fter the Dragons is quiet, thoughtful, and, above all, kind. It’s not easy to do right by one another, especially when we’re put in hard places without clear answers. Death, and how we face it, matters. … More After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang
Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! This is a collaborative series started by That Artsy Reader Girl, which has a new prompt for discussion and review each week. Today, we’re chatting about books written before I was born. These can be books I’ve read, books I mean to read, or just some books that I think are interesting. … More Top Ten Tuesday: Books Written Before I Was Born
Dragon Tamer is irreverent, light-hearted, and a joy to read. It’s everything I want from a cute fantasy romance. It even has puns in it! Really dumb ones! The BEST ones. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and the whole book is better for it. The main pairing is a bookish dragon prince devoted to pacifism and an extremely fighty Viking-esque himbo lady who’s got some really impressive muscles. AND THEY ADOPT A MAGIC PUPPY TOGETHER. … More Dragon Tamer by Ophelia Silk
This is a fast-paced novella chock full of intrigue, murder, and the fantastic. De Bodard thrusts the reader into her Dominion of the Fallen universe head-first and expects them to sink or swim to keep up. Personally, I found it to be an energetic experience; as this was my first introduction to her world, there was something new on each page to keep me eagerly flipping the page for more. An underwater Vietnamese dragon city below Paris? Crab shifters? Possible poisonings? I was here for it at every turn. … More Of Dragons, Feasts, and Murders by Aliette de Bodard
The stakes have been raised, and the winds are changing. Joron will find himself flensed to the bone, losing everything he holds dear. He will be hammered and tempered into steel before he can live out his destiny… or reject it entirely and shape a different future from what has been foretold. … More Call of the Bone Ships by RJ Barker – A Lush, Nautical Epic Fantasy
A Deadly Education is an oddly niche book given how widely it has been marketed. While on the surface it appears to be a bit more on the YA side, the tone and content of the novel is more akin to a dark adult fantasy. We’ve seen a great deal of controversy surrounding it these past few weeks, specifically regarding its multicultural cast. Yet amidst the discussions of dreadlocks, Asian rep, and whether the main character is Indian enough, it seems we’ve collectively managed to gloss over Novik’s mishandling of rape and sexual assault in an academic setting. … More The Rape of Galadriel: A Deadly Education’s Mishandled Treatment of Sexual Assault
As an introduction to Sarah Beth Durst’s works, you can’t go wrong with Race the Sands. This stand-alone epic fantasy adventure features hair-raising monster racing, an older woman as a protagonist, and found family elements all set against a backdrop filled with intense political machinations. … More Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst
I had a few frustrations with The Ranger of Marzanna. There were many things I ought to have enjoyed more than I did – I love the idea of magic coming at a price of your own humanity, for example. Unfortunately, I struggled to connect with the characters and found the prose to be mediocre at best. The dialogue in particular tended to take me out of the narrative. … More The Ranger of Marzanna by Jon Skovron
In order to get the most out of Driftwood, a reader must arm themselves ahead of time. Archeologists’ tools – brushes, trowels, and picks – are recommended. This, you see, is not merely a book… but an artefact of another world. Driftwood immerses the reader within its ever-shifting borders. It demands that the reader explore and discover, content in its own ergodicity without crossing the line into onanism. The constant press of the new and novel, the erasure of history and culture, and the preservation of individual identity within that atmosphere is explored with a subtle, deft hand. This is less a novel than it is a glimpse into a distant, alien future that might have been. … More Driftwood by Marie Brennan
Né łe! was originally published in Love Beyond Body, Space and Time, an anthology forcused on indigenous science fiction and urban fantasy focusing on LGBT and two-spirit characters. It’s a beautiful little f/f love story that showcases indigenous women in STEM. Further, it does a great job at representing the differences between two women of different indigenous backgrounds. While they have similarities, their cultures are not presented as identical. … More Né łe! by Darcie Little Badger
Black Forest Basilisks 