Women in SF&F Month: Swords and Fire by Melissa Caruso
This week I’m sharing about some series I love that I think deserve more readers and more discussion in bookish/SFF communities. Today I’m raving about Swords and Fire by Melissa Caruso, a Venetian-inspired epic fantasy trilogy containing The Tethered Mage, The Defiant Heir, and The Unbound Empire. This is one of my favorite somewhat recent series for a lot of reasons, but basically, the first book kept me up reading until 2:00 AM and the next two books were even […]
Review of The Unbound Empire by Melissa Caruso
Between watching the rushed final season of Game of Thrones and reading a couple of recent conclusions to trilogies, I’ve been thinking a lot about series endings—especially how rare it is to find a multi-volume story whose final installment measures up to its previous ones. Many series I’ve otherwise loved have had concluding volumes that didn’t entirely work for me, and in many of these cases, my problem wasn’t where the story ended up but how it got to that […]
Women in SF&F Month: Melissa Caruso
Today’s guest is fantasy author Melissa Caruso! Her Venetian-inspired debut novel, The Tethered Mage, is the story of a young noblewoman who accidentally breaks the rules to save her city—and accidentally binds herself to a fire mage while doing so. It was one of my favorite books of 2017, largely due to these two women and the fantastic world, and I ended up staying up until 2:00 one morning finishing it since I could not put it down. The second […]
Review of The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso
The Tethered Mage, the first book in the Swords and Fire trilogy, is Melissa Caruso’s debut novel—and what a wonderful debut it is! It’s Venetian-inspired fantasy featuring great characters (including a variety of women), magic, political intrigue and mystery, friendship, and a dash of romantic entanglement, but what truly sets it apart is the solid worldbuilding. I found it so exciting and compulsively readable that I could hardly put it down, and I ended up staying up until 2:00 AM […]
The Leaning Pile of Books
The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week–old or new, bought or received for review consideration (usually unsolicited). 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 book are included. There are no new reviews […]
