193 reviews found
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As is tradition, let us begin by admiring the incredible angled-title cover art on this book! Then, as is tradition, let me remark upon how I’ve somehow let an egregious span of time elapse (six years?? Really, Kara??) before finally finishing this trilogy. Guardian is a more-than-sufficient conclusion to the series A.J. Hartley started in Steeplejack. This is a beautiful young-adult fantasy series that offers a primer on resisting fascism and bigotry along with…
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,…
What’s better than a book about vampires? How about a book about a book series about vampires—that might turn out to be real? Kate Stayman-London combines fanfic with spicy vampire sex and no small amount of peril in Fang Fiction. I received an eARC via NetGalley thanks to being a host of Prophecy Girls podcast.
Tess drops out of grad school after someone else in her program sexually assaults her. She takes solace in…
Marissa Meyer is one of those authors always adjacent to my radar, never quite on it. I want to say I tried Cinder once and bounced off it, but I can’t actually say for sure. In any event, I noticed the sequel to Renegades on a shelf at my library and promptly checked out both books. I am a sucker for superhero remixes, and this one looked good. However, I have been burned by them…
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…
I was so hyped for The Undetectables for no particular reason. It just seemed like a neat premise, and who doesn’t like the tagline, “Be gay. Solve crimes. Take naps”? Courtney Smyth promises a queernorm paranormal mystery involving witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, and fairies. For the most part, she delivers, although the mystery part of the novel is perhaps the least satisfying.
Mallory and her two best friends, Cornelia and Diana, ran the eponymous onetime…
Here we are! The story that began in In Every Generation and continued in One Girl in All the World concludes here with Against the Darkness. Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Kendare Blake, who will also return as a guest on my Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls a couple of weeks after this review is published. I’d like to think I’m still providing a fair review of these books,…
My silly “summer of witches” reading stretches into autumn and now (at least with my reviews) winter. Anyway, VenCo was published earlier this year to much acclaim. More importantly, it felt like Kara bait! Cherie Dimaline writing a contemporary fantasy book about witches? Sign me up. The result is as enjoyable as it is uneven, and while I wouldn’t call this one a masterpiece in the same vein as some of her other works, it’s…
Epic fantasy heist. Those three words in the subject line of an email were all it took for me to windmill slam “yes” on getting an eARC of The Queen of Days from NetGalley and publisher HarperVoyager. Some marketing person knew the magic words that would pique my interest instantly. I was excited to dive in, and thankfully, the book lived up to the hype! This is a delightful, powerful adventure that left me wanting…
What would you do if a relative died and left you her creepy house, and fortune, on the condition that you relocate your life to live on the property? Oh, and everyone around you keeps acting super sketch? That’s Cordelia Bone’s problem in The Witches of Bone Hill. Part romance, part thriller, all fantasy, this book uses a lot of classic tropes, often to good effect. Ava Morgyn’s writing took me a while…
C.L. Polk is fast becoming one of my favourite fantasy authors (love that they are Canadian to boot, eh). Even Though I Knew the End is everything I want in a novella: fast pace, great worldbuilding, and a protagonist I can get behind without too much exposition.
Helena, aka Elena, was once in training to be a “mystic,” one of few women accepted to the very sexist Brotherhood. Then she made a demonic deal, sold…
What do you mean I have to wait a year for Book 3?? I guess I’ll manage, but I have spoiled myself by waiting a year to read Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, resulting in almost no wait between it and The Shadow Cabinet. Juno Dawson has created an excellent new urban fantasy series. However, I am going to be harder on this book than the first one for precisely that reason: she has…
Almost a exactly a year ago, I read the first and second books in The Keeper Chronicles. Now we conclude this trilogy with Long Hot Summoning. Tanya Huff increases the role of Claire’s younger sister, Diana, giving her a Summoning of her own and more responsibility for saving the world. It’s a fresh and fun adventure with much of the charm but also most of the flaws of the first two books. Also,…
Bought last year but a victim of every bibliophile’s nemesis, the ever-growing to-read shelf (or pile, or teetering tower), Her Majesty’s Royal Coven sounded like something I would really enjoy—and I did! It’s going to be a summer of witches on this site, for I have many witchy books to read and review, starting with this first adult novel from Juno Dawson.
Helena, Niamh, Leonie, and Elle grew up together in Yorkshire, bonded by age…
Sometimes it’s nice to be late to a new series. I enjoyed Legendborn so much that I was very happy I borrowed its sequel, Bloodmarked, at the same time. Tracy Deonn bottles lightning again in this novel: it’s everything you might want a sequel to be. If Legendborn scratched my itch for nostalgic YA fiction but with better diversity and racial awareness, then Bloodmarked doubled down on the itch-scratching while truly establishing the Legendborn…
I guess I review Buffy novels now … this is an unexpected perk of starting a Buffy rewatch podcast two years ago. Not only did we give away copies of In Every Generation to our listeners, but we actually interviewed Kendare Blake on our podcast. I received an ARC of One Girl in All the World. I’m happy to report that this sequel avoids the dreaded second-book syndrome. It builds on the success of…
There was definitely a span of adolescent years during which I was obsessed with Arthuriana. I remember borrowing Malory’s Morte d'Arthur from my library multiple times despite being way too young to pick my way through the Middle English prose. I devoured all sorts of retellings and reimaginings, like Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord series. So when this series crossed my Twitter feed one day, I couldn’t not windmill-slam the “place hold” button on both Legendborn and…
I received an eARC from NetGalley and a hardcover from Disney Hyperion in return for a review! We also interviewed Lily Anderson for my Buffy rewatch podcast, Prophecy Girls, and I will update this review with a link to the episode when it’s out!
It’s 1999. In an alternative version of Sunnydale, the Mayor doesn’t ascend but rather blots out the sun and renames the town Demondale to attract, shall we say, a new…
Sometimes, you just want to get out and fight monsters. But bureaucracy! That’s the situation Zoey Prescott faces in Memories, Lies, and Other Binds by Katy Foraker. This urban fantasy twist on vampire-hunting and immortality mashes up time-worn tropes with a dose of family drama and unexamined angst. It’s a fun ride!
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.
Zoey Prescott stopped aging in her twenties. That was in…
What if you could take your feelings of sorrow, hurt, grief, loss, etc., and surrender them up? And if, in turn, the person to whom you surrendered these feelings could use them to nourish a beautiful, if capricious, garden? That’s what In the Shadow Garden explores. Liz Parker’s dark romance thriller, set in a small town in Kentucky, is about what we do with our worst memories. But it’s also about friendship, family, and who…
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