Jenn Lyons has published a slew of well-received epic fantasy novels over the last few years (she launched a 5-book series in 2019 with The Ruin of Kings [click the title for a link to my review] that concluded in 2022), an epic standalone and now Green & Deadly Things, a dark-fantasy standalone about dead demigods, necromancy, an order of knights, and nature magic.
Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. That’s how history remembers it.
History remembers it wrong.
Mathaiik has trained all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain, nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world.
But when an even stranger kind of monster begins to wake, the Knights quickly prove powerless to stop them. Whole forests are coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, as if the land itself has turned upon humanity.
It’s a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights’ very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up.
This is only the beginning of his problems. Because said necromancer, Kaiataris, knows something history has forgotten. The threat of this wild magic is part of a cycle that has repeated countless times–life after death, chaos after order. And if she and Math can’t find a new way to balance the scales, this won’t just be the end of the world as they know it, but the end of all life, everywhere.
Mathaiik (Math as everybody calls him) is a young member of the Idallik Knights, who doesn’t quite fit in with his crew, his magical abilities haven’t quite manifested. He’s not particularly well-liked by his fellow knights but still, he preservers because he wants to defend the world from necromancy. His sister is his only truly positive relationship.
Lyons starts the novel with incredible verve – Math and his colleagues are attached by animated plantlife, leaving many of them dead, injured, or infested. He’s one of the only survivors so of course some blame comes his way. He’s in even more hot water when a long-dormant Necromancer is awakened, one of the dread Grim Lords who were the cause of nearly ending the world hundreds of years prior to the start of the novel.
This necromancer, Kaitaris (Kai), changes things. Math struggles to reconcile the knowledge and beliefs that have indoctrinated him with the wakened woman who confronts him. Confronts his beliefs, especially when he manages to save her life. His activity with Kai labels him an outlaw even more. The characters fall into an awkward romance, with Kai flirting, Math realizing he’s attracted to a woman who he thought for his whole life was essentially the epitome of evil.
There’s also a great deal of horrific imagery and this is an element where Lyon’s prose/storytelling excels. Plants coming to life, spores infecting people is portrayed as terrifying to the characters and I was able to feel that in the narrative. I was reminded a bit of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted in the way folk horror/haunted forest elements are brought into a fantasy novel involving a magical order of knights and demigods.
I found the character of Kai to be a delightful highlight of the novel. Her attitudes, outlook, and overall sense of fun that illuminated the character despite being in a centuries-long slumber was refreshing. She was a great foil to Math, who was a little bland and super naïve, he felt more like a pre-teen than the twenty-year old he was. I have to admit that his name was a stumbling block for me. Granted, reading fantasy for a few decades I’m accustomed to some non-traditional names for characters, but a character named “Math” at the heart of a fantasy story just kept me shaking my head.
While I was immediately gripped by the frenetic and horrific opening, the narrative pull wasn’t as strong or sustained for the remainder of the novel. In the end, that leaves me somewhat frustrated because Lyons did a lot of things really, really well – horrific scenes, the delight of Kai, the depth of the world-building, but the plotting and blandness of Math (ugh, that name!) had me feeling this novel could have been more than it turned out to be. All that said, the positive elements tipped the scales in favor of me enjoying the novel overall.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | Tor
March 2026 | 368 Pages
Excerpt: https://culturefly.co.uk/read-an-extract-from-green-and-deadly-things-by-jenn-lyons/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Tor Books
