Absolutely wonderful.
A young woman with cancer is presented with a fantastical opportunity to save herself in this adult debut.
Rachel Parilla is sick. Very sick. She used to be a cheerleader. She used to take her younger sister, Alice, to conventions for Alice’s favorite book series, Time of Iron, a melodramatic epic fantasy in which characters like the Iron Maid and the Golden Cobra have bloody adventures and torrid love triangles in the magical land of Eyam. When Rae was getting her first cancer treatments, Alice kept her entertained by recounting the plot of the first book in the series. Soon Rae became a fan herself, but her aggressive cancer makes it hard for her to hold a book, let alone read it. One day she wakes in her hospital bed to see a strange woman who has an even stranger offer: She can stay in her own world and die of cancer, or she can embody a character in Time of Iron, find the magical Flower of Life and Death, and come back to a cancer-free body. Rae scoffs at the idea, but lo and behold, there is a door waiting for her—and when she opens it, she finds herself in the body of the books’ infamous villainess, Lady Rahela, the Beauty Dipped in Blood, immersed in the world of Eyam. Rae’s adventure begins with tremendous wonder, and there are many laugh-out-loud moments as she revels in the fun of being a fictional femme fatale. But as Rae gets closer to her goal, Brennan brings the people and the world of Eyam to vivid, often heartbreaking life with such incredible skill that readers will be even bigger fans of Time of Iron than Alice.
Absolutely wonderful.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780316568715
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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