Mind-expanding fantasy and SF.
A royal minister in disfavor is ordered to complete a tyrannical queen’s prized project in Barsukov’s fantasy novel.
In an unspecified realm where medieval elements combine with a culture approaching (but not quite reaching) a “steampunk” level of development, Lord Shea Ashcroft is a royal minister who has defied an order by the all-powerful but rarely seen Queen Daelyn to use a gas weapon on protesters. Thus, Ashcroft is demoted to an assignment to ensure completion of Daelyn’s ruinously ambitious legacy project: a soaring tower in Owenbeg, a province bordering on the rival nation of Duma. Though ostensibly a defense against “skyrafts,” the massive edifice seems more an arrogant affirmation of royal power than anything else (its toll, in human and financial terms, triggered the protests in the first place). To keep the structure standing and growing, its chief engineer Brielle has had to resort to accepting aid from the “Drakiri”; these are members of a strange, secretive minority—equipped with advanced, incomprehensible technologies—whose origins are now obscure even to them. Among their most prized pieces of tech are “tulips,” oval devices that can counteract gravity. If not wielded properly, a tulip can cause a drastic implosion, destructively pulling everything in range inward. Brielle’s desperate deployment of tulips throughout the tower leads to catastrophic failures and losses of life—but are these accidents or acts of sabotage? Haunted by the death of his sister Lena in a childhood tulip incident, Ashcroft gets close to a Drakiri woman (coincidentally also called Lena) and learns that a Drakiri superstition predicts the advent of a frightful “Mimic Tower” that will materialize if the tulip-assisted tower of Daelyn continues to persist. Assassination attempts and intrigues at court seed a trail ultimately leading Ashcroft into Duma itself, where the Cold War–like animosity between the two kingdoms takes on literally cosmos-bending proportions.
Readers may be tempted to make analogies between the Drakiri and Jews or Romany people, or to compare the Drakiri devices to the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, another apocalyptic power grimly unleashed in a Slavic setting. But these analogs only go so far as the narrative reaches a metaphysical denouement that goes outside the realm of conventional reality to explicate the tale’s vagueness regarding time, place, physics, and even the reason that Queen Daelyn’s capital remains nameless. Some of this material was originally released as an award-winning novella, Tower of Mud and Straw (2021). In this volume,Barsukov has added a follow-up, City of Spires, City of Seagulls, forming a whole that answers many of the original narrative’s questions, however cryptically. There are similarities to Stephen King’s epic Dark Tower series (though without anything near the marathon page count) as well as to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven (1971) and the work of sibling Russian masters Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Barsukov’s storyline becomes quite challenging to follow in the narrative’s latter half, in which plot threads diverge to follow Shea, Brielle, and (via rather conveniently recovered diary entries) the Drakiri Lena, but the payoff is worth the effort. The author’s prose is rarely less than lyrical and poetic (“The balcony windows brought in the smells of autumn’s brandy: smoke from the burning leaves, damp earth, the rotting perfume of forgotten things”). Highly recommended for fans of high fantasy and SF wishing to tread in especially exotic territory.
Mind-expanding fantasy and SF.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781647101367
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Caezik SF & Fantasy
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
SEEN & HEARD
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