A fast-paced fantasy adventure in which an Elven warrior comes to question everything about her world.
An Elven commander faces a new war in this first installment of Smith’s fantasy series.
As the story opens, 50 years have passed since the great Elven warrior Selenna and her allies fought and routed the forces of the Necromancer and brought peace to the land of Belissia—and 50 years since both Selenna and the Necromancer vanished in the course of their final confrontation (no bodies were found). The Elves are long-lived beings, most with some kind of mastery over the “five elements” of mancery (including Aquamancy, Electromancy, and Pyromancy). Others, called Truthseers, are trained in the art of mind-reading, and a tiny handful of Elven Inquisitors have the rare ability to shift between the dimension of Belissia and the mysterious Shadow Realm. As the book’s main action begins, Selenna’s daughter Selouteau is the captain of an airship in the Elven Armada when violence again threatens Belissia. After a massive force of Humans invades and establishes a beachhead on Belissia, Selouteau is tasked with shoring up the Elven position in the coming conflict by making overtures to Ezell, the self-exiled prince of the Ez people. At her side on this mission will be young Ensign Perch, a Truthseer who’s far more than he seems. The situation is likewise more complex than it looks: Ever since the Necromancer’s War, ruling Elven factions have been high-handed toward and dismissive of the Ez and other groups they call “Lesser Races”—a fact that the invading Human Alliance, under the cultlike control of a “Divine-King,” is only happy to exploit. Selouteau’s orders are “to gain allies, not start another war,” but long before the fast-paced action of the book’s climax arrives, readers will know that another war is inevitable.
Smith’s prose is occasionally verbose and overdramatic (“The words hit Selouteau like a physical blow,” reads one passage; “her head swam, and her mind reeled”), and the author sometimes gives his characters groan-worthy dialogue (“If I ever see your ugly, scarred face again, it will be the last thing you remember,” snarls Ezell after a barroom brawl, adding, “ever”). But he has an unfailing knack for conveying gripping action scenes, and, despite the fact that the various sorceries give his Elven characters (particularly Selouteau herself) the equivalent of comic book superpowers, Smith manages to invest confrontations with the feeling of real tension and stakes. By far the book’s most fascinating element is its steady thread of subversion: Readers will instinctively like Selouteau, but they’ll quickly wonder if they’re rooting for the wrong side. The Human Alliance might initially seem boorish and malevolent, but by the time Prince Ezell speaks about “the curfews and mandatory camps imposed by the Elves during the war” that resulted in “tens of thousands of deaths,” readers will be looking at Selouteau and the other Elves in a harsher light, which is refreshing to find in a supernatural epic. This is first-rate fantasy in the Tolkien vein, with future volumes sure to deepen the story.
A fast-paced fantasy adventure in which an Elven warrior comes to question everything about her world.Pub Date: June 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781923163690
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Clark & MacKay
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A well-constructed and enjoyable conclusion.
In the conclusion to the Emily Wilde trilogy, a Cambridge professor of dryadology—faerie studies—prepares to live her research as never before.
Previously, in Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (2024), Emily poisoned Queen Arna, the usurping stepmother of her faerie-prince fiance, Wendell Bambleby, and found a gate to Wendell’s lost kingdom; naturally, the process of establishing a new monarchy in a quixotic faerie realm will be far from smooth. Unfortunately, Arna is not quite dead; she is using her poisoned, liminal state to blight the very landscape. Emily must employ her specific mortal skills (academic research and unrelenting resolve) to find the faerie lore that best describes their current situation, picking out the clues within scraps of old tales to locate the hidden, dying queen, and deal with her in a way that doesn’t lead to further damage. Although much of what she learns is grim, Emily forges on, determined to discover the path to a happy ending for herself and Wendell, where she can be the faerie queen she never imagined she’d be (and is frankly quite uncomfortable being). Thankfully, this concluding volume isn’t the feared retread of the previous two, both of which involved Emily’s research in remote European locations and her efforts to get on with the human locals, even while her obvious neurospiciness and deep understanding of rules allow her to deal with faeries more effectively than most mortals can. This installment makes effective callbacks to the previous two, while moving the story forward as Emily, despite the concerns of her mortal friends, tries to make a place for herself in a dangerous new world where not all of her subjects are prepared to take her seriously. Janet of Carterhaugh merely had to drag her lover Tam Lin from a horse to secure her happiness from a vengeful faerie queen; Emily has to put in real work, using her brain and plunging into physical danger to earn her future. The result is far more satisfying and believable, despite being mainly set in a fantastical world.
A well-constructed and enjoyable conclusion.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593500224
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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