An engaging paranormal romance in which love triumphs over isolation.
A Psy and a cat shifter separated by trauma and amnesia reunite and take on an unknown enemy.
The Psy-Changeling series continues with a new pair of lovers whose personal connection might strengthen the links among the human, Psy, and shifter groups just as the Psynet is under attack. In sections that alternate between the recent past and present and between the points of view of the two protagonists and a mysterious villain, we learn about the abruptly ended budding romance of Psy Ivan Mercant and ocelot-shifter Soleil Bijoux Garcia and then see them renew their bond. Ivan has always been self-contained. His in-utero exposure to a drug, followed by a childhood with his troubled single mother, has affected him emotionally as well as cognitively. Though eventually embraced by the powerful Russian Mercant family, despite not having a biological connection to them, he is convinced that the drug’s effects will eventually make him a danger to everyone. A chance meeting with a playful healer briefly gives him hope, but losing her seems part of his inevitable solitary existence. Even when he finds her again, she doesn’t seem to recognize him. Orphaned young when her shifter-human parents died in an accident, French Latinx ocelot Lei is now reeling from the recent massacre of her shifter pack. But her shifter half is drawn to an intense stranger in the midst of a Psy crisis. Once Lei realizes the love they could have, Ivan must contend with her determination that they stay together and his own protective instincts. While an amnesia plot may not be for everyone, the novel deftly balances Ivan’s grief with sweet flashbacks to the couple’s initial dates and then ramps up the electric attraction between them in the present. The author’s signature warm scenes involving new changelings and the changeling families familiar to regular series readers reinforce a tone of communal love and support. While the external threat mounts and Ivan and Lei work with Psy and changeling leaders to combat it, the sexual chemistry between the couple reaches a joyful culmination. Some readers, however, may grumble at how late in the book the scene occurs.
An engaging paranormal romance in which love triumphs over isolation.Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-44067-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Slow and plodding.
A young woman with a magical ability to harness light discovers she is royalty.
Talasyn is a foot soldier for her homeland of Sardovia, which has been under attack for the past decade by the powerful and evil Night Empire, a conflict known as the Hurricane Wars. Talasyn is an orphan with no knowledge of her family, but she assumes they might be the source of her rare, magical Lightweaving talent. During a battle with the forces of the Night Empire, Talasyn spars with Prince Alaric, a fierce warrior who is the son and heir to the Night Emperor. Talasyn is sent on a covert mission into Nenavar, a nearby matriarchy that has remained neutral during the Hurricane Wars, to try to access a Light Sever which could hone and refine her magic. Instead, she discovers she is the heir to their royal throne; she and her mother, now presumed dead, disappeared under mysterious circumstances when she was a year old. Alaric follows her into Nenavar, and they discover his magical ability to cast darkness and shadows produces shocking results when mixed with her Lightweaving. A few weeks later, the Night Empire defeats Sardovia and ends the Hurricane Wars, and the novel transitions to a tedious, slow-moving story of court intrigue and diplomacy. A group of Sardovian soldiers and refugees seek asylum in Nenavar, but Talasyn’s grandmother agrees to protect them only if Talasyn agrees to join the royal court and marry Alaric. The politics surrounding the impending wedding is the primary plot for the rest of the novel, and it’s a slog. The glacially slow pacing only serves to highlight the confusing world building and underdeveloped characters. It’s unclear why Alaric and Talasyn are attracted to each other, and their tentative romance is just as stuck in a rut as the plot.
Slow and plodding.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780063277274
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.
The master of supernatural disaster returns with four horror-laced novellas.
The protagonist of the title story, Holly Gibney, is by King’s own admission one of his most beloved characters, a “quirky walk-on” who quickly found herself at the center of some very unpleasant goings-on in End of Watch, Mr. Mercedes, and The Outsider. The insect-licious proceedings of the last are revisited, most yuckily, while some of King’s favorite conceits turn up: What happens if the dead are never really dead but instead show up generation after generation, occupying different bodies but most certainly exercising their same old mean-spirited voodoo? It won’t please TV journalists to know that the shape-shifting bad guys in that title story just happen to be on-the-ground reporters who turn up at very ugly disasters—and even cause them, albeit many decades apart. Think Jack Torrance in that photo at the end of The Shining, and you’ve got the general idea. “Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same,” King writes, “and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard.” In the careful-what-you-wish-for department, Rat is one of those meta-referential things King enjoys: There are the usual hallucinatory doings, a destiny-altering rodent, and of course a writer protagonist who makes a deal with the devil for success that he thinks will outsmart the fates. No such luck, of course. Perhaps the most troubling story is the first, which may cause iPhone owners to rethink their purchases. King has gone a far piece from the killer clowns and vampires of old, with his monsters and monstrosities taking on far more quotidian forms—which makes them all the scarier.
Vintage King: a pleasure for his many fans and not a bad place to start if you’re new to him.Pub Date: April 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3797-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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