Book #50 of 2022: Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer #2) 2020’s Raybearer remains a strong debut, rich in #ownvoices West African-inspired worldbuilding that still feels distinctively a creation all of author Jordan Ifueko’s own, with flourishes of mild-melding polyamorous coteries a la Sense8 or Octavia Butler’s Patternists. But I actually think this sequel closing out …
Tag Archives: fantasy
Book Review: The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #47 of 2022: The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #4) The grand finale to the Thomas Covenant saga moves slower than one might predict, given the apocalyptic atmosphere and scant amount of time remaining for the Land. The sun and stars have all gone out, the Worm …
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Book Review: In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman
Book #41 of 2022: In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman (Tess of the Road #2) This fantasy sequel has some compelling things to say about indigenous complexity and sovereignty to resist the forces of empire, even when cloaked in the name of science or protesting that they’ve come there to help. It’s an interesting …
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Book Review: Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
Book #38 of 2022: Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (The Button Box #3) I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed this latest Stephen King / Richard Chizmar collaboration, given how I was generally lukewarm on the authors’ original Gwendy’s Button Box and cared even less for Chizmar’s solo followup Gwendy’s …
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Book Review: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #35 of 2022: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #3) This penultimate volume has perhaps the slowest start of any Thomas Covenant story, with literally the first five chapters — one hundred full pages, almost a fifth of the whole text — spent on an extended …
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Book Review: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
Book #30 of 2022: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman (Tess of the Road #1) My original review from when I read an Advance Reader’s Copy of this book in 2018: Practically from the start, I’ve been reeling over the emotional journey that the heroine makes in this intensely personal fantasy novel. Largely eschewing …
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Book Review: Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
Book #27 of 2022: Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz This YA novel has a well-drawn teenage heroine at its heart: an early nineteenth-century daughter of the Scottish nobility who longs to become a medical surgeon in an era when that was considered unthinkably inappropriate for women. At first she attends lectures dressed as …
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Book Review: The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
Book #25 of 2022: The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (The Gilded Wolves #1) This YA fantasy novel reads as a blend of National Treasure with Six of Crows, which is not a combination that entirely works for me. (I’m not using that latter title as a shorthand for any heist story, either: this is …
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Book Review: Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #23 of 2022: Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2) This sequel is rather cleanly bifurcated by a development midway through, and although both of the resulting sections have their strengths, I think the opening is more successful than the close. (Call it a five-star passage followed by …
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Book Review: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
Book #18 of 2022: Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Skin of the Sea #1) I love that this YA historical fantasy novel features Black mermaids and other elements drawn from #ownvoices West African folklore, a simple fact of representation that I know is going to matter deeply to a lot of readers. I …
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