At 848 pages, Samatha Shannon’s fantasy epic The Priory of the Orange Tree is a beast of a book, and a beast of an achievement. The first half borders on perfection, and while the second half isn’t as strong, on the whole it’s a gripping read. Ead, a member of the religious order called the…
Winterkeep is the fourth book in the Graceling Realm series, and I’d strongly suggest that if you like the sound of it, you start with the first book, Graceling. Like many fantasy series, the books build on each other, and there’s no way to write this review without spoilers. Fortunately, the three previous novels (Graceling,…
I like big men. I wanted so badly for The Lady’s Champion to be the hefty-hero Iove story I’ve been waiting for. Instead, it was a huge disappointment. The Champions of Aldland were originally warrior heroes who saved the country from tyranny, but now they have become entertainers, albeit admired and skilled ones. Like the…
Do you have a crush on Loki, that trickster god from Norse Mythology? Perhaps because you kinda loved him (or Tom Hiddleston) in the MCU? If you do, The Witch’s Heart is the kind of book you’ll adore. It’s a modern retelling of the myth of Loki and Angrboda, and is filled with witty banter…
The Stormbringer is a fantasy romance set in something like a post-apocalyptic world, about a century after a tyrant named Thyran blazed a path of destruction through the land. Even as people struggle to recover from Thyran’s legacy of harsh winters and roaming monsters, word comes that he is coming again. While it’s a compelling…
Women’s fiction hides under the guise of fantasy and romance in The Midnight Bargain, a sometimes clever but disappointingly never wise, novel. Beatrice Clayborn is in town for bargaining season in Chasland, aka The Season in Regency England + Magic. She wants books not a husband, because a husband will put a literal collar on…
The Ippos King is the third book in Grace Draven’s Wraith Kings series. Everything that happens in this story is a continuation of events that took place in the previous volumes, so I strongly encourage the books be read in order. The Wraith Kings defeated the demon horde known as the galla and drove them…
For a novel featuring a romance that has been hyped up over four other books, The Siren and the Deep Blue Sea was a big letdown. The last in a series about the Embraced, people born with special abilities, this story follows Maeve and Brody as they continue the fight against the villainous Circle of…
Let’s start with the concept behind In the Vanisher’s Palace: it’s an f/f retelling of Beauty and the Beast in a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy setting infused with Vietnamese culture and fairy tales. I was extremely excited by this, and on the whole, I wasn’t disappointed. The devastating “breaking of the world” by an alien race known…
I read and reviewed May Peterson’s début novel Lord of the Last Heartbeat last year, and although I liked the concept behind the story, the world it was set in, and the main characters, I found the author’s overly florid writing-style difficult to navigate; the words got in the way of the story to the…