Books shelved under “Fantasy”

This is something I probably never would have read had it not been nominated for a Hugo Award. I generally eschew tie-in fiction—I have enough fiction set in original worlds to read. The Butcher of Khardov is set in the world of Warmachine, which Wikipedia reliably informs me is a “tabletop steampunk wargame.” So, Dungeons & Dragons on steroids.

The cover art and illustrations scattered throughout the story reinforce this perception. Orsus Zoktavir is…

My ePub copy of this from the Hugo Voters Packet had really messed up formatting, but I perservered anyway, because this story is awesome. Six-Gun Snow White is the classic Snow White fairytale reinterpreted through the lens of the Old American West. Snow White is the ironically-named child of a silver mine owner and a Crow woman, Gun That Sings, who married him against her will so that he would leave her people alone. Gun…

Mmm, it’s good to dip back into the Laundry Files universe for a little while. Charles Stross is in fine form with Equoid, a delightfully creepy take on unicorn mythology guest starring a young H.P. Lovecraft. Bob Howard is itching to get out of the office, and in a classic case of careful-what-you-wish-for, he gets sent to a country farm with a unicorn infestation. Zombies and tactical teams and chaos and destruction ensues.

The…

Hot on the heels of “The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly,” I started “Fade to Gold.” I think I like this one even better. It is definitely a more straightforward narrative, and it feels like some kind of fable. Benjanun Sriduangkaew delivers a sucker-punch kind of tragedy: a lone soldier, a woman, is making her way back to her village when she encounters a fellow female traveller. But the traveller is actually a …

I read Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead last summer when he was first nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. I remember getting a good deal of enjoyment from it during a few sunny days reading outside. It was fantasy, but not as we’ve become accustomed to know it. Gladstone’s Alt Coulumb was a twisting maze of legal deals entwined with magical contracts. The worldbuilding was simply superb, and the plot had me hooked. So…

Could not deal.

I looked at my progress today and realized I was only slightly more than halfway through. Every time I go to read it, my eyes feel heavy. Enormous paragraphs of description and narration make for a style of story that just does not work for me at the moment. I need something more quickly-paced, something that grabs and takes me along for the ride.

This is not a bad book. But it’s…

Here we are at the end of the To Hell and Back trilogy. As I said in my Dreams of Gods and Monsters review, a trilogy works best for me if each successive book raises the stakes and widens the scope of its world. By these criteria, Matthew Hughes has succeeded. The first book introduces Chesney Arnstruther, a high-functioning autistic man whose world is mostly numbers until he accidentally summons a demon, incites a strike…

I’ve mentioned, once in a while, how David Eddings’ Belgariad was my gateway into fantasy. I read Papa Tolkien first, but it was the impressive heft of the first three Belgariad books in a single omnibus that ignited my Grade 7 mind with a thirst for more tales of wizards and magic and intrigue. I soon after started reading A Song of Ice and Fire. (I developed some nice upper body strength from lifting…

In Grade 12 English we were responsible for an Independent Study Unit, where we read two novels and wrote an essay comparing their common themes. We also had to give a presentation on a theme from the books. I studied Douglas Coupland’s Hey Nostradamus! and Girlfriend in a Coma; my presentation was on theodicy and the Problem of Evil. A classmate gave a presentation about Pride and Prejudice. We had the opportunity to…

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from the author in exchange for a review. Loves me the free books!

So, I don’t necessarily do steampunk. I understand the appeal (I think) of speculating about what would have happened had the Victorians taken the Industrial Revolution to the next level. But I think that steampunk often runs aground, for me, as resembling too much both science fiction and fantasy. I like my science fiction scientific,…

This might not have been the best time for me to read The Holders. The first (and only) season of The Tomorrow People just finished broadcasting here in the UK, and I’m sad it’s over, because my landlady and I were having so much fun heckling its ridiculous characters and plot twists. Seriously, Stephen is supposed to be a high school student but has the ripped body of a mid-twenties man and never gets…

Well, here we are. Dreams of Gods and Monsters, the third book in this delightful trilogy from Laini Taylor, was coincidentally published a few weeks before I discovered the first book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, courtesy my landlady. Two months later and I’ve read all three books. There’s always something fun about binging on a series in short succession. It definitely creates momentum and allows one to keep the characters and their…

Micah Grey runs away and joins the circus. It’s a common enough idea in literature. There is something magical about circuses, which function as heterotpias in which misfits and outcasts find a place where the rest of society can tolerate or ignore them as long as they offer entertainment value. What makes Pantomime different from the run-of-the-mill circus novel is its setting. Ellada is a country in a different world with a society relatively similar…

It’s hard to believe I’ve had to wait over a year between Dresden Files books! I’m glad I developed this sideline of being a teacher while I waited.

As with previous reviews, this is full of spoilers. And, to be honest, I don’t really understand why someone who hasn’t been following the series up to this point would be much interested in what happens in book 15. If you’re really curious about whether Dresden…

For a book called The Innocent Mage, set in a land protected by a magical barrier, where the practising of magic is a capital offense for the Olken and a birthright for the Doranen, not a lot of magic actually happens in this book. Karen Miller dangles the potential for magic like a carrot before whacking the reader with the stick of scenery-chewing dialogue. While there is plenty to enjoy about the slow-simmer of…

Lee Collins has gone and done it, people. He has made me a fan of a Western-based series. I never thought I would see the day. But if I liked The Dead of Winter, then I guess I loved She Returns from War. This sequel is everything I wanted and nothing like what I expected; Collins manages to satisfy my appetite while simultaneously surprise and delight.

Whereas The Dead of Winter is a…

I’m not saying I’m book-stalking Laini Taylor. I’m not not saying it either. My landlady happened to borrow Blackbringer (or Dreamdark: Blackbringer for those in favour of colon book titles) from the library while seeking the third instalment of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. This isn’t it, incidentally—it’s actually Taylor’s debut novel, but in many ways it’s even better. How can that be? Well, it has fairies. And djinn. And dragons.

Did I…

I read God Stalk and Dark of the Moon as part of the omnibus The Godstalker Chronicles. However, I’m reviewing them separately because they are separate novels with standalone—but connected—arcs. They work well as an omnibus edition, because the latter picks up almost immediately following on from the former. Whereas I had a great deal of difficulty with God Stalk, however, I found this one slightly more tolerable.

To be honest, about fifty…

So, God Stalk is the first book in a series by P.C. Hodgell that seems to have a cult following but otherwise is shrouded in obscurity. I can’t remember where I first saw it mentioned, but it sounded interesting. I read the omnibus edition of the first two books.

It seems like God Stalk is a book that provokes one of two reactions: either one loves its rich, evocative characters and environment, or one hates…

In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor introduced us to Karou, a blue-haired seventeen-year-old girl whose origins are far more fantastic than you could believe at first glance. She is a linchpin in a war between the angelic seraphim and the demonic chimarae of Eretz, a world parallel to Earth. At the end of the first book, Karou learns the secret behind her origins and abandons her on-again/off-again angelic lover Akiva to go…