A collection of novellas featuring the same two characters set in various interesting fantasy and fantasy-adjacent settings. White Crow is Mary Gentle’s response to all the bad low effort fantasy that was flooding the market in 90s and early 00s.
The Female Man is a more interesting and consistent story about sex and gender than Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. Russ is a poet and it shows. Russ hits the reader with evocative words and images that still hold up today (mostly). The Complete Alyx Stories haven’t, but they were influential to writers that came later, like Mary Gentle (as seen in the foreword to her White Crow collection)… So I’m glad Russ wrote them.
Another Terry Pratchett banger. Mort takes awhile to get going but once it does it’s amazing until the very end. It’s Terry Pratchett’s combination of philosophical, political, ethical, cosmological ideas infused into (mostly) lighthearted fantasy romps that makes more unique and interesting stories that are still enjoyable to read more than 30 years later.
Gene Wolfe’s take on an Alice in Wonderland “rabbit hole” story which follows an American teen who finds himself in a layered fantasy world based on Arthurian legend, British folklore, Greek mythology, Norse mythology, and more… All at the same time…
This is something only Gene Wolfe could/would write.
Reading through K.J. Bishop’s The Etched City was sublime. Novels like this don’t get written often and reading them leaves me a changed man. The poetry, the philosophy, the mythic and dream-like nature of the writing have left me completely stunned and in awe of its beauty and depth.
A grounded yet fantastical story about a young woman, Sasha, who is selected to attend the Institute of Special Technologies. Sasha attends this mysterious college and is thrust into a world of dark academia with widespread and fantastical implications.
Ash - A Secret History is by far the longest novel I’ve read. When I saw the thickness of the book, the number of lines on each page and the miniscule size of the font, I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to read through the whole thing.
All it took for me to get over that fear was reading the first few pages. Mary Gentle hooked me with her commitment to telling Ash’s story in a way that only she could and she refused to let go of me until the very end.
These illustrations are kind of whack. All the characters look like little goblins.
But Le Guin’s Earthsea series is fantastic.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s conclusion to her fantastic Earthsea series. Once again, she manages to create a fantasy world where violence doesn’t solve everything. Her characters engage in the mundane activities that real people do most of the time: chat, make friends, think about their loved ones, cuddle with their pets, etc. The way she writes these mundane scenes makes them feel just as important and interesting as they really are.
Childhood trauma. Check.
Split timeline. Check.
Transported to another world. Check.
Children competing for a prize (to the death?). Check.
This is Japan.
A collection of short stories and novellas set in the Earthsea setting that Ursula wrote to help her find out how to continue the story when prompted to do so by her publisher.
There’s some great stories here but I prefer the Earthsea novels to this generally (don’t get me started on The Farthest Shore).
An edgy retelling of Peter Pan by Brom, the illustrator who’s work you’ve definitely seen before (Doom II, Diablo II).
The precursor to N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, this is another fantasy setting fully divorced from Tolkien. For that reason alone, I’m into it.
It features a protagonist who gets entangled with the enslaved gods who are used and abused by the people in power. Hijinks ensue.
Feels like an Arthurian legend, a mix of fairy tales but grounded in a reality somewhat like our own with some fantastical twists layered into it.
Short and sweet, deserving of all the praise it has received.
The first novel in Terry Pratchett’s City/Night Watch series featuring the drunk and depressed Captain Vimes, the human who thinks he’s a dwarf Carrot, the everyman Nobby and the boomer Sergeant Colon. They act like a tight knit four man improv group, bouncing off each other really well and provide a great foundation for the humor, action and hijinks in the novel.
There’s no denying that V.E. Schwab is a great writer. She’s able to construct stories that entice you to keep reading despite the underlying story not being all it’s cracked up to be.
Her Villains duology leaves me feeling empty. She knows what the big moments she wants to have in her story are and she constantly steers her characters in the direction of those big moments without it feeling earned.
Hasn’t aged as well as the first two books in the series IMO.
It’s kind of a retread of the first book with a little bit of the 80s crack epidemic and reganomics commentary spliced into it. It’s not as evergreen as the other books.
“The Raven Tower” is one of the worst books I have ever read. I’ve only covered the tip of the iceberg in this review because reading through this book has left me completely drained of energy. Please don’t read this book, it is beyond trash. If you really want to, I can’t stop you but I really wish I could.
Xiran Jay Zhao strikes again. I was blown away by her YA novel Iron Window a few months ago so when I saw her next novel Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor on sale, I snatched it up.
Once again, Xiran has interwoven ancient Chinese history and mythology seamlessly with an anime inspired aesthetic (Yugioh in this case whereas Iron Window was very Darling in the Franxx) serving it all through a genre appropriate lens.
It’s heartbreaking. I’m tearing up by page 4. This series is advertised as a story for kids but it’s written in such a way that it’s just as interesting reading through it as an adult. A younger reader wouldn’t catch all the subtext (and there’s a lot of it).
An absolute page turner if I’ve ever read one (I couldn’t put this book down). Each time I sat down to read, it only took a few sentences to transport me completely into this world that V.E. Schwab has so carefully built.
A Gathering of Shadows develops the characters introduced in the previous book (along with some fresh faces), portrays the evolution of their relationships with one another and sets everything up for what I’m confident is going to be a riveting conclusion to the trilogy.
Le Guin mostly successful attempt to write a story in the world of a Wizard of Earthsea told from the perspective of a girl and, eventually, woman.
Ged shows up and steals the show a little bit from Tenar which Le Guin will rectify in the subsequent novels.
There’s a, soon-to-be wizard, on a archipelago world. He goes to wizard school and becomes xXx#1_Mage_NAxXx.
A classic fantasy story elevated by Le Guin’s poetic use of words. Struggles to give women in the story the story they deserve, an issue dealt with in the subsequent novels.
Thud! by Terry Pratchett tells the story of Sam Vimes, head of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and his fellow coppers trying to solve a dwarf’s murder. The upcoming anniversary of the thousands years old Battle of Koom Valley is keeping tension high between the dwarves and the trolls; making it harder for the constables of the Watch to keep the peace and solve the crime.
Thud! is a Terry Pratchett novel through and through. There’s ample comedy interlaced with impactful action scenes with just a little bit of drama sprinkled in. This time around, it’s a little grittier and darker than usual.
Terry is dedicated to the bit. More than anything he is committed to creating absurd worlds that feel real. His work has aged beautifully because the world we live in is as absurd as it’s ever been and it’s only getting more absurd from here on out.
Small Gods is about an autistic savant (pour a drink every time Terry Pratchett includes an autistic character in one of his Discworld books) named Brutha who is a lowly priest/monk in the church of Om. Hijinks ensue.
A few different cooky POV characters doing their own thing, eventually meet up to save big T Time.
The second Terry Pratchett book I read, I preferred Going Postal but this one is no slouch.
Going Postal is my favorite Terry Pratchett novel. I’m facepalming right now for not writing my thoughts down about this book.
It was an enjoyable romp but doesn’t necessarily hit the highs of the previous books in the series. As the third and final(ish) book in the series I was expecting something a little bit more. Or maybe I was expecting a little bit less, a more tightly edited and polished story. Either would have been nice.
I really loved it…
I was skeptical at first (I’ve been burned too many times by boring and tropey fantasy novels that so many people love) but V. E. Schwab reeled me in with some gritty and edgy fantasy that felt really “real” to me.
I was so immersed in the world that I was tearing up by the end of the book which doesn’t happen to me very often (one character’s arc really spoke to me)
An incompetent wizard is tasked with protecting a visitor visiting from a faraway land. A fantasy novel for people who don’t like fantasy novels.