A sharp, fast-paced fantasy driven by witty characters, impressively complex worldbuilding, and emotional gut punches.
A young man finds himself caught between the demons of Hell and the Queen of All Fae in Givler’s fantasy novel.
In the second installment of the author’s Debt Collection series, Matthew Carver has already lost his soul after having it unlawfully taken by a representative of Hell. Now he works for the immortal Orion, “master of the Hunt,” taking down demons and attempting to get his soul back. During one of these hunts, Matthew is about to be killed by the demon Zagan when he manages to blow on a dandelion, which calls the Faeries and transports him to their world: “The dandelion seeds in the ball-like head waved for a moment, as if my life’s last breeze was merely music for them to dance to…A few heartbeats later, the white head of the dandelion exploded, and seeds shot everywhere, thrown around like nature’s shrapnel. Impossibly, I felt something reach up and hook into my chest through the ground, and suddenly I was pulled downthrough the gravel as if it were water.” There he discovers, via his anthropomorphic fire friend Willow, that he is actually a Lord of Fire—the first in almost 400 years. And Gloriana, the Faerie queen, wants to strike a bargain: In exchange for marrying one of her four daughters and thus strengthening their bloodline, she will help Matthew regain his soul. Doing so is the best chance they have of preventing a “giant supernatural war” that Hell seems determined to ignite. As Matthew navigates the increasingly dangerous world of Fae politics, he begins to suspect that there’s a traitor in their midst. With the discovery that demons are more invested in the Faerie world than it seemed at first, Matthew faces some impossible choices—including whether to finally rescue his soul in exchange for damning his previously dead sister back down to Hell.
Matthew’s wit carries him far, with plenty of quips and self-deprecating jabs to keep readers amused even as his life crashes down around him: “All things considered, I’d like to congratulate myself on exceeding expectations. I killed an Immortal and survived a year on Lucifer’s Most Wanted list. If Vegas had been running odds on me, I could have made a fortune betting on myself. Granted, given that this was looking like my untimely demise, I wouldn’t have gotten to spend it, but I could have died with a smug sense of superiority, which would have been nice.” That being said, Givler still manages to imbue Matthew with a level of emotional depth that belies the steady stream of one-liners—evidenced mainly by his agony over the fate of his previously dead sister, who is now comatose and kidnapped. Meanwhile, the extensive discussions of soul-selling legality and its various loopholes prove delightfully absurd as they add a grounding mundanity to various fantastical scenarios. The novel’s action is steady but not rushed, while its scenes of violence (and there are quite a few) never become overly graphic. The book has a couple of stray typos, but nothing that would get in the way of readers immersing themselves in the intricately woven universes of mortals, demons, and Fae.
A sharp, fast-paced fantasy driven by witty characters, impressively complex worldbuilding, and emotional gut punches.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2023
ISBN: 978-1958204061
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Sad Seagull Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.
A young Navarrian woman faces even greater challenges in her second year at dragon-riding school.
Violet Sorrengail did all the normal things one would do as a first-year student at Basgiath War College: made new friends, fell in love, and survived multiple assassination attempts. She was also the first rider to ever bond with two dragons: Tairn, a powerful black dragon with a distinguished battle history, and Andarna, a baby dragon too young to carry a rider. At the end of Fourth Wing (2023), Violet and her lover, Xaden Riorson, discovered that Navarre is under attack from wyvern, evil two-legged dragons, and venin, soulless monsters that harvest energy from the ground. Navarrians had always been told that these were monsters of legend and myth, not real creatures dangerously close to breaking through Navarre’s wards and attacking civilian populations. In this overly long sequel, Violet, Xaden, and their dragons are determined to find a way to protect Navarre, despite the fact that the army and government hid the truth about these creatures. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own. Violet is repeatedly threatened by her new vice commandant, a brutal man who wants to silence her. Although Violet and her dragons continue to model extreme bravery, the novel feels repetitive and more than a little sloppy, leaving obvious questions about the world unanswered. The book is full of action and just as full of plot holes, including scenes that are illogical or disconnected from the main narrative. Secondary characters are ignored until a scene requires them to assist Violet or to be killed in the endless violence that plagues their school.
Unrelenting, and not in a good way.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374172
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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