The Singing Hills Cycle novellas are something I look forward to every time a new installment is announced. They never disappoint in any way and The BThe Singing Hills Cycle novellas are something I look forward to every time a new installment is announced. They never disappoint in any way and The Brides of High Hill is no exception.
We’re used to mysterious adventures, spooky adventures, dangerous adventures, and sad adventures being in store for Cleric Chih, but never before has the adventure been scandalous…even a little salacious. Chih is in over their head and Almost Brilliant isn’t even around for some reason!
As with most of the Singing Hills Cycle books, the messages here revolve a lot around gender norms, feminine rage, class warfare, and the theft and/or destruction of one’s heritage by a group of people who see themselves as superior to you and yours. Whereas previous installments in this series have either taken place during travel or otherwise mostly in open air, The Brides of High Hill has a distinctive gothic feel to it, with everyone trapped inside a walled-in compound for the duration of the book. This places the threats as coming all from within, as opposed to the other novellas, where the threat was always coming from without.
The storycraft here was clever and sharp-witted, with a razor-edge thrill to it. The story was absolutely compelling to read, but as with all the Singing Hills Cycle stories, Nigh Vo gives us the perfect amount of story to satisfy us. It’s another job well done.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinion, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Epic Fantasy/Fantasy/Fantasy Series/Historical Fantasy/Mythological Fiction/Novella...more
Normally, I love historical fantasy. Normally, I absolutely love historical fantasy set in Italy (whether it’s supposed to be our Italy or if it’s jusNormally, I love historical fantasy. Normally, I absolutely love historical fantasy set in Italy (whether it’s supposed to be our Italy or if it’s just inspired by our Italy). Normally, I love coming of age fantasy. Despite all this book should’ve had going for it, this book just wasn’t my cup of tea.
If you don’t mind books that don’t even seem to commit to a solid plot until halfway through the book, then you’ll like this book. If you don’t mind a lack of worldbuilding and atmosphere, then you’ll like this book. If you like a protagonist who’s a bit of a supercilious dullard, then you’ll like this book.
I, however, didn’t like this book. Which is sad, because I went into it thinking I would. Paolo Bacigalupi isn’t a bad writer, I just don’t think he’s the writer for me.
I was provided a copy of this title by Netgalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review is rated three stars or under and will not be appearing on my social media. Thank you.
File Under: Coming of Age/Fantasy/Historical Fantasy ...more
The Truth of the Aleke is the second book in The Forever Desert series, which is made of novellas set in North Africa long past. The first novella, ThThe Truth of the Aleke is the second book in The Forever Desert series, which is made of novellas set in North Africa long past. The first novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, was released last year and was just 90 pages. It served to mostly just set the stage for the world of the Forever Desert and the larger story that starts here in The Truth of the Aleke. While you don’t necessarily need to read it to enjoy this book I highly recommend it because it’s an outstanding and entertaining read.
The Truth of the Aleke is only about 12 pages longer than The Lies of the Ajungo but takes place 500 years after the events of that book.
Utomi uses fantasy to continue to tell the fable of a war over land and resources in The Forever Desert, with the moral of the story being that both sides are liars. The truth is a murky and nebulous thing that’s shaped by whoever is currently on the winning side. Ultimately, no one cares what the truth truly is–they only care about who holds the power. There’s no room to care for anything else.
These books aren’t lighthearted. I almost feel like their covers do these books a disservice, because they’re so much prettier than the stories inside. The stories are bleak, violent, messy, and distinctly unhappy. These books don’t end happily. But they’re written so well and with great imagination. I highly recommend them.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Fantasy/Fantasy Series/Historical Fantasy/Novella/OwnVoices ...more
I think it may finally be time for this reviewer to admit, fully and truly, that anything “cozy” just isn’t a good fit in temperament and style.
Yes, I think it may finally be time for this reviewer to admit, fully and truly, that anything “cozy” just isn’t a good fit in temperament and style.
Yes, it may be true that this book ramps up a bit in pacing, action, and thrills toward the end. However, waiting until after the 60% mark to grab enough of my attention that I can keep my eyes open for more than an hour is far too long.
Make no mistake: This is by no means the fault of Sarah Brooks. Brooks is an immensely talented author with a great sense of style, a terrific imagination, and this is one heck of a story. I loved the premise, the characters, and the world building. It was simply the pacing and how sedately this book moved that made me disagreeable. My brain just doesn’t like books that move at a more stately pace like this one does.
I’ve had a lot of similar experiences with cozies this year: I love what they are saying they offer, and often like many other aspects of the book, but they just put me to sleep.
So while I may be rating this three stars because I was ultimately very bored for the vast majority of the book, you may very well love it if you love cozies.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Due to a rating of three stars or lower this review will not be appearing on my social media. Thank you.
(One thing I do give a TW/CW for is for on-page animal death, and that happens right in the beginning of the book; however, it is done as an act of se(One thing I do give a TW/CW for is for on-page animal death, and that happens right in the beginning of the book; however, it is done as an act of self-defense and the time period in which the book occurs should be taken into consideration. Any other on-page animal death takes place during a battle scene, which is par for the course in a novel about war).
I love Lauren Blackwood’s books. Her last book, Wildblood, was an absolutely standout novel that I felt a lot of people slept on for how brilliant it is. Wildblood was mainly about black pain and magic (according to Blackwood), but The Dangerous Ones lets Blackwood not only write about black pain but to also indulge in many of the romantic fantasy impulses she usually has to curb in her more serious and focused novels.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that The Dangerous Ones may not be as brilliant as Wildblood, but it’s a whole lot of fun and a smash of a read in a lot of ways.
The centerpiece of The Dangerous Ones are our two protagonists: Jerusalem (a runaway slave girl who was also born a Saint, which is somewhat akin to a demi-god), and Alexei (an Ancient Vampire who traveled specifically from Europe to America to fight on the side of the Union Army). They live in the same encampment, training together every day, and fight advance battles for the Union Army because their encampment is made up of other Saints like Jerusalem. They’re so deadly and prolific the newspapers have given all the Saints nicknames.
Jerusalem and Alexei are also fighting another battle: attraction and love of the star-crossed kind. Not only crossing ethnic lines, but also that of being Saint and Vampire. In the everyday moments and the heat of battle neither matter seems to bother either party, but in the small, silent moments the disparities between them seem to stretch like an ocean. Their chemistry on the page is absolute fire, and Blackwood has written them some of the best dialogue I’ve read in a romantasy in a long while.
The Dangerous Ones is violent, fiery, angry, romantic, magnetic, and even though there are pacing issues in the latter half of the book I really enjoyed it.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
This was a lovely, if terribly sad, book. Even with how sad it is, I found it almost impossible to put down because the writing is just so elegant andThis was a lovely, if terribly sad, book. Even with how sad it is, I found it almost impossible to put down because the writing is just so elegant and the story is engrossing.
It’s interesting how sometimes the same old story can captivate you just being packaged in a slightly different way. Here, Morgan takes a basic plot we’ve definitely seen before: two women who are both running from their own kinds of ghosts and end up fighting them together in some sort of way, and keeps one woman’s ghosts mundane and turns the other woman’s ghosts supernatural. I also found myself surprised to be as invested in the story as I was, given I knew what was coming most of the time and knew most of what was going to happen in this book. Did I know it all? No. But I knew enough that there were few surprises. Usually, this would make me whine and moan, but I kept on being just as invested as I was from the beginning. I think that may have been because the writing was just that good and because I cared about the characters that much.
Two things that I loved so much about this book: One, the time period this book is set in. I love a good historical fantasy setting, and books set in the late 1960’s are some of my favorites. It was a time of so much social, political, and religious upheaval. It makes for excellent storytelling fodder. The second thing is the geographical setting of this book. The isolated, gothic-like setting of a very isolated island somewhere (I’m guessing from the text) in Puget Sound made not only for picturesque passages full of evocative imagery, but it also matched the mood of our protagonists and gave the story the supernatural feeling of liminal space that I found to be essential to the story being told.
There’s this ribbon woven through the text of this story about the spirit world and whether or not it’s tied to religion and faith or not, or whether it matters at all. Is it a gift or a curse? Burden or blessing? This question goes unanswered and I believe that’s the moral of the story. It’s all in what you carry with you.
I recommend this for fans of elegant prose, books about women fighting back without violence, books about unlikely and fast female friendships, and fans of 1960’s historical fantasy.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review was written without compensation.
Before you ask: Yes, this is a kissing book. It also has a brave maiden, true friends, lecherous royals, malicious intentions, a king of legend, a draBefore you ask: Yes, this is a kissing book. It also has a brave maiden, true friends, lecherous royals, malicious intentions, a king of legend, a dragon with a treasure, a curse, magic, battle scenes, betrayal, and true love.
I’m surprised this wasn’t marketed as a YA book, because it definitely could’ve found a great niche in that market. Our FMC, Fryda, is the daughter of her clan’s chieftain and kin to King Beowulf. Even though she is about twenty and should have been married by the time the book starts in earnest, she remains unmarried because seven years prior to the present-day events of the book she fell into a chasm in the earth and mangled one of her hands, which caused her intended to break off their engagement. She’s been deemed unmarriageable ever since. Not that she really wants to be married off, considering she holds a deep affection for one of the clan’s slaves, Theow, a Celt who was stolen from his homeland as a child.
This is Sharon Emmerichs’ debut novel, and as debuts go it was a terrific effort. The characters may be tried-and-true formulaic, but they are vibrant and have flaws and vulnerabilities. There are surprises hidden in some of the characters, both good and bad. Emmerichs’ definitely did her due diligence in the research department, even if some liberties have been taken with linguistics for the time period (I’m not an expert on 6th century Sweden demographics, though). To this day there is academic debate as to whether or not Beowulf originated as an oral tradition with pagan roots, a tale written by Christians, or if the truth is a happy medium. Emmerichs’ seems content to go with the happy medium route and not to try to deviate and for the purposes of Shield Maiden that seems to fit just fine.
The book really is enjoyable, with multiple POVs (but not so many that you go dizzy with them). The pacing is nice and brisk without any filler material. The only true downfall to this book, in my opinion, is that it’s rather shallow. It’s so fast-paced and determined not to be slow that none of the emotions invoked by the book have time to settle in and be processed by either the reader or the characters before all of a sudden we’re off to do something else. As a result, the highs don’t get to shimmer as much and the lows don’t get to sink so much. You don’t get a chance to feel any of it.
It is an enjoyable read though, especially for the YA set. I liked it a lot.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All opinions, thoughts, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Coming of Age/Epic Fantasy/Fairy Tale/Folklore/Historical Fantasy/Mythological Retelling ...more
Immortal Pleasures is a fantastical take on what might have happened to one of history’s most divisive and mysterious figures: La Malinche, the Nahua Immortal Pleasures is a fantastical take on what might have happened to one of history’s most divisive and mysterious figures: La Malinche, the Nahua woman who rode and stood at Hernan Cortez’ side as he conquered Mexico. She grew up a trafficked girl in the Tabasco region but had an aptitude for languages, so she ended up with Cortez to serve as an interpreter. To this day opinions are mixed as to whether or not she was a traitor to her own people, but her ability to speak multiple languages and a penchant for diplomacy helped save lives on both sides of the conquest. Mysteriously, no one knows what happened to La Malinche when all was said and done. Immortal Pleasures offers a visceral, titillating, dark, romantic, and angry scenario in which La Malinche (now known as Malinalli) is turned into a vampire a few years later after Cortez has sent her away to live in Spain.
I have to say I’m feeling absolutely spoiled with the horromance lately! Isabel Canas (Vampires of El Norte) has been going on and on about how Horror Romance absolutely needs to be its own genre, just like Fantasy Romance, and I couldn’t agree more. Immortal Pleasures is a prime example of horror romance: Heck, it even has a HEA. The blurb for this book seems to be trying to sell us a love triangle, but that’s really wishy-washy. There’s no triangle to speak of.
What this book does so well–what Castro does so well–is world building. Her research is extensive and her knowledge is vast and she puts it to work so exquisitely to craft these impeccable horror novels based in Mesoamerican mythology. I loved the repatriation of ancient artifacts aspect of the story and I loved how the villains just found new and more miserable ways to exploit people (proving that slavers and colonizers truly have no conscience whatsoever).
It was absolutely wonderful. This lush, decadent, and immersive novel is going to stick with me.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Dark Fantasy/Historical Fantasy/Horror Romance/Horromance/Urban Fantasy/Vampire Fiction ...more
I’m not a big fan of WWII fiction, but I’m inexplicably drawn to WWI fiction. From 2022’s lit fic novel Two Storm Wood (which this novel reminds me ofI’m not a big fan of WWII fiction, but I’m inexplicably drawn to WWI fiction. From 2022’s lit fic novel Two Storm Wood (which this novel reminds me of in some ways) to Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals (which takes place in an alternative-Earth’s version of WWI), novels that capture the ghosts and horrors of those monstrous trenches and stories of those who love them are of interest to me. Add my interest to my curiosity in author Katherine Arden (I’d not read one of her novels before this even if they are on my wishlist) and I was so happy to get a chance to read The Warm Hands of Ghosts.
Arden’s writing is impeccable, from the words chosen to the sentence structure. The prose flows smooth as silk, the dialogue is perfectly suited to the characters and the time period, and the pacing is perfect. The story arc is sublime, with the alternating character-POV chapters lasting just long enough and hitting just when they need to in order to keep the suspense and emotion going. The world building is without fault, as its clear Arden didn’t skimp on the research one bit and put that knowledge to good use in conjunction with her ample writing talents. It’s an absolute masterpiece of a novel.
The themes of trauma, grief, love, fidelity, memory, “madness”, and darkness are all implemented so well here, woven with one another like a complex braid until it becomes one messy unit of no ends or beginnings. Such is the life of a common soldier or a nurse who comes to war. They don’t come to the battlefield until the people in charge have already decided it’s time to fight. The war started before they got there.
It’s a beautiful novel, even if it’s sad and brutal. I cried, but not as much as I thought I would. It was a fantastic read and I’d read it again.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Historical Fantasy/Historical Fiction/LGBTQ Romance/Military Fiction/Supernatural Fantasy ...more
…And the reward for the longest novel I devoured in record time this month (that wasn’t a spicy romance) goes to The Witchwood Knot, which is my first…And the reward for the longest novel I devoured in record time this month (that wasn’t a spicy romance) goes to The Witchwood Knot, which is my first Olivia Atwater book and certainly won’t be my last because it simply hit every single one of my cozy gothic fairy tale buttons while maintaining a certain sense of style and panache that you don’t see too often when it comes to the cozier tales. That flair sets this story apart from so many cozier gothics that can often cause me to drift off in the second act. Not this book. This book kept me captivated from the start.
(Note please that there is an author’s note at the beginning of this book regarding TW/CW when it comes to sexual harassment of both woman and child. Take care of you.)
This book simply wouldn’t work without our FMC, Winifred, exactly as she is. She’s a terrific female protagonist, made just the way I like them: full of spite. Let’s just say I identify. She’s also intelligent, cunning, deceitful, and careful. I absolutely love her. She’s had to learn some hard lessons, both mundane and arcane, to get where she is today, and that makes her unique. Her unique outlook on life and on everything faerie is the framework for everything we readers see and understand of this story for a good long while, so it’s marvelous that she’s as intriguing and engaging as she is.
Likewise, the flip-side of Winifred is our MMC, Mr. Quincy, the mysterious and vexing “butler” of Witchwood Manor. He’s everything Winifred is, save he’s full of frustration and anger instead of spite. He’s trapped within Witchwood Manor, bound to an oath he can’t undo, and is almost as alone as is possible. He hides behind cruelty and illusions, but is filled with fear.
Atwater has an unmistakably lovely way with charming, lovely prose and with the elegant and polite dialogue of the Victorian period. Reading the dialogue exchanges between Winifred and Mr. Quincy are like an amped-up version of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, if Elizabeth carried a knife with her at all times and Darcy were willing to turn her own fears on her. When they aren’t exchanging witty repartee and they drop the social mores, these two melt so deliciously it’s like milk chocolate.
I love Atwater’s use of faerie lore. It’s amazing. Most of it is well known, but it’s the little stuff that means so much, you know? Like how important the number three is to faeries. How the scent of bayberry is associated with protection from evil (and that it’s easier to carry bayberry perfume while traveling than to carry candles of it). The way some believe mirrors are portals to the other side. It’s these touches that always impress me when it comes to worldbuilding. I love it when authors do their research and do it well. When it comes to historical fantasy, an author must do double duty by ensuring the historical and fantastical aspects both are accounted for and Atwater has done exactly that.
It’s a simply wonderful novel. I can’t recommend it enough.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. This review was written without compensation. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Book Series/Dark Fantasy/Fairy Tale/Fantasy/Romantasy/Fantasy Series/Gothic Fiction/Historical Fantasy ...more
Was this book a great read? No. Was it pretty fun? Yes.
Sun of Blood and Ruin isn’t a book I can recommend with a good conscience, but I’m not going tWas this book a great read? No. Was it pretty fun? Yes.
Sun of Blood and Ruin isn’t a book I can recommend with a good conscience, but I’m not going to sit here and say I totally regret reading it.
The story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There is more than one plot hole. There are several points in this book where things happen and I thought, “Wow! How convenient!”
Lares obviously doesn’t care much for cohesive world building, exploring the magic systems or belief systems she’s introducing, or even trying to roughly outline the rich culture she’s embedded her story in.
If I may say: This book reads like Lares just assumes her readers know what Mexico looked like (in all ways) in the 16th century: from the very earth on which they stood to the sky above them. While I don’t like authors who patronize their readers, it wouldn’t have hurt to give readers some clues into what Mexico culture was like in more detail.
It was a popcorn flick in the guise of a book. I wouldn’t buy it, but it was okay.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Since this review rated three stars or lower it won’t be appearing on my social media sites. Thank you.
I’m among the few that didn’t really enjoy What Moves the Dead that much when it was released. I found it to be underwhelming when I reviewed it, but I’m among the few that didn’t really enjoy What Moves the Dead that much when it was released. I found it to be underwhelming when I reviewed it, but I like Kingfisher so much I decided to read the sequel anyway and I’m glad I did because I loved What Feasts at Night so much better than What Moves the Dead.
I think what threw me off with What Moves the Dead was the inevitable comparison with Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. I just couldn’t let it go and I think that may have compromised my ability to enjoy that story. With What Feasts at Night, we’re removed from the Usher household and on a new journey with Alex Easton. There’s no prior story association for me to be hung up on and so I got to enjoy this story just as it’s presented.
What I loved the most about this book was the dry witticism of Alex Easton. Alex’s voice is strong and clear and so funny to me. I laughed so many times reading this book because my sense of humor is skewed much the same way. Alex is a genuine character and one I loved reading. I could read an entire novel in Alex’s voice, but if Kingfisher wants to keep writing novellas featuring Alex Easton in creepy gothic occult horrors then I’ll totally keep reading them just to laugh the way this book made me laugh.
It was lovely to see the esteemed Miss Potter and the besotted Angus again, as well as meeting new supporting characters that made for a colorful and entertaining cast.
The world building and story in this installment were so much more my speed this time around. Some nice moth core (it’s a thing) aesthetics, nightmare lore, superstitions, folk treatments, and musings on PTSD. It’s well-constructed, even if I felt the writing could’ve been better in a few places. The imagery was top-tier though.
It’s a great sequel to What Moves the Dead. I totally recommend it.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Laura’s is Carmilla, even though Laura never set out to have a nemesis at all and certainly never meant it to be Carmilla“Everybody’s got a nemesis”.
Laura’s is Carmilla, even though Laura never set out to have a nemesis at all and certainly never meant it to be Carmilla, a girl who burns with incandescence and whom Laura wants with an obscene passion. Every time Carmilla sneers at her Laura only wants to pin her to a wall and see her become pliant.
Carmilla’s nemesis is definitely Laura and she’ll tell you so. Laura’s been her nemesis since the very first evening she walked into Ms. De Lafontaine’s poetry seminar and showed her up. Carmilla’s used to enemies and backstabbing, though. She doesn’t know what to do with, or about, Laura.
And Ms. De Lafontaine? Well, she’s electric, enigmatic, enthralling, and possessive.
These are the most basic facts at the heart of An Education of Malice, and if the book just stopped there I would’ve loved it. But author S. T. Gibson took this concept of power imbalance between a possessive lecturer and her talented poetry students, a needy and obsessive student with no mother and an absentee father, and a earnest but erotic freshman student with a way with words and elevated it. Ms. De Lafonatine becomes a parasite, feeding on the lifeblood and youth of her needy student who longs for a mother figure of any kind. The needy and obsessive Carmilla is pushed and pulled between her admiration and thrall for Ms. De Lafontaine and her passion and fascination for the erotic and earnest Laura. Laura is torn between her all-consuming erotic desire for Carmilla and her pursuit of becoming a member of the Episcopalian clergy. Steadily events spiral and spin out of control.
This book gripped me from page one, with its late 1960s all-women’s small liberal arts college setting (my favorite fashion era, btw), sapphic gothic novella retelling cellular structure, original poetry excerpts, quoted poetry excerpts, and the almost cultish fervor that follows elite lecturers and the most brilliant darlings of smaller college campuses. The word choices are sublime, the imagery is gorgeous, and the sentence structure is immaculate. I enjoyed every single page. Best book I’ve read so far this year.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
I went to a writing workshop taught by author Christian Kiefer once and he said something along the lines of, “Every story is basically The Odyssey toI went to a writing workshop taught by author Christian Kiefer once and he said something along the lines of, “Every story is basically The Odyssey told over and over again in different ways”.
A Short Walk Through a Wide World (to be known as ASWTAWW from here on out) is, essentially, an Odyssean story, save Odysseus starts the journey in 1885 as a nine year-old girl named Aubry finds an enigmatic wooden puzzle ball on the ground in front of the house of a neighbor who has died in her home city of Paris. Very shortly after Aubry finds this ball, she becomes struck with some sort of weird affliction that keeps her on the move: She can’t stay in a city for more than a couple of days without starting to die, and she can never go back from whence she came.
This is a wonderfully written book: It’s engaging, interesting, emotional, insightful, and incredibly intriguing. The book is informally broken up into three acts: The beginnings of Aubry’s journey and some of her lessons in love, her adventures in friendship and the beginnings of discovering what the book calls the “Terra Obscura”, and then the book gets more retrospective and sentimental as Aubry grows older and more forgetful after wandering the Earth for almost her entire life before starting to tie some things together for the ending.
It’s a thoughtfully crafted story, written by an author who obviously treasures knowledge in all forms and put a lot of care into his story.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Coming of Age/Historical Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Magical Realism ...more
Ideally, I like to give any ARC I read about 25% of its length to impress me before I either decide to DNF the book or to soldier on and see if I can Ideally, I like to give any ARC I read about 25% of its length to impress me before I either decide to DNF the book or to soldier on and see if I can complete it, despite knowing it’s going to be a slog and I’m not going to enjoy it much. Such was the dilemma I felt at the 25% mark of The Carnivale of Curiosities. I chose not to DNF it and to continue on, hoping for some sort of redemption in the rather one-dimensional characters that seemed plucked from some sort of B plot in a Six of Crows spinoff or a pick up in the plodding pace of a sagging plot.
Really, neither happened for me.
For a book that had a really great opening sentence to hook the reader, the book itself seems like a mish mash of Six of Crows, The Night Circus, movies like the Prestige and tv shows like Penny Dreadful or Carnival Row. Fantasy just on its own stands on the shoulders of giants because it’s genre fiction; in the case of historical fantasy writers need to be even more careful because they have that historical, real world ephemera that’s floating around their world building and plot too. You can’t stray too far outside the bounds of what really happened unless you want to classify your book as Alternative Earth fiction (think Steampunk or Gaslamp).
I just ended up thinking this book moved too slow, was too predictable, the characters were just not given the care and attention they should have been, and it really shouldn’t take until you’re into the second act of the book for the inciting event to happen, no matter how long the book is.
That being said, Gibbs is an excellent writer when it comes to setting a scene and when it comes to prose. I think that some better editing would have made this book shine. I hope to see more from her in the future.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you. As per personal policy, this review will not be posted to any social media or bookseller website due to receiving a rating of three stars or lower. ...more
Hansel and Gretel is one of those scarce few fairy tales I love seeing retellings, interpretations, and story continuations of. I am an unabashed loveHansel and Gretel is one of those scarce few fairy tales I love seeing retellings, interpretations, and story continuations of. I am an unabashed lover of the movie “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”, simply because I think it’s kind of cool to see the two of them grow up to fight what once tried to kill them (and yes, I totally love how corny it is). That’s why I was so quick to request Kell Woods’ debut novel when I saw it was a continuation of the same fairy tale (and besides, look at the pretty cottage core cover!).
This is, at heart, far more fairy tale than dark fantasy with a healthy dose of historical fantasy, seeing as historically accurate wars, rulers, religion, and politics are all mentioned in the book. The setting is a small village in Germany’s Black Forest in 1650, two years after the end of the Thirty Years War and the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. Troops and mercenaries that have fought on both sides of the war are returning either home or to work as sell-swords for the next buyer with coin enough to pay them for their services.
It’s here that we find Hans and Greta, all grown up, both unmarried and living together in their childhood home in the woods. They’re constantly broke because Hans keeps gambling their money away. The only way they can stay afloat and not starve to death is because Greta bakes the most wonderful gingerbread cookies in the whole village to take to market every week. But then mercenaries come to town and stir up some trouble, Hans is deeper in debt than Greta thought, all of a sudden taxes have been raised above what anyone in the village can afford, and she keeps having these visions…
As a fairy tale, this book is great. As a witchy, spooky, read, it’s okay. The plot isn’t entirely as cohesive as I’d like because there’s a whole lot of time dedicated to character development and ensuring character interactions don’t feel forced as well as the romantic and familial subplots. Some part of me feels like this book was almost rushed: If it had been even 50 pages longer there might have been time to let the time spent with our antagonist(s) bloom instead of it feeling so compressed like it felt to me.
It’s a great debut effort and well worth the read. I’m a fan.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: Dark Fantasy/Fairy Tale/Folklore/Historical Fantasy/Romantasy ...more
Part Pride & Prejudice, part Bridgerton, and a very generous dollop of fairy tale magic is the stuff A Fragile Enchantment iReal Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars
Part Pride & Prejudice, part Bridgerton, and a very generous dollop of fairy tale magic is the stuff A Fragile Enchantment is made of. That’s a problem, because it just feels all so derivative.
Normally, this wouldn’t bother me so much. Genre fiction of all kinds is beholden to the paths trodden before it. I can see the influences from authors as disparate as Jane Austen and Naiomi Novik inside this book. In my opinion, it becomes an issue when I (as a reader) keep thinking about other authors’ works as I’m reading the book in front of me instead of being completely immersed in the book I’m reading. For instance: While reading many scenes in this book involving Kit, I shouldn’t constantly be comparing him to Mr. Darcy. I should be fully invested in Kit as a character all his own instead of saying, “My, how very Darcy-like of him”. At one point, in the third act, there was another strong P&P correlation that actually made me groan aloud. That isn’t something I can applaud.
What saves this book is Allison Saft’s compelling and beguiling sentence composition and her elegant word selections. Her prose is absolutely beautiful when given free rein. When A Fragile Enchantment isn’t concentrating on being so rigid in its period restraints, the prose absolutely glows with loveliness. That’s what kept me reading to the end. I wanted to gobble up those beautiful sentences. It shows that Saft truly has talent as a writer. That was worth sticking around for.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
This book is in no way your next great fall read, because it’s simply too full of blooming life and arid heat to be a fall book, but I’ll tell you whaThis book is in no way your next great fall read, because it’s simply too full of blooming life and arid heat to be a fall book, but I’ll tell you what–I promise you it’s a fantastic YA romantasy. I absolutely adored every page of this epic historical fantasy that takes place in India during the 16th century (when the Portuguese came to colonize India).
Magical flowers grow on the Rann of India, which is located in West India just south of the border of Pakistan. In real life the Rann is full of salt flats during the arid part of the year and that salt is mined by nomadic tribes moving through the area. During monsoon season most of the area fills up with water and some of it becomes swamp. The nomadic tribes remain at their ancestral home during the monsoon season and then move back out when monsoon season passes so their livestock can graze. In Flower and Thorn, our protagonist, Irinyah, belongs to a tribe that not only deals in livestock but also in the hunting and selling of the Rann’s magical flowers. Each flower has a different power to it, along with a scarcity level. As it goes with all magic, they each also have a price. It’s too bad most people looking for easy fixes and power don’t really care about what it’s going to cost them.
Irinya is a rare female flower hunter. It’s usually a job reserved for males (like most jobs outside the home), but her mother was a flower hunter and ever since her mother disappeared when she was a child Irinyah has taken up her mantle. She inoculates herself against the poison in the thorns by pricking herself a little bit repetitively, like one would build tolerance against venom. She also shapes the poisonous flower thorns into little darts for the blow pipe that once belonged to her mother.
This whole book is about broken promises, broken families, pride, the importance of home, oppression, misogyny, and colonization. These themes are all things I love reading about and will almost always love reading about. There’s also a little bit about conservation and sustainability, but that theme isn’t explored as fully as the others (likely because it would’ve taken the plot off onto a tangent that couldn’t have been threaded back in smoothly).
The book has some points to make about war and women leaders and whether or not they’re fit to rule or be taken seriously as a ruler. While I appreciate a great feminist narrative, this book does take this book to some extremes with men and women: the women in this book all seem to lack genuine duplicity or violence and the men in power are all portrayed as lecherous and violent in nature. I don’t buy this as an entirely realistic portrayal, but seeing as this is a tried-and-true YA romantasy that has a serious point to make I think it’s probably for the best the waters here didn’t get very muddied with grey morality. It’s pure escapism here, us getting whisked away to the Indian subcontinent to a time when war is on the doorstep and it’s an opportunity for the colonization of India to be stopped. I think it’s okay to just let it be that.
It’s a lovely fantasy read with a cool magic system and great world building. The romantic dynamic is complicated and sweet. I highly recommend it.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
What’s the worst thing about this book? That it had to end. What’s the best thing about this book? That it knew exactly how and when to end.
That’s thWhat’s the worst thing about this book? That it had to end. What’s the best thing about this book? That it knew exactly how and when to end.
That’s the power of a well-written novella: Knowing what to say, how to say it, when to end it, and how to end it well.
I have made no secret of the fact The Woods All Black was one of my most-anticipated titles of 2024. Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons has lived in my head rent-free since I read the ARC and I was beyond excited when this title was announced. Historical horror? Trans romance? Revenge? 1920s? There was absolutely nothing about this book I’m not 100% here for and now that I’ve read it I can confirm it was absolutely everything I hoped it would be and more.
Leslie Bruin, a WWI war nurse, joined up with the Frontier Nursing Service after coming home to America to help keep women and children healthy even if he doesn’t quite agree with the Service’s eugenics-based mission. He means to work around the margins as he travels from posting to posting. His latest posting is taking him to a very rural town in the hills of Appalachia. Unbeknownst to him, things in that town have happened between when his services were requested and when he arrived that have triggered feelings of ill will between him and the town’s inhabitants before he even arrives.
Yes, the messaging writ large in this book surrounds transphobia, hate crimes, religious zealotry, queer love, and traditional gender roles and conformity. What’s also of great interest is the guilt-shame-fear culture of insulated communities like you’d find in isolated areas of Appalachia, where you’ve known everyone that lives there your whole life. It’s that tumult of feelings in your stomach where you can’t tell if you feel guilty for your actions or ashamed, but you’ll never admit you might have been scared.
The writing is haunting, erotic, bloody, and vengeful. It’s not a southern gothic ballad but a southern gothic folk song, full of revenge and blood-soaked honor.
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
Oh, Andrew Joseph White, if you keep writing books as good as this one and your debut I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.
I fell in love wiOh, Andrew Joseph White, if you keep writing books as good as this one and your debut I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.
I fell in love with White’s 2022 release, Hell Followed With Us, from the moment I first heard of it. It was like nothing I’d ever heard of before and I was ready to board the ship. I enjoyed the ride immensely. Then, when White announced his second novel, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, I could’ve swooned. Everything about this book made me swoon and behave like Veruca Salt, shouting, “Don’t care how, I want it now!”
Obviously, this is one of my most-anticipated releases this year, and holy hot damn it didn’t disappoint. If I could give this book more than five stars I totally would. This book hits really close to home for me in more than one way. My ex-spouse is both trans and autistic, my older child is gender fluid and autistic, and my younger child is autistic enough that he’s been declared permanently disabled. I myself am bisexual and mildly autistic, besides also being bipolar and having a host of other psychological issues. In the 1880’s (the time period this book takes place in) I’d likely have been placed in an asylum when I was in my early teens and left there to rot. For that matter, any of my family members might have met that unfortunate fate, if not worse.
AJW deserves not only all the accolades but also all the admiration for writing a book with a main protagonist that’s both trans and autistic. It couldn’t have been easy to write, and it couldn’t have been easy to convince agents and editors to publish it. But I’m so ecstatic that this book got written and made it onto book shelves because it’s brilliant and it’s beautiful in its own savage way.
When writing historical fantasy, you need to be just as careful with the “historical” portion of the book as you would be when writing historical fiction so as to not only keep your world building framework steady and make sure your atmosphere is correct, but also to avoid anachronisms where you can. AJW acknowledges in the back of the book that the queer historian he consulted to help him with the research for this book pointed out that such things as the constant chaperoning of unmarried females in Victorian times were definite obstacles to fiction. Therein lies the joys of historical fantasy, where all of a sudden the fantastical parts of the plot can create opportunities to circumvent what would otherwise be seen as an anachronism.
The world AJW created in this book is cold, cruel, grey, dreary, hateful, and wretched. There is no beauty to it except for the ties between the women at Braxton’s, which start out as tenuous and loose as a hasty basting stitch when Silas arrives but steadily tighten and grow stronger like corset laces as the book goes on and the abuses they endure grow with every day that passes.
There is precious little sweetness in this book, but when it is there it’s worth slowing down for, just to sink into a little and revel in it. It’s intimate and soft and a little unraveling. It’s an oasis, a pit stop in the midst of desperate chaos as Silas and the girls try to figure out where the spirits are and how they can escape a place that is sure to only serve up their deaths in the near future.
The climax of this book is manic, horrific, and grotesque. No one escapes without trauma. And even as the book ends, the trauma lingers and the business isn’t quite done.
I can’t recommend this book enough. To all ages. To all readers.
(AJW does include a list of possible CW/TWs inside the book for those who need them.)
I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. Any thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.
File Under: 5 Star Review/Body Horror/Ghost Story/Historical Fantasy/Historical Fiction/Horror/LGBTQ Fiction/LGBTQ Romance/Occult Horror/Own Voices/Paranormal Fantasy/Paranormal Horror/Secret Society ...more
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