Book #300 of 2021: The Verdigris Pawn by Alysa Wishingrad A solid children’s fantasy adventure. I think the metaphor of the chess-like board game that recurs throughout would have been stronger with a clearer explanation of its rules, and I wish the protagonists had a greater sense of personal agency, rather than seeming fated to …
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Book #288 of 2021: Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao (Iron Widow #1) This #ownvoices sci-fi / fantasy debut is going to appear on many best-of-2021 lists, my own very much included. Loosely based on the only female emperor in Chinese history, it’s the powerfully intimate tale of a girl raised in a society that …
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Book #270 of 2021: D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michel Faber Not bad, but a pretty typical novel of the child-goes-to-another-world-to-have-a-series-of-strange-encounters variety, a la The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and so forth. The most distinctive part of this book is also its most frustrating, as there’s no consistent and coherent explanation …
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Book #268 of 2021: The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (The Goblin Emperor #2) I’ve enjoyed this spinoff sequel to 2014’s The Goblin Emperor, but I don’t love it nearly as much as the original novel. Leaving the imperial palace and its lonely ruler behind, we’re instead presented with a low-stakes, street-level plot …
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Book #258 of 2021: The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron (The Legend of Eli Monpress #1) Eli Monpress is a very silly character — a thief pulling audacious heists and kidnappings in country after country apparently just to amass history’s largest total bounty on his head — which is not necessarily a problem, except for …
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Book #257 of 2021: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black This standalone YA fantasy novel hasn’t completely won me over, but I like it a lot more than author Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince, which has a somewhat similar premise of fairyland intrigue. (The central romance here, for instance, strikes me as …
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Book #251 of 2021: The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker (The Golem and the Jinni #2) This long-awaited sequel to 2013’s The Golem and the Jinni is another lovely piece of historical fantasy, following those two beings from Jewish and Arabian folklore as they navigate the next stages of their life in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York …
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Book #234 of 2021: Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova (Brooklyn Brujas #3) Although I appreciate that this third heroine in author Zoraida Córdova’s Brooklyn Brujas trilogy is less foolhardy than her older sisters — as shown by how she’s the only one whose adventure doesn’t begin with her own selfish spell gone wrong — the …
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Book #226 of 2021: The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo Overall I find this retelling of The Great Gatsby to be an improvement on the original, to which it has added some light touches of sorcery and demons. The biggest change is its queer reading of most of the cast, with Daisy, Jay, …
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Book #220 of 2021: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #40) Author Terry Pratchett is pretty reliably funny, and if you approach his individual books as scaffolding devices for his specific brand of clever humor, outrageous puns, and insightful commentary on our own society by means of its satirical fantasy version, this one is another …
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