Books shelved under “Fantasy”

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…

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…