A promising adults-only continuation of a YA romantasy series.
A whipping girl’s life is transformed beyond her wildest dreams.
Tamsyn is a beloved member of the royal family of Penterra—sort of. Abandoned on the castle doorstep when she was a baby, she’s been raised alongside the young princesses as their whipping girl, taking the physical punishment whenever one of the untouchable royal sisters does something wrong. Penterran society no longer fears dragons a century after their eradication, but fear of raiders has kept Tamsyn and her sisters close to home. She’s starting to look forward to independence in the next chapter of her life, but then her family asks one more sacrifice of her: She must marry Lord Beast, the so-called barbarian whose people keep her city safe, who has requested a royal marriage as recompense. The Beast of the Borderlands, better known as Fell to friends and companions, is desperate to improve life for the impoverished northerners he rules, so he hopes that a royal marriage will help. That’s why he’s horrified to learn, after publicly consummating their hasty marriage, that he’s been tricked into wedding the less-than-royal Tamsyn. Despite his anger and her fear, they find that they have an intense, unusual connection, and they set off north together, going home to Fell’s people. When a surprise attack leads Tamsyn to learn she has the ability to turn into a dragon, their world expands far beyond what they initially expected for their lives together. This book, the first in a new series, serves as a prequel to Jordan’s YA Firelight series, which centered romantasy before the current vogue for it. It will be enjoyed by many fans of the original tales, especially if they’re now adults; though it has several explicit scenes that are decidedly not YA, it ticks all the romantasy boxes. Fans of Jordan’s historicals, on the other hand, may be disappointed by a lack of the depth they’ve come to expect from her work—though that may be worth overlooking thanks to the compelling plot. A cliffhanger ending will leave readers anxious for the next installment.
A promising adults-only continuation of a YA romantasy series.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780063399990
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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