Book #243 of 2020: Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Raybearer #1) A lovely piece of #ownvoices YA fantasy, with an all-black cast and imaginative worldbuilding loosely inspired by West African mythology. Debut author Jordan Ifueko is clearly breaking from the eurocentric genre norm here, but she also seems to have ventured further afield from the Orisha …
Tag Archives: fantasy
Book Review: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
Book #242 of 2020: Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #29) This wasn’t my first Discworld title, but for a long time, it was the only one I had read in the subseries about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. It’s the volume I’ve reread the most as well, so I can attest that it works just …
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Book Review: The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
Book #237 of 2020: The Tyrant Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #3) On balance I think this latest Baru Cormorant sequel is probably an improvement over the previous volume, but it’s still nowhere near as electrifying as the original novel. The more fantastical additions like self-aware cancers continue to not quite work for …
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Book Review: The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street by Lauren Oliver
Book #231 of 2020: The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street by Lauren Oliver This middle-grade adventure story has a nice anti-bigotry message, objecting to prejudice both against marginalized human groups and against the misunderstood creatures in the heroine’s care, but that’s somewhat muddled when the ultimate villain is revealed to be a monster himself. I …
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Book Review: The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson
Book #229 of 2020: The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever #3) A suitably epic conclusion to this classic postmodern fantasy trilogy, bringing both its setting and its reluctant champion to the verge of apocalypse before pushing forward to a measure of redemption for each. This series …
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Book Review: The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny
Book #226 of 2020: The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny (The Chronicles of Amber #2) This 70s fantasy sequel is another fun sword-and-sorcery adventure across parallel worlds, but it’s rather less gripping than the series debut. Our demigod hero was no less superhuman in that previous volume, but as an amnesiac going up against …
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Book Review: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Book #225 of 2020: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas There’s a certain climactic reveal in this YA urban fantasy novel that I found disappointingly telegraphed from early on, but that’s honestly one of the only critiques I can make about it. What a refreshingly original story overall, populated with delightful personalities who ring with #ownvoices …
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Book Review: The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman
Book #223 of 2020: The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman There’s a fun Diana Wynne Jones-meets-Norton Juster vibe to the start of this children’s fantasy novel, in which a bored eleven-year-old girl and her nine-year-old brother are gifted a life-sized magical steam train by their eccentric uncle. The ensuing adventure doesn’t quite live up to …
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Book Review: Diana and the Island of No Return by Aisha Saeed
Book #215 of 2020: Diana and the Island of No Return by Aisha Saeed (Wonder Woman Adventures #1) I suppose I’d recommend this new middle-grade series to tweens who love the Wonder Woman character already and are excited to see more of her childhood, but I haven’t gotten much out of the first volume myself. …
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Book Review: Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale
Book #213 of 2020: Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale A one-star rating feels perhaps too harsh for this title, which I didn’t exactly hate reading. But structurally it’s a mess that inelegantly transitions from one lackluster concept into another near the end, lowering my appreciation after I’d already spent most of the …
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