The Beast of Blackmoor was first published as part of the Night Shift anthology, and it was far and away my favorite part of that collection. This review is an adaptation of the original review I wrote for the whole anthology, because Milla Vane has reissued her story. It’s a prequel to her A Gathering…
Danger lurks in the western realms. The Destroyer’s imminent return has sent the realms into turmoil as desperate citizens seek refuge—but there’s no safety to be found when demons and wraiths crawl out from the shadows. Even Koth, a northern island kingdom left untouched by the Destroyer a generation past, is besieged by terrors spawned…
Shannon: Phoenix Unbound, the prequel to Dragon Unleashed was my first experience with Grace Draven’s writing, and I was beyond impressed by the novel. This, the second book in the series, is set in the same world, but has little noticeable carry-over from the first book. I think readers could easily start with Dragon Unleashed without…
In The Fiery Crown, the second book of Jeffe Kennedy’s Forgotten Empires series, we rejoin our marriage-of-convenienced monarchs Con and Euthalia as they await the evil emperor Anure’s reaction to their marriage (since, you know, Lia was technically Anure’s fiancee). The first book was one of my top ten reads of 2019, and while this…
Thief of Dreams, book one in Bec McMasters Court of Dreams series originally appeared in the Of Thrones and Crowns anthology in 2019 and was republished separately earlier this year. It’s novella length and sets up the storyline that will (I suspect) run throughout what I believe is going to be a trilogy, so while…
I’ve been enjoying Jeffe Kennedy’s Uncharted Realms fantasy romance series since I picked up The Crown of the Queen, a bridging novel between the author’s Twelve Kingdoms series (which I’ve yet to read) and her Uncharted Realms series (which I’ve now read almost to completion). The end of that series is out now (The Fate…
M.A. Grant’s The Iron Crown is The Sixth Sense meets Vikings plus magic. Grant takes an outlandish mash-up and handles it with intelligent writing, but doesn’t treat the central love story as central, which means the book – though marketed as one – ultimately doesn’t feel like a romance. Lugh is the third of three…
In Tara Quan’s magical world, there are elementals, who can harness the powers of things like ice and earth, and there are familiars, shape-shifting witches who ground and channel the gifts of elementals and keep them from going off the rails. Mina Mao is a familiar, and she’s also a frustrated and under-utilized support employee…
I Buried a Witch is the middle book in Josh Lanyon’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks trilogy, a series of fantasy/mystery/romance novels set in and around San Francisco and featuring witch and antiques dealer Cosmo Saville and his husband, John Joseph Galbraith, the Commissioner of Police. The books don’t really stand alone as there’s an overarching storyline,…
I love our end of the year lists in part because, later, I can look back and see what we loved. In 2014, Meljean Brook’s novella Frozen made my #Bestof2014 list. (2014 produced several books on it I still adore: Three Weeks with Lady X, Rogue Spy, No More Mr. Nice Guy, Having Her, Off…