Books shelved under “Mythology Remix”

Gods and monsters and nightmares, oh my! The Lost Portal, a sequel to The Last Huntress, promises to be an epic quest. Lenore Borja returns us to the quartet of fierce huntresses: Alice, Soxie, Olivia, and Hadley. Amid affirmations of female friendship and explorations of family ties, these four women are all that stands between the Greek pantheon’s attempt to return to the world—or remake it in the process. The stakes are high—however,…

Last year I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan’s reimagining of the mythology of Chang’e (and specifically, her daughter). I was apprehensive whether Tan would bottle moonlight twice with Heart of the Sun Warrior—yet here we are, another five-star read. What can I say? Tan’s storytelling abilities are impressive.

Some time has passed since the end of the first book. Xingyin is living fairly…

What would you do if you could make the world a better place and save the soul of someone you’re attracted to, but you would have to die in his place? A hero would jump at this chance, of course. The Last Huntress is a story about willingness to sacrifice and standing against powers far beyond our comprehension. Lenore Borja’s world is creative and intriguing, though I can’t say the same for the story she…

Revenge plots are always fun. Give me a woman scorned any day. Charmed combines a revenge plot with another one of my favourite tropes—a fairy-tale remix setting. Jade Linwood takes elements of some of the most familiar fairy tales of the Western canon, turning their protagonists into women who are out to avenge themselves, and in some cases their countries, against none other than Prince Charming. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Rebellion.

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Although I would have got around to Daughter of the Moon Goddess eventually, in all likelihood, my bestie Rebecca putting this into my hands (quite literally), got me reading this sooner rather than later. It was one of her favourite books last year—so much so that she jumped at the sequel. So, you know, no pressure to love it or anything. Fortunately, our friendship can continue. Sue Lynn Tan has written something that I dare…

First of all, let’s be clear: Norse mythology is hella cool.

In his introduction to Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman echoes what draws me to it. Like him, I was entranced by the stories of the Norse gods from an early age. I remember vividly my elementary school library having this big, thick book on Norse mythology full of illustrations. When I went through my mythology phase, I tolerated the Greek gods and occasionally talked…

There’s a clever tweet going around out there advocating for a moratorium on words like “throne” and “crown” in YA book titles, and I totally get why. A Crown of Wishes is one of those densely generic titles that does a terrible job at hinting about the contents of the book. In this particular case, it is at least appropriate, in that the book does feature both crowns (metaphorical and literal) and wishes (um ……

I often use the idea of stories that “grab” me, often elaborating on that by then saying they “don’t let go”. Sometimes, though, I should be talking about whether or not I was able to grab onto a story. Sometimes, as with The Star-Touched Queen, stories or parts of them elude me and leave me feeling dissatisfied, even if I’m not sure why.

Roshani Chokshi delivers an Indian mythology–infused story of a princess doomed…

Previously, on Kara’s reviews of THE SPI FILES…:

… the intimations of bigger and better story arcs continue here. Once again we have a direct reference to the face-shifting ghoul terrorizing Ian. (According to the Goodreads series list, the next book is The Ghoul Vendetta, so I’m guessing we’ll soon get some pay-off on that arc!) …

I was going to criticize the covers and complain about how they’re all different poses of

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In Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, Salman Rushdie combines the literary traditions from A Thousand and One Nights with aspects of Arabic mythology and a dash of our own fascination with apocalypses of the modern age. It is an entertaining novel in its own right, but I can’t help but feel like Rushdie has gone and pulled a John Irving on me and written something on repeat. All the old standbys are…

I couldn’t stay away from the sequel to The Wrath & the Dawn, and my library was quick to enable me with The Rose & the Dagger. The love story of Shahrzad and Khalid and the war it has provoked come to a swift conclusion here. Hold on to your bookmarks, folks, because Renée Ahdieh is not slowing down this magic carpet ride, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

First off:…

As I reflected in my review of The Sleeper and the Spindle, fairytale retellings are all the rage. With The Wrath & the Dawn, we have a new take on One Thousand and One Nights. Unlike the original, the stories within the frame story fall by the wayside, for the most part, as Shahrzad’s relationship with Khalid intensifies. Renée Ahdieh’s reimagining, then, is less about retelling the stories from One Thousand and…

I'm always down for some historical/mythological fiction in a comedic style, so The Table of Less Valued Knights seemed like a good proposition. Marie Phillips delivers an Arthurian quest beset with archetypes, allusions, and anachronisms. Her characters quip like they're in a Christopher Moore novel (albeit slightly less self-aware) and her vision of Knights of Camelot is every bit as decadently absurd as Monty Python's.

There. Have I name-dropped enough comparisons yet? Good. Let's get…

So you’re fourteen years old, and you’re on a vision quest. It’ll be another hundred years or so before Europeans show up and tell your people that, actually, Turtle Island is going to be called “North America” and was empty before they showed up. But I digress. You want to get a vision so you can become a man, but this stupid turtle just won’t shut up … ohhhhh.

Meanwhile, you’re fourteen years old, and…

Using the word versatile to describe Neil Gaiman is a bit like using the word crooked to describe a politician or talented to describe the holder of a world record for most pies eaten in an hour. It just seems obvious.

But think about it. Gaiman has written short stories and novels and all the lengths of fiction in between. He’s written comics/graphic novels. He writes for children and for adults, and picture books for…

Poison Fruit, like Autumn Bones, does not let much time elapse between books. The events of Halloween are still fresh in people’s minds as New Year approaches. Now Daisy has to get to the bottom of what the hell-spawn lawyer Daniel Dufreyne is doing buying up land around Little Niflheim. And she also needs to sort out her complicated feelings about her attractions to Stefan and Cody.

I’ll start off with the romance…

I have to return this book to the library soon, because despite putting it on hold, it has another hold on it already. Already. This Chuck Palahniuk guy sure is popular. Yet I feel as if I should do my civic duty and put a sticky note inside this book that reads, “Don’t bother.” That’s pretty much my review of Damned, in two words.

Madison Spencer is a thirteen-year-old girl, the daughter of rich-but-eccentric…

Dark Currents, the anticipated debut to Jacqueline Carey’s new urban fantasy series Agent of Hel, got my attention back when it first came out. I saw it on io9, added it to my to-read list.

And promptly forgot about it.

Because that’s what happens when you have a list so long that even if you stop adding books to it today, it will take you about four years to get through it.

Fortunately,…

Blood and Iron, not to be confused with the urban fantasy novel of the same name by Elizabeth Bear, is the first entry in a trilogy by Jon Sprunk about fantasy nations at war. Our hero is Horace, a shipwright and carpenter stranded on the shores of a hostile empire, at their mercy, who suddenly finds out he can do magic. What ensues in the slow self-destruction of the capital city of this kingdom…

I probably shouldn’t have read this, considering how little time I had left to get through these library books. I probably should have skipped in favour of a book I was more confident I could enjoy. But I think I needed this—I needed something that’s just so bad I could sit back and bask in its badness for a bit. The Thirteen Hallows certainly satisfied me in that regard.

All the warning signs are clearly…