So pleased to report that Publishers Weekly gave my forthcoming novel a starred review! Very happy about this, and also, I must admit, relieved. As you might imagine, waiting for big reviews just prior to publication date can be a nail-biting exercise.
Will people get my book, the things I was trying to accomplish, trying to say? Will they enjoy my story concept and characters? Or . . . or . . . (My fellow authors can fill in the blanks on pre-pub-day anxiety and dark imaginings.) But so far, so good. Publication day: July 11. For a list of my appearances, please see here (scroll to bottom.)
PW Starred Review: At the Table of Wolves
Veteran SF/F author Kenyon turns to historical paranormal fantasy in this compelling recreation of an alternate 1936 Britain rife with espionage, intrigue, and moral ambiguities. Idealistic young journalist Kim Tavistock, raised in America but now settled into her father’s stately home in Yorkshire, grapples with the suspicion that her father may be, like many of his aristocratic class, a Nazi sympathizer. King Edward will soon abandon the throne for “that woman,” Wallis Simpson, who is herself dangerously close to Erich von Ritter, a character loosely based on the seductive real-life Nazi agent Joachim von Ribbentrop. Kenyon adds enormous fuel to this smoldering prewar scene with the bloom, a sudden appearance in 1918 of psychic talents affecting about one in 1,000 people. It’s suggested that this manifestation was produced by the mass trauma of the Great War. Kim’s psychic gift is spill, which causes others to reveal their deepest secrets to her. The Nazis are a decade ahead of the British in finding military uses for psychics, and Kim is drawn into a quixotic attempt to foil a Nazi plan for invading England, risking her heart and her life in the “tawdry, morally wretched” game of spying. Kenyon’s finely tuned historical atmospherics and her sure-handed development of even minor characters make this novel a superb adventure, worthy to launch a distinguished historical fantasy series. (July)
Available for preorder:
Signed copy. A Book for All Seasons, Leavenworth, WA