Surprising and redemptive; Carey masters yet another subgenre of speculative fiction.
A soldier and a witch fumble their way through a sea of misfortune in hopes of a better future in this upending of the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name.
After Magnus Tresti’s wound forces him to leave the army, no one will employ him except the reclusive widow and secret witch Jannae Mirchella. After several weeks as her handyman, Mag is assigned the unusual task of looting the body of a dead demon they’ve seen fall from the sky. Resentful that Jannae hasn’t paid him for any of his work, he steals one of the demon’s possessions, a battered tinderbox, and runs off. He’s soon arrested, and in an effort to warm up the cell where he’s imprisoned, he strikes the flint of the tinderbox and discovers that it summons three demons who must obey his commands. He’s deeply troubled by his power over these beings, but his situation is such that he constantly requires their help to extricate himself from trouble. As he wrestles with this dilemma, he’s pursued by the witch and the king’s warlock advisor, both seeking the tinderbox for themselves. Carey replaces one of the most memorable aspects of the original tale: Andersen’s tinderbox summoned enormous-eyed dogs, not humanlike demons; the switch highlights how unethical it is to keep magical servants forced to obey one’s orders. In addition, Carey excises the most obviously unsavory aspect of the story, in which the soldier uses the dogs to kidnap the virginal princess on several nights, and marries her after the king is disposed of. Here, Mag is gay—and attracted to one of the demons. Nor does he wish to rule anyone. This version also lends sympathy and dimension to the witch, the abused daughter of an innkeeper who unintentionally causes her beloved mentor to be condemned to death. The typical story of a poor man triumphing over a cruel king and an evil witch is thus transformed into a compelling exploration of the brutality of the social divide, the hypocrisy of rulers, and the futility of war.
Surprising and redemptive; Carey masters yet another subgenre of speculative fiction.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9780316595490
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
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
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.
The conclusion to the Villains trilogy asks, In a world where there are no heroes, what does victory really mean?
Schwab’s world is one where violent near-death experiences can engender ExtraOrdinaries, people who come back to life with a new superpowered ability, but lacking empathy, patience, and a variety of other, gentler qualities. In this installment, Victor Vale is becoming increasingly desperate; ever since Sydney Clarke used her power to bring him back from the dead, control over his own ability to cause and dampen pain has been slipping. Sydney herself is chafing against her life on the run with Victor’s protective ex-cellmate, Mitch Turner, and struggling with missing both Victor and her dead sister, Serena, whom she might not be able to resurrect—and definitely shouldn’t. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist, Dr. Gabriel Gray, discovers the existence of ExtraOrdinary people and seeks to harness their power for himself with tragic consequences for himself and many other people. Because the narrative skips around in time, it becomes clear fairly early that a final conflict is looming at EON, a high-tech facility where ExtraOrdinaries are imprisoned and experimented upon. This series has really lived up to its title; while antiheroes and villains have been popular protagonists for quite some time, not every writer is willing to lean into the darkness as hard as Schwab does. Some of her characters were psychopaths even before their near-death traumas, which means they didn’t have much moral fiber to begin with. And even the people who are basically good do a lot of bad and often foolish things when faced with a crisis…and there are a lot of crises. The strength of this series lies in Schwab’s ExtraOrdinary power to make you care for many of these incredibly rash, ethically dubious—some verging on irredeemable—characters anyway. As a result, the story rises above the usual grimdark cynical slog; instead, this is a gripping and nuanced saga with an ending that feels both inevitable and well earned.
Who is victorious? The author and the readers.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781250192233
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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