A great start to a fantasy duology featuring well-developed characters and settings.
The fates of a warrior princess and a royal guard entangle in Solomon’s series-starting romantic fantasy novel.
Cecelia is eldest child of King Filip of the Archipelago of the Moons and the presumed heir to the kingdom, despite that fact that her mother is not the queen. She always felt like an outsider in her own family, especially as she doesn’t know the truth regarding her late mother’s identity. She was brought up to be a fierce warrior and a brilliant strategist, so when her father, who has visions, tells her to travel with her brother to the kingdom of Korith to investigate a looming threat, she accepts her mission—even when he tells her she’ll likely never return home. Viktor is the kinsguard of Korith’s young monarch, and a remarkably skilled fighter who’s killed many men during his service. He’s assigned the role of bodyguard to visiting princess Cecelia and her young sibling. Viktor’s frustration increases when he becomes romantically infatuated with Cecelia. Despite their mutual attraction, the pair find themselves unwillingly thrown together by an arranged marriageand caught in the middle of a chaotic political plot and popular rebellion. As their newly formed bond is tested, Cecelia and Viktor come to realize there are plenty of secrets hidden in Korith’s history. Solomon’s first entry in the Dual Moons duology features chapters that focus alternately on Cecelia and Viktor, which is an effective narrative strategy. They ably introduce the two complex main characters as they both struggle with questions of identity and duty, as well as their romantic feelings for each other: “Fragile hearts…need tender care,” Cecelia whispers to Viktor at one point. “Your loneliness can keep mine company.” Their love story builds in an intricately developed fictional world; the story delves into religion and politics, examining the oppression of a people and the lengths to which people will go to gain power. The author also makes the intriguing choice to separate the characters with two road trips to explore the internal dynamics of a frayed kingdom.
A great start to a fantasy duology featuring well-developed characters and settings.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987942017
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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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