Tamora Pierce’s Tortall universe seems to be a cultural touchstone for so many women in fantasy, but (in no small part due to having never been a girl reading fantasy), I’d never delved into it. But the combination of peer pressure and a couple auspicious Bingo squares gave me a reason to move the Protector of… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce
I’d missed The Annual Migration of Clouds when it came out, but after really enjoying Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest and seeing the 2024 release of Clouds sequel We Speak Through the Mountain, I thought it was worth circling back and reading the pair together. We Speak Through the Mountain is a direct… Continue reading Sci-fi Novella Review: The Annual Migration of Clouds and We Speak Through the Mountain by Premee Mohamed
I read A Court of Thorns and Roses earlier this year to see what all the hype was about. It really wasn’t good. But then I was told that I had actually not seen what all the hype was about, because really it’s the second book in the series–A Court of Mist and Fury–that set… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Echo of Worlds was released on June 25, 2024. Last year, I described the opening book in M.R. Carey’s Pandominion duology as being exactly what you want in an epic series-opener. It set up… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: Echo of Worlds by M.R. Carey
After reading the entire Vorkosigan Saga and the three novels in the World of the Five Gods, I thought I may be turning into a Lois McMaster Bujold completionist. A few years later, I haven’t quite made it to her entire catalog, but she remains one of the most reliable hits on the shelf. And… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Sharing Knife by Lois McMaster Bujold
Back in 2019, after discovering the stunning works of Carol Berg, I began to hunt for female-authored epic fantasy that had flown under the radar in the 90s and 00s. And despite it being overshadowed by other popular mid-2000s fantasy [grumbles at marketing dollars thrown at The Name of the Wind instead], one series I… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Inda Quartet by Sherwood Smith
Carol Berg’s Lighthouse Duet is one of the best fantasy series I’ve ever read, and is in many ways responsible for my commitment to picking through the backlists of fantasy authors who never really captured the popular imagination. As it turns out, a lot of my favorite books fall into that category. And yet I… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Sanctuary Duet by Carol Berg
I read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time before I started blogging, and it played a huge role in getting me to reconsider my generally negative stance on hard sci-fi. It’s absolutely tremendous work. Ever since, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get to the sequel, Children of Ruin. And, now that I have, I’ll… Continue reading Sci-fi Series Review: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I read Peadar Ó Guilín’s The Call before I got into blogging, but I circled back to the sequel when I found myself struggling to fill the Gothic Fantasy square on my all-sequel themed Bingo card. As it happens, a lot of Gothic fiction seems to be standalone. But while I’m not sure the Grey… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Grey Land by Peadar Ó Guilín
If you’re not on the fantasy subreddit, or if you’re not a follower of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, you may not know the story of Senlin Ascends, a book that languished in obscurity for years before a last-ditch entry in SPFBO sparked a chain of events that turned it into something of a cult classic… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Books of Babel by Josiah Bancroft
