Book #2 of 2021: The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny (The Chronicles of Amber #4) These novels are short enough that it’s never a major investment to continue on with the series, but that also means each volume has limited space to really wow a reader. In this fourth book, a lot of that …
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Book #303 of 2020: Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #4) And so my 2020 comes to a close with another 1000+ page tome, the newest release in author Brandon Sanderson’s massive Stormlight Archive, which is increasingly inseparable from his even larger super-series linking together everything in the multiverse Cosmere setting. (Earlier …
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Book #299 of 2020: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #6) I’m not a big fan of the first half of this novel, in which the three protagonists — a returning Eustace, his classmate Jill, and a rather miserable creature named Puddleglum — are very nasty toward one another as …
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Book #298 of 2020: The Way Back by Gavriel Savit It’s probably not a good sign when a book that feels so tailor-made for me as a reader struggles to keep my attention throughout. I do love the first quarter or so of this story, which sees a pair of Jewish kids fleeing their nineteenth-century …
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Book #297 of 2020: The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White (Camelot Rising #2) I don’t have much to say about this sequel, other than that it’s the sort of middle volume that largely treads water for its trilogy en route to a hopefully stronger conclusion. The plot and character arcs don’t really progress any further …
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Book #294 of 2020: Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack (Anya #2) Another fun middle-grade fantasy adventure, albeit somewhat messier in plot than the first novel with this Russian Jewish heroine. Still, the representation in this series remains charming and relatable, from the opening scene with Anya building a sukkah to her pride about …
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Book #293 of 2020: The Ever Cruel Kingdom by Rin Chupeco (The Never Tilting World #2) In the first volume of this YA fantasy duology, twin sisters raised on opposite sides of a stationary world each fall in love and get caught up in a propulsive plot that brings them and their partners hurtling together …
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Book #287 of 2020: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia #5) This was always my favorite Narnia volume growing up, and it turns out I actually like it even better as an adult. The nautical adventure is episodic but fun, and the way the children travel from …
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Book #285 of 2020: Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro Although the narrative loses a little focus and momentum in its back half, for the most part this is a strikingly original post-apocalyptic fantasy, rich in #ownvoices Latinx cultural details and queer representation and distinctive in structure as one long chapterless text addressed …
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Book #284 of 2020: The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix This urban fantasy reads like a quirkier Neverwhere, and its worldbuilding isn’t really distinctive enough to merit all the heavy infodumps in the first half of the novel. I know from works like Sabriel that author Garth Nix can introduce a setting more …
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