Books shelved under “Fantasy”

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,…

What feels like a long time ago, I read a book called The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Now she’s back with a standalone sequel of sorts, The Witness for the Dead. You don’t need to have read The Goblin Emperor to read this book: the protagonist, Thara Celehar, was a character in the first book, but otherwise there is no real connection between the two. This is an entirely different story—or rather, stories…

Talk about a compelling narrative! Melissa Bashardoust isn’t fooling around. From page 1, Girl, Serpent, Thorn is a wild ride. Soraya is the twin sister to the new shah. She is also poison: her touch is deadly to all living things save plants. Her mother raised her to believe this was a curse from a div (a demon), and as a result, Soraya has been raised apart from the court. Different and distant, she discovers…

Have I ever remarked how much I appreciate books that have simple titles? Book titles can sometimes be so lengthy or convoluted. I appreciate the simplicity of each of the titles of C.L. Polk’s Kingston Cycle. Also, how did I not know Polk is Canadian until now?? Get a grip, Kara! I am pleased I procured Soulstar from my library not too long since I read Stormsong because I actually remember the ongoing story!

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Hey, it’s your girl Kara, reading the sequel to a book four years after I read the first book, and the real tragedy is that this is not unusual for me! So when you hear me say that I struggled to get into Shadowhouse Fall, it’s not because of the book itself. Rather, I literally forgot everything about the plot of the first book and had to lean on my review and some…

It’s always satisfying when a trilogy comes to a full-stop close, loose ends wrapped up and most questions answered. In Son of a Trickster, Eden Robinson introduced us to Jared Martin, a Haisla/Heiltsuk boy on the cusp of manhood and also learning about his magical heritage. Robinson could have stopped there—nearly did, by her account, not being much of a series writer—yet she didn’t. Trickster Drift followed Jared’s move to Vancouver, his attempts to…

Apparently 3 years was too long to wait between reading Witchmark and Stormsong because I have forgotten pretty much everything that happened in the first book, oops! As I started Stormsong, I was very confused: who are all these people? Who are the Amaranthines, and why do they care about Aeland or Laneer? What’s going on? Nevertheless, I did my best to forge on and trust that C.L. Polk would do their best to…

One of the library’s copies of Crooked Kingdom was available sooner than expected, although I did only start reading it 1 day before my loan was up (and it had another hold on it after me). Oops! Fortunately, despite its heft, this book is a pretty easy read. Leigh Bardugo’s style has that benefit of the words virtually leaping off the page as you glide through her narration.

Picking up where Six of Crows left…

Earlier this year I panned Ruins & Revenge, a Raine Benares spin-off novel featuring Tam as the main character. In my review, I expressed my disappointment over Lisa Shearin’s plotting, but I reassured myself that I would continue reading her novels (specifically her SPI Files series).

I might need to revise that prediction. I might need to take a long hiatus from Shearin’s novels for a while.

The Phoenix Illusion begins with a building…

Over a decade ago, I read Lilith’s Brood. I immediately recognized the power of Octavia E. Butler’s writing, her utter willingness to exploit science fiction to the fullest extent that it can comment on our society. Since then, I have always nodded along and agreed every time someone calls Butler a grandmaster of science fiction and fantasy. She is an icon. But I didn’t read anything else by her.

Until now.

Kindred is the…