The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Note: Although I tried to keep this review relatively spoiler free for both books in this series, it does mention some of the characters the protagonist remains friendly with after the first book. Since there is some uncertainty about who can be trusted in that one, you may prefer to read my review of The Obsidian Tower. I’ve been a fan of Melissa Caruso’s work since reading her debut trilogy, Swords […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Tangleroot Palace contains six short stories and one novella by New York Times bestselling author and comic book writer Marjorie Liu, each of which is followed by her reflections on it. The author’s introduction mentions that she could not resist making some edits to these previously published stories, but they remain essentially the same as they were beforehand. I’d never read any of these stories before this book so I […]

One good thing about the past few years has been the abundance of amazing speculative fiction books, and yet again, it was difficult to narrow down my list of 2022 releases that sound promising to a somewhat reasonable number. Like last year, I searched the web for early reviews, excerpts, and information from the author and/or publisher and came up with 30 books. (And of course, that wasn’t necessary for some of these because I’ve loved the author’s other works […]

It was a rough year between the ongoing pandemic and then being evicted, buying a home, and needing to do lots of work on said home, and I didn’t write nearly as many book reviews as I would have liked. (And a few of those I did write were catching up on books I’d read in 2020 and struggled to review because of, well, 2020.) But it was a great year in other ways. Women in SF&F Month 2021 was […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Note: Since I hope that this series will be discovered by more readers who will also appreciate it, I did my best to keep this review spoiler-free for all three books in the series. The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng concludes K. S. Villoso’s Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy (sometimes called Chronicles of the Wolf Queen). It’s a stunning finale, simultaneously gripping with its many twists and turns and thoughtful in continuing […]