Book #175 of 2022: A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (The Last Binding #2) 3.5 stars, rounded up. I don’t like this queer adult fantasy sequel nearly as much as its predecessor, but it’s an engaging story that mostly earns the reader’s forbearance over the switch in protagonists. Whereas the first volume in this series …
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Book #171 of 2022: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #2 / Mistborn #5) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] As I mentioned in my review of that previous title, this era of the Mistborn series grew out of a writing exercise that author Brandon Sanderson liked enough to expand …
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Book #167 of 2022: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea #1) Author Ursula K. Le Guin’s first Earthsea novel — following two short stories in the setting she’d already published elsewhere — recounts the early life of its titular character, whom we are repeatedly told will someday be the most powerful …
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Book #165 of 2022: Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe A dybbuk is a ghoulish spirit from Jewish folklore, traditionally said to be haunting a person or place due to unfinished business at the creature’s time of death. In this middle-grade novel, there’s such an entity lurking around the mikvah (a ritual bath site) …
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Book #164 of 2022: Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater (The Dreamer Trilogy #3) I’ve been steadily losing patience with this Raven Cycle spinoff from the start of the second volume on, and unfortunately, nothing in this final novel (which appears to close out the entire franchise, at least for now) does anything to reverse that trend. …
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Book #163 of 2022: Amari and the Great Game by B. B. Alston (Supernatural Investigations #2) It remains hard to avoid Harry Potter comparisons in discussing this middle-grade fantasy series, but this second volume is just as engaging as the first and continues to put an original spin on some common genre tropes shared between …
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Book #161 of 2022: A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Fractured Fables #2) I enjoyed A Spindle Splintered for its fresh take on fairy tales (by means of a terminally-ill young queer woman from our world discovering she’s an iteration of the Sleeping Beauty trope and then traveling throughout the multiverse rescuing some of …
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Book #159 of 2022: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #1 / Mistborn #4) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with this author.] Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy from 2006 to 2008 fits squarely in the genre of high fantasy, presenting a sword-and-sorcery world in which gifted individuals can push and pull …
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Book #158 of 2022: The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves #2) Given the fairly direct character parallels, this sequel continues to read like Six of Crows fanfiction with the serial numbers barely scratched off. (If author Roshani Chokshi hasn’t read that bestselling YA fantasy series about a teenage heist gang whose members …
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Book #157 of 2022: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (The Roots of Chaos #1) The middle of this fantasy novel is pretty good! But the beginning is terribly slow — I actually quit the ebook at 33% when I tried reading it a few years ago, and was only able to …
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