tip about a robbery at Sam Markowicz’s hardware store, Moe is found dead at the bottom of his own cellar stairs. Police Chief Walter Turner, the future father-in-law who tends to ignore Irene’s input, does tell her that Markowicz is a Jew who escaped Germany and that the robbery was really an antisemitic attack. Among the many people recently come to town to work at the Tabor Ironworks, which makes parts for the war effort, is one who’s boarding at the home of Irene’s mother. Glamorous Katherine Morningside’s claim to be a singer who knows Frank Sinatra makes Irene doubt her veracity. Meanwhile, the mystery deepens when a Jewish janitor friend of Sam’s who works at Tabor’s gets beaten but refuses to talk to the police. Although Chief Turner calls Moe’s death an accident, Irene suspects that he was murdered because of something he discovered about the ironworks. She gets to work tracking down clues and does such a good job that she’s soon in the killer’s sights. A gutsy and likable sleuth enlivens a debut replete with historical touches.
perspective of each of the characters. The fate of a great city is at stake, but the lower-class characters are mostly concerned with getting enough to eat each day and pursuing personal agendas if there’s any time left over. Most of the upper-class ones and their servants are occupied with preserving a magical and social status quo to the exclusion of anything else. The middle class—well, we barely hear from them, so who knows? The secret truth that Prince Byrn a Sal was not the legitimate heir to the throne drives the plot, but we never even find out whether or not he was a good ruler; that doesn’t seem to matter to all parties concerned. The blank spots in the reader’s understanding can feel frustrating at first but ultimately make the society seem real. A promising, if meandering, start; given the experienced hands we’re in, it will undoubtedly pay off by series’ end.
SCORPICA
Macallister, G.R. Gallery (448 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 22, 2022 978-1-9821-6789-9
science fiction and fantasy
Five nations ruled by women are sent into free fall when, for decades, only boys are born in this novel of magic, might, and intrigue. As the Drought of Girls rages across the Five Queendoms, fingers begin to point. In Scorpica, the warrior queendom, the Barren Queen worries that her people will turn on her only daughter, the last in the nation to be born before the Drought began. Suspicion swirls among the mages of Arca and the priests of Sestia, any one of whom could have angered their patron deities and provoked this punishment. Even if that were so, Bastion, the queendom of scribes, should have noticed the lack of girl births in its recordings. Can the peacemakers of Paxim continue to broker goodwill now, knowing that any of the other nations may fall at a moment’s notice? Macallister weaves her way through the women with the most to lose in the pending collapse of civilization as they know it. As Queen Mirriam of Arca worries that the Drought will deprive her of the magical energy she needs to continue her unnaturally long life, a healer flees Arca with her too-powerful daughter to protect her from the old monarch’s watchful eyes. After two exiles—a rightful heir and the woman honor-bound to protect her—flee Scorpica, the freshly crowned Queen Tamura hatches a plan to maintain the size of her country’s standing army. And somewhere on an unremarkable coast, an ancient but not-quite-forgotten sorceress weaves together plans for a coup no queendom will see coming. As these women and girls cobble together new lives in the throes of a worldwide curse, readers will begin to see the set pieces of a sequel fall into place. Although Macallister’s final cliffhanger may feel unsatisfying to those who want tidy answers to their burning questions, the promise of a continuing story will be enough for many fantasy fans. A bold setup for a blood-bathed new series of epic fantasy.
AGE OF ASH
Abraham, Daniel Orbit (560 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 15, 2022 978-0-316-42184-3 In the first of a trilogy, a city faces a secret crisis of rulership. The city of Kithamar’s new prince, Byrn a Sal, has died within a year of his coronation. Why and how did he die? The answer involves an ambitious thief seeking revenge for her brother’s murder, the fellow thief who secretly loves her but despises the path she’s on, a foreign priestess searching for her missing son, a noblewoman who serves at the head of a religious cult, and the dangerous, centuries-old secret behind the royal succession. Abraham is best known for being one-half of James S.A. Corey, the writing team responsible for The Expanse, the bestselling space opera book series and the source for the fan-favorite TV show. It’s a shame that Abraham doesn’t gain equal attention for his excellent, delicately barbed political fantasy series, such as The Long Price Quartet and The Dagger and the Coin. This new work bears the hallmarks of a great Abraham work: intricate and dirty schemes enacted by initially sympathetic characters who make self-serving choices that they will eventually come to regret, but often too late to change course. It takes a long while for the broader outlines of the plot to take shape because of the narrow 44
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1 january 2022
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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