Books shelved under “Fantasy”

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…

Every so often I just love to put myself through the experience that is reading the sequel to a book I read nearly 6 years ago! That is the case with The Crown’s Fate, which picks off where The Crown’s Game left off. Somehow, that first book and the description of this one were enough to keep it on my to-read list after a massive purge I did shortly after joining the StoryGraph. Then…

Here we are, the sixth and final book of The Song of the Shattered Sands. A Desert Torn Asunder brings to a close the quest of Çeda to kill the Kings of Sharakhai, perhaps in unexpected ways. But the story has grown grander and more epic in scope since that first book, and there are other players on the field who deserve closure too. Bradley P. Beaulieu manages the not inconsiderable feat of creating…

I’m having a pretty good year for epic fantasy! First Beaulieu’s Song of the Shattered Sands, then Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, and now Rebecca Roanhorse’s Black Sun bringing me fantasy stories in worlds not inspired by medieval Europe. In this case, Roanhorse has drawn on pre-Columbian America for her inspiration. As she says in her acknowledgments, she wanted to challenge the idea that pre-Columbian Indigenous cultures lacked civilizations worthy of such epic tales…

Sometimes I think I’m getting old when I start to complain about the number of characters in a book and how hard it is to keep all the plots in my head! I’m starting here because that’s my major issue with When Jackals Storm the Walls, the fifth book of The Song of the Shattered Sands. For what it’s worth, Bradley P. Beaulieu is starting to bring all these various characters and plots…

Sisters are so inconvenient, right? We’re always messing with your attempts to run an orderly, oppressive empire hostile to any religion except your own. Best to just ship us off to some quiet, out-of-the-way prison where we can languish until we decide to jump onto a pyre like a good girl. But, of course, there is always the possibility we will instead align ourselves with a plucky maidservant who has nascent powers granted by her…

All of you should know by now that heist novels are my jam, and a fantasy heist novel? Bring me the fainting couch and smelling salts, for surely, I swoon! Suffice it to say that when I discovered this hidden gem, the highly underrated Six of Crows by unknown author Leigh Bardugo, I was anticipating a good time.

Kaz Brekker runs with the Dregs, a group of street criminals in the slums of Ketterdam. Kaz…

As longtime readers of my reviews will know, I am a big fan of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series. Novik’s blending of historical fiction with the fantasy concept of dragons serving in militaries is such a captivating tale. So when Uprooted came out in 2015, I was excited to read Novik’s foray into more traditional fantasy.

Then, of course, I never got around to it. Until now!

Agnieszka lives in a small village near an evil,…

This book was recommended to me by Esmè, who wrote into my Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls. Some of our comments on the show about how strange life at Sunnydale High must be for students who aren’t in the know about Buffy’s life reminded Esmè of The Rest of Us Just Live Here. Indeed, it sounds like a great choice for me: I love “meta” books that deconstruct literary tropes like this…

As promised a scant two weeks ago, I’m back with my review of Beneath the Twisted Trees, book 4 of Bradley P. Beaulieu’s epic The Song of the Shattered Sands series. Things are definitely heating up.

Çeda is determined to free Sehid-Alaz, the King of the Asirim. Not only would this hopefully free the asirim from bondage to the Kings of Sharakhai, but it is also the right thing to do: Sehid-Alaz is…

I don’t really know what I just read. The Accident Season is a supernatural YA thriller that purports to have a mystery at the heart of it. Yet the deeper we go into the story, the more that mystery unravels into almost a bait-and-switch. Populated by the barest hints of ghosts, fairies, changelings, and other such spirits, this book tugs at your brain in a pleasing way, but I’m not sure, in the end, it…

Seldom have I read consecutive books in a series so closely together, but as I explained in my review of book 2, a misunderstanding of what book I was requesting on NetGalley has necessitated such haste. Now, there are advantages: I remembered everything that had happened in the previous book! Nevertheless, I was concerned that diving into A Veil of Spears so soon after the previous book would leave me feeling bored; worse still,…