Since I’ve fallen rather far behind on reviews given 2020, I’ll probably be writing some shorter reviews. Usually when I write posts covering more than one book, the titles have little in common other than being speculative fiction that I’ve read, but this time I’m covering two fantasy books about magical women pushing back against patriarchies: The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk and The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow. As an Amazon Associate I earn from […]

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 […]

Tooth and Claw, one of Jo Walton’s earlier novels, won the 2004 World Fantasy Award. Though it is often compared to Jane Austen’s work, the author cites Victorian novels in general and Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage in particular as inspirations in her Dedication, Thanks, and Notes, adding “this novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like…if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology.” She imagined this by populating Tooth and Claw with dragons […]

Sylvia Izzo Hunter’s debut novel The Midnight Queen was published in fall 2014. Since then, a second book in the Noctis Magicae series, Lady of Magick, has been released. A third book, A Season of Spells, is scheduled for publication toward the end of this year—and I am delighted that there are more books in this series to read since I thought The Midnight Queen was quite charming. Gray Marshall, an especially powerful mage studying at Merlin College, finds himself in quite […]