205 reviews found
Showing 121 to 140 of 205 results
In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor introduced us to Karou, a blue-haired seventeen-year-old girl whose origins are far more fantastic than you could believe at first glance. She is a linchpin in a war between the angelic seraphim and the demonic chimarae of Eretz, a world parallel to Earth. At the end of the first book, Karou learns the secret behind her origins and abandons her on-again/off-again angelic lover Akiva to go…
I have a soft spot for urban fantasy in which there is “another” world within our own world—Neverwhere comes to mind as a good example. I think it speaks to the reader in me; for someone who inhales escapist fiction, the prospect that any door could potentially be a portal to another place is just … intoxicating. Daughter of Smoke and Bone capitalizes on this idea. Karou is the human adopted daughter of a…
My first outing with Thomas Usher didn’t go so well. People died. He moped around. I wasn’t sure why or how I should care. Pretty Little Dead Things was a car crash of a dark and nasty novel that would definitely appeal to certain people who are not me. But still, I had Dead Bad Things on my tablet courtesy of my Angry Robot Books subscription, so I thought I would give it a chance.
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The Great and Secret Show reminds me of the only Tim Powers novel I’ve read, Last Call. And that, for anyone wanting a one-sentence review (contingent upon understanding the nature of my opinion of Last Call), is that.
In many ways, coming across a book that doesn’t interest one even though it’s a good book makes writing a review far more difficult than coming across a bad book. But if one truly reads…
Spiritwalk bills itself as “the sequel to Moonheart”, and while this is technically true, the events of Moonheart are only barely linked to this book. Reading it will spoil certain outcomes from Moonheart, but you could probably read it without having read the first novel. I wouldn’t recommend this course of action, however, simply because it seems that Charles de Lint doesn’t spend as much time in Spiritwalk developing the atmosphere of the…
Yes, I have indeed read another romance novel with vampires. What is wrong with me?
As with The Rest Falls Away, Soulless has been on my to-read list for a while now. I almost bought the boxed set of all five books in this series at Christmas time, stopping myself on the grounds that I wouldn’t want to bring them back to England with me, so they’d gather dust at home until the summer.…
For Valentine’s Day, my school library had a "Blind Date with a Book" event. They had wrapped books in wrapping paper festooned with hearts and put them on display. You could select any book at random and borrow it, keeping its identity under wraps until you get home. (We have this week off for a half-term break, so the students would have an entire week to read it.) The idea is to try a book…
I didn’t expect to be reading another one after the last one, but I guess what they say about vampire romance novels is true: it never rains but it pours.
Actually, The Rest Falls Away has been on my to-read list since 2009, long before Dracula, My Love waltzed its way into my life. The tagline everyone uses to describe this book is “Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Regency England”, and I’m unoriginally…
The public domain is a wonderful concept. Copyright is a useful tool during a creator’s lifetime, but when a work passes into public domain, something special happens. Anyone can reproduce it and indeed use its characters and ideas without worrying about any associated legal encumbrances. In this way the public domain becomes a treasure trove of mutual cultural touchstones. Of course, to do this, one needs access to public domain materials. Hence why, in my…
I enjoyed NBC’s new Dracula series an inordinate amount. It was a fun, thrilling experience of storytelling and characterization. And it got me thinking that, despite happily watching various adaptations over the years, I’ve never actually read the original novel. What with it being public domain and all, I put the Project Gutenberg edition on my tablet and sat back to see how the original stacks up to its adaptations.
(If you haven’t already, you…
I wasn’t sure I would like Picking Up the Ghost before I started it. The back cover copy bills it as a coming-of-age story about a kid from an impoverished background learning more about himself and his absent father through magic and encounters with ghosts. None of that pushes my personal urban fantasy buttons. But I gave it a try, and it just goes to show why reading widely and keeping an open mind can…
So, I am an idiot and did not realize this was a book of short stories until I was well into it. Don’t ask me why. I have an ebook copy, and so there was no real description or anything to clue me into it. I just started reading, assuming it was a novel. After a few chapters there were no obvious connections between these characters and their respective stories, but that’s Ekaterina Sedia for…
The Roanoke Colony was in trouble, and when its governor returned from an expedition to secure more help from England, he discovered the entire population had disappeared: all 114 people, including his grandaughter, Virginia Dare, the first English colonist born in the Americas. To this day, there is no definitive explanation for the colonists’ disappearance, making it the perfect fodder for the literary imagination.
In Blackwood, Gwenda Bond takes some liberties with another Elizabethan…
When I was younger, I was ridiculously fond of watching Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. (I still am. I just don’t have the time to watch it as much any more, nor am I spry enough to stay up until 1 am when it’s usually on these days.) The show is typical of the 1990s sitcom-with-a-twist: typically, each episode consists of Sabrina trying to solve a typical adolescent dilemma with magic, only to make the…
Well, here we are, at the end of a very long journey. I can see now why The Dark is Rising sequence is packaged, well, as a sequence. The individual novels are quite short--some of them closer to novellas than anything else. The five-book stories are in fact a single story, but packaged together, they take up nearly 800 pages of very small print. It's an adult-sized story aimed at young adults and children, and…
I’ve gradually been making my way through China Miéville’s back catalogue. He’s one of those authors who is prolific, but not in a terrifyingly fecund sort of way. I feel like I can play catch-up without being overwhelmed. Well, without being overwhelmed by the number of titles to read. Miéville’s characteristic, crafty style means that I might be overwhelmed in other ways.
I made the mistake of taking my form tutor group to the library.…
I’ve been making a slow tour through Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence for a few months now. It’s undeniably an important series in the fantasy canon, but my personal reaction to it has been more ambivalent. I have been rather disappointed with the novels as stories. They’re brilliant examples of methodical mythological remixing. Yet in adjusting the tone of the books to aim them to her younger audience, Cooper also seems to feel…
Thaiburley. The City of a Hundred Rows. Nestled in a vast but somewhat unexplored world, Thaiburley is the centre of this story, almost a character itself. From the Pits and Kat to the Heights and the Prime Master, characters of different backgrounds have gradually come together to face the greatest threat this city has seen in ages. They’ve grown and changed in ways they didn’t think was possible. Though I haven’t always been the most…
Greenwitch is the third in Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. It unites the protagonists of the previous two books. Will Stanton meets Barney, Simon, and Jane. Together, they foil the latest plot of the Dark, which involves stealing a secret artifact from the Greenwitch. This entity is a construct of twigs and leaves built by the women of Trewissick in an elaborate, night-long ceremony. They assemble the Greenwitch, then the men of the…
I recently realized I was behind on the latest Laundry Files novels, and when Blackwell’s had a big sale, I picked up all the ones I didn’t already own. Before I dive into the new ones, however, I’ve decided to reread, starting right back at the beginning.
I actually really like my first review, below, from eleven years ago. I am pleased to see The Atrocity Archives, for the most…
Showing 121 to 140 of 205 results