Books shelved under “Fantasy”

I have great respect for writers who can create entirely different worlds without succumbing to the need to explain every little detail of the world’s workings. Felix Gilman accomplishes this with The Half-Made World. His world is nothing like our own. There is the barest patina of the Wild West to it in the set dressings and costumes: frontier towns, guns and lawmakers, the looming spectre of industrialization, and disillusioned soldiers from a forlorn…

Occasionally I link to other reviews when I think they make a salient point that complements or contrasts nicely with mine. In this case I’m going to link to Khanh’s review of this book, because it is simply one of the best reviews ever. I laughed out loud reading this, and I liked it better than the book. That is my review of the review.

On to reviewing The Kiss of Deception,…

Hmm. A little too Stephen King for me. But that’s kind of a compliment.

I liked the various shorter works Thomas Olde Heuvelt has had nominated for Hugo Awards, so when I saw this on my library’s New Books shelf, it was a no-brainer. HEX looked like just the right amount of creepy and fantastic: I liked the idea of a social media–influenced modern take on a cursed town. As the narrative develops and the…

I have been remiss in my Temeraire reading. I am way behind now, and with the series ending, it is time to catch up. (I say this, but I don’t actually own the next books and have no intention of buying them in the near future, because I have a ton of other stuff to catch up on. Hah. We’ll see how that goes.) Naomi Novik has always managed to keep the series fresh by…

I can’t believe it has been nearly three years since I read Bronze Gods! It feels like just yesterday I stumbled across the gem of a new fantasy novel in the library and excitedly took it home. Mind you, my memory (or lack thereof) of that first book is more consistent with such an elapsed time. I went into Silver Mirrors with only a vague sense of what happened in Bronze Gods (fortunately, Aguirre…

As I reflected in my review of The Sleeper and the Spindle, fairytale retellings are all the rage. With The Wrath & the Dawn, we have a new take on One Thousand and One Nights. Unlike the original, the stories within the frame story fall by the wayside, for the most part, as Shahrzad’s relationship with Khalid intensifies. Renée Ahdieh’s reimagining, then, is less about retelling the stories from One Thousand and…

Fairytale retellings are sooooooo in these days, and probably with good reason. Fairytales are, in some ways, cultural bedrock. They are meant to be adapted, retold, reimagined with each new generation and new age. The popularity of such a practice fluctuates, but they are always there, beneath the surface, lurking and awaiting their next moment in the spotlight. Hollywood is incredibly talented at messing up its attempts to retell fairytales (although I have to admit,…

My review of Flannery has been pre-empted because as I write this I’m out of town (a rare occurrence). Rather than try to write that review without referring to the book for the choicest tidbits, I might as well review Anansi Boys, which I read during the combined three hours of flights I had on Tuesday evening. I previously read this book a while ago, but like many of Neil Gaiman’s novels, it was…

As a longtime fan of the Raine Benares series, I was excited when I learned that Lisa Shearin was self-publishing a seventh book. Although All Spell Breaks Loose was a satisfying conclusion to the Saghred saga, there seems like plenty of story left to tell about Raine and this world. Sure enough, Wedding Bells, Magic Spells begins just before Raine’s wedding to Mychael. At the same time, the Isle of Mid is playing host to…

So many feelings, not sure how to put it into words. Mistwood started off like its title: hazy but somewhat enervating in all its potential; as it condensed, the story and plot started narrowing until it almost missed the mark. Even a few days later, I’m not sure whether I think this is a good book or not. I guess the truth is that I liked so many parts of this book, but in other…

For a while I did not like this book. In fact, I was downright worried: was I really going to pan a Terry Pratchett book? Inconceivable! So I let out a sharp breath of relief when everything suddenly clicked and fell into place. Nation is a fun yet sensitive tale, full of Pratchett’s signature wit. I mean, how can you not enjoy exchanges like this?

“The thing about the trousermen is, they are very brave

…

Trigger warnings for discussions of suicide and Faustian bargains with eldritch beings.

Mean Girls is one of my favourite movies of all time. It was the first movie I ever purchased for myself on DVD. (If you are reading this in the future, kids, DVDs were the optical media of choice for storing video, back before Netflix just decided to store everything directly in your brain.) It’s a scathing, fun, moving look at the harmful…

So many friend reviews of this book—and so many opinions! It seems that The Eyre Affair is one of those books that some people love on first sight and others find incredibly tedious, confusing, or just unbelievable. I see elements of both, and so, more often than I would like, I find myself on the fence with these polarizing reads. It’s not a position I see as superior—if anything it smacks of indecision to me.…

One reason I love the Victorian novel? It’s remarkably self-aware. Victorian authors tend to have an appreciation of irony and can wield characters-as-social-commentary like nobody’s business. Victorian England was a time of immense social and technological change, novelists of that era tended to be of a position and background that gave them something to say and the means to say it. While I’m not here to condemn the novels of any other time period, I…

I love it when a book manages to surprise me! I picked this up from the library at a whim, no real expectations, but not overly optimistic from the vague description and some of the reviews I read here on Goodreads. Ash & Bramble gets likened to a Cinderella retelling, but that’s a bit like saying Hansel and Gretel: Witchhunters was a retelling of Hansel and Gretel—in that it is entirely inaccurate. Sarah Prineas…

Look, I know the writing is clunky and the kids read more like twelve-year-olds than the fifteen-year-olds they’re supposed to be. I know the story jerks about in stops and starts. I know Nicholas Flamel is a terrible role model and these kids should not be emulating him.

But. But.

I still really enjoyed The Alchemyst. And this is one of those times I’m glad I tend to wait a day or two before…

Finally caught up on this series, thanks to the magic of ordering stuff online and reading these relatively short novels back to back. The Brimstone Deception starts the day after The Dragon Conspiracy concludes. With such tight timing, it’s no coincidence that emotions and tensions continue to run high. Lisa Shearin advances Mac’s storyline even as she drops some more bombshells about the world of The SPI Files in general.

Already the plot of this…

These book titles remind of the titles of The Big Bang Theory episodes. First The Grendel Affair and then The Dragon Conspiracy. It’s cute, and hopefully Lisa Shearin won’t have to write so many that she starts to run out of ideas like that TV show….

In this sequel, Mac Fraser and Ian Byrne are investigating the theft of magical diamonds with bad mojo. There’s yet another rival dragon in town, this one a…

I am a big fan of Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series. I was stoked to hear she had a new series, this time urban fantasy set in our world, coming out. That was … three years ago. This is book one. What happened?

Life happened. The Grendel Affair came out during my last year teaching in England. No problem, I figured—I’ll buy it when I move back in August. Then August came around, and I…

This is an odd book. I'm pretty sure it’s good, but I’m not sure I liked it. It took me far longer to read Black Feathers than I usually take to read any book. Part of that was because I spent more time focused on other things over the past few weeks. Most of it, I think was avoidance. Joseph D’Lacey’s writing is good; don’t get me wrong. But I was never in a hurry…