Spinning Silver is a lush, richly imagined, gloriously magical fantasy novel that takes its inspiration from Russian and Jewish folklore. A story full of adventure, wit, dangerous fey and clever queens, it is everything, EVERYTHING that a fairy tale for adults should be. Irina is the plain daughter of the first wife of an upstart…
People leading politically progressive lives under the administration of President Crosby (read: a not at all veiled Donald Trump) are the “rogues” of this lackluster anthology. Unfortunately, the tails wag the dogs of these stories, as the political agendas, themselves oversimplified, overwhelm superficial characters and snoozer plots. The writing is uneven as well. On the…
It is rare when all the stories of an anthology please, but Hamilton’s Battalion is one such collection. It’s an inspiring book for our time and one of the most heartwarming and hopeful books I’ve read this year. These novellas are set during the Revolutionary War in the year 1781 when Colonel Alexander Hamilton led the siege against Yorktown…
Paranormal plus historical. Yeah, I wasn’t sure what to think either, but I couldn’t resist the lure. Isabel Cooper creates a historical world based in fantasy with the elements of a more contemporary paranormal and kept me entertained for over 300 pages with it. It’s the fourteenth century, and Sophia Metzger seeks a dragon. Well,…
Written from a beautiful and intimate ‘own voice’ perspective, Liz Jacob’s Abroad is a delight. Accurate and nuanced writing is becoming the norm with Brain Mill Press, and Abroad continues this trend, and raises the bar higher. Although the novel subtly changes points of view throughout, the strongest voice is that of Nick Melnikov. When…
I agreed to review this anthology entirely because “the devil’s doorbell” is the best euphemism for “clitoris” I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Thankfully, the anthology was fantastic. There were far more hits than misses in the seven short stories, including two stories I gave DIK As (one by Jeffe Kennedy and one by…
Ms. Lerner’s romances are set far from the glittering ton, her main characters are often working class men and women, not every character is wealthy, explicit depictions and conversations about sex are common, and sexuality isn’t limited to m/f. I like her books for those reasons, but mostly because she’s a terrific writer. In All…
Rose Lerner has been an autobuy author for me ever since I read her début novel, In for a Penny. While she sets her stories in the Regency era, she tends to move away from the glittering ballrooms of the ton and puts a different spin on them, whether it be, as in Penny, looking…
Isla Martin has been in love with Joshua Wasserstein since she first saw him in ninth grade, but between Isla’s shyness and Josh’s misunderstanding of her relationship with her best friend Kurt, the two never managed to get on the same page. Suddenly it’s senior year, and these bicultural New Yorker/Parisians have started to figure…
Obsession can be a powerful thing. It can help us do great deeds or it can be the cessation of greatness. An obsessed character can be a fantastic, multifaceted personage or a cardboard cutout with only one side painted in. In the case of this novel the author manages to land her obsessed character somewhere…