Books shelved under “Fantasy”

What a seriously impressive and original young adult fantasy novel. The name alone, Flora Segunda of Crackpot Hall, promises a whimsical adventure. But it’s hard to describe just how quickly Ysabeau Wilce pulls the rug from beneath the reader, removing any possibility of normality and dragging us into a fantastic world where anything can happen—but that doesn’t mean it will.

Flora’s world is one where magic is real and a part of daily life,…

When I clued into the fact that Broken is a Frankenstein-inspired mashup of resurrection-related romance and teenage angst, I was determined not to like it. I don’t see why we need to revisit Frankenstein but set it in high school. So A.E. Rought was fighting a pitched battle to earn my approval—but she makes a good case.

Broken’s relationship with its source material is similar to how all other vampire stories relate to Dracula…

I have a soft spot for urban fantasy in which there is “another” world within our own world—Neverwhere comes to mind as a good example. I think it speaks to the reader in me; for someone who inhales escapist fiction, the prospect that any door could potentially be a portal to another place is just … intoxicating. Daughter of Smoke and Bone capitalizes on this idea. Karou is the human adopted daughter of a…

I’ve never really considered what the collective noun would be for a group of mages (coven might work, but it has more specific connotations than just a gathering). Blight is probably as good as any. The mages of Dorana certainly seem to fit the description. Never have I met such a pack of whiny and entitled people. I was happy to see their country destroyed.

Yes, it is this fury that Karen Miller has…

My first outing with Thomas Usher didn’t go so well. People died. He moped around. I wasn’t sure why or how I should care. Pretty Little Dead Things was a car crash of a dark and nasty novel that would definitely appeal to certain people who are not me. But still, I had Dead Bad Things on my tablet courtesy of my Angry Robot Books subscription, so I thought I would give it a chance.

…

The Pirate’s Wish picks up literally where The Assassin’s Curse leaves off: Naji and Ananna are stranded on the Isles of Sky with a wizard who doesn’t seem all that interested in helping them. That changes when a manticore the wizard has been keeping prisoner escapes, kills him, and makes a deal with Ananna to help her in return for passage to the manticore’s home, the Island of the Sun.

The manticore is an early…

Part of my disillusionment with Green isn’t Jay Lake’s fault so much as the cover copy. The dustjacket claims this is a novel about a girl raised to be consort to an immortal Duke—which it is. But that’s only about the first third of the novel. If the dustjacket is to be believed, the entire book is about this plot to overthrow the Duke. Actually, Green accomplishes that with ridiculous ease. From there, the story…

The Great and Secret Show reminds me of the only Tim Powers novel I’ve read, Last Call. And that, for anyone wanting a one-sentence review (contingent upon understanding the nature of my opinion of Last Call), is that.

In many ways, coming across a book that doesn’t interest one even though it’s a good book makes writing a review far more difficult than coming across a bad book. But if one truly reads…

I saw this on a library shelf and fell prey to their assertion that, having read The Shadow of the Wind, I should read this too. Blair’s review is spot-on when she says “the story begins promisingly” but then “the book soon begins to get quite silly and more and more plot holes and unanswered questions pop up”. The Prince of Mist suffers from being, ultimately, a story without a heart. Carlos Ruiz Zafón…

Hard to say whether this is the most famous Rushdie, but it’s certainly the one that got him into the most hot water. The Satanic Verses contains, in part, an irreverent telling of the genesis of Islam as revealed by the prophet Mohammed (Mahound) retold through the visions of Gibreel Farishta, a Bollywood superstar-turned-archangel. Yet, in that trademark way of his, Salman Rushdie manages to turn such irreverence into a kind of sacred worship all…

Spiritwalk bills itself as “the sequel to Moonheart”, and while this is technically true, the events of Moonheart are only barely linked to this book. Reading it will spoil certain outcomes from Moonheart, but you could probably read it without having read the first novel. I wouldn’t recommend this course of action, however, simply because it seems that Charles de Lint doesn’t spend as much time in Spiritwalk developing the atmosphere of the…

For Valentine’s Day, my school library had a "Blind Date with a Book" event. They had wrapped books in wrapping paper festooned with hearts and put them on display. You could select any book at random and borrow it, keeping its identity under wraps until you get home. (We have this week off for a half-term break, so the students would have an entire week to read it.) The idea is to try a book…

I didn’t expect to be reading another one after the last one, but I guess what they say about vampire romance novels is true: it never rains but it pours.

Actually, The Rest Falls Away has been on my to-read list since 2009, long before Dracula, My Love waltzed its way into my life. The tagline everyone uses to describe this book is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Regency England”, and I’m unoriginally…

This is one of those books where the description is of no help whatsoever, and in fact reading the description is more confusing than just reading the book. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, although it would probably make me less likely to take a chance on reading this had I just randomly encountered it. Instead, a group I’m a member of chose this for February’s read, and my library had a copy. I’m glad…

The public domain is a wonderful concept. Copyright is a useful tool during a creator’s lifetime, but when a work passes into public domain, something special happens. Anyone can reproduce it and indeed use its characters and ideas without worrying about any associated legal encumbrances. In this way the public domain becomes a treasure trove of mutual cultural touchstones. Of course, to do this, one needs access to public domain materials. Hence why, in my…

I enjoyed NBC’s new Dracula series an inordinate amount. It was a fun, thrilling experience of storytelling and characterization. And it got me thinking that, despite happily watching various adaptations over the years, I’ve never actually read the original novel. What with it being public domain and all, I put the Project Gutenberg edition on my tablet and sat back to see how the original stacks up to its adaptations.

(If you haven’t already, you…

I wasn’t sure I would like Picking Up the Ghost before I started it. The back cover copy bills it as a coming-of-age story about a kid from an impoverished background learning more about himself and his absent father through magic and encounters with ghosts. None of that pushes my personal urban fantasy buttons. But I gave it a try, and it just goes to show why reading widely and keeping an open mind can…

So, I am an idiot and did not realize this was a book of short stories until I was well into it. Don’t ask me why. I have an ebook copy, and so there was no real description or anything to clue me into it. I just started reading, assuming it was a novel. After a few chapters there were no obvious connections between these characters and their respective stories, but that’s Ekaterina Sedia for…

I had little but praise for The Alchemist of Souls, the first adventure of Mal Catlyn and Coby Hendricks in an alternative Elizabethan England. Anne Lyle had a keen eye for characterization and an ability to weave a tight, dramatic story that held my attention and left me wanting more. So more’s the pity that The Merchant of Dreams was quite a different experience!

This sequel picks up a little while after the first…

The Roanoke Colony was in trouble, and when its governor returned from an expedition to secure more help from England, he discovered the entire population had disappeared: all 114 people, including his grandaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English colonist born in the Americas. To this day, there is no definitive explanation for the colonists’ disappearance, making it the perfect fodder for the literary imagination.

In Blackwood, Gwenda Bond takes some liberties with another Elizabethan…