An immersive new fantasy world that has something for everyone.
Maas’ new adult fantasy series is equal parts mystery, romance, and action drama.
Welcome to Crescent City, where all manner of Vanir—near-immortal magical beings—live together. If the Fae, animal shifters, witches, angels, vampyrs, mer folk, and so on don’t exactly live in harmony, they do all bow down to the powerful Asteri, the six godlike beings who rule the planet Midgard with an iron fist and are currently concerned with suffocating an uprising of humans who are sick of being oppressed by the more powerful Vanir. Bryce Quinlan, half human, half Fae, with barely any magic to her name, lives in Crescent City with her roommate and best friend, Danika Fendyr, the famously powerful wolf shifter who will one day lead all the wolves. After a fun night out, Bryce stumbles back to their apartment to find Danika and her whole wolf pack brutally murdered. When other victims are found dead under similar circumstances two years later, the angel who governs the city enlists Bryce to use her knowledge of Danika and her memories of the crime scene to help Hunt Athalar, a brooding angel with a tragic past, solve a mystery that will eventually concern a stolen Fae artifact, a rare demon, and Danika’s long-buried secrets. Readers who love Maas for her romances will find plenty to enjoy here: not only the story of Bryce and Hunt but several love-stories-to-come hinted at for the bevy of ridiculously attractive, wondrously powerful characters who populate Crescent City. But the mystery of Danika’s death and Bryce’s struggle to deal with her lingering grief as she investigates do just as much to speed the reader through 800 pages as the steamy romance.
An immersive new fantasy world that has something for everyone.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 9781635574043
Page Count: 816
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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