy story that could stand on its own as a “young woman finding herself” narrative—it just so happens to also tackle heady topics like the nature of space, time, and the unconscious energy that flows through all of humanity. The author mostly avoids proselytizing to his audience, instead doling out bits and pieces of his theories in the course of a genuinely good mystery. While some moments come across as a bit trite (such as when a young boy suddenly “glimpses new worlds within his reach”), the prose remains clear and accessible. The book ultimately provides a plethora of intriguing ideas through which readers can parse, even if they don’t completely buy into Goldie’s philosophies.
A thought-provoking metaphysical adventure.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2014
ISBN: 9781493625239
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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