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 […]

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 […]

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I discuss books I got over the last week—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration (often these are unsolicited books from publishers). 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 […]