This is the 10th Dirk & Steele book, and I clearly need to reread the older ones sometime soon, because I seem to have forgotten a lot of the mythology. Not because it’s convoluted (I actually kind of really love it), but because there’s so much of it, and Liu doesn’t really slow down or recap a lot. This interview explains Liu’s approach to her ( Read more... )

This is the third of the Hunter Kiss novels, and probably my favorite so far. Book one was quite good, but suffered from the fact that Maxine’s dead mother was a more compelling character than Maxine herself, and the second book focused more on Grant, the requisite supernatural boyfriend (one of the few actually likable ones), than Maxine, but ( Read more... )

Set in Africa in 2070 after The Great Change-the return of magic-has changed the world, Ejii is a Shadow Speaker and the oldest, all-but-disowned child of a power-hungry chief well on his way to being a dictator before he’s beheaded by Jaa, a female liberator who objects to his government, especially since he’s doing things in her name. When the ( Read more... )

Tilo is a young woman trained in the ways of spices and made immortal (in the form of an old woman) when she is sent out into the world (specifically, California) to use her knowledge of spices to help people.

Like the children’s book The Conch Bearer, which is the only other book of Divakaruni’s that I’ve read, the imagery is vivid and involving ( Read more... )

When she was an infant, Heaven Kogo was the sole survivor of a plane crash. At 19, she’s the pampered and sheltered adopted daughter of a Yakuza boss, and about to be married off to a creepster for daddy’s business. Then ninjas invade her wedding, her exiled adopted brother saves her and tells her not to trust her family as he’s dying, and ( Read more... )

Though a sequel to Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, this actually stands alone very well. Balsa, the spearwoman who protected a young prince in the first book, returns to her homeland to solve the mysteries of her past, and to satisfy her mentor’s debt of honor.

I still haven’t seen the anime based on the first book in the series (I know, I know ( Read more... )

Set in a world where nature provides everything, including technology, the Ooni Kingdom believes it is the only place where mankind dwells. Zahrah is dada, a child born with vine-entwined dreadlocks, called dadalocks. There are many legends about the dada, both good and bad, but Zahrah doesn’t know if any are true. Her best friend, Dari, though, is ( Read more... )

Mina is Korean-American whose mother has extremely high expectations of her, expectations that are compounded by her mother’s neglect of her younger sister, Suna, who is nearly deaf. To pacify her mother, Mina learns about cheating and forging school papers-and the accounting books for her family’s business-from her friend, Jonathan. Jonathan ( Read more... )

Women of the Silk tells the story of Pei, a young Chinese woman who is sent to a silk factory as a child. The story begins shortly before she enters the factory in 1919, and ends when she is forced to leave due to the Japanese occupation in 1938. The Language of Threads picks up where Women of the Silk left off, and covers Pei’s life in Hong Kong ( Read more... )

This is the fourth Twelve Kingdoms novel to be translated into English, and the last one that was adapted into the anime. This is also the longest novel so far, following three initially independent plotlines that eventually coincide. In the central plotline, Yoko, the new king of Kei (all rulers are kings, and their spouses queens, regardless of ( Read more... )