An astutely written tale that eschews fantasy melodrama to explore social dynamics.
After her father is executed by a mad queen, a girl uses magic to fight for the oppressed in this YA fantasy debut.
Dravon Galain, a former captain in the queen’s military, is about to be executed. He kneels before a crowd in the castle courtyard, which is surrounded by Dawn’s Gate, the capital of the High Desert kingdom. His wife, Audrie, and their daughters, 10-year-old Tris and 14-year-old Maggie, look on in horror, sure that Dravon isn’t the turncoat the queen believes he is. After the killing by firing squad, Dravon’s corpse is left in the courtyard. Maggie sneaks in and takes his military jacket, vowing to clear his name. She fastens the single button left on the coat and “vanishes without a sound.” Though magic is mostly gone from the world, Maggie is whisked into a dark, strange realm. She eventually wakes in an alley by the castle and receives help from Elly Babblewatts, a teenage tinkerer. Maggie soon learns that she and her family must hide from angry mobs and the queen’s hunters, called Shadow Lurkers. Thanks to the teleporting coat, she gains a reputation as a powerful witch. Eventually, she unites with oppressed people in the kingdom, including Salavan of the Lost Sabers tribe. Will they be enough to end the queen’s “empire of chains”? Miller’s series opener brings readers into a world rife with social ills, including “indentured child workers” and a queen who enslaves those critical of her governance. Maggie gradually learns more about her magical coat, traveling frequently to the eerily beautiful “Sorrow's Deep,” which provides one of the principal narrative thrills (“She finds that her vertical momentum does not carry to the next world, but horizontal momentum is maintained”). At times, the large cast and the detailed society of the author’s worldbuilding crowd out his protagonist. The reward for readers is an intriguing, fragile allied force—including the priestess Mos Marry, who wants magic eliminated—that may prove troublesome for Maggie even if the contingent topples the queen. The final scene offers a shocking moment that’s hopefully addressed in the sequel.
An astutely written tale that eschews fantasy melodrama to explore social dynamics.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 979-8503395259
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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