A richly imagined beginning that shouldn’t be missed.
A young woman is dragged from her quiet country life into the vicious, backstabbing world of politics and religion in this fantasy series opener.
Hellevir has always been different. When she was 10, she discovered the ability to travel into Death, the strange, liminal world ruled by a mysterious man in black. When she is 12, and her mother dies in childbirth, Hellevir travels to Death and offers the man in black a trade: If Hellevir gives up “something from life that is full of life” and a “blood gift” (in this case, one of her fingers), she will be able to return her mother to the world of the living. Milandre, an old healer and Hellevir’s mentor, warns Hellevir to keep her gifts a secret. But when the queen brings her poisoned granddaughter’s corpse to Milandre’s doorstep, Hellevir can’t stop herself from bringing the young woman, Sullivain, back to life. Soon afterward, Hellevir receives a royal summons to move to the city and be ready to bring Sullivain back from the dead at a moment’s notice. Only the man in black isn’t happy with Hellevir defying the laws of nature, and he requests a new kind of price if she wants to bring back any more lost souls without losing even more of herself. Gordon’s fantastic series opener paints the world of Rochidain with vivid detail, from its network of canals to the drunken parties of its nobles to the sinister state religion that has a strong hold on Hellevir’s mother. Hellevir’s complicated relationship with Sullivain, whose gratitude and attachment to Hellevir don’t stop her from threatening Hellevir’s family should she let Sullivain die, has more than enough substance to sustain the books to come.
A richly imagined beginning that shouldn’t be missed.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780063248779
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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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