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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Book #109 of 2022: A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft I was initially drawn to this YA novel by its #ownvoices Jewish element, having heard that although it’s a fantasy story set in a different world, the heroine’s religion is a recognizable stand-in for my own. In fact, the situation is even more clear-cut …
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Book #102 of 2022: This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke Author Katherine Locke nails the tense and paranoid atmosphere in this fictionalized account of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (a student-led uprising against Soviet control that ultimately failed, although the novel doesn’t track the conflict all the way to its bitter end). And as ever …
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Book #92 of 2022: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas An underwhelming cross between Rebecca and The Haunting of Hill House, in which a recently-married woman finds her new home literally haunted by the malevolent spirit of her husband’s first wife. (The publisher’s blurb compares it to Mexican Gothic too, but that similarity is basically limited …
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Book #86 of 2022: Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor by Xiran Jay Zhao (Zachary Ying #1) This is a solid and charming #ownvoices middle-grade fantasy debut. I’m rounding up my rating slightly since I’m so outside the target audience, and because I appreciate the effort author Xiran Jay Zhao has gone to in conveying …
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