Book #114 of 2021: White Cat by Holly Black (The Curse Workers #1) I’ve enjoyed this fantasy novel enough to continue on to the rest of the trilogy, but I have some real issues with the memory and emotion manipulation magic that populates the story. The protagonist at least somewhat recognizes how problematic it is, …
Tag Archives: fantasy
Book Review: The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #111 of 2021: The Wounded Land by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #1) In the first Thomas Covenant trilogy, the titular antihero resisted the appeal of the fantasy realm that summoned him from our reality, but gradually came to decide that its ideals were worth fighting for even if he …
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Book Review: The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark
Book #107 of 2021: The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark This 2018 novella is short enough that it feels more like a proof-of-concept for the setting than a full story, and while that worldbuilding has cool potential — a steampunk Afrofuturist historical fiction version of New Orleans that’s neutral in a Civil War …
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Book Review: A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology edited by Dhonielle Clayton
Book #105 of 2021: A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology edited by Dhonielle Clayton I love how works like this aim to spotlight authors and characters of under-represented backgrounds in literature, but for me as a reader, the YA sci-fi and fantasy stories in this collection are generally more good than …
Book Review: The Truth by Terry Pratchett
Book #103 of 2021: The Truth by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #25) Overall this is a fine comic romp through the fantasy city-state of Ankh-Morpork as it’s introduced to the concept of print journalism, and the novel comes late enough in author Terry Pratchett’s career that it largely avoids the needless sexism and classism that sometimes …
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Book Review: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson
[Review originally written 4/1/16, updated 4/10/21] Book #100 of 2021: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s strongest examples of self-contained storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing one particular character’s actions during the second and …
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Book Review: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland
Book #97 of 2021: A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland (A Conspiracy of Truths #2) In the final analysis I think I don’t love this spinoff sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths quite as much as the original novel, but it’s a welcome return to a land where diversity in race, gender, sexuality, disability, …
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Book Review: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan
Book #94 of 2021: The Mysterious Disappearance of Aidan S. (as told to his brother) by David Levithan I love a nice postmodern portal fantasy, and this middle-grade novel spins a premise I don’t think I’ve seen before, where the focus is not on a child who vanishes into another world, but on a sibling …
Book Review: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
Book #91 of 2021: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert (The Hazel Wood #1) Quite a lot in this YA portal fantasy doesn’t work for me, but I think it mostly comes down to the characters. Alice, our protagonist — yes, this is largely a riff on Alice in Wonderland — is just so angry …
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Book Review: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
Book #89 of 2021: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn #3) This closing volume to the original Mistborn trilogy is another outstanding adventure by the standards of the epic fantasy genre at large, but I think it’s perhaps just a minor step down from the first two books. The malevolent force called Ruin …
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