Book #45 of 2020: Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse A delightful middle-grade fantasy novel that incorporates elements of traditional Navajo folklore while avoiding the paint-by-numbers plot that such modernizations often entail. (I hesitate to call the work #ownvoices, since author Rebecca Roanhorse is not Navajo herself and she makes clear in an afterword …
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Book #43 of 2020: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern This seems like one of those books that is guaranteed to frustrate a lot of readers, in that it obliquely hints at larger designs instead of ever giving us the full picture. The opening premise, after all, is less a novel than a collection of …
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Book #39 of 2020: Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and The Fool #2) A marked improvement over the start of this trilogy, but still rather slow-paced and occasionally a bit tedious in how it retreads familiar territory from earlier in the Elderlings saga. (Of course Fitz is going to insist on doing something …
Book #38 of 2020: The Guinevere Deception by Kiersten White (Camelot Rising #1) This Arthurian YA took a little while to grow on me, and there’s a major twist that’s telegraphed so openly throughout this initial volume that I wish author Kiersten White had moved it forward and spent more time dealing with the fallout …
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Book #37 of 2020: The Candle and the Flame by Nafiza Azad Another book that I wanted to love more than I actually did. In theory, this 2019 fantasy novel with #ownvoices Muslim protagonists and mythology should be a bright gem amid the common eurocentric tropes of the genre. In practice, it’s a tad aimless …
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Book #35 of 2020: The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones (Chrestomanci #2) I still think the debut volume Charmed Life is the best place to start this series, but this prequel surpasses it on just about every level. We actually get to visit other worlds in the multiverse that makes this setting …
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Book #27 of 2020: Infinity Son by Adam Silvera (Infinity Cycle #1) I feel similarly about this YA superhero novel as I do Marissa Meyer’s Renegades trilogy: it’s neat for the genre exploration and representation — which in this case includes a gay Latino protagonist written by a gay Latino author — but somewhat underwhelming …
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Book #26 of 2020: Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb (The Fitz and the Fool #1) When I first read this novel in 2015, I gave it the following lukewarm review: “Ideally, any sequel should justify its own existence. Why are we returning for another chapter of this story? What new developments require plucking these characters …
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Book #25 of 2020: Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly Less a retelling than a continuation, this novel takes the standard version of the Cinderella fairy tale and imagines a possible redemption story for one of her wicked relations. But it really doesn’t work for me, on just about any level. Worst of all are the under-explained …
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Book #24 of 2020: Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin (Serpent & Dove #1) A reader’s enjoyment of this fantasy debut may depend on their fondness for certain fanfiction tropes about nemeses forced to fake a relationship for appearance’s sake. In this case, it’s a church witchfinder and a secret witch, whose dynamic of grudging …
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