Book #182 of 2022: The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson (Wax and Wayne #3 / Mistborn #6) [Note: I am Facebook friends with this author. Review originally written in 2016.] The fight scenes in this novel are top-notch, and it’s great to see new applications of the basic magic principles Sanderson introduced in the …
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Book #179 of 2022: Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo (The Singing Hills Cycle #3) This is the first volume of the Singing Hills Cycle that hasn’t quite worked for me. We’re still following nonbinary Cleric Chih as they wander around this East Asian fantasy world recording people’s stories, learning the truth behind the lore, …
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Book #178 of 2022: The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea #2) Earthsea is a very loose children’s fantasy series, somewhat akin to The Chronicles of Narnia: although certain characters recur across volumes, each book has a fairly distinct structure and tone, and there isn’t much of an overarching plot. This second …
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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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