Book #160 of 2024: The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid I might have liked this novel better if I hadn’t first heard about it on a list of #ownvoices Jewish-inspired fantasy works, which definitely set me up for disappointed expectations. Debut author Ava Reid does draw on some folkloric elements from her religious …
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Book #159 of 2024: Dragon by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #8) This 1998 title is a bit of an odd installment in the Vlad Taltos fantasy series. It’s not the first volume to take place earlier in the protagonist’s career, back when he was a low-level boss for the Jhereg criminal organization, but it’s unusual …
Book #157 of 2024: Plum Duff by Victoria Goddard (Greenwing & Dart #6) This series had been steadily improving, but this sixth volume — the latest so far, barring a few spinoff short stories I haven’t read yet — feels like a step backwards for me. It is big on atmospheric winter comfort and overall …
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Book #154 of 2024: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (Welcome to Night Vale #3) This is not a very Night Vale-centric novel. I mean that both in the literal sense — it’s an origin story for the titular character, most of which isn’t even …
Book #148 of 2024: Orca by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #7) This 1996 fantasy novel finds its reformed antihero still in fugitive drifter mode, on the run from his former employers rather than working for them as an assassin-for-hire and district crime boss. It’s about a year after the events of book #6 Athyra, and …
Book #146 of 2024: Love-in-a-Mist by Victoria Goddard (Greenwing & Dart #5) After several false starts, I’m delighted to report that this series has finally reached the level I had expected from the other titles in author Victoria Goddard’s wider Nine Worlds saga. Every previous Greenwing & Dart installment carried clear potential and a share …
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Book #144 of 2024: The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan (The Mirror Realm Cycle #1) A lovely fantasy debut, with major vibes of other tales I’ve adored from that genre like Strange the Dreamer or Spinning Silver. Like the latter, this is an #ownvoices Jewish novel, peppered with mentions of ketubahs and genizahs and more …
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Book #141 of 2024: The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman As a genre, Arthuriana tends to be at its finest — with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King remaining the absolute gold standard for me — when pitched as a tragedy, inviting us to invest in the glimmering dream of Camelot so that its …
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Book #138 of 2024: Blitz by Daniel O’Malley (The Checquy Files #3) I have a lingering fondness for the Checquy, author Daniel O’Malley’s fictional and exceedingly dysfunctional British intelligence agency tasked with containing all threats of a magical nature, and I’m glad that this novel stands so apart from its predecessors, as it’s been over …
Book #137 of 2024: Athyra by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #6) Given how the last volume in this series sort of blew up the overall premise, and how author Steven Brust has bounced around in the timeline before now, it would have been unsurprising for this sixth novel to be another flashback entry, taking place …
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