Books shelved under “Fantasy”

Stakes that are neither too high nor too low. Facing discrimination and prejudice as a refugee who belongs to an ethnic minority in their new city. Dealing with the complicated history of one’s culture, one’s past. Pushing back against for-profit healthcare. These are all powerful elements in The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia. Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC!

Although novella-length, this book brims with plot. Firuz, a Sassanian refugee, joins…

After reading Sarah Gailey’s The Echo Wife last year, I jumped on Just Like Home as soon as it came out—and thanks, by the way, to my library for having a copy available right away! For those who don’t know me, I want to be upfront: I don’t generally read horror. It takes a special kind of speculative-fiction author to get me to do that, and Gailey happens to be such an author.

Vera Crowder…

Moment of shame as I admit I have never read anything by C.J. Cherryh! I picked up a whole stack of her paperbacks from the used bookstore; I decided to start with The Paladin because the internet told me that it was a good standalone work. No lies! Now, it took me over a week to read this little story because I was distracted and, perhaps, not in the mood for exactly this type of…

Claire Hansen returns in this sequel to Summon the Keeper. It’s rare that I manage to read the next book in a series in such close succession, but here we go! The Second Summoning embraces and builds upon certain elements of absurdity present in the first book. I admire how Tanya Huff can write urban fantasy that is simultaneously tense and intriguing yet also funny and lighthearted. However, the plot of this book didn’t…

Alas, for the first time in over a year, I must shelve another book as “did not finish.” I am loath to do this with an eARC I received from NetGalley—I try my best only to apply for books I will hopefully like, and even when I don’t like them, I do my best to finish them and provide a full review. That being said, I have no problem with DNFing a book if it…

Welcome to part two of my two-part review of this duology from Marie Lu. I’m glad I went with my gut and read both books in close succession. Had I waited, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed Steelstriker as much as I did—and as you read this review, you will see that I still liked it less than Skyhunter. My chief critique from that review is repeated here: this series is fine,…

This was one of those cases of the cover truly attracting me while in my local indie bookshop. I hadn’t read anything by Alix E. Harrow previously, but the title, description, and cover sold me on The Once and Future Witches. And, given the climate of hostility towards women and people of marginalized genders in the United States in 2022, this book set in 1893 feels oddly, uncomfortably familiar.

Taking place from the spring…

On my most recent trip to our town’s used bookstore, I got a hefty dose of Tanya Huff books. Having finished the Gale Women series (though that didn’t stop me from accidentally buying another copy of The Future Falls by mistake, oops), I was happy to discover several books in two different series from Huff. I decided to start her Keeper Chronicles first with Summon the Keeper. It was a great change of pace…

I love it when I take a chance on a book and it pays off. I knew nothing about Freya Marske or this novel, A Marvellous Light, but the description was sufficient to persuade me to buy it. No regrets. This Edwardian fantasy novel about magicians, with a gay romance and plenty of class and family drama, is a perfect spring read (or indeed, a perfect read for any season). Marske takes a mystery…

Gosh, somehow I thought it was only a year since I read The Warrior’s Tale, but it has actually been two?? How time flies in this pandemic.

I was in a minor reading slump the week following Untamed, so when I went back to reading I wanted something I knew I could get through, something unchallenging. Kingdoms of the Night fits these criteria. As I have remarked in my previous reviews of…

New trilogy from one half of the James S.A. Corey duo? Definitely interested. Disclaimer: I don’t think I read beyond Leviathan Wakes in The Expanse series, but maybe I’ll go back one day. For now, though, let’s talk about Age of Ash. Abraham sets us up to expect heists, recrimination, and plenty of intrigue. I would say that this book mostly delivers, though I could see how there is room for disappointment depending on…

This book crossed my radar and I was ambivalent. On one hand, the description didn’t do a lot for me: it read like your fairly standard fantasy novel with the twist that the society is matriarchal rather than the mostly patriarchal ones we see. On the other hand, I was feeling some epic fantasy, and I wanted to see if Scorpica might pleasantly surprise me. You might say I am an optimist. Well, G.R. Macallister’s…

Duo M.A. Carrick’s The Mask of Mirrors was far-and-away one of my favourite books of 2021. It was such an original, interesting fantasy novel! So I pre-ordered The Liar’s Knot with much anticipation, though as usual I didn’t actually get to reading it until now! That delay did not dampen my excitement, nor did Carrick disappoint me. There is no second book syndrome here, folx.

The Liar’s Knot picks up shortly after the end…

This was a lot of fun in exactly the way I needed right now. Books about books and libraries are, of course, like catnip to a reader like me—yet at the same time, they can often be a letdown. Not so with The Invisible Library. Genevieve Cogman understands how to take the premise of an interdimensional library and wrap it up in enough mystery and intrigue to keep a story going.

Irene is a…

Sometimes a book sneaks up on you, so viciously quiet you don’t realize how much it has affected you until you reach the final pages. Light from Uncommon Stars starts strange before turning decidedly peculiar, yet somewhere along the way, it transubstantiates into something … pure. I don’t know how Ryka Aoki does it, but somehow, this book satisfied me more than any book in recent memory.

Shizuka Satomi is a renowned violin teacher, though…

Don’t you just love when you read a book and it makes your heart feel so incredibly full? That was my experience with The Midnight Bargain. While C.L. Polk’s earlier Kingston Cycle was captivating, The Midnight Bargain was an absolutely sublime balance of magic, romance, social justice, and more. I say this as someone who is not particularly keen on romantic plots! I loved nearly everything about this book, from its characters to its…

This book perplexed yet also entertained me. The Glass Sentence feels like a novel from a different era, a pulpy young adult adventure story that would already have been turned into a movie of questionable quality by the time I was still too young to appreciate it. Perhaps this is appropriate for a story that is about different eras! S.E. Grove’s storytelling is rich and creative in many ways that I will be happy to…

Media tie-in novels aren’t my thing. I have a form of aphantasia that makes it nearly impossible for me to visualize events as I read, and as a result, novels about characters I know from screen tend to fall flat because I can’t imagine the actors portraying those characters. Nevertheless, I have long been a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in 2021 I started a rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls with a friend.…

If there is one thing I can say about Jo Walton, it’s probably that her novels never fail to surprise me in various ways. Some of her novels I have loved—years later and I still can’t stop thinking about My Real Children, whereas others I only tolerated or didn’t quite enjoy. The more I read of Walton’s work, the clearer it is she has certain motifs she likes to return to time and…

I have rather slept on Kendare Blake up until now. However, I applied to read her tie-in novel for Buffy the Vampire Slayer on NetGalley (because I have a Buffy rewatch podcast). Because I am generally more critical of tie-in novels, I wanted to try some of Blake’s original fantasy fiction to get a feel for her writing. Unfortunately, Three Dark Crowns left me wanting—not in a good way.

On the island of Fennbirn,…