An evocative, almost dreamlike mix of dark fantasy and moving reality.
A boy who can fly undertakes an incredible journey to save his dying mother in this fantasy.
Twelve-year-old Calvin Khumalo, the son of an industrious single mother, has a secret. He can fly. In vivid, soulful language—the hallmark of this unusual tale—Rajah conveys the euphoria Calvin feels as he soars into the sky before sunup and sits cross-legged in the air, watching the sky change “from the deep blue of dawn to a pinkish bronze. The sun wraps its arms around everything in the chilly morning: the mountains, the school, even the dairy farms.” Calvin’s ability to fly came to him in tandem with nightmares about being trapped and threatened by dark forces. It also led him to his mentor in the mountains, Athwall, a benign, 1,000-year-old creature of myth with shaggy blue fur and fangs, who tells Calvin he has been chosen to save the world. But all Calvin wants to do is to save his mother. Diagnosed with terminal heart disease, she hasn’t enough time to wait for a transplant. (A compassionate doctor and realistic information about the function of body and brain—saved from textbook dryness by Calvin’s sense of wonder—appear to be grounded in the South African author’s own experience as a pediatrician.) Athwall tells Calvin of a heart that resides inside the ancient, magical Heart Tree on a mountaintop guarded by a savage beast and that they must confront other terrible dangers (described in chilling detail) in order to reach it. As Calvin, his weakening mother, and Athwall undertake this perilous quest, the boy wrestles with a moral dilemma. If he takes the heart from the Heart Tree to save his mother, he will kill the tree and all life that springs from it. If he doesn’t, his mother will die. He is haunted, too, by horrific nightmares about what fate awaits him when he meets the tree’s demon protector. (While not gratuitous, these visions contain graphic violence that could disturb younger readers.) Although there are hints, the major twist that comes is as touching as it is unexpected. Readers should have a box of tissues nearby.
An evocative, almost dreamlike mix of dark fantasy and moving reality.Pub Date: July 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-62-094113-6
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2021
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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