FOOD FOR THOUGHT is a sapphic Greek myth about Limos, the goddess of famine, and Demeter, the goddess of harvest. Long ago, the Fates decreed that they should never meet, because their powers were great enough, and diametrically opposed enough, that they could be responsible for one another's destruction.
Limos is obsessed with the specter Demeter plays in her life. When people approach her to bargain, she is always second best. When a poor farmer has a poor harvest, he turns to Limos to spite his competitors. She is used as a weapon against people, an instrument of suffering. One day, Demeter comes to her, asking her to do the same.
I thought this was a great tale of obsession, with two morally grey women who are too powerful to be controlled. It really did feel like one of the Greek myth stories I used to read in my copy of D'Aulaires as a kid, especially with what happened to the king who was foolish enough to kill one of Demeter's favorites in this book. Truly chilling.
What a great short story. I hope she writes a novel.
I bought this book because of a teaser I saw the author post on Threads that made me think this was going to be a really twisted dark romance with dub con (MY FAVORITE). It wasn't quite that, but I loved it anyway. SONG OF THE DEMON COURT ended up being an examination of personal faith, an enemies to lovers romance with high stakes, and a pretty interesting character portrait of two flawed and damaged people slowly learning to trust each other-- all with a Jareth-coded hero framed within an erotic pied piper retelling. WHAT.
Annika lives in what I believe is medieval Bavaria. The children in town are dying of a plague and the council have called upon a mythic race (kind of like demon elves?) called the pipers to cure the children with enchanted song. However, they cannot afford to pay the price and they know it. But because The Men(TM) are stupid and stubborn, they go ahead with the plan anyway, and the pipers decide to take the children away as punishment.
Annika alone goes to the kingdom of Laute to get the children back. Instead of forking them over, Loic, the son of the king, agrees that she can look them over as a sort of nanny in exchange for being his plaything. Disgusted, Annika agrees, and is then surprised when he proceeds to mostly not touch her. She came to this kingdom playing a game of her own, but it seems like Loic is playing one, too. And the stakes have never been higher.
So this was a really fun read. I loved that Annika was a single mom and her body wasn't perfect. She was brave but made stupid decisions, which, don't we all. I never disagreed with or failed to understand anything that she did, though. Loic on the other hand is a true morally grey character. He reminds me a lot of some of Anne Stuart's heroes, particularly the one in PRINCE OF MAGIC. Towards the end, he did a lot of things that were hard to like, since he wasn't truly a villain character, but you know what they say: hurt people hurt people. He was basically the fantasy equivalent of that. AND OH MY GOD, the author makes him suffer. This is a man who is put through hell for his cruelty, and has to really grovel to get his HEA. I actually felt so sorry for him by the end.
The world building was SO detailed and creative and I thought the writing was beautiful. I was surprised by the heavy religious themes. I'm not religious at all but I thought they added to the medieval setting in a really rich and authentic way. THE LAST HOUR OF GANN was similar, especially in how the hero's faith was tested and challenged, and I loved that book as well. I think it's thematically relevant to a lot of people. But the way the heroine is judged and internalizes some of her teachings to her own detriment might be hard to read for people who have experienced religious abuse/trauma.
ALSO I loved how sign language was so casually and cleverly integrated into the plot. That rep is unusual and shouldn't be, so it was especially great to see here.
Apparently there's a sequel coming out and I will definitely be first in line for it!
Perfection, thy name is Ann Aguirre. MIRROR, MIRROR is a spicy feminist fairytale that turns the wicked stepmother trope on its head. Trude has been in love with Viggo since they were children, and he used to love her too, until he fell for their friend, Lisabet, instead, and the other cruel, beautiful little girl stole him away for good.
But when Lisabet dies, Viggo marries Trude. And when she comes home to the man she has been in love with her whole life and his beautiful lonely young daughter, it seems as if she's finally getting the family she has always longed for. Dreams really do come true.
Except... Viggo holds her at a distance, sleeping with her-- sometimes using her roughly-- but never telling her that he loves her. And Albie, the daughter, is babyish and cunning, affectionate one minute and oddly cruel the next. And then, the mirror arrives...
I just loved this book from start to finish. The lush prose, the slow pacing, the build-up of the household and how it was expanded into a claustrophobic, creepy little world, and the quiet, loving strength of the heroine. It was all magnificently done. I read the first book in this series of standalones, BITTERBURN, and liked it, but didn't love it. That book walked so this book could fucking fly, and the little call-out to the previous book was so well done.
Honestly, no notes. Between this and THE THIRD MRS. DURST, Aguirre kills it at fairytale retellings and gothic romances. It looks like there was supposed to be a third book in this trilogy, a standalone Bluebeard retelling (gender-swapped! OMG!) but it seems as if it might have been dropped. That's heartbreaking if true. I know that her witchy books are her best-sellers right now, so I get why she's attending to those, but I'm also praying to every god I know that she'll write another fairytale.
This is one of my favorite YA titles I've read this year. I actually don't really like horror that much, but apparently I do like horror as long as it's folk horror and the dog doesn't die. WHAT WE HARVEST is a gorgeous, lyrical novel about four magical founding farming families: one of them raises red horses and dogs, one ghost melons that glow in the dark, one glittering golden yams, and the last, a field of rainbow wheat that each has its own distinct flavor.
For years, they've been the toast of the farming community, world-renowned and celebrated, but Hollow's End holds a dark secret. A mysterious quicksilver blight has overtaken the crops and whatever it touches doesn't come back the same. Strange animals watch from the woods with glowing white eyes, tinged by rot. If Wren and her family can't figure out how to hold the blight at bay, their farm and their loved ones will all fall into corrupt and blackened ruin.
I loved this book so much. There were things about it that pushed my suspension of disbelief a little, but the story was so good that I didn't care. It has all the elements I love: magic-realism, dark family secrets, childhood friends to lovers, angst, sinister rituals, and high stakes danger. Some YA feels like it's pandering to the parents, rather than its teen readers, but this book was beautifully teen, whether it was the wistful longings for adulthood, or the mistakes we make while impetuously trying to be adults.
I can't wait to read more from this author. This was an INCREDIBLE debut.
I just know this is going to end up as one of my favorite books of 2024. It is fantastic. I felt lukewarm about her earlier book, HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROW, but SMALL FAVORS takes everything I did like about that book and heightens it: strong and flawed heroine, culty and claustrophobic small town, folk horror, fairytale retellings, feminism, and the seductive lure of evil and danger.
In the town of Amity Falls, people live like frontier men and women, harvesting based on the season and going by wagon when they need bulk supplies. But something in the surrounding woods has changed. Animals come out and they don't look right. And there are whispers of creatures with silvery eyes.
Ellerie, our narrator, stands at the forefront of this tale. And when tragedy strikes, she finds herself forced not just as protector for her siblings but possibly bearing the burden of saving the entire town. If they even want to be saved, that is.
Evil is, after all, a most seductive mistress.
I am just blown away by how good this was. It's easy, I think, as an author to feel the need to handhold your younger audience when you write YA. But this book doesn't do that. I'm glad it wasn't an adult story because it was so intense that I think it would have actually been too much if it were more graphic. Craig deftly handles serious and disturbing themes that are probably, unfortunately, relatable to some members of her young audience: sexism, emotional abuse, religious abuse, gaslighting, hard choices regarding right vs. wrong, and the perils of first love. Ellerie is allowed to be selfish and flawed but it's clear from the get-go that she's a good person. I loved her so much and her growth over the book is as much as a coming of age tale as it is a hero's journey.
My only qualm is that I wish there had been an epilogue or something because the ending felt the teensiest bit abrupt and I was curious what ended up happening with the parents/baby.
Whenever a book gets this popular, I'm always kind of leery of starting it because I feel like it almost gets to a point where the book will never live up to the standards I've set for it in my mind. My toxic reader trait is that I build things up in my mind until they reach a point where nothing short of god can match them. But after weeks and weeks and weeks of being bombarded with it on Goodreads, TikTok, and Instagram, I finally decided to bite the bullet. I told everyone around me how much I wanted to read the book, and someone picked up the hint and got it for me for my birthday present.
I read it in literally two days.
This book is god.
God of keeping me up at night and forcing me to read about hot shadow men and dragons.
I chose not to perceive most of the reviews for this book because I didn't want to be spoiled, but I did glance at a few spoiler-free ones that were both positive and negative before asking for this book. FOURTH WING is a fantasy book but it's a fantasy book written by a romance author, and in an interview I saw with her on TikTok, she said she wanted to write a book for people who had trouble getting into fantasy. In that regard, I think it succeeds wildly. It was very, very easy to get into this book. Case in point: me finishing it in two days, on very little sleep.
FOURTH WING is basically a cross between Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, Mercedes Lackey's Joust, DIVERGENT, HUNGER GAMES, and VAMPIRE ACADEMY. Because of this, it feels almost nostalgic, even though it's contemporaneous. The language of the book is very modern so it isn't like a lot of high fantasy books, which tend to use very ornate and convoluted language. It is very easy to read and is written kind of like a young adult book, almost (although I'd put the target age demographic as probably new adult). Which means that it's accessible for young readers, but because the characters are older and the content is actually pretty sexual, older readers can enjoy it too without feeling weird.
I don't want to spoil too much because it's better going in cold, but I actually really loved this book. It's compulsively readable, and even though the heroine is a bit of a Mary Sue (seriously, two-toned hair and, like, super special powers? she's basically the posterchild), I liked that the author gave her real struggles in the form of chronic pain/long-term disability and a very real sense of being out of her element and having to struggle to achieve physical feats when all of her strength lies in book-learning. This rounded her out as a character. It's also a very feminist story. Sometimes the heroine does break the fourth wall (fourth wing, fourth wall, get it?), and it can come off as cheesy, but her perspective serves as a nice counterpoint for the borderline villainous hero, who despite being a couple years older than her, is often put in his place by her, so the relationship doesn't come across as being unequal.
FOURTH WING also subverts a lot of other tired tropes. The heroine isn't a virgin and says several times that she enjoys sex. Her best friend is queer and has an on-page relationship and the author doesn't bury her gays. It's very casual and the heroine teases her about her relationship the same way she teases the straight characters. Also, even though this is a military academy where the students are basically supposed to Hunger Games each other to get control of dragons, none of the violence that Violet faces from her attackers is ever sexual. I don't personally mind that in a story about bullying where it's obviously toxic, but I know it bothers a lot of people, and it's notably absent here.
But the biggest selling point for me? DRAGONS. I am still a ten-year-old girl at heart, okay? If a book has dragons OR unicorns in it, I will come running. As soon as I found out that this was a romantic fantasy book about a girl who bonds with dragons and has an enemies-to-lovers relationship with a morally grey hero, I basically fell over myself adding it to my to-read pile.
On a closing note, I feel like in the book community, there can be an almost hipster mentality where a popular book is seen as "selling out" or "too commercial," and reviewers feel a lot of pressure to hate on it for clout, lest their intellectualism and credibility be called into question. I am not saying that all one-star reviewers all clout-chasers (and I have definitely been the odd one out when it comes to very popular books more times than I can count), but I do definitely see people who seem like they hate on these books precisely because they sell well and maybe aren't as safely literary as other tried-and-true choices in the book blogger canon. I think it's wrong to punish a book for being easy to read though, and I think it's even more wrong to mock or deride reviewers who actually enjoy these books. Is this Tolkien? No. But that's why I like it. Tolkien, to me, is like a chore. Reading books like that feels like an unpleasant mental exercise. This book is like eating an entire bag of potato chips. Addictive. Fun.
So if you have had trouble getting into the fantasy genre and you really enjoy romance novels, this might be the gateway drug that ends up sucking you in for good. I honestly felt so giddy after reading this, the way I did after reading THE HUNGER GAMES for the first time. It was so much fun to post status updates for this book and fangirl over it with other readers who also enjoy it, and to be a part of the hype for a popular book while it's popular, and be excited over the release of the sequel. (WHICH I TOTALLY ALREADY PREORDERED BY THE WAY.) I hope, if you pick this book up, that you feel the same way. Although if you don't like it, I'll also totally understand. (Sort of.)
ALL THE STARS AND TEETH was overly written and felt like the work of an author who was trying to prove herself. BELLADONNA, on the other hand, feels like the work of an author who knows that she doesn't have to. That she is, in fact, it. I can't think of many authors where I gave one of their books a one star review only to come back and give one of their later ones a five, but Adalyn Grace is that rare case and she pried all five of those stars from my stingy little fingers with BELLADONNA.
This is everything I never knew I wanted in YA fantasy and I honestly don'tthink the reviews do it justice. I mean, with YA fantasy being a dime a dozen these days, and everyone off to the races to write The Next Big Thing, what makes this one stand out? What is it like? Well, BELLADONNA is beautifully written and features an awkward, sort of Tim Burton-y heroine, like a female counterpart to Victor Van Dort from Corpse Bride. The writing is beautiful and ornate without being overdone and it has a wonderfully Gothic pseudo-Victorian setting replete with ghosts, poison, and murder. There's a very cinematic feel to both the writing and the story-telling and it's darkly whimsical and utterly addicting, because even though it doesn't really do anything different, the characters and the setting are all so vivid that they seem to come alive.
Signa has changed hands multiple times every since her mother was Red Wedding'd at a baby shower. Signa was the only survivor but Death left his mark on her and now she can consume poison without succumbing to it and people around her have the disconcerting habit of dropping dead. When her aunt dies, Signa taken in by her uncle as ward, where she will live with her cousins, Blythe and Percy. Just one problem, their mother was recently Red Wedding'd herself and Blythe, with her mysterious illness, appears close to death herself. And instead of living out the days to her inheritance peacefully in the countryside, Signa ends up involved in a dastardly murder plot where she, and everyone she holds dear, may be in danger. Also, the family is in-fighting over petty and non-petty dramas, and the uncle, mad with grief (or guilt?) is hosting elaborate parties like he thinks he's Jay Gatsby, or something.
So let's talk about why this book was great. The writing was good. The setting was wonderful-- creepy and atmospheric, with body horror and real stakes. Honestly, there were some moments in this book that made me glad I wasn't reading it at night. The heroine was delightfully awkward and it wasn't portrayed as too quirky or twee. I could sense her inability to fit in and her loneliness, and the author showed us instead of telling us. Part of the book is watching Signa grow and blossom, like a dark orchid, in a hothouse full of society people who don't quite know how to deal with her.
There's also a love triangle, of sorts, and some genuinely sensual scenes. Sometimes sex in YA can be yuck, but the heroine is older (19) and the author did such a good job making things romantic and vague, rather than explicit. I think the last YA book I read that managed this balance so well was Holly Black's CRUEL PRINCE. I just love me a really good romance, okay? Especially if it makes me swoon and the hero is just the tiny bit dangerous. Which is maybe why this just kind of feels like a love ode to goth girl media. There's elements of Labyrinth, Tim Burton, Secret Garden, classic fairytales... basically everything I loved as a kid but grown up and wearing a fancy dress and falling in love for the first time.
Someone needs to make this a movie. And also give me the sequel. Not necessarily in that order.
I bought BEYOND THE RUBY VEIL on impulse a couple months ago when it went on sale, not realizing it was dystopian or sapphic. I'm a simple woman-- show me a fantasy novel with a gorgeous cover, and I willingly part with my cash like a sucker. I decided to make this one of my Pride Month picks and color me shocked when, despite rather mixed and unenthusiastic feedback from some of my friends, this ended up rocketing up my favorites list when I finished it in a day.
The plot of it sounds super cheesy. It's one of those water wars-type books, where the premise revolves around scarcity of resources. The heroine, Emanuela, lives in a pseudo-Renaissance Italy setting called Occhia, where water is obtained by a blood sorceress called the watercrea who takes people away when they get these mysterious lesions called "omens" and then drains them dry of blood.
On the day of Emanuela's wedding to her closeted best friend, she gets a lesion and is taken away by the watercrea. But Emanuela, who is a ruthless sociopath who will stop at nothing to get what she wants, is not about to let some old woman determine when she will die. She kills the watercrea, thus putting an end to her city's dwindling water source. And they aren't happy about it.
I don't want to say too much about this book, but it ended up going in a direction I wasn't expecting, and towards the end it gets very, very dark. Like, why-did-I-read-this-while-eating dark. In some ways, this reminded a bit of Kerri Maniscalco's KINGDOM OF THE WICKED crossed with Claire Eliza Bartlett's THE WINTER DUKE, but it's much darker than either of those two books, and the heroine is way more ruthless. Also, those books were a little more focused on the romance, and while there is gay yearning in BEYOND THE RUBY VEIL, and two potential LGBT+ relationships are kind of set up here, nothing is set in stone by the end of the book. So in that way, it's kind of more like Crystal Smith's BLOODLEAF, a YA book that took some serious risks with world-building and consequences.
I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel. I want to learn more about the cities and the mysterious aerial veil that shrouds the city and I want to see who Emanuela is going to torment next (probably everyone).
HOUSE OF HOLLOW is one of the best horror stories I've ever read. I don't even normally like horror because I am a soft and jellied wimp, but I do like fairytales, and this is like the darkest of the lot: a story of three girls who went missing at the stroke of midnight while their parents fretted and worried, only for them to return, not quite the same, with matching scars on their throats and discolored hair and eyes. Ten years later, Vivi, Grey, and Iris Hollow are beautiful and exceptional girls, but beneath all of the gloss is the dark shadow of their shared pasts and the truth of why they really went missing.
Part of what made this such a win for me is the beautiful prose. It's like biting into a truffle, only to find it filled with rot. The exquisite writing masks the horrors until it's too late to run and by that point, you're so invested, you probably won't even want to. And don't be fooled by the dreamy teen narrator and the flowers on the cover: this book has triggers of all kinds, with many scenes of body horror, and some pretty emotionally devastating blows. There's one scene towards the end that really wrecked me and nearly made me cry.
I would recommend this to people who like really dark stories that explore deep topics and horror that goes beyond splatterpunk and gore. The whole time I was reading this book, I kept picturing it as a movie, with the same visuals as movies like Velvet Buzzsaw, Paradise Hills, and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I think if you enjoy those things, you'll probably like this book, too.
The first time I read this book was as an ARC when it first came out and I couldn't stop thinking about it. THE SUMMER PRINCE was one of the first diverse sci-fi-fantasy books I ever read and it totally blew me away. It's set in a dystopian matriarchal society in a futuristic Brazil, where all of the leaders are women and everyone old expects to live to two hundred. They elect their kings in an elaborate, Hunger Games-like ceremony every five years, and the king, in turn, chooses his new queen one year later: on the day of his sacrificial execution.
Our heroine, June, is an activist/artist, kind of like a female Banksy. She does all of these elaborate art pranks and one of these is at the very beginning, with her friend Gil, to help elect the underdog choice: a boy from the very worst parts of Palmares Tres named Enki. The prank works and the three of them end up first as glamorous poster children for the opulent party scene, and then as icons of rebellion. As the year goes on, the three of them become incredibly close: Gil and Enki become lovers and June starts to fall for him too, all the while, his fate hangs over the three of them like the sword of Damocles.
I think I loved this book just as much the second time. I loved the way Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language are woven into the story. I liked the heroine's passion for art, and how it ends up taking a more political bent as she sees more of the injustice that's inherent in the system that she's been blind to because of her privilege. I liked how there wasn't really a lot of slut-shaming, and how all of the characters in this book felt like real people making real decisions in this fantastic backdrop. It takes a while to get into, but I think the heroine sells the world-building, and her melancholy and wistfulness end up making this a pretty devastating read, especially as the story winds to the end.
I was a bit torn on whether to give this a four or a five. It's not a perfect book, but it's still a very, very good one, so I've decided to round up because I've never read anything like it before and I still love it.
On a scale of five Hidden Legacies, ON THE EDGE rates 4.5 Hidden Legacies. It is not quite up to par with Hidden Legacy but it is very, very close. One of the things I love so much about the Andrews's books is not just the world-building (although also the world-building!) but the heart. They build these huge casts of characters with complex relationships and you can just picture them so clearly in your head, like scenes from a movie. I loved Hidden Legacy because of Nevada's relationship to her family, but I think I love Rose and hers just as much-- if not more.
The world of the Edge series is really unique and interesting. There are three realms: The Weird, The Edge, and The Broken. The Weird is a fantasy realm filled with magic that is a mirror of our world. It has a similar but alternate history to ours, with different outcomes paralleling our own historical events. The Broken is our world, as we know it. No magic. Just drudgery and electricity. The Edge is the narrow band between them where anything is possible and the two worlds can commingle. The people who live there take care of their own and have a complex hierarchy of family grudges and debts to pay.
Rose Drayton has always lived on the Edge. She has a very messed up family and now she is the sole guardian for her two brothers, a shape-shifter and a necromancer. Rose is also incredibly powerful; she has the ability to flash white, in powerful bursts of magic. But because of her lowly origins, people have been trying to force her into marriage contracts or even sell her into servitude and she's had to learn to fight to keep her freedom. Which is why, when a noble from the Weird, walks into her life, Rose's first instinct is to attack first and ask questions later.
Declan is arrogant and dangerous and has magical abilities that rival her own. He claims he wants to take her as his bride and ends up forcing her into a bargain where she has to give him three "impossible" challenges to prove his worth. The challenges end up taking an interesting turn when a new threat other than Declan rears its literally ugly head: "hounds" that devour magic and people with equal fervor. The secret of the hounds is related to Declan in a mysterious way, and Rose must fight her growing attraction to Declan even as she battles the evil that threatens to consume her entire home.
So I loved this, obviously. It's nearly two in the morning and I stayed up all night to finish this book on a work night because it was SO FREAKING GOOD. Like, I don't know what I was thinking only giving this four stars the first time I read it. It's a five, easy-peasy. Rose is such a great character. She's the epitome of a butt-kicking heroine, and I loved the way she stood up for herself and her brothers, and how much they loved her in return. The romance was slow-burn and a DELIGHT. The action was cinematic in scope. The tension and the suspense were A+. And the villain was pee-in-your-pants terrifying. Literally the only flaw was that Declan didn't quite make it to my "best heroes ever" list and the final battle was a little anticlimactic. But everything else was amazing. Especially that ending.
Thank goodness I own all the other books in the series! BAYOU MOON, here I come!
This is my second time reading RAMPANT and I think I actually enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time. RAMPANT is the story of a girl named Astrid Llewellyn who is descended from unicorn hunters. Her mother, Lilith, is obsessed with them and has been teaching Astrid her whole life that unicorns are evil. Astrid thinks her mom is pretty crazy until she's out in the woods with her boyfriend and the two of them are attacked by a rogue unicorn.
After that, Astrid is sent off to a special unicorn killing school in Italy that's masquerading as a religious order. Once there, she meets other girls who are descended from other lines of unicorn hunters. They even have a pet "house unicorn" named Bonegrinder. Astrid learns that there are different kinds of unicorns, ranging from the small, goat-like zhi to the Persian karkadann, which is the size of a tank. All unicorn hunters are apparently descendants of Alexander the Great, who rode to victory on a giant karkadann of his own: Bucephalus.
I loved this book so much. Sometimes the mythology didn't really make sense but most of it, I was like, okay, I can roll with this. I loved the Italian setting and the bond between the girls. This is surprisingly diverse for the time it came out: one of the girls is Black and the other is Singaporean Chinese. The way they rally together and train together and fight and protect one another was so well done. You just don't really see many YA fantasy books these days with that kind of theme of sisterhood, which made me enjoy this book even more than I did.
I think if you enjoyed VAMPIRE ACADEMY, you'll enjoy this book. It has the same themes: kick-butt girls, dangerous paranormal threats, secret magic schools abroad, forbidden love. I'm honestly surprised the reviews for RAMPANT are so mixed because it feels like the type of book so many readers are begging for. The only things that I think would put people off are a few throwaway remarks about sexuality that don't age well, rape (off-page, but the victim is gaslighted by an authority figure, although the main character stands up for her and a pretty interesting and heartfelt discussion follows), and the fact that the heroine is kind of spoiled and bratty (but in an age-appropriate way, tbh).
I LOVED this book and can't wait to read book two. Thank goodness I already own it!
We're sorry, but the number you are trying to dial, 1-800-MY-FEELINGS, has been disconnected. Please try again later when the caller isn't a hot weeping mess on the floor.
Hi, this book fucking wrecked me. I'm not even sorry because it hurt so good. The original Peter Pan story is actually very dark and creepy; it is a world filled with cruelty and death. The Disney version only really scrapes at the surface of it. Jodi Lynn Anderson's interpretation is a marvelous, twisty world-- a version of Neverland that is fickle and capricious, as subject to whims as its inhabitants.
Here, the narrator is Tinker Bell, but the main character is really Tiger Lily. She is given full agency in this book. We see her troubles and woes. Her village is suspicious of her and thinks she is cursed, but because she is the daughter of the shaman (who I think is supposed to be a two-spirit person), she is granted some clemency. All of that is changed when she meets Peter and his band of lost boys and the English people come to their shores.
This was just so dark and so good. Mermaids eat people. The pirates are psychotic (one of them used to be and still is a serial killer). Peter's lost boys were actually boys he rescued/kidnapped that were swabs/slaves of the pirates. Wendy is-- well, a bitch, although she doesn't mean to be, which makes it even more annoying that she is. And Tiger Lily is... wonderful. I loved how fleshed out she was, with strengths and weaknesses. There's an air of doomed romance that hangs over the plot, keeping it tight, making you turn the pages with bated breath. I love doomed romance even though I hate it for being doomed and if a book makes you invested enough that the ending hurts, it must be a good book.
So yes, I read TIGER LILY fully expecting not to like it and it ended up destroying me.
Disclaimer: I was the beta reader for this book but I paid $$$ for the final copy. Kindle Unlimited? I don't know her. I pay with my coin, THANKS.
Heather has a way of writing the stories I didn't know I desperately wanted to read, which is (just one reason) I'm glad we're friends, because I get to see these stories in their bare bones versions before falling in love with them all over again in the final draft.
SOME VELVET SIN is a dual timeline fantasy story. Part of it is set in the American 1950s, during the peak of rock n' roll and greaser culture, and the other half is set in a nebulous underworld. Each timeline features a different set of characters, and I actually don't want to say too much about them because this is one of those books where knowing less is more going in because you get to figure out all the way the characters connect with one another in all of these exquisite constellations of meaning that slowly begin to make sense.
I will say that at its heart, this is first and foremost a romance, but it also plays with some of my favorite tropes, too, like difficult and morally grey heroines; dangerous boys; unanswered questions from beyond the grave; gothic and punk elements; and, of course, dangerous boys. Oops, did I already mention the dangerous boys? Well, it bears repeating because it is my FAVORITE.
SOME VELVET SIN was such a great book. It actually ended up haunting me a little and making me feel kind of sad (CURSE YOU, HEATHER), so now I've got to go through all my books and pull out something happy while I try to get over these characters and their incredible, poignant love story.
I loved AKATA WITCH so much. It was so different and yet it also shares so many similarities to the dark academia fantasy books I love. I guess with a young adult book about magical children, comparisons to Harry Potter are inevitable, but this reminded me more of VITA NOSTRA, a dark work of speculative fantasy penned by a Ukrainian husband and wife duo, where magic is intensely philosophical and transforms you physically and mentally the more you learn.
Even though I would classify AKATA WITCH as dark academia, I like that it solidly rejects that classist European boarding school structure. Sunny first learns of her abilities when she sees the end of the world in a candle frame. Her friend, Orlu, takes her to his friend, Chichi, who recognizes the magic in her and takes her to their mentor, who helps her unleash her powers and start on her training journey.
Sunny is albino, and there are a lot of superstitions about albinism being magical in Africa, so I thought that was a really interesting choice for the author to make-- especially since we see how Sunny is discriminated against and rejected by her peers for being different and sounding different and looking different, since she has an American accent from being brought up in the U.S. One thing I really liked about this magic system is that innate ability is tied to the physical, usually in some sort of equal or opposite measure. So people who are physically disabled might be able to shapeshift, and people who are blind can have the Sight. This idea of compensating people for their physical "flaws" and making it part of their power was really cool.
The magic system is also really interesting. I liked how their juju knives sort of "choose" them (yes, like Harry Potter). Here, that covenant feels more sacred though, since Sunny bonds with her knife with blood. I like how the magical money works in this world too (chittim). They receive chittim for gaining knowledge-- it literally falls from the sky-- so when they try out a new spell, fix a problem, or even learn something new about themselves, they are rewarded with this magic money that can be used to buy magical goods in magical shops. Like Harry Potter, there is also a magical world and a mundane world. They call themselves "Leopard" people and people without magic are called "Lambs" and the two worlds are supposed to be separate but obviously, there are slip-ups, and there are people in charge who dole out punishments for offenses.
The main source of conflict comes from an evil man named Black Hat Otokoto who is using children for dark magic. Some people will probably compare him to Voldemort but honestly, he reminded me more of Rose the Hat from Doctor Sleep, what with the children sacrifices and the hat and all that. I think he's a really sinister villain and he really adds a real sense of stakes to the book, which is so much darker than any other magical children fantasy book I've read. Messing up a spell can lead to death, and magic can also conjure up spirits and gods, so it's really important not to go beyond one's level or act with malice, especially since magic can turn around and kill the person who performs the spell.
One thing I also really liked is how we are introduced to the world of Leopard people alongside Sunny through excerpts from her guide book, "Fast Facts for Free Agents," and how it's also acknowledged to be an imperfect work that has classist, sexist, and racist undertones. There's a discussion about how knowledge doesn't always lead to wisdom and how motive has to be analyzed when considering a source, which I thought was a really refreshing take from the "read this book and take it at complete face value" dialogues that usually emerge from books of this type.
AKATA WITCH was really fun and really unusual and I loved the Nigerian setting. Sunny, Chichi, Orlu, and Sasha are pretty young teens (13/14) but the book doesn't feel young, and I'm not sure I'd necessarily categorize this book as middle grade because the characters and the concepts feel like they're being targeted at an older audience. It's immersive and epic in scope, and I managed to burn through it in just a couple days because I was having such a good time. I really can't wait to read further into the series. I hope we get to see these characters grow up as they come into themselves.
This is some of the creepiest stuff I've ever read. It reads kind of like a mash-up between Silent Hill and Narnia. Imagine finding a hole in your place of residence, but instead of leading you to a delightful and whimsical journey of portal fantasy adventure, it plunges you into a foggy nightmare land where islands with doors spread out as far as the eye can see-- like the lighthouses in Bioshock: Infinite-- and something disturbing and unseen lurks in the rasping shadows of willow trees.
So here's the thing. I am a HUGE horror wuss. My siblings both love horror movies-- I can't stand them. I'm a romance reader at heart, okay? I just want everyone and the dog (or cat) to survive at the end and get married and maybe make babies but also not because I'm all about choice. And horror movies-- and books-- have a nasty habit of unaliving the characters it makes me care about. That stinks.
Not T. Kingfisher, though. I've read three of her horror stories at this point and so far, all the animal sidekicks have survived. (Not only that, but they also defend their humans like the very good girls and boys that they are.) Sometimes there's a bit of a romance, sometimes a fromance (friend romance, get it?). But the main character is always a charming blend of cynical and doofy, and there's always some lighthearted humor to take the load off the spine-melting terror. And you know what? I LOVE THAT.
I don't know why I keep coming back to the horror genre when it stresses me out so much. I think it's because I love the VIBES of horror. I grew up with Goosebumps and Scholastic's Point Horror line, so I like the feeling of being scared, I just want an HEA, too. But T. Kingfisher's books deliver on the vibes while (usually) delivering HEAs for those characters you care about. THE HOLLOW PLACES sure pushed all of my limits, though. I don't want to say too much and spoil things, but there was some serious body horror in here and she knew exactly how much to withhold to maintain that cloying sense of uncertainty and terror. Do NOT read this alone in the dark or you will be very sorry.
I'm giving this five stars because I honestly think this is the best and most developed storyline she's come up with after her Bluebeard retelling, THE SEVENTH BRIDE. Her other horror novel, THE TWISTED ONES, was just as creepy, but I felt like the payoff wasn't quite as good. THE HOLLOW PLACES delivered in a way that TWO did not, and man oh man, did I want to return to sender. Instead, I'm keeping this on my Kindle because I think the reread potential is high and I want to have it on hand as a reference of what good horror looks like, in case I ever decide to write horror myself.
THE LAST WISH is a series of intertwined short stories, many of which are interesting and creative retellings of European fairytales (such as telling the story of Cindrella with a striga!). Nine times out of ten, I would urge people to read the book before watching the film or the television show, but in this instance, I would actually recommend the opposite. The world of Geralt of Rivia is a complex one with many characters and details, and watching the show first really helps you imagine it more clearly, as well as giving you more of an emotional stake.
I loved the television show when I watched it. It was everything I had hoped Game of Thrones would be, and wasn't. There's an incredibly diverse cast, many of the women characters are strong and interesting, and Geralt of Rivia is a surprisingly compassionate and noble hero who is completely kick-butt but not at the cost of his humanity (although he might disagree). I fell in love with the world from the first episode and it doesn't hurt that Henry Cavill and Anya Chalotra are total babes.
Reading the book was an interesting experience because it was really interesting to see what changed in the show and what was removed. You're thrown into the action right from the beginning with a striga (vampire-like creature) and it never slows from there-- fight scenes, emotional conflict, court intrigue, magic. The book has everything! The arc with Renfri destroyed me inside just as it did in the show, and the trick Yennefer plays on Geralt for ogling her made me cackle just as it did in the show. But the chapter about Nivellen and his enchanted house (Beauty and the Beast?) didn't seem to be included, which is a shame, as I thought that was a really dark and interesting chapter. So Gothic.
THE LAST WISH is one of those books that will appeal to most people who love fantasy but will appeal more and gain more depth if you have a rich background in folklore and history. I grew up with tons of books of fairytales from a number of cultures, including Eastern Europe (so, things like The Shoemaker's Apron and The Glass Mountain) and the Middle East, some of which are referenced here. Like Sapkowski casually references Ifrits (spelled afreets here), which are Islamic fire demons!
I would honestly recommend this book to anyone who liked the epic fantasy world of Game of Thrones but felt let down by the characters and the representation. I loved Yennefer, who was allowed to be strong and complex but wasn't villified in the book. I loved the friendship between Geralt and Dandelion (renamed Jaskier in the show), and the easy camaraderie between them. I loved the morality in this world and how richly it explored the concepts of good and evil, the thin line between them, and what it means to be noble, right, and human, even if we don't see ourselves that way.
This is such a deep book and I loved it so much. I can't wait for the second season (and the second book). Seriously, I've been let down by so many fantasy novels, it feels good to see one become so popular that I actually really enjoyed.
Hey, my friends! It's 6/17 and it's on sale today for $1.99! Make like a rabbit and get hopping!
I'm doing a project for Black History Month where I'm trying to read as many books by black and biracial authors as possible. Most of the ones I've done so far have been realistic fiction, but QUEEN OF THE CONQUERED is fantasy. I'd read some of Kacen Callender's work before, but their style is much, much different here than it was in KING AND THE DRAGONFLIES. KING was a mild coming-of-age story about sexuality and identity written for the middle grade audience. QUEEN (ha) is a brutal adult fantasy novel that serves as a direct parallel to the cruel and devastating colonialism of Afro-Caribbean peoples by the Dutch. Here, the islanders work as slaves in the tropical paradise that used to be their home. Their colonizers are called the kongelig, and all of the major ruling families have plantations where they rule with the dual fists of physical punishment and magic. You see, the kongelig prize something called the "kraft." Some of the islanders have it too, but fearing rebellion, any islander found with the power of "kraft" is put to death.
Our heroine, Sigourney, is a biracial woman who, against all odds, is the lady of her own plantation. Her mother was a freed slave that her white father fell in love with (he freed her and then married her). But the other colonizers took umbrage with this, and had Sigourney's whole family murdered. She survived where none of the others did and rose from the ashes to claim her birthright. But this isn't your typical chosen one vs. the oppressors story-- it's much darker and more complex than that. Sigourney likes her power, and wants to inherit the whole island once the ruling king dies. She's willing to use her people as pawns to make this happen, even though she tells herself that she'll free them when she becomes queen. But, she can't help but wonder, where will the money come from with no slaves to work the land? What will happen to the economy? In her heart of hearts, she knows the answer to these questions, as well as the darkness clouding her heart.
Sigourney also has the kraft and she's incredibly powerful-- she can reach into people's bodies and control them like puppets and she can also read minds. These powers are indispensable, as she is loathed on both sides. Her people hate her for being a traitor and the other kongelig hate her because she represents a mockery to her way of life. Watching Sigourney navigate the viper's nest of court intrigue with the other plantation nobles in her endless quest for power, while trying to figure out a dark mystery that lies in the center of the island and becomes increasingly more perilous as blood spills and ghosts rise from the grave, the reader can't help but root for Sigourney-- even if they know deep down that they shouldn't. She's a truly morally grey heroine, whose decisions are frightening because they make us question the actions we might take when faced with similar decisions.
I LOVED this book. It seems like a lot of people didn't like it because it takes forever to get moving, but I honestly love slow world-building if I love the world. Pacing-wise, this book actually reminded me a lot of another book I read recently, called VITA NOSTRA. The plots are nothing similar, but both books are like sinking into a hot bath that suddenly becomes boiling-- you don't realize just how deadly the narrative is until you're already in hot water. QUEEN OF THE CONQUERED could have been shorter, yes, but I honestly loved all the time we got to spend in Sigourney's head. It made me really feel for her character in a way that's a lot harder in shorter books. Even though I didn't like her, I could understand and sympathize with her, which is the hallmark of great writing.
Anyone who wants to learn about how colonialism works and the toxic effects it has on a land and people should read this book. It was incredibly represented and despite being a fantasy novel, raised a lot of real-world problems like privilege, abuse of power, institutional racism, consent, love, and the fine line between good and evil. I honestly can't wait to read KING OF THE RISING. I think it's going to really take the world by storm (get it, because the series is called Islands of Blood & Storm?). Anyway, bad puns aside, do yourself a favor and read this book. It's amazing.
I decided I had to read this book after my friend Heather gave it five stars because we tend to have the same frustrations about YA fantasy. BLOODLEAF, however, is that one book out of one hundred that manages to turn all the usual tropes on their heads. It has innovative and interesting world-building, a compelling mythology, a strong female protagonist, real emotional stakes, and some really good twists and plotting that left me guessing (even if my guesses were right).
The plot is a little confusing and less is definitely more when going in, but the main character is a teen girl named Aurelia who is engaged to be married to the prince of a neighboring kingdom. Her own kingdom is like Scotland in the peak of its witch-hunting frenzy, and unlucky for her, she happens to be a witch. When she is betrayed, she ends up being forced into hiding and flees to the neighboring kingdom incognito where she discovers a treacherous plot to undo their magical protections and throw the entire city into darkness.
Aurelia is such a great narrator. She immerses you into the story without overwhelming you with info-dumps. You, the reader, basically see everything in real time as she's experiencing it. This book made me feel all the feels, too. There were some real gut-punching moments in here that made my stomach drop. I also like the three-tiered magic system of feral, high, and blood magic. Also, it's worth noting that blood magic involves cutting, so there's a lot of that in here (in case you needed to know).
BLOODLEAF was so much more than I dared hope it would be. I can't wait to read the sequels.
Who knew that an asexual romance could be so... well, sexy? I bought BEYOND THE BLACK DOOR impulsively years ago because of the Bluebeard vibes the summary was giving off and because I'd heard tell that it was a villain romance. But then I fell into the sinkhole that is my never-ending to-read list and somehow never got around to picking this up until now, which was MY MISTAKE, because this book was everything I love in the fantasy genre.
Kamai, the heroine, is something called a soulwalker. She has the ability to walk into people's souls while they're asleep and potentially see their true selves and find out their secrets. However, the one soul she can't see is her own, and no matter which soul she's visiting, she's followed around by a mysterious black door that her mother tells her she should never open. But not why. So obviously, she wonders what the heck is behind there and eventually opens the door.
I think anyone who loves Rosamund Hodge is going to love this book because it has the same sort of narrative style. Plot-wise, it reminded me a lot of Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series, because there's a lot of political intrigue and it has a sort of Ancient Mediterranean setting. And the villain love interest did NOT disappoint, BEE TEE DUBS. He's like a cross between Jareth from Labyrinth and Julian from the Forbidden Game trilogy: the perfect blend of hot, arrogant, and dangerous, in other words.
But there were so many other things I loved about this book too. As someone who probably falls on the ace spectrum herself, I REALLY appreciated this rep. Kamai is a bit more acey than me, but so many of her feelings reflected my own and I wish so hard that this book had been around when I was a teenager because I feel like it would have helped me figure out some of my own confusions. There's this great on-page discussion of sexuality, and I feel like the heroine's angst over it makes sense because her mother is a courtesan and she's grown up in a house of courtesans, and no one has ever sat her down and explained this sort of stuff to her, so it makes sense why she'd have some internalized acephobia.
There's also a trans character and he is the BEST. He reminds me a lot of Luisa from Encanto because he's a strong and sweet character, and his struggle is less about his identity and more about being what he wants to be and living up to his own expectations. For most of the book he does use female pronouns, by choice, because outing himself will cause problems, but transphobia isn't built into the world for the most part (and neither is other bigotry, really), and the author even came up with a term for it called soul-crossed, which is part of this sexuality chart explained with moons.
I could honestly see this as a movie, you know. It has the perfect blend of action, magic, mystery, and romance. Kamai was a great character but so were all the people around her, and it was lovely to see so many strong female characters. I can't wait to read more from this author. I'm so happy.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
>
Books:
best-scifi-fantasy
(36)
Loading...
