Winter’s Gifts, by Ben Aaronovich. Subterranean Press, 2023

I was delighted to find the library had the latest (I think- at least until November) installment in Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, because I love this fictional world and the fictional detectiv that inhabit it. I was a little disappointed to find that these rivers were not ( Read more... )

Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher. Tor Books, 2023

Shades of fractured fairy tales! Kingfisher has taken the tale of the sleeping maiden in the tower, surrounded by brambles and briar roses, and humanized - albeit by using a not entirely human protagonist.

When a baby is born to the ruler of a tiny backwater kingdom, a fairy steps in. Within minutes of ( Read more... )

The Golden Enclaves: Lesson Three of the Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Ray, 2022

Starting just minutes after the end of Lesson Two, Lesson Three starts with Galadriel “El” Higgins having just gotten all grades of the students in the Scholomance out alive- all except one. The door way has closed, forever, with one person left behind- Orion Lake, ( Read more... )

The Last Graduate: Lesson Two of the Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Ray, 2021

The second volume in the Scholomance Trilogy finds the narrator, Galadriel “El” in her senior year. The graduating class has escaped, and the new load of freshmen have been portaled in. In this school, where there are no instructors, assignments appear by magic, and one ( Read more... )

A Deadly Education: Lesson One of The Scholomance, by Naomi Novik. Del Rey,2020

Galadriel- “El”- to pretty much everyone- is in her junior year at wizard school, which is very much not like Hogwarts. The school itself- the Scholomance- is a somewhat sentient structure that exists in the great void, with only one way in and one way out. And you only ( Read more... )

The Night Garden, by Lisa Van Allen. Random House LLC 2014

Having seen the author’s work compared to that of Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen, I had great hopes for this book. That the book is set in a farm and garden made it even more appealing to me; that the garden is a maze, with many garden ‘rooms’, which is expanded each year sealed the ( Read more... )

The Drowned Woods, by Emily Lloyd-Jones. Little, Brown and Company. 2022

Mererid (Mer) is on the run. She’s insanely powerful- a water diviner or water witch who can control water in any form- but she lives in constant fear of discovery. When the wrong person finds her waiting table in a pub, her past comes rushing past. She was the prince’s ( Read more... )

Gallant, by V.E. Schwab. Greenwillow Books, 2022

Fourteen year old orphan Olivia has never known a home other than Merilance, an orphanage. She is non-verbal, and is bullied and shunned. That’s all right with her; she prefers to be alone, anyway. Her only possession, other than the gray dresses the orphanage provides, is her mother’s old journal, a ( Read more... )

Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, by Micah Dean Hicks. John Joseph Adams, 2018This book is…. weird. It’s a strange mashup of sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and family. The town of Swine Hill (Swain Hill), already in decay from loss of industry, has become a mostly deserted, post-apocalyptic, ruin of ghosts, pig-men, corporate greed, and angry, ( Read more... )

Hollow Kingdom, by Kira Jane Buxton. Grand Central Publishing, 2019This is an end of the world as we know it, zombie apocalypse, quest novel… narrated mainly by a human-raised crow named S.T. - Shit Turd. There are occasional short passages by whales, polar bears, and others- including Genghis Cat, a true ninja. S.T.’s human has gone zombie, his ( Read more... )