Review of Tomorrow’s Kin by Nancy Kress
Tomorrow’s Kin, Nancy Kress’ latest novel, is the first installment in a science fiction trilogy expanding on her superb Nebula Award–winning novella Yesterday’s Kin (my review). In its entirety, this novel spans about ten years: the first part contains the previously published story, which revolves around a geneticist whose interesting (though rather unremarkable) discovery leads to her being among the first to meet aliens, and the last two thirds continues after the end of the original novella. Though I did feel […]
Review of The Waking Land by Callie Bates
The Waking Land, Callie Bates’ debut novel, is the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy featuring a heroine with conflicting loyalties and the power to wake the land like her ancestors of old, an ability last possessed two hundred years ago. Though I can understand why this new release is often compared to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale due to its wild magic and the heroine’s connection with nature, it’s not a comparison […]
Review of The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett
The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett is the first book in the Mrs. Quent trilogy, a Regency-esque fantasy set in a secondary world. The book itself is also split into three disparate but connected sections spanning subgenres: the first is primarily fantasy of manners, the second is mainly Gothic fantasy, and the last has more in common with traditional high fantasy with its focus on magic and higher stakes. While I feel that it’s a flawed novel in […]
Review of The House of Binding Thorns by Aliette de Bodard
The House of Binding Thorns by Nebula Award–winning author Aliette de Bodard is the second novel in the Dominion of the Fallen series, a dark Gothic fantasy set in the ruins of an alternate Paris containing fallen angels, magic, and a dragon kingdom under the Seine. Though it follows events in the previous novel set in this world, BSFA Award winner The House of Shattered Wings, it’s considered a standalone sequel: it shifts the focus from House Silverspires to House […]
Mini-Review of Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb
Book Description from Penguin Random House (CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR FOOL’S ASSASSIN and FOOL’S QUEST): More than twenty years ago, the first epic fantasy novel featuring FitzChivalry Farseer and his mysterious, often maddening friend the Fool struck like a bolt of brilliant lightning. Now New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb brings to a momentous close the third trilogy featuring these beloved characters in a novel of unsurpassed artistry that is sure to endure as one of the great masterworks of […]
Review of The Floating Islands by Rachel Neumeier
First published in 2011, Rachel Neumeier’s young adult fantasy novel The Floating Islands was received with acclaim: it was a Junior Library Guild selection and a Kirkus Best Children’s Book of the Year, chosen for the ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book list, and recommended on the ALA Amelia Bloomer list of feminist literature. Though currently a standalone that completes the two main protagonists’ story arcs, it does leave much of the setting open for further exploration and the author does […]
