Sharp enough to draw blood.
A kindhearted heir to a banking fortune in a fantasy analog of Venice receives several brutal lessons concerning how little such kindness will serve him.
Intelligent, nature-loving Davico di Regulai dreams of becoming a doctor and marrying his foster sister, Celia. It is obvious to all that he doesn’t have the ruthlessness and strategic ability of his ambitious, arrogant father, Devonaci, who, despite his lack of noble blood, not so secretly controls the city of Navola through his vast banking interests. But as the heir to the di Regulai estate, Davico has no choice but to ineffectively follow the path his father has laid out for him—which certainly does not include medicine or becoming Celia’s husband. His struggle to live up to his family’s considerable reputation is so acute it gives him ulcers. Meanwhile, Devonaci’s plots have earned him many enemies, some lurking more closely than he knows; unfortunately, not all of them are as weak and foolish as he supposes, leaving Davico in a very vulnerable position. Is there anyone he can trust? Is there any use or value to his own unique talents in the treacherous society that he calls home? He will be forced to find out. The plunge of this political fantasy into grimdark might feel shocking, but it’s not like the author doesn’t provide plenty of warning. Throughout the narrative, the reader is shown that Davico’s honesty and unwillingness to harm others put him at a great disadvantage in his society; infused with painful and realistic political maneuvering, this is not a classic epic fantasy in which the good must prevail. And yet, the novel’s climax shares significant elements with a fantasy from that era: Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber (1970). Perhaps both authors drew from the same historical source; perhaps it’s an homage. It’s a bit jarring when so much of the story has a wonderful freshness to it. But regardless of the source, the book employs these plot elements extremely effectively. And it is clear that Bacigalupi has his own kind of epic in mind; despite the already hefty page count, this is only the start of a significant and painful journey and some considerable character development.
Sharp enough to draw blood.Pub Date: July 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593535059
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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
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
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