Book #155 of 2022: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance #3) Because of the way that this YA fantasy trilogy has been structured, the concluding volume is at a bit of a disadvantage right from the start. Book one introduced a magical boarding school in a pocket dimension where Lovecraftian monsters feed on …
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Book #153 of 2022: Black Bird, Blue Road by Sofiya Pasternack Another outstanding middle-grade Jewish fantasy novel from #ownvoices author Sofiya Pasternack, who had previously dazzled me with her Anya and the Dragon debut. I love this one even more, from all the subtle authentic touches of lived-in Judaism and lesser-known mythological nods to the …
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Book #152 of 2022: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw With one bizarre caveat that I’ll get to below, this 2022 sequel novel to the 1993 stop-motion classic is a worthy follow-up and a great adventure in its own right. It’s certainly far better than I expected …
Book #151 of 2022: Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #3) I am starting to feel about this no-longer-a-trilogy the way I do towards HBO’s Westworld program, where I continue to enjoy the premise and the general vibe — in this case, snarky queer interstellar necromancers — but am often too frustrated …
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Book #147 of 2022: Babel: an Arcane History by R. F. Kuang An exquisitely slow-burning fuse of a novel, presenting the 1830s education of a young Chinese-born translator and eventual radical at the fictional Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University. In the alternate fantasy universe of this setting, cognate pairs across languages have magical …
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Book #146 of 2022: Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson and Janci Patterson (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians #6) [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with the first author.] Middle-grade book series are odd, in that their release schedule often outpaces the age of their target audience. That’s particularly the case for the Alcatraz …
Book #141 of 2022: Fairy Tale by Stephen King This new portal fantasy from Stephen King is fine, but its tale of an ordinary kid finding his way into a magical world is not exactly breaking fresh ground for the author of such works as The Waste Lands or The Talisman. There’s also an awful …
Book #133 of 2022: The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters A dark and powerful YA rural fantasy novel, complete with witchcraft, murders, monsters, a sapphic love story across small-town Georgia class divisions, and major southern gothic vibes. Our two teen protagonists are the sister of a wealthy missing girl and the daughter of a …
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Book #116 of 2022: The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska A fun little queer enemies-to-lovers YA fantasy, but with some tonal and worldbuilding issues that are keeping me at a slight distance. The two antiheroines are teenaged assistants to rival witches, tasked with hunting down victims and ripping their hearts out to fuel their mistresses’ …
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Book #110 of 2022: Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher An exquisite dark fairy tale, about a woman seeking the services of a necromancer to save her sister from the abusive husband who’s likely to murder her as soon as she produces a male heir. There are impossible tasks met with fierce determination, hard-won and …
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