A character-driven fantasy story that doesn’t waste readers’ time.
Dymitr, a monster hunter turned monster, must return to face his family when he’s called home for a funeral in the second of Roth’s Curse Bearer series.
Baba Jaga, the great sorceress of Slavic folklore, has something that belongs to Dymitr: his bone sword, a magical weapon that comes from his own spine. As a Knight of the Holy Order, Dymitr was meant to use it to kill magical creatures, whom he was taught to regard as inhuman. After learning that everything he was taught about monsters was a lie, that they are in fact just as human as he is, and after Baba Jaga turned him into a magical monster himself, Dymitr has no interest in hunting them anymore. Baba Jaga made Dymitr a zmora, a magical being that feeds on human fear, and he’s only interested in figuring out what to do with his new life. But his bone sword is also made of a piece of his soul, and being separated from it will cause him to go mad. Luckily, Baba Jaga is happy to give Dymitr his sword back—so long as he kills 33 fellow Knights, starting with his own grandmother. Horrified at the thought of killing the woman who raised him, Dymitr hears more awful news from his sister. His uncle has died, and the family is gathering to perform the Knights’ burial rituals. Dymitr hopes that he can use the trip home to steal his family’s book of Knight curses and offer it to Baba Jaga as a bargaining chip for his sword. As in the first installment in the Curse Bearer series, Roth’s fantasy worldbuilding is efficient and effective. Most of the short—for fantasy, anyway—novel is dedicated to tense action sequences, expanding the fantasy world in ways that directly impact the plot, and to compelling character development as Dymitr faces his violent family.
A character-driven fantasy story that doesn’t waste readers’ time.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781250855503
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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