An epic time-travel fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.
A patriotic historian in the grand nation of Dominion is sent back in time to make sure that events play out the way they’re supposed to in Harrow’s ambitious fantasy.
As a historian, Prof. Owen Mallory’s area of focus—or, more accurately, obsession—is Una Everlasting, the legendary knight who bravely served Queen Yvanne and helped her form the great nation of Dominion. While working on a manuscript he hopes will get him a fellowship, Mallory receives an old book in the mail. As he translates it from an older version of Dominion’s language, he comes to suspect that it’s a firsthand accounting of Una Everlasting’s death, which, if real, would be an enormously significant finding. Before he can figure out if the book is genuine or who sent it to him, Mallory is summoned to the office of Dominion’s Minister of War, the imposing Vivian Rolfe, who reveals that she sent the book as a test to see if he’d sell it or if he’d respect and protect it. Satisfied with Mallory’s dedication to Una Everlasting (and therefore to Dominion itself), Rolfe asks Mallory a simple question: “Are you the man who will save [Dominion]?” When Mallory answers yes, Rolfe stabs her letter opener through his hand, and as he bleeds onto the book’s pages, he’s sent back in time to Dominion’s ancient past, where he comes face to face with the real Una Everlasting. Mallory realizes that the book is a magical object that can send anyone anywhere in time when they give it their blood. He also realizes that Rolfe doesn’t want him to translate a book about Una Everlasting—she wants him to write it himself. Harrow has set up a complex and deeply compelling world in Dominion, where Mallory’s devotion to his country is complicated by his fixation on the myth of Una—and his growing love for Una as a human being. Una is beautifully drawn as a real person struggling to live up to the weight of becoming a legend, and Rolfe is a great villain; with each appearance, her knavery becomes so much more fascinating and devious that readers will turn the pages just to see what she’ll do next.
An epic time-travel fantasy about how stories from the past can shape our future.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781250799081
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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
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