Category: Fantasy

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns (Rise of the Empress #1) by Julie C. Dao

I fucking devoured this book. It is dark and brutal and cruel and one of the most honest portrayals of what it means to be a woman with ambition when everyone around you automatically assumes you lack agency because of your youth and beauty OR views you as a threat simply because of those last …

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Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2) by Seanan McGuire

After reading Down Among The Sticks And Bones, I feel, honestly, that its prequel Every Heart A Doorway seems a lot flimsier in my recollection in comparison. Which is weird because I ended EHAD unsure of whether I wanted to read more about Jack and Jill: at the end of DATSAB, I was burning to …

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The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy #1) by S.A. Chakraborty

I needed this to be good and not only did it come through, it came through with big brass bells on! Honestly, it had me from the scene where Ali was staring at the courtesans and his companion steps between them and admonishes him to look away because OH MY GOD, S. A. Chakraborty understands …

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The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

What a lovely start! In The Wee Free Men, the thirtieth Discworld book and the second explicitly marked as intended for young adults, Terry Pratchett introduces Tiffany Aching, a young witch who would go on to feature in four more novels, including Pratchett’s last. Likewise, he introduces a new setting, a rural area known as …

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Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive #2.5) by Brandon Sanderson

Hahaha, one of the other reviews of this I read said something along the lines of Lift being like DeeDee from Dexter’s Laboratory and I was all “yassss, I love her!” which prolly wasn’t the other reviewer’s intent but he sounds boring anyway. So! If you are bothered by exuberant protagonists whose primary concern is …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/25/edgedancer-the-stormlight-archive-2-5-by-brandon-sanderson/

Wrapping Up

Time for some short takes, to mostly clear the desk for the coming year. The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest. In the fourth of her five Clockwork Century novels, Priest takes a stab at telling her story mostly from the point of view of an unsympathetic narrator. Rector Sherman is an addict, hooked on the “sap,” …

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Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons, #1) by Leigh Bardugo

If this novel were about, say, Donna Troy, I would be all in. It’s a fun exploration of the Amazon myth, about a young Amazon who doesn’t feel she quite belongs on Themyscira, who feels like her mother spends more time being queen than being mom, who sets out to prove herself and maybe save …

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Stand Still, Stay Silent: Book 1 by Minna Sundberg

Again, I’m somewhat mystified by why my husband thought this book would be my kind of thing. I mean, it’s definitely entertaining! This first volume provides an intriguing set-up: a horrifying virus causes the Scandinavian countries to shut their borders, often violently, against all comers. Ninety years later, a ragtag team is sent out from …

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The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

What has stayed with me in the months since I read The Ballad of Black Tom? The sense of teeming New York in the 1920s, the deft characterizations of the divides among black and white, the delicious irony of seeing an H.P. Lovecraft tale told from a black point of view. The story is eventually …

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A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson

In A Taste of Honey Kai Ashante Wilson tells a love story spanning decades in a fantastic world that looks much like the ancient Mediterranean. One of the lovers is a soldier from an empire that resembles Rome, the other is a young member of a noble house in a North African polity. (I don’t …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/12/07/a-taste-of-honey-by-kai-ashante-wilson/