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
Leigh Bardugo may be the most popular author I’ve read in several years, with her hit Shadow and Bone Trilogy garnering a huge fanbase and ultimately resulting in a Netflix adaptation. But for all its popularity, Shadow and Bone is almost universally–at least in my circles–considered inferior to a later work in the same universe:… Continue reading Fantasy Duology Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
I first heard about Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman on a list of excellent female-authored fantasy that had been undeservedly forgotten. The premise struck me immediately: Steerswomen are a group dedicated to the collection and free distribution of knowledge, traveling the world asking and answering questions. They will truthfully answer any question asked of them, no… Continue reading Sci-fi/Fantasy Series Review: The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein
I haven’t done many of these, so I’ll start with a word about my series reviews. They are not reviews of the last book. They are meant to be helpful for people who have not read the series at all, or perhaps who have started and are unsure about whether to continue. As such, I… Continue reading Fantasy Series Review: The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
The Murderbot Diaries don’t need much introduction, and it’s no accident that it’s the only ongoing series where I’ve caught up on new releases. Martha Wells has been writing speculative fiction with strong characters for years (my introduction to her work came in The Books of the Raksura, which I would also recommend), but she’s… Continue reading Sci-fi Series Review: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
