Book #236 of 2017: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Seraphina #1) This novel depicts a fascinating world in which dragons and humans were once enemies but now live under an uneasy peace, with the dragons who take on human form (for diplomacy, study, or trade) forced to publicly identify themselves and live in ghettos within human …
Tag Archives: fantasy
Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
Book #235 of 2017: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #2) This is a dark little fairy tale about twin sisters who fall into a world of vampires and mad scientists and must make choices about who they want to be as they grow up. It’s technically a prequel to …
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Book Review: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois
Book #234 of 2017: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois This is a collection of short stories in the “sword and sorcery” genre, which as far as I can tell is fantasy on the smaller scale, with no evil overlords threatening the world. (I’d say the stakes are lower than epic fantasy, but …
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Book Review: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin
Book #233 of 2017: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #2) As this series goes along, it’s starting to feel like author N. K. Jemisin is more interested in showing off her admittedly awesome and intricate worldbuilding than in telling a story with compelling emotional stakes for her characters. It’s still …
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Book Review: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce
Book #232 of 2017: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #4) This is the final book in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet (within her larger Tortall series), and it sort of resolves the ongoing storyline from the previous books. But most of the novel strands its main characters away from the central …
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Book Review: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black
Book #231 of 2017: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles #1) This was cute, but very short and way below my preferred reading level. I felt like I hardly got a chance to know the characters before the book came to a rather sudden end. I could see myself …
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Book Review: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
Book #225 of 2017: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #1) Great fantasy worldbuilding and effortless diversity of race, gender identity, and sexuality, but it bothered me a little that the three different storylines felt so isolated from one another (even after I developed a suspicion about how they were connected …
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Book Review: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
Book #216 of 2017: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #19) Terry Pratchett’s City Watch novels have been steadily improving as the Discworld sub-series goes along, and this third book continues that happy trend. Whereas the introduction of nonhuman characters into the Watch in the previous volume felt largely like an unfunny joke about …
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Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne
Book #214 of 2019: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne On both a plot and a writing level, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child falls far below the previous Potter books — perhaps reflecting the fact that J. K. Rowling was not involved in the actual writing process. (She’s merely one of …
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Book Review: The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
Book #211 of 2017: The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #3) There are a lot of scenes in this final novel of the Tearling trilogy that feel intended to be climactic but have little narrative build behind them – either in this book or the two before it …
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