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THE OUTLAWS OF SHERWOOD

In the tradition of T.H. White's reincarnation of King Arthur, a novel that brings Robin Hood and his men—and women—delightfully to life. Compressing elapsed time into a year and a half—from Robin's escape to the forest to the band's pardon by King Richard—McKinley includes many familiar characters and incidents (e.g., Robin's first meeting with Little John, the defeat of Guy of Gisbourne) while reshaping others (Marian, in disguise, is the one who outshoots competitors at the Nottingham Fair). McKinley's band is truly merry, casually undertaking deeds of derring-do while engaging in witty repartee that recalls the Three Musketeers. After considerable research, the author has—like her predecessors—created a Robin Hood who reflects "what the teller and the audience needed him to be at the time of the telling" (McKinley's quote from J.C. Holt). Thus, her characters are idealistic Saxon guerrillas fighting invading Norman oppressors in the cause of justice; include several highly competent women playing crucial roles; and have a charmingly ironic 20th-century self-awareness—yet they also embody the perennial dream of escaping the flawed everyday world for a simple life and noble deeds in the company of well-loved companions. Enriched with entrancing details of life in the forest, graced with a neat pair of satisfying love stories, and culminating in a couple of rousing battles and a dramatic close when the king dispenses justice, McKinley's Robin should be delighting readers for years to come.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1988

ISBN: 0441013252

Page Count: 360

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Review Posted Online: May 3, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1988

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ALCHEMISED

Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.

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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

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DEVOLUTION

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

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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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