A strong second outing for a well-built world and an interesting, strangely well-matched pair of lovers.
The second in a series chronicling the adventures of an English dryadologist—an academic studying faeries—in an alternate Europe.
Emily Wilde has refused the marriage proposal of her former academic rival, Wendell Bambleby, because she would be mad to marry a deposed faerie king disguised as a human. But she has devoted herself to finding a door into his kingdom, which would allow him to take back the realm stolen from him by his stepmother. Emily’s quest takes her to the isolated Alpine village of St. Liesl, accompanied by Wendell and two unexpected companions: Emily’s niece Ariadne, an aspiring dryadologist, and Farris Pole, the prickly head of the Dryadology Department, who blackmailed Emily into including him. Much of the plot follows the outline of the previous volume, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023): Emily and her cohort stay in a guesthouse; everyone but Emily manages to befriend the locals (she's hopeless at social niceties); Emily encourages hikes into the countryside, where they have perilous encounters with the local faeries; and Emily’s determination leads her to behave rashly, endangering everyone's lives, until her cleverness and intuitive understanding of faerie behavior allow her to triumph. But Emily’s adventures remain entertaining, thanks to the neurodivergent heroine whose blunt behavior and affinity for peculiar logic present a problem when interacting with humans but prove an asset with faeries. This book also offers new emotional depths for Emily, who struggles with her growing but potentially life-threatening love for Wendell, unexpected affection for her niece, and fraught relationship with Farris Pole. Now that she has people to care about, the previously solitary young woman has to reckon even more closely with the consequences of her behavior and how it affects those around her. Emily feels like a character worth following; hopefully the next installment shakes up the format a little.
A strong second outing for a well-built world and an interesting, strangely well-matched pair of lovers.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780593500194
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.
This is wizard Harry Dresden’s yearlong mourning period for Karrin Murphy, the woman he loved.
If you keep upping your protagonist’s powers throughout a series, then you must balance the scales by increasing the number and strength of their enemies—as well as seriously messing with their personal life. Over the course of the Dresden Files, Harry Dresden, Chicago PI and now one of the most powerful wizards in the world, thought his first love was dead (she wasn’t), sacrificed his half-vampire girlfriend on an altar to save their child, lost another girlfriend when they learned she’d been mind-controlled into their relationship, bound himself into servitude as the Fae Queen Mab’s Winter Knight, and, for the length of an entire book, thought he himself was dead (he wasn’t). But nothing has hit quite as hard as the death of Karrin Murphy, the former police lieutenant who was his quasi-partner, friend, and, after a slow burn across many books, lover. Chicago is in a terrible state following a battle with Ethniu the Titan and her Fomor army, and Harry is doing his best to confront the monsters, dark magic, and anti-supernatural prejudice running wild amid the slowly rebuilding city. He’s also trying to save his half brother Thomas from two different death sentences, train a new apprentice, and juggle a relationship with Thomas’ half sister Lara, the dangerously seductive vampire Queen Mab is forcing him to marry. But he’s doing all this while nearly crushed by grief that threatens his judgment and disturbs his control over his magical powers. Butcher really makes you feel the dark, depressive state Harry exists in as well as the effect it’s having on his friends. Despite all that happens in it, this book is a pause as well as a setup for the series’ planned conclusion, an epic conflict with the eldritch creatures known as “the Outsiders.” It’s a tough, redemptive pause that could be a real drag, but thankfully, it’s not, because Butcher shows balance, too: Even as the crises pile up, so do the help and goodwill from unexpected sources.
The series’ snarky noir vibe might be dwindling, but there’s something of substance in its place.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593199336
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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