Book #80 of 2022: Book of Night by Holly Black This urban fantasy story is generally fine, and it closes on a stronger note than it begins (albeit in a way that seems it’s likely meant as the launch to a series, rather than the standalone work it’s been marketed as). But it all feels …
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Book #79 of 2022: Archer’s Goon by Diana Wynne Jones This 1984 sci-fi / fantasy novel, which I read and reread countless times as a child and is apparently one of Neil Gaiman’s favorites as well, opens with an irresistible premise: a hulking enforcer camps out in the thirteen-year-old hero’s kitchen, saying his mysterious employer …
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Book #73 of 2022: The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross (The Laundry Files #1) This 2004 publication — which in my edition includes the novel The Atrocity Archive followed by a sequel novella “The Concrete Jungle” — introduces the Laundry, a secret British intelligence division dealing with magic and related otherworldly threats. It’s urban fantasy, …
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Book #63 of 2022: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd A fun but very trope-heavy research adventure, sort of like The Historian meets The Shadow of the Wind by way of Secret History. The heroine’s estranged father dies suddenly, and she finds an old highway map among his possessions that seems worthless yet for some reason …
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Book #62 of 2022: The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis Charmingly strange and surprisingly modern for a novel first published in 1881 Brazil, this story details the life of a fictional dead man from his own perspective, written “with the pen of mirth and the ink of melancholy” as he lies …
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Book #61 of 2022: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) This 1999 debut is an incredibly dense high fantasy adventure that I can’t honestly say I’ve enjoyed too much. Author Steven Erikson clearly has an epic scope in mind for this saga, but this first thick tome — …
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Book #55 of 2022: Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North Author Claire North has written some of my very favorite novels, but this is one of her efforts that doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. The premise of the setting is sound: a post-apocalyptic future where holy priests try to recover digital …
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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 …
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 #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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