I very much enjoyed the two previous books in this cozy sapphic fantasy series by Rebecca Thorne, “Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea”, and “A Pirate’s Life for Tea”. Reyna is a former guard to the ruthless Queen Tilaine, and Kianthe is the all-powerful Mage of Ages. They have settled down together in the town of Tawney, where they run a small, unassuming tea shop away from the pressures of the world.

Of course, life is never that simple, and over the years they have searched for missing dragon eggs, raised a baby griffin, sailed with pirates, and generally tackled injustice wherever they found it. Perhaps most importantly, they have encouraged all the people around them to become the best versions of themselves. Now they have a whole supportive community, which is very useful when you have a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it.

In this, the third book of four, they are trying to entrap and overthrow the aforementioned Queen, using their own very real wedding as bait. Not to mention working out who is going to rule in her absence. But did I mention a wedding? That alone seems like a pretty stressful thing to plan and pull off! Trying to do both at the same time results in the sort of shenanigans you might imagine.

Most of the characters from the other books are here, as well as some new ones including Tessalyn the long lost heir to the throne, her expertly-named protector James, and Kianthe’s rather disapproving parents.

This series began as a reaction to the popularity of “Legends & Lattes” by Travis Baldree, but it has continued to grow away from that initial inspiration and certainly has found its own voice. The warm and loving tone was exactly what I needed, as well as the positive vibes and mutual understanding of the two main protagonists. This is my favourite book of the series so far, and I’m told by the author that the fourth and final book is even better, so I have a lot to look forward to. An extended excerpt of that one is included as a bonus chapter at the end.

Go read the whole series! Thanks to Tor for the early review copy.

Don't forget, you can pick this up in our ebook store!
 

If the thought of a sapphic romance with a giant spider woman—in a creepy gothic mansion filled with tarantulas no less—doesn’t make you want to burn down said mansion and move to another country, then sit down on a tuffet, and let me tell you more about this novella by Argentine-Brazilian writer Hache Pueyo, who also translated it to English.

It tells the story of Dália who is one of the servants looking after Miss Anatema, the mistress of The Capricious House. She is not exactly what you would call a great boss, given that Dália gets promoted at the start of the book because Anatema eats her predecessor. Dália is given the job of solving a mysterious theft, and there’s a high chance of getting eaten herself if she fails to do so, or is too bold with her employer.

Anatema is only vaguely anthropomorphic in that her human face is surface level camouflage over so many teeth, and she generally has a greater number of limbs than is strictly necessary. Still, Dália is not as traumatised by all this as many would be, and what starts off as more of a predator and prey situation turns into something more caring.

Things move very quickly in the relatively small number of pages of the book, and I would have preferred more length to really sell Dália falling for Anatema. There’s a distinct power imbalance as well which is not remarked upon either. Regardless, I enjoyed the characters and setting a lot, and the writing is delightful even when people are munching away on fried spider legs, or corralling rogue tarantulas like escaped kittens.

Eight legs out of ten! Thanks to Tor for the early review copy.

Don't forget, you can pick this up in our ebook store!

This is one of those books where I feel my lacklustre words are not even worthy of talking about it. It tells the story of two close sisters, Ysabel and Esther, who live in a small human town on the very edge of the faerie world. Esther has fallen in love with Rin, a being who takes on a different form every time we meet them. The sisters like to sing together, and it’s Esther’s songs that have captivated Rin. However, the farmer who lives next door has other opinions on who she should marry.

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found cataloged at his website.

“A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.”

This mysterious quotation from the movie Birdman claims that there is a reality that exists apart from the narratives we weave around reality. On its face, that’s obvious. But in an age when narrative shapes perception, and perception manifests reality, it’s a radical rebuttal to what some call a post-truth era, in which those who control the narrative control reality.

We need narratives. Stories are how we make sense of the world. But the more emotionally compelling the story, the less it needs to conform to the nuts-and-bolts of reality. Our beliefs are a filter that shapes our truths. There is both power and danger in that. We must remind ourselves that all stories have a teller. How far we trust a given storyteller is up to us. Stories are a kind of magic—we must be mindful of who's casting the spell.

The Doors of Midnight, just released in August 2024, is the second volume of R.R. Virdi's Tales of the Tremaine, a Silk Road epic fantasy that is all about stories and how they shape and are shaped by reality. The books follow Ari, a traveling storyteller and student of magic, across two timelines in a story-within-the-story (with many more nested stories). In the present, adult Ari is not only a storyteller, but The Storyteller, whose carefully cultivated reputation precedes him and grants him access to the wealthy and powerful. This is useful, because he’s hunting demons masquerading as the wealthy and powerful.

His path keeps crossing with a mysterious beauty called Eloine who wants nothing more in life than to listen to Ari tell her his life's story and unburden himself of his troubles. And he does! With enthusiasm! This is the inner story of Ari's adventurous youth as a student of magic, a collector of folklore, a pursuer of the demons who killed his adoptive family, a prince of thieves, a cloaked vigilante, a spy for a desert warlord, an apprentice to a mystic, an apprentice to a demigoddess—and more. 

Ari had a busy youth, but he keeps himself no less busy as an adult, playing politics, investigating nobles, searching for obscure texts, getting involved with assassination plots, and always—always—telling people his story. Ari absolutely loves telling his own story, spreading rumors about himself, and knowing that people are talking about him.
 

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“And through it all, I added rather wonderfully to my already growing reputation. My white cloak, combined with all of my usual cleverness and skill in spinning stories, aided a great deal in this.”

 

 

 

Ari, past and present, is an incredible narcissist. It's a trait that is integral to the theme: Ari is preoccupied with (re-)inventing himself through stories, but in doing so, may be locking away truths about himself that he must someday face. That day of reckoning never happened in the chunky previous book, The First Binding, nor did it happen in the likewise hefty The Doors of Midnight.

For me, it became tiresome. This could be a coming-of-age story, but Ari never really matures out of his self-absorption. This could be a self-discovery story, but the lessons of Ari's myriad adventures seem short-lived. This could be a quest for vengeance, but Ari never seems to get any closer. Not yet, anyway. Maybe in the next volume. So what kind of story is it?

The Doors of Midnight, like its predecessor, ends up being a collection of adventure tales, loosely strung together. This, too, is no accident. R.R. Virdi is a scholar of folk tales and how they morph and merge as they travel. Characters and events conflate, fragment, or get repurposed. They become canon here, apocrypha there. Ari, The Storyteller, is crafting a legend about himself. 

Tales of the Tremaine is a quilt of episodic patches with an organizing theme and a potential reckoning on the distant horizon. Unfortunately, the question also arises: how much longer will we care? The story references Scheherazade and her narrative tease of stretching out her story for a thousand-and-one nights, but The Doors of Midnight is unfortunately less capable of keeping us breathless for what happens next. Though there are some scenes of beauty and wit, for me, it was often a slog to get through the weighty tomes of this saga.

Part of my problem is that, despite having the lofty title of The Storyteller, Ari isn't a storyteller that trusts his audience to get the point. He will present a lovely image, heavy with implication, and then spend the next paragraph or more explicating it.
 

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“She didn’t wait for me to find the rest of the words. ‘It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said what I said either. I know it bothers you.’ Aram didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t need to. We both knew enough to hear the things unspoken.

 

I suppose that’s one of the signs of true friendship. You begin to learn the shape of one another’s thoughts—their hearts. And in doing so, you learn to speak another thing. A new language. One unknown, and unheard by anyone other than the two speaking it. And sometimes, a great deal can be said within that stillness and silence.”

 

 

 

Ari can't leave anything unspoken. He needs to narrate, pontificate, repeat himself, expound on meaning, and offer his wise insights—but they aren't all that deep. The adult Ari, who is ultimately the narrator of both past and present timelines, still reads like a young person sounding out his own thoughts and treating them with a self-important gravitas that an older reader might find unwarranted and tedious. It is, unfortunately, the prevailing style of the narration.

By contrast, the best parts of the book are when Ari learns that other characters (usually women) have internal lives, his assumptions about them have missed the mark, and their stories are perhaps more interesting than his own. These breaks from narcissism into humility make Ari sympathetic and human—for as long as they last. Ari learning to listen is actually a plot point, though it's unevenly applied. Sadly, these lessons occur in the narrated past, and Ari-the-narrator shows no signs of having grown from them.

The magic in this saga is compelling and gets right to the heart of the thematic intersection of reality and stories. Imagine a multiverse where anything is possible within the logic of a story. Practitioners of the magic in this world envision their version of the story and bind it to reality. They impose their narrative on the world. It's an amazing metaphor, which hasn't yet been used to its full effect, but there are hints that this is coming. 

Stories can be used not only to create a reality, but to hide one, and this story drops hints that the key to Ari defeating his demonic enemies (and discovering his own birthright power) is in discovering the truth hidden behind the stories—or perhaps discovering the true story beyond what others have imposed onto reality. Fans of metafiction like me are champing at the bit to see the promise of this idea realized. This book tells us R.R. Virdi is still making the promise, but we don't see it fulfilled just yet.

There are enough similarities between Virdi's Tales of the Tremaine and Patrick Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicles that one could wonder if Virdi's saga is a viable replacement for the Rothfuss story that may never be completed. Beside the myriad details that map directly to one another, both are ultimately tales that the narrator is telling about himself that call for a healthy dose of skepticism by the reader. Alas, while the elements of the two series have a lot of overlap, Virdi's approach to storytelling doesn’t scratch the same itch. With Rothfuss, there is enough of a difference between youthful and adult Kvothe that it sparks a mystery around the unreliable narration and the character’s Mary Sue-ness. With Virdi, I feel like I’m granting Ari the benefit of the doubt, and hoping for a payoff. The difference is the strength of the through-line, which in Rothfuss seems to build, but in Virdi, feels deliberately diffuse, like a collection of folk tales. I admire the cultural anthropology of Virdi’s approach, but I’m more drawn into the narrative momentum of Rothfuss’s story.

I’d have enjoyed The Doors of Midnight more if only Ari’s storytelling lived up to his self-appointed title as The Storyteller.

 

It isn’t hard to see the similarities between Brandon Sanderson’s cosmere and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sanderson himself has expressed his intention to create a world as expansive and influential as Stan Lee did with Marvel. And by all measures, including the explosive growth of his business, he is on his way to succeeding.

Both IPs have drawn in millions of fans from all corners of the globe. Both feature increasingly intertwined worldbuilding across multiple settings, planets, and timelines. Both release content at an insane rate, with Sanderson “accidentally” writing 4 books during COVID and Marvel releasing so much content in 2025 they need a trailer for it. 

Readers echo this comparison as they talk about their hopes for an “Avengers: Endgame level” conclusion in Wind and Truth, the much anticipated fifth and final book in Part I of Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive.  

But Sanderson has been clear that it isn’t Endgame and warned fans to check their expectations, because they will be left with “big questions” and unfinished storylines. Perhaps MCU fans can consider Wind and Truth something more along the lines of Infinity War than Endgame. Wheel of Time fans might say it isn’t the ending, but an ending.

Worried cosmere fans can be reassured: Sanderson sticks the landing. Wind and Truth provides the perfect blend of explosive action and closure, while setting up the second half of the series. 

The story picks up right where the previous book, Rhythm of War, left off—with the people of Roshar preparing themselves for a contest of champions between Odium and Dalinar Kholin to determine the future of the planet. 

Wind and Truth covers the 10 days prior to the contest, one day at a time, from morning to night—a unique narrative choice that will keep readers in suspense and flying through the book's 1,344 pages. The “Sanderlanche”—a cascading series of action scenes, big reveals, character growth, and catharsis—comes later than expected (about halfway through Day 10), but in a way, the entire book is the Sanderlanche of the series.

Readers are treated to flashbacks that provide insight into the past and fill in the blanks of lore that has been referenced since The Way of Kings. Characters level up and use their powers in new and creative ways. Fight scenes are riveting, dynamic, and surprising throughout. There’s also some great throwbacks to oft-quoted, fan-favorite moments from the previous four books.

Plotlines divide the main characters into five groups, all trying to save the planet in their own way: Dalinar and Navani searching for answers on how to win against Odium; Venli and the singers finding their place on the Shattered Plains; Adolin leading troops into battle; Szeth and Kaladin chasing a Herald in Shinovar; and Shallan, Rlain, and Renarin going after the Ghostbloods. 

All five storylines are riveting, but Adolin’s was the surprise standout that will have him becoming many readers’ favorite character (if he wasn’t already). And you can take Brandon’s word for it, too—during the Wind and Truth Release Party at DSNX, he was asked to share his favorite scene or chapter to write. His answer: a sequence involving “a certain Kholin son who knows his way around a sword.”

Wind and Truth also shines in its themes—the virtues of hope and trust, promises and oaths, and the strength one can wield only after being broken. And, powerfully presented by the requisite flashback scenes (Szeth’s, in this case) and woven effortlessly throughout: the illusion of a fixed right and wrong and the importance of trusting one’s own judgment.

But that trust doesn't come easily, as characters grapple with betrayal by their own minds; so readers can expect Wind and Truth to continue and build upon its depiction of mental health challenges within the main characters. By the end of Book 4, most of the characters have overcome some of their darkest moments. Wind and Truth sees them using what they’ve learned to either fight the demons that remain or help others fight theirs. 

The series finale does have a sprinkling of weaknesses that only stand out because the rest of the story is so strong. For example, the mental health themes sometimes come across as heavy-handed or out of place, like when characters stop abruptly in the middle of a fight scene and try to use therapy to win over their opponent.

The other problems won’t surprise most Sanderson fans who are familiar with his quirks—dorky puns, cheesy humor (there’s a poop talk within the first 35 pages), and characters using modern slang that risks pulling readers out of the story.

But the quirks are minor, and Sanderson’s more subtle humor always lands (all birds on Roshar being called “chicken” will never not be funny). Sanderson does cute pretty well, too—some familiar spren make charming appearances, and there’s a new character that is destined to inspire the newest cosmere plushie.

So what if you’re not a plushie-buying, leatherbound-collecting, Investiture-studying, Easter-egg-hunting, hardcore cosmere fan? Do you need to become one to enjoy Wind and Truth? 

Yes and no. Wind and Truth forges connections within the universe more comprehensively than any other cosmere book has thus far—full of familiar names, missing pieces of lore, and crossover characters and magic systems from other worlds. The result is deeply satisfying and just pure fun for readers who can draw those connections.

Being a more hardcore fan provides the opportunity to experience all the squeals of joy and Leonardo-Dicaprio-pointing-gif moments while witnessing a massive integration of multiple cosmere books—in particular, Mistborn Era 1 and 2 (including Secret History), Warbreaker, Elantris, Arcanum Unbound, and Sanderson’s 2023 Secret Projects. 

It isn’t that prior knowledge of these books is necessary to understand what’s happening; it’s more like a missed opportunity for maximum impact. Like not getting the fireworks when you beat a Super Mario Brothers level, or not collecting all the armor upgrades in the Legend of Zelda before beating Ganon. You still win, and winning is awesome—you just don’t get all the bells and whistles.

Less hardcore fans, or those who have only read The Stormlight Archive, will still love Wind and Truth. It's full of surprises, exciting new uses of the magic system, and BIG moments for the main characters. It is exactly as a series finale should be—tying together loose ends, rounding out character arcs, delivering on the promises of foreshadowing, and bringing the first act of The Stormlight Archive to what Aristotle would approve of as the quintessential “unexpected but inevitable” conclusion.

Buy Wind and Truth direct from the Dragonmount ebook store here!

Accolades (soft spoilers)

Overall MVP: Adolin 

Coolest use of Stormlight: Shallan

Best fight scene: Szeth

Most tearjerking moment(s): Kaladin

Most changed since Book 1: Renarin 

Needed more screen time: Lift, Jasnah

Best side character arc: Yawnagawn

The POV upgrade you didn't know you needed: Sigzil

Best Worldhopper cameo: Thaidakar (wink-wink)

Best villain (ever?): Taravangian

Grace is a licensed mental health counselor who believes in the healing power of found family in fantasy novels and IRL. Also known as Bain & Chiad, Grace has been reading The Wheel of Time since 1998, when she and her high school sweetheart dressed up as Elayne and Rand for Halloween. She fell in love with present-day WoT fandom and was inducted into Far Dareis Mai in 2019. She is the writer of Maidens’ List and a cohost of The Light’s Work.

The City in Glass begins with three vengeful angels razing the city of Azril to the ground in fire and fury. Our protagonist—a demon named Vitrine who has spent generations of human lives creating the city by influencing and inspiring its people—dies along with the citizens of Azril. But demons are not welcome in the afterlife, and Vitrine returns to pick up the pieces of herself and her shattered city.

This dreamlike book follows Vitrine as she starts over, rebuilding her Azril piece by piece and person by person. The narrative jumps back and forth between the original Azril and the new Azril, and we get to see Vitrine realize that, although she can use the infinite time afforded to an immortal to grow a city from the ruins of the old, it will never be the original city. Some things are lost forever.

Grief and resilience are major themes in this book. Of course, the perspective of an immortal demon guiding a city into existence over a millennium may not be relatable to most of us. But the emotion of stark loss is, and Vo’s writing brings this mercilessly home. Vitrine, reeling, takes stock of her ruined works and wonders how the world can keep going on as if nothing has changed:

"The sky is still blue," Vitrine thought, looking up. "I am not sure that the sky should still be allowed to be blue."

The prose is stunning throughout this book: beautiful and raw and honest. Many of us have experienced grief in the form of the loss of a loved one, through death or separation. Although Vitrine’s loss is of a city and its history and people, it is also the loss of the time spent developing and cherishing that city. The realization that all she has left of it are memories, and that there is no future to dream of with those people, is the same crushing realization that brings the raw grief in all of us.

Despite the impression that you may have at this point, this is not a book that will make you sad! I loved reading this book, and Vo’s biblical “and it was so” way of describing this fantasy world of demons and angels. As Vitrine sets about developing a new city, I was reminded of the mechanics of a civilization-building strategy game. She influences the course of history by encouraging this person to study astronomy, and that person to study commerce. She selects those people who show initiative and guides them into positions of power. She teaches her people to dance, and to read, and to have ambitions and goals. With a few exceptions though, Vitrine is not attached to the people. She is immortal and they are brief, and her project and passion is the city itself.

I could not put this book down and I highly recommend it.

While the first book by Rebecca Thorne shared a certain amount of DNA with Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy Legends & Lattes, this one takes Reyna and Kianthe’s story deeper into uncharted waters.

As we discovered last time, Reyna is a former guard to a murderous queen, and Kianthe is the most powerful mage around, but they have both made a quiet life together in the village of Tawney, running a tea shop. There is the small matter of some missing dragon eggs they need to locate before said dragons decide to turn the whole place to ash, plus the continuing threat of Queen Tilaine, but other than that life is good, if perhaps a little too quiet.

A year on, and the search for the eggs has taken our couple far west to Shepara, the home of the Nacean river. They have come to see the lord of the area, Diarn Arlon, who says he will happily help them in their quest, with one small condition—first they have to deal with an annoying pirate problem for him. That problem mainly takes the form of Serina, a Robin Hood-esque pirate who is stealing grain from Diarn Arlon to feed the poor along the length of the river. She is being pursued by Bobbie, who (in a clear case of nominative determinism) is the constable charged with bringing her to justice. Did I mention the two of them used to be friends, and perhaps, something more? And who is the Dastardly Pirate Dreggs?

The generally light-hearted tone of the first story continues here. Bobbie crochets small animals when stressed, and is clearly under a lot of pressure by the number of these that litter the place. Reyna is helping to raise a chaotic baby griffin, and Kianthe’s puns remain truly under-appreciated. All in all, it’s an enjoyable romp and I was glad to spend more time with the existing characters, and meet the new ones. I look forward to reading the next book soon.

Also, a tip of the hat to any fantasy book that makes such a blatant Mass Effect reference that I laughed out loud.

Both books are highly recommended, thanks to Tor for the review copy.

I liked the first novella in this series, The Fireborne Blade, and hoped to see more adventures with our two heroines. I did not suspect I would get my wish quite so soon!

Saralene is now the High Mage, but the former holder of the title (recently deceased) has other plans for her. With her trusted companion, the brave knight Sir Maddileh, she must travel to the domain of the eponymous princes and find some way to prevent her imminent demise. Along the journey, the two will also face a perhaps greater challenge—their feelings for each other.

Instead of the faux academic papers about dragons we had last time, this book breaks up the narrative with some short folk tales from the perspectives of both the humans and the dragons. The same events are seen quite differently, and the fun juxtaposition of the two feeds neatly into the story.

Despite the high stakes, this book feels slightly lighter in tone to the first one, particularly with the running commentary of their new feline companion. Which is not a complaint by any means! 

If this is all we get with these characters, the book provides a satisfying conclusion to the tale, but I certainly wouldn’t complain if we got more of these bite-sized tales every now and again, much like a fantasy equivalent of the Murderbot novellas by Martha Wells.

Recommended, alongside the first one.

Thanks to Tor Publishing for the early review copy.

I was incredibly excited to read The Daughters’ War by Christopher Buehlman, whose work I first discovered last year when browsing for audiobooks by top rated performances. Buehlman had read his own book, The Blacktongue Thief, and I was intrigued. In theory authors should be the perfect people to narrate their own books—they will get all of the pronunciation correct, and any intended inflections or emphases will be realized—but this is seldom actually the case. Voice acting is a talent and a skill that takes training to develop, just as writing is, and most folks pursue one path or the other (well, most folks pursue neither but we’ll forget about them for now). Buehlman defies this by turning in an excellent and accented performance of The Blacktongue Thief, deftly introducing readers to the characters and lore of his grim fantasy world.

The world of “Blacktongue,” where the duology (and I hope there are more books to come) is set, was not always grim. The Blacktongue Thief takes place several years after the goblin wars, a series of invasions by goblins that required increasingly desperate measures and alliances to be repelled by the kynd (the humanlike [humankynd?] races). The first invasion, known as the Knights’ War, was easily won by knights on horseback who outmatched the shorter goblins. The goblins responded by introducing a plague that devastated the horse population nearly to extinction, and the second invasion, called the Threshers’ War, required the conscription of farmers in order to hold out against the goblins. The humans won but paid a high price in blood and sons, and when the goblins came again, they had to call upon their daughters to march to war.

This “Daughters’ War” is where this second book takes us, from the perspective of Galva dom Braga. Galva, who was a grizzled veteran who worships the god of death in The Blacktongue Thief, is now an untried soldier marching to war as part of an experimental unit of women soldiers matched with war corvids. The corvids are magically bred, oversized, intelligent ravens that are trained to kill goblins. Readers of The Blacktongue Thief will know that the war corvids did indeed turn the tide, driving the goblins to an uneasy truce and leaving nearly the entirety of Manreach with a severe case of PTSD.

The Daughters’ War takes place during the war of that name, but the book is really about one daughter’s war: Galva dom Braga. Her three brothers are also marching to war, each in different capacities, and the story follows the dynamics of the dom Braga family in tandem with the battles against the goblins. The eldest brother and heir is a drunk who has been given a mostly symbolic rank and spends his war drinking and carousing with other ignoble nobles. The next brother has earned his high rank and sits on the senior war council. The youngest brother is a sort of assistant apprentice to the powerful and slightly mad wizard who created the corvids. Then there is Galva, the third eldest, who has trained at the elite sword academy and is paired with two deadly war corvids but has not yet been tested in a real fight. 

Each dom Braga sibling will be tested in this war—against the enemy, against each other, and against themselves—and some will do better than others. Galva also experiences love and friendship, all against the backdrop of a terrible war that can suddenly and painfully introduce loss into any relationship. 

And the war is brutal. Readers of The Blacktongue Thief will recall the legacy that the goblin wars had on the lands and their people; readers of The Daughters’ War will experience that trauma directly. These goblins are not the lesser cousins of orcs that populate many fantasy worlds. These are terrifying monsters whose primary reason for invading is simply that they want to eat people. Being eaten by monsters is not an unusual threat in fantasy (who can forget the infamous trolloc cookpots), but there is something particularly terrifying about the matter-of-factness with which these goblins pursue it (Buehlman has also written several horror novels). People are farmed, dumbed with drugs, herded, butchered, and savored. The goblins are intelligent, but in a nonhuman way. They build siege engines and execute strategies, but they also swarm like zombies, piling over themselves to overwhelm adversaries. There is an inevitability to the goblin invasion that permeates these pages. That is why the farmers, and now the daughters, have been called to fight.

I applaud Buehlman for creating this menacing adversary, and I applaud him further for making this book about the people who are fighting more than about the fight. There are fights aplenty, but the impact is felt more on Galva's character than on the battlelines. The book is, after all, a prequel, so a prepared reader will know more or less how the war itself goes. What is far more interesting is the path that Galva takes from a green soldier to the hardened, no-nonsense soldier that we meet in The Blacktongue Thief. We also see Galva meet the Infanta Mireya, whose usurped throne is a point of some consideration in The Blacktongue Thief, but whose relationship to Galva is the point of consideration in The Daughters’ War.

Perhaps the thing that impressed me most about this book is the change in tone from The Blacktongue Thief. That book is told from the perspective of the titular thief, full of exaggerations and swagger, willing to do most anything to seize an advantage. This book, from the perspective of the upright soldier Galva—for whom lying is a cardinal offense and to whom death is preferable to dishonor—feels entirely different. Even the verbosity is dialed back, from a skilled linguist who clearly enjoys his way with words to the laconic soldier who will not waste breath nor ink on anything that does not need to be said.

The Daughters’ War is a masterpiece in evoking the readers’ full range of emotion. This book made me stay up past my bedtime, made me cry, made me laugh (a little—there is little humor in war), and a certain character made me absolutely furious. I cannot recommend this book enough, and we can all hope that Christopher Buehlman continues to write in this world. The Daughters’ War is released on June 25; thank you to Tor for the advance review copy.

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found at his website.

Is history a fact, or a story—and, if the latter, whose story?

Rakesfall, by Vajra Chandrasekera, is a series of stories that intentionally collapse on their way to completion, question their own truth and intent, expound on the nature of reality and history, and then morph into something completely different. Rakesfall doesn't try to invest you in a particular character or plot; it’s not in the business of setting up expectations and then fulfilling them. It uses stories—or fragments of them—as a means of illustrating a philosophical and political thesis, delivered from the mouths of a rotating cast of characters.

What is fiction anyway? Is it the same thing as a story? Is it that graph of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement, where someone or something irrevocably changes? For me, Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler was the book that first showed me that fiction could be far weirder, taking readers on a journey and showing them the sights in different ways, sometimes addressing the readers directly, sometimes narrating the readers as though hijacking their minds.

The title “Rakesfall” refers to a mythological world war between peoples known as the Yoke and the Rake. The Yoke conquered and colonized, but the Rake survived and persisted in hiding. They form an archetype for conflicts that echo through time, where the conqueror writes history, but the conquered still “haunt” the world the victor describes, a dissonance in the tale—and a ticking bomb.

This is the heady premise of a thread that connects several otherwise disjointed stories across space, time, and characters. It’s Hindu monistic philosophy in a Marxist critical theoretic frame. 

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“The lesson is that false consciousness has always [distanced] our people to their true selves. The one and the others; the white and the black; the north and the south; the lion and the tiger; the colonizer and the indigene; these were all a distraction from the true and essential distinction, that the [oppressed] people must fight all forms of oppressors.”

-- Rakesfall

Who has the power, how is it exercised, and what illusions of division does it generate?

If this sounds elevated and hard to understand, that’s also my experience of reading Rakesfall. The book is full of mysterious meta-stories that don’t reach any evident conclusions, and character-delivered explanations of why it’s wrong to expect evident conclusions. “You mean that histories are true and stories are lies? No, both are true and both are lies, grandmother says. The difference is that stories have endings, and histories understand that nothing ever ends.”

Rakesfall skips among unrelated characters (of fluid genders and species), settings, time periods, and genres, and insists that all these categories aren’t real. The Hindu maya, the illusion we perceive of distinctness and separateness, is an instrument of oppression that it is our eternal mission to dismantle. These aren’t different stories. They’re all one story, whether the illusion is experienced as supernatural or as a glitch in one’s post-human sensor arrays.

It’s informative that six chapters of Rakesfall were published as five independent short stories across five magazines and nearly two decades. It has the feel of an author circling a set of concepts and, in a metatextual flourish, unifying them. Those who have read Chandrasekera’s wonderful debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, will recognize many of the same themes, laid out in a more straightforward way. (It’s saying something that Bright Doors reads as straightforward in comparison to Rakesfall.) In fact, the city of Luriat, with its invisible laws and powers, bright doors, and rewritten palimpsest history, are part of the much broader universe (multiverse?) of Rakesfall.

This is a universe where time is “not a flowing river of cause and effect, but a glacial ocean, whole and complete, past and future laid out full, frozen and transparent.” Reincarnation, ghosts, zombies, and digital consciousness outside of time are phenomena that reveal the lie of the life/death duality. The “akashic record” is the true history of all that is, which is either supernaturally written in the firmament, or a universal blockchain, depending on the era. Identities—our senses of self—are porous and bleed not only up and down our ancestry, but across our connections and sense of purpose. Haunting—a recurring theme—is the shadow thrown by the suppressed past on the current version of history. In this setting, the characters in various eras struggle toward various goals, but their story is really about escaping illusory concerns and seeking wholeness and reconciliation with the past—often through shocking violence.

Okay. That’s a lot of high-minded material. But is it a good read? This is a book that engages with the head far more than the heart. The ideas are sophisticated and complex.

The language is poetic, sometimes playful, with wry twists in tone and rhythm: “Until then she will not rest, nor sleep, not leavetake, not take leave, not take or leave, nor give and take, nor so much as blink.”

There’s humor and relatable truth: “Whenever Uncle rants, about history, about politics, about the injustices faced by his, that is to say their, great race, his comb-over rises up and unfurls like a flag.”

There are jokes that are jarring in their context, but it feels intentional: “Grandmother Sits only ever gives explosives on birthdays.”

For readers who read to admire the artist’s artistry and the intellectual game of metafictional self-reference, recursion, and infinite regress, this book is full of delights. For readers who seek the union of philosophical and political arguments that can reference the Hindu epic Ramayana, the Sri Lankan Civil War, and post-human cyberpunk detective stories, this is your book.

But if you’re reading to immerse yourself in characters, their yearnings, and the escalating measures they’ll take to fulfill those yearnings—if you’re looking for a traditionally-defined story—Rakesfall will actively resist you. To be fair, every step of the way, it telegraphs what kind of book it isn’t. It isn’t a tale, it’s an argument about tales, history, and the nature of the universe. It can explain, in text, why it’s making the narrative choices it makes, but it doesn’t try to win you over to it. That’s on you. I was often frustrated as I latched onto a story thread, only to see it yanked away or interrupted by a screed just as I was getting invested. There was a certain pleasure in going back over my highlights and notes, and discovering all the intentional connections. But this was an intellectual pleasure, not the emotional one of reading a great yarn.

Rakesfall is aware, and answers with a shrug. “But maybe it’s exploitative to attempt truth in fiction, maybe it is mere commodification only, maybe fabulism strips histories of whatever dignity realism might have to offer—or maybe it’s the other way around, maybe it’s mimesis that takes away history’s dreams and fantasies, makes it small and lonely and vulnerable in a haunted world.”

It is up to you, reader, to determine if that model of fiction satisfies.

Much gratitude to Tor Books for the advance reading copy. Rakesfall will be available June 18, 2024.

Raquel Petra has everything she could ever want - her wife Marlena, their daughter Atalanta, and a job working alongside Marlena as researchers for the Institute. Specifically, the Global Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Pocket Worlds, which investigates little bubbles of parallel reality, and the elusive points that connect them to our own. Then, with one tiny mistake, Raquel loses everything in an instant.

Time runs fast in some of these worlds, slow in others. This leads to a wide variety of imaginative uses for time dilation, which is one of my favourite things in the story. Grow crops very quickly in a fast world, then store them in a slow world so they don’t go off. Calculating how old somebody is requires keeping track of all the worlds they’ve been in. 

Because the points where you enter a world can be attached to a movable physical object, which can itself be brought inside another world, you end up with worlds within worlds, and all the complexities that might imply. It’s a great science fiction concept to build the tale around, but all the other aspects here shine just as much.

This is a story anchored in the Dominican Republic. Raquel works as an archeologist, exploring the pocket worlds for evidence of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, something that becomes more relevant as things progress.

On a broader view, it is very much about colonialism, capitalism, environmental disaster, and war. But, primarily it’s about one person’s sadness, grief, and complete self-destructive refusal to let go of what she lost. Those are the parts that really stuck with me after I had finished reading. Ultimately, it’s also about hope, something I am personally very glad for, and you will be too. This story hurts in all the right ways.

Highly recommended.

Thanks to Tor for the early review copy.

This novella has quite a different setting from Aliette de Bodard’s recent Xuya books, but it’s an equally fascinating place.

Việt Nhi is a lowly member of the Rooster clan, one of the four opposed navigator clans who help guide ships through the Hollows; another space entirely that is used as a shortcut to achieve faster-than-light travel. As with many shortcuts, there is a slight catch. The Hollows are also home to a form of life known as the Tanglers; large unknowable creatures with deadly intangible tendrils that love to feed on the travellers who cross through their realm.

The navigators are not defenceless however—they can project their life energy into a form known as their Shadow; a force that can tear open holes in the universe and protect their ships from harm. Sometimes though, Nhi just uses it to give herself a nice hug when she is feeling stressed out by life.

And Nhi is certainly stressed. Not only has one of these eldritch horrors escaped from the Hollows intent on devouring everything in its path, not only is she being sent to find and catch it, but she will have to work with delegates of the other three clans to do so, accompanied by an aloof imperial envoy intent on keeping everybody in line.

Nhi does not do well with people. They do not always make sense to her, and she finds social interactions particularly wearing. Plus, all the clans barely tolerate each other at the best of times, so this will be quite the challenge of teamwork. To complicate matters even further, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to another member of the team…

With a queer and neurodivergent main protagonist, and a band of lovably broken outcasts, this is a fun tale inspired by xianxia-style martial arts, but rooted in science fiction with an undercurrent of romance. It does a lot of world building despite the short length, and I hope we will get to see these characters again, or at least have more stories set in the same universe.

Definitely worth your time.

Thanks to Tor Publishing for the early review copy.

We join Maddileh on an ill-fated quest to recover the Fireborne Blade. The King himself witnessed her punching Sir Allerbon in the face, but I can assure you that he really did deserve it. So, retrieve the ancient sword, regain her honour. A simple enough proposition. Of course, the slight catch is that this weapon happens to be located deep in the lair of a legendary dragon, known as the White Lady. 

The story slowly takes us towards their final confrontation, through pockets of dangerous magic and the ghosts of those who had fallen attempting the same journey. Her useless and argumentative squire Petros is also present.

Most of the world building comes in the form of academic papers on the nature of dragons, which are interspersed between the chapters of Maddileh’s story. Typically, these are records of previous encounters, which usually end in gruesome fashion for the knights involved. Even in death, dragons are still to be feared.

There are also some flashbacks to her preparations beforehand, notably getting some equipment from a mage, Kennion, and his suspiciously knowledgeable assistant Saralene. Perhaps the only thing worse in this world than a woman who wants to be a knight, is a woman who wants to wield magic.

I really enjoyed this book. The path down to the dragon is filled with twists and turns, both literally and literary. Even though it is brief at 176 pages, it paints a vivid picture of Maddileh’s world, and I quickly came to love the characters. Well, some of the characters, at least. It leaves things in such an interesting place that I hope I can read more of their adventures to find out what happens next.

Recommended.

Thanks to Tor Publishing for the early review copy.

Rebecca Thorne would be the first to admit this book was initially inspired by Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes (check out Ola Aleksandra Hills’ review here) . It’s a (mostly) cozy romance in a fantasy setting about two women who open up a shop, grow to be part of the local community, and have pasts that eventually catch up to them. On the surface, that sounds like the same story, but it really isn’t; think of it more as a familiar framework to hang something new on.

Reyna is great at her job as a royal guard, but does not particularly enjoy dispatching the increasingly frequent assassins who threaten the throne. It is not, however, a role you can easily leave with your head still attached, as the Queen frequently demonstrates.

Kianthe is the Arcandor; the most powerful mage in all the land. She’s a magical troubleshooter, called in to deal with big (and frequently fiery) problems. But there’s a lot of stifling politics around the role, and many layers of ineffectual men trying to tell her what to do.

The two have also been secretly dating for years, and have a shared dream of running far away together to open a tea shop that sells books. Or, perhaps, a bookshop that serves tea. An incident at the palace makes their dreams suddenly a lot more real, and they end up incognito as small business owners in a forgotten corner of the world. There is just the small matter of Reyna committing treason against the Queendom, and Kianthe hiding from the Magicary, but I’m sure that won’t come back to bite them later (it will).

It’s worth keeping in mind that this is not quite as cozy or small scale as Legends & Lattes is. There is an underlying dragon-shaped mystery about their new town, which leads them into more adventure, and indeed more mortal peril, than you might anticipate. The two of them don’t always make the best decisions, particularly in terms of self-care and self-preservation. But this is an established relationship, and they are both supportive of each other throughout, which is certainly refreshing.

“Tomes & Tea” is planned as a four book series, and books two and three are already written. So, it will not be too long until we find out what is next for our couple, and I personally can’t wait. In fact, since the first two books were originally self-published before being picked up by Tor, I don’t actually have to wait; those two are currently available in ebook form. The physical books look very nice however, and I suspect I will pick those up for my shelves as they are released.

A fun tale, recognisable in some ways, but still very entertaining. Another sapphic shopkeeping success!

Thanks to Tor for the early review copy.

Many modern fantasy books are showcases of worldbuilding—magic systems, creative (and not so creative) variations on the “orc,” tongue-twisting character and place names, and so on. Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova has the best elements of all of that, but it also has what so many of its contemporaries do not: vivid and engaging prose. Take the very first paragraph.

It was nearly midnight on New Year’s Eve, but the city inside the Wall didn’t celebrate. The people there knew that the birth of a new year was—like any birth—difficult, painful, and dangerous.

You better believe I tore through this 350-page book in a hurry after that. It helped that I read it on vacation, of course, with my only distractions being ordering another drink and the occasional dip in the Pacific. But Foul Days isn’t just a great beach read. It is also a great stay-up-past-your-bedtime read, a great take-on-your-lunch-break read, a great anytime read. The action is fast, the world is vividly bleak, and the suspense kicks in early and doesn’t let up.

The main character, Kosara, is a young witch who has packed a surprisingly long troubled past into her short years. Before long, she is forced to give up her shadow—her magic—in order to escape from the Czar of Monsters. It’s a short-term solution, because a witch can’t live for long without her shadow. In Kosara’s quest to get it back, she gets swept up in the machinations of the criminal underworld and crooked cops—including a handsome cop with almost as many secrets as Kosara—and a host of monsters. There is an element of steampunk to the fantasy—trains, guns, and a hot air balloon make appearances—as well as a touch of romance (I did mention a handsome cop…).

I picked this book up because the blurb advertises The Witcher meets Naomi Novik, and doesn’t that sound like a good time? There is more Naomi Novik here than Geralt; the Witcher comparison stems mostly from the compendium of monsters and specialized monster fighters. Novik’s influence is much more present, with a flawed-but-strong young heroine and a world grown from eastern-European folklore roots. In the case of Foul Days, those influences come from the author’s origins in Bulgaria.

Indeed, the “Foul Days” of the title correspond to the Pagan Slavic winter holiday of Korochun, the time of year when the more malevolent spirits are at their most potent. Those spirits are especially potent in Chenograd, where the story begins. Chenograd and Belograd are two halves of a city divided by a wall—The Wall—which keeps all the monsters and evil spirits on the Chenogradean side. It also (mostly) keeps all the citizens of the cities on their respective sides. As you might imagine, there is some tension between the folks on opposite sides of The Wall.

We learn more about the origins of The Wall and how this city got to be divided as the book progresses. Dimova does an exceptionally good job of introducing the lore at a pace that keeps the reader informed without overwhelming. The POV is third person, but there is more than a hint of the unreliable narration from our heroine, Kosara, who has some secrets that she would rather not share with the reader or anyone else. This mostly works well, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty that very much matches the uncertainty that Kosara feels after crossing to the other side of the wall and discovering the betrayal and deception that more than validate her secrecy.

There are a few instances, though, where I wish Dimova had trusted her own very capable character development and left things in the subtext. For example, after Kosara meets a character who is revealed to have robbed a bank with a toy gun, we read that “Kosara glanced at Nur with newfound respect. This perhaps showed that something was amiss in Kosara’s own moral compass.” Added to the fact that on the very first page of the book we see Kosara using magic to cheat at cards, I don’t think we need to be told so explicitly in which direction her moral compass points.

Overwhelmingly, though, I enjoyed the prose of Foul Days immensely. The world that Dimova creates leaps off the page—sometimes frighteningly so—and, at times, managed to take me from my sunny vacation to the snowy streets of Chernograd and Belograd. I loved discovering and understanding the different monsters, some of which are truly evil and some of which are just your average creatures with their own needs and wants. The book also does an excellent job of illustrating that some of the humans are more monstrous than any creature, and, as the cover of the book says, “the scariest monsters are the human-shaped ones.”

Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova comes out in June, and I highly recommend putting it on your summer reading list. The second book, Monstrous Nights, is set to release in October, and I am already excited to see how Dimova continues this adventure. Thank you to TOR for the advance reader copy that I reviewed, and thank you to Grace for editing this review.

Tsalmoth, a Vlad Taltos novel by Steven Brust, begins with a punchy opening line: “Have you ever noticed that getting married is like trying to collect a debt from a dead guy?”

Well, have you?

I myself have not noticed this, but I also do not have any personal experience doing either thing, so perhaps I am not best qualified to assess the analogy. In any case, I certainly felt compelled to read the next line, and the next, and the next—which is a good thing, because before that, I had been slightly worried to discover that I was starting the sixteenth Vlad Taltos novel, having read none of the previous fifteen! This seems to be a theme with my book reviews—jumping into series and universes at random points and trying to find my footing. I needn’t have worried though, as I was able to understand enough about the world and characters to find it deeply enjoyable as a stand-alone novel. Indeed, after a few pages, I found myself caught up in the story and piecing together enough context to enjoy the ride.

Tsalmoth follows the adventures of Vlad Taltos, a sort of mid-level organized crime boss in a fantasy city, as he attempts to plan a wedding and collect a debt from a dead guy. The story is told first-person from Vlad’s perspective, and I quickly found myself enjoying his voice. Although the first few pages had me feeling in over my head with characters and lore, Vlad quickly addresses this by offering “...maybe I should tell you a bit about myself. Nah, skip it. That’s boring. You’ll figure it out.” This snappy and somewhat cocky tone is tempered by Vlad’s curiosity, good-heartedness, humor, and noted simple tastes.

Each chapter begins with several ‘out of time’ paragraphs of Vlad describing the wedding planning process. As he sorts through the various traditions and cultural expectations of a wedding, I was reminded of a The Sopranos meme of actor Michael Imperioli as the hapless Christopher Moltisanti pinching a cigarette between his fingers and earnestly explaining his understanding of a concept. Go ahead and insert “So get this, Tony…” before any of Vlad’s expositions and you’ll see what I mean.

Brust, as Vlad Taltos, does include some absolutely effective descriptions that can’t help but resonate with the reader. For example, recounting a conversation with his betrothed, Cawti:

We talked about moving stuff around. How can a discussion of moving a table from one side of a room to the other make you so happy? I don’t know. It did.

Those few, simple words about the pure contented feeling of planning with another person that you trust and want to spend time doing nothing with do more to capture the feeling of love than a lot of flowery prose that I have encountered.

Vlad’s adventures begin, as alluded to, with the death of a guy who owes him money. In his efforts to find who is responsible, and who might be able to make good on the debt, Vlad is drawn into a world of intrigue. In classic mob story fashion, the plot thickens—and thickens again, as more players are revealed, and factions emerge. Each time it seems that he is closing in on the money, a new angle develops, until the very end when everything is tied up in surprising and satisfying fashion.

One element that I found to be missing, although I stayed on my toes expecting it for the whole read, is a devastating betrayal. In fact, most of the characters, aside from Vlad, are fairly one dimensional (in the character sense, not necessarily in the planar existence sense). This could be an intentional choice of the author to depict an unreliable and self-interested narrator, so I mention it more as an observation than a criticism. 

There is sorcery and necromancy and demonology in the world of Vlad Taltos, as well as a collection of races and classes that I struggled to keep track of. I attribute my struggles more to the fact that I started in the middle of the series than as a shortcoming on the writing. If anything, I am now motivated to read more of Brust’s books so that I can begin to understand more of this world.

Overall, Tsalmoth is an entertaining mob mystery set in a fantasy world. The quick pacing and snappy dialogue helped smooth over any of my confusion about the world of Vlad Taltos. Even if I didn't know exactly what was happening in the universe, I always knew what was happening in the moment. Steven Brust has firmly been added to the list of authors whose works I will always check for at libraries and booksellers.

I should begin by explaining something of my own relationship to the author’s works. Like many, I first encountered Brandon Sanderson when it was announced that he had been asked to complete The Wheel of Time series after the untimely passing of Robert Jordan. There are several camps of opinion on how he managed this monumental task, and I fall firmly in the camp of being glad that the plot was wrapped up in an overall satisfying manner, while being somewhat disappointed by the change in the tone of writing and the presentation of some of the characters. Sanderson himself has been open about the challenge of meeting the expectations of Wheel of Time fans and how he found some characters—Mat especially—more difficult to capture than others.

It was that exact issue that soured me on his writing for a time, as Mat is a favorite character of mine, and I found myself increasingly disheartened by what felt like a cartoonish representation of Mat’s thoughts and actions. On the other hand, Sanderson did a very nice job of advancing Rand’s arc into darkness (and eventually back out again) that had somewhat plateaued in Jordan’s final books. When I reread The Wheel of Time, which tends to happen every three years or so, I am prepared for the change in writing style and am increasingly able to enjoy the final three books of my favorite series. However, I have struggled to get into Sanderson’s other works, finding within them the same style of writing and characterizations that put me off his Wheel of Time books.

So when I opened Tress of the Emerald Sea, I was mentally prepared to not enjoy it. I am delighted to say that Brandon Sanderson proved me wrong! And he did so with the exact elements that I had come to dislike about his writing.

I read Tress of the Emerald Sea in three days over my winter holiday break. It was the perfect book for this time of year—cozy and fun and easy to put down as various social obligations arose and then pick right back up again after they were met. Brandon Sanderson says that the book was inspired by The Princess Bride, and this is apparent. The wit, fun, and magic—not the magic system or its wielders, but the magic of simply reading—reminded me of both the movie and the book by William Golding. The word “romp” is overused in describing books and movies, but I am going to go ahead and say that Tress of the Emerald Sea is a delightful sea-faring romp, complete with all of the elements of a classic adventure: pirates, mutiny, a friendly cook, a talking rat… you get the idea.

The book is well structured, with a clear and concise plot, believable character interactions, and strong character development. Tress is especially compelling, growing into her own as she leaves her small island home and ventures into an increasingly bigger world. The villains are somewhat comical (the evil sorceress sometimes plays Solitaire on her laptop, er, “magical seeing board”), but it does not detract from the stakes of the story. In fact, the real danger in the book comes from the environment.

In a twist that is both very Sanderson and a touch sci-fi, the seas that cover much of Tress’s world are not water but spores that drift down from the orbiting moons. These spores are highly reactive to water in ways that are dangerous and often deadly. The worldbuilding—always a strong suit for Sanderson—is executed perfectly, with details given to the reader gradually but steadily so that our understanding of the world is always exactly where it needs to be. 

The narrator is a familiar figure to those acquainted with Sanderson’s cosmere, and is eventually introduced to be a character in this book as well. This allows the fourth wall to be more of an open window, with thoughts frequently directed at the reader. Some of these are useful exposition, some are comical asides, and some are absolutely nonsensical ramblings. There is a reason for that though, as you’ll see.

The combination of relatively low stakes and a narrator with a known penchant for zaniness is what allows me to put aside my usual preference for grimdark fantasy and really enjoy Sanderson’s writing in this book. For example, all of the nameless sailors on the ship are simply generalized as “Doug” or “the Dougs.” Descriptions often employ similes, mostly to positive effect. A character described as having a “neck kind of merged with his chin—to the point that after meeting him, you’d inexplicably get a hankering for a baguette” made me laugh out loud. 

On the other hand, sometimes these comical descriptions detract from moments of gravity. That particular character is being described right after he dies, one of the few actually depicted deaths in the book. Other times—as when the ship tilts and we are told that it is “as if we are seeing through the lens of a student who had just discovered experimental film”— I am reminded of the note left by a professor on one of my college assignments: “Is this really the best way to describe this?” Maybe not.

Overall, this book was a joy to read. The physical copy is beautiful, with an outside cover and endpapers that fit the spirit of the book perfectly (and that you will appreciate even more as you consider them again after finishing the book). Sanderson’s acknowledgements and postscript notes make clear the absolute pleasure that the book was to create. For an author who has been so prolific over the past decade—in fantasy, no less, a genre whose authors have a notorious tendency to be less prolific than we would like—Tress of the Emerald Sea is a welcome addition to an already impressive catalog. In fact, it just may have motivated the Sanderson skeptic in me to take another look at the cosmere.

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and publisher of khōréō, a Hugo-nominated and IGNYTE-winning magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Analog Magazine, LeVar Burton Reads, Writer’s Digest, and others. Learn more at www.aleksandrahill.com

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TL;DR: Legends & Lattes and its standalone prequel, Bookshops & Bonedust, live up to their promise of being novels of “high fantasy and low stakes.” These books are the literary equivalent of a warm hug: simple (but never trite) stories of individuals triumphing over the mundane and heroic that inspire the reader towards kindness at every turn. 

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I read Legends & Lattes in about two sittings a couple of weeks before it came out in November 2022—and then, well… life happened. We got a puppy; my first MFA thesis of the academic year was due two weeks after that; and then I was overwhelmed with work, gearing up for my second thesis of the academic year, and trying to handle the landshark that had taken up residence in our once-peaceful one-bedroom apartment. 

I thought of Legends & Lattes and the review I’d been meant to write for it every week since—not just out of the haunting of guilt that I’d still not gotten to it, but also out of how applicable it was. I found myself recommending it to anyone who mentioned that they’d been having a tough time—and, in the “post-COVID” years where it doesn’t ever truly feel like the pandemic is over and during which many other troubles have surfaced… well, that was pretty often.

It’s with incredible pleasure that I learned I had the chance to review the second book set in this world—which came out just today, November 7, 2023. 

Because this review will cover two books, it’s divided into two sections: one for those who have not yet entered the world of Legends and Lattes, and one for those who want to know a bit more about Bookshops and Bonedust in particular. However, these are both standalone books, and you can start with whichever one tickles your fancy more.

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Part 1: Legends and Lattes

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree begins at the end. An orc by the name of Viv has just beaten what amounts to the Big Bad End Guy (BBEG) of her own adventure. And so… she decides to settle down and open a café in a city named Thune, where no one has heard of coffee (yet). She has a nest egg of gold that she’s saved up in her years of adventuring and a strong work ethic to make her dream a reality. It’s a far cry from her previous life, and a very different path than many of “her kind” take, as so many folks point out to her—but she’s determined to leave that past behind. What follows is the story of how the coffee shop comes into being.

This is not a nail-biter of a book: the reader never truly worries that she will end up homeless and destitute—the stakes are never quite that high. Rather, the challenge is whether she will give up on her dream and whether she is willing to continue trusting herself and the path that she has chosen and, more importantly, whether she is willing to ask for help—or, more critically, accept when others offer the help she so willingly and unquestioningly gives to strangers. 

It is a book that asks whether a person can truly change, and whether they can find happiness in that change; it also understands that being entirely self-reliant can be the same thing as being selfish, and that trust and faith in others can be more terrifying than fighting monsters. Perhaps most importantly: this is a book that made me want to be kinder and more open to those around me. I live in New York City, where often, the biggest kindness you can give others is space and privacy to live their lives—and yet, while reading this book, I found myself longing to connect more closely to the neighbourhood I’d lived in for the past seven (now eight!) years. Thanks to our now year-old puppy, Virgil (pictured right), and his exuberant friendliness and insatiable curiosity about the world, we’ve been able to make our neighborhood more of a home than ever. I’d like to think Viv would adore his goofy, chaotic self.

While I absolutely loved this book (as did many others—it was nominated for multiple awards and Baldree won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2023), there are certain readers who will likely not enjoy it. In particular: if you are looking for higher stakes and extensive moments of tension—this book is not for you. Most challenges are vanquished almost as soon as they appear, which can give the feeling of a lot of stuff happening without much consequence (this is magically explained later in the novel, but that will not be satisfying for some, I presume!). The evolution of Viv’s café is also a big formulaic—from one type of coffee to two, from no pastries to one pastry to more, from tiny kitchen to large kitchen. If you’re looking for a book that goes into a realistic scenario of growing a food services business—this also probably isn’t for you (but I do highly recommend Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential to scratch that particular itch!). 

However, this is the perfect book for you if you: are looking for comfort and coziness, want a queer, low-drama romance, and/or delight in descriptions of food. I recommend it most for those who feel deeply lonely: it’s the type of book that makes you want to reach out to those around you, and that may inspire you to ask for—and allow yourself to receive—the help that you need. 

Legends & Lattes is available in the DM eBook store. So is Bookshops & Bonedust!

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Part 2: Bookshops and Bonedust

Bookshops & Bonedust is Baldree’s sophomore novel. This one starts at the beginning: we see Viv, the retired adventurer and main character of Legends & Lattes, on her very first campaign with the mercenary group Rackam's Ravens. It’s almost her last, too: she’s injured by the henchman of the necromancer Varine and just barely survives. But survive she does—only for Rackam and company to leave her in the seaside town of Murk to recuperate. Stuck in a place that takes all of about ten minutes to see (according to the innkeeper) and still healing from a thigh wound that requires dreadful amounts of bedrest, Viv’s worried that she might go crazy from boredom before Rackam comes to fetch her on their way back from hunting Varine—if they come back for her at all.

But while in Murk, Viv builds a community through her small acts of kindness. She befriends Fern, a rattakin who inherited her father’s slowly dying bookshop, her gryphet Potroas (for whom I would die)t, and a taciturn orc carpenter named Pitts. She also finds something more than friendship with Maylee, the local baker and a former adventurer herself. Readers of Legends & Lattes may also remember the name of Gallina, who appears in Bookshops & Bonedust as a young and somewhat annoying gnome desperate to be taken seriously enough to join a mercenary group. 

This book is also a great option for those who found Legends & Lattes a little bit too low-stakes but are on the lookout for cozy fantasy. It’s still definitely not a book that will set your heart racing at every turn of the page, but it does manage to keep a low level of concern throughout for what Varine the necromancer is up to, and has a greater antagonist arc than L&L managed. I appreciated how everything came together, both in the more mundane aspects of the plot as well as in the larger “BBEG” sense of the story. (With that being said, if you’re looking for a realistic Bookstore Simulator™, this isn’t the book for you—no mentions of consignment or returnability to be found here!)

Ultimately, this book is about much more than adventure and magic. At its core, it’s about what it means to connect with others and to trust them; it also thrums with Baldree’s love for stories. Fern teaches Viv to love reading; she does so not with force or snobbery, but by trying to understand who Viv is and what will make her, not Fern, and not anyone else, happiest. Bookshops and Bonedust also considers the price of friendship and what it means to stay in a place temporarily, including what we owe those who care for us when we’re just passing through their lives. It’s a deeply touching book, and, in the end, encourages the reader to take chances and connect with the world around them, just like Legends & Lattes did. 

Also like Legends & Lattes, this is a book for those who want something cozy and comforting; who love books about books; who are looking for quiet queer romance; and—of course—who want to learn more about Viv, the wonderful orc of the first installment of this series. 

You can find both Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust in the DM eBook store!

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian SFFH writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, an Ignyte and Shirley Jackson award-winning magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

 
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TL;DR: The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu is the first book of the War Arts Saga trilogy. Set in a secondary world inspired by wuxia, it's an exhilarating, action-packed start to a very promising series. It’s perfect for fans of subverted tropes and wuxia/martial arts, and readers who enjoyed The Stormlight Archive, She Who Became the Sun, and The Unbroken. 

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The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu follows the story of a Chosen One: Jian, who has been foretold to defeat The Eternal Khan, a warlord from the adjoining Katuia nation, and lead the Zhuun nation to victory by a five-hundred-year-old prophecy. But when Taishi, an old, ornery, one-armed war arts master, goes to check on Jian's training, what she finds is a spoiled, petulant boy taught so many different styles that he has learned nothing at all. Worse, news of the Eternal Khan of Katuia's death arrives soon after she does. The prophecy is broken, and Taishi must help Jian flee for his life from the political machinations of the dukes of Zhuun.

The premise of the series is an excellent subversion of the Chosen One trope as well as an absolute love letter to wuxia, a martial arts genre typically set in ancient China. The magic that features in this story is martial-arts-based; specifically, individuals have an inner energy (jing) that they can learn to master with training (as an aside, I think that the jing here is the same as the one of traditional Chinese medicine, making up the Three Treasures along with qi and shen. Based on my limited knowledge, I think qi is used more frequently; I’d love to hear why the author went with jing here instead). Many schools of martial arts exist, each with different jing-based abilities. For example, Taishi's school is Windwhisper, which lets her manipulate air currents to attack, defend, and—most excellently—fly using her jing. There are some other fantasy elements in the story, such as reincarnation, but it's all generally more subtle than, for example, channeling in The Wheel of Time; I would say it's much more similar to books like She Who Became the Sun, which has limited magic but still feels very much like a fantasy novel.

I absolutely loved reading this book, especially with Taishi as the point of view character. She's no-nonsense; she's highly skilled and knows it and yet, people continue to underestimate her both because of her age and because of her physical disability—one of her arms does not work. She's the kind of character I would be thrilled to see more of in fantasy. In fact, I loved her so much that I was deeply disappointed to learn that there would be other POV characters in the book! I didn't much care to enter Jian's head at first, since Chu manages to make him so deeply irritating from the start; the book also follows the stories of Salimande, an elite Katuia warrior and one of the Wills of the Khan, and Qisami, a ruthless, sardonic, and deeply chaotic bounty hunter I kept picturing as Awkwafina for some reason. 

While I was initially disappointed to be breaking away from Taishi, the multiple perspectives in the book let us get a much deeper, fuller picture of the world, especially the conflict between Zhuun and Katuia and all of the political forces at work. Katuia itself is a fascinating culture; they are a nomadic people within the Grass Sea, a dangerous land of monstrously large grass and ever-shifting landscape. The culture appears to be steampunk-esque, with moving cities that rely heavily on machinery and, I think, steam. Without giving anything away, I really can't wait to see how the world and all the people within it grow and change over the next two books; one of the final scenes of the novel has me more excited for a sequel than I’ve been since I can remember.

Furthermore, the reader sees a promising start to Jian’s evolution as a character, from annoying child-warrior who needs to learn something of the real world to… well, not a hero, not yet, but someone with the potential to be. I appreciate Chu’s restraint in not making Jian the golden boy right away and—to my great surprise, given my initial distaste for him—I’m excited to see how the character I genuinely found deeply annoying grows. 

The one thing I'll note: while the book was full of both tension and action, I did feel it sagged a bit in the middle. This might partially be my fault—I got absolutely knocked out by COVID when I was about two-thirds the way through and didn't pick this book back up for two weeks—but there is also some amount of setup and moving about in the middle of the book that slows the pace down. If you feel yourself getting a bit bogged in the details, I highly urge you to keep going—the parts that felt a bit unnecessary for me when I was reading them are, I think, going to be major parts in the next books, and I'm really excited to see where they go. 

I've been really hesitant about committing to series for the last little while, especially when it comes to long books (The Art of Prophecy clocks in at 528 pages in the hardcover edition, which is on the shorter side of "tome length", but still a big time investment!), but I find myself so excited to keep going with this trilogy. And, I was thrilled to learn while preparing this review, the series has been optioned for television, with The Wheel of Time's very own Uta Briesewitz set to direct. No word yet on the series premiere, but the next two books in the series are coming out in 2023 and 2024 so you don't have to worry about unpredictable years of waiting between the books after you start the series.
In all, I give my highest recommendation for this book, especially for anyone who is looking for an awesome, action-packed martial arts fantasy with multiple strong female leads. It's perfect for fans of She Who Became the Sun and The Unbroken, as well as those who enjoyed The Stormlight Archive with its sprawling world and battle scenes. And if you don’t know if any of those things are up your alley, trust me and give this book a chance. I’d love to hear what you think.
 

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

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TL;DR: The First Binding by R. R. Virdi is a South-Asian-inspired epic fantasy that builds heavily on the traditions of Tolkien, Rothfuss, and Jordan to create something startlingly original. Recommended for fans of The Kingkiller Chronicles and She Who Became the Sun. The first book in the Tales of Tremaine series, it’s a promising start to a complex, intriguing world.

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The First Binding is a hefty book, clocking in at over 800 pages. Those who are familiar with the genre will immediately recognize the structure of The Kingkiller Chronicles: a figure shrouded in magic and conflicting legends, myths, and tales tells—we think—his true story.

And that story is something. Ari, our protagonist, is now known as simply the Storyteller: a magician who wanders the world telling stories with hefty doses of magic both in them, and used in the performances thereof. Yet he once was an orphan working in the understage of a theater in the bustling city of Keshum. He knew nothing of his family or past, but does know stories: the legends of the creation of the world and the great heroes of lore, which are inspired from Hindu mythology/cosmology. It is clear how much the author loves both his source material and storytelling in general, and how deeply meaningful both are to him. Early on in the novel, Ari says: "I don't know if you're aware of what it's like to be deprived of your past, your parents. The idea that there is nothing connecting you to anyone in this world apart from your work. There is a certain hollowness, singular and all encompassing [sic], that fills you. The notion that you are all that is—nothing more—and when you're not much on your own, it's a rather crushing thing." (p.89). The manner in which Virdi weaves stories-within-stories-within-stories in this book is an absolute pleasure both in how they snuck up on me as a reader and how well they fit both the narrative and the philosophy: that a story, fuzzy as it is, is both identity and truth. 

Eventually, Ari encounters magic for the first time. When a Binder arrives at the theater, he learns not just that magic exists, but that he may learn it, too. In this world, magic is enacted through five pairs of Bindings, where each member of a pair acts as counterbalancing force to the other. These bindings are controlled by the "folds" of the mind—a compounding of your thoughts to create your own version of the world, reminiscent of the Mythbusters' quip of "I reject your reality and substitute my own." More folds result in stronger magic, or a stronger counterbalancing: if I use six folds to lob a stone at your head and you use eight to imagine yourself dodging it, then you will be safe; less, and you will probably end up with a lump on your forehead. Before Ari can learn any of the Bindings, he must learn the folds; before he can learn the folds, he must learn to settle his mind. The exercises he is first set to—the candle and flame—are strongly reminiscent of the flame and void that Tam teaches Rand in The Wheel of Time. Ari is promised the opportunity to study at a magic school named the Ashram if he works hard with his new teacher.

And he wants to learn: 

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"I knew what I really wanted in life. To birth my own flame. To understand fire and shape it the way it once had been eons ago. I didn't want to play in a story. I wanted to be the story. A legend in my own right. 

A child's ambition knows no bounds. And a man or woman who holds to that can go on to do great or horrible things." (p. 121)

 

Yet, before Ari can do so, tragedy strikes and he must put of his dreams of the Ashram a little bit longer. Perhaps the most marvelous part of this story is not the magic system (which I greatly enjoy), but the combination of Ari’s absolute determination to survive and succeed and his utter inability to hold his tongue—to the point of seeming to have a death wish at times. He's reminiscent of Matrim Cauthon in that sense: someone you can't help rooting for despite the fact that you're certain you'd want to thwap him over the head if you had to spend any time with him in person.

His personality is also perfect for the magic that exists in the world: he is hungry and ambitious in a way that I felt in my bones; he wants more viscerally than almost any character I’ve ever encountered. And that means that he lives on the edge of a knife. “There is a cost to magic—old magic especially,” a teacher tells him. “If you wish to enforce your will on the world, shape it—shift it—make it—break it, what do you think will be the cost, hm? If you wish to affect it, do you think you will be spared its effects on you? There. Are. Costs.” (p. 573). As Ari comes closer and closer to wielding magic as a child, the reader feels the tension rising, knowing that he can’t possibly fathom the costs and that there is a very real chance that he might not think about them until it’s too late. 

Though I found myself breathlessly reading many parts of this book, I do have to note that it was a very slow start for me. While it seems many readers found the prose compelling from the first page, I found it somewhat overdramatic; it eventually settles into competent, very readable writing. In larger part, however, I found Virdi's writing of female characters deeply irritating in a way that was reminiscent of the most outdated parts of The Wheel of Time —a gender essentialism that feels forced and unnecessary and like it belongs in the 1980s/90s. In the “present tense” sections of the book, Ari spends almost the entire time telling the story of his childhood to Eloine, the singer/temptress/’broken thing’ our narrator meets in the first chapters of the book. I flipped to a random page to draw an example: this isn’t the most egregious one I could remember, but it is representative: 

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"She had a point. Most women always do. But it can be a terrible danger to let them know you know that." (p. 45)

By this point, I had already annotated "omg, stopppp" in the margin: so many of these interactions feel so cliché that is seems the author is either trying to parody classic fantasy works or prove his own maturity in matters of romance. Eloine is at times coy, at times humourous, at times wounded—but only quietly so, hinting at trauma without ever speaking of it. In general, the various women in Ari's life all feel insufficient, foils for his experience and learning rather than true characters on their own (though, to be fair, many of the male characters are treated in the same way: Ari is, above all, a self-centered figure out of the need to survive).

Most importantly, all the past sections of this book (let's say about 500 pages of the total text) are told directly by Ari to Eloine, within the first few days of meeting, while hearing barely anything of her story—which translates to about thirteen hours of speech on Ari's part. The idea of listening to a monologue that long from a person I just met, regardless of gender, is truly horrifying and often pushed my suspension of disbelief to the point of breaking. If I hadn't promised to review this book, I would have likely given up within the first fifty pages, as many folks on GoodReads seem to have done.

But, I pushed on—and I’m glad I did. At page 97, I finally found myself pulled deeply into the world. My interest waxed and waned throughout; I inhaled the past tense and found myself often trudging through the present. Ultimately, however, I found myself so compelled by the magic system and the setting that I fell in love with the world. 

And, I suppose, Virdi would quote his book right back at me for my gripes:"[i]t's a horrible thing when someone asks for a story and isn't willing to patiently sit through it and listen" (p. 129). This one required a lot of patience for me; for others, I’m certain it will be a breeze. 

Above all, I believe that what he is trying to do is something excellent: pull something new into fantasy. It builds on familiar foundations while drawing from a well of tradition that has been underrepresented in fantasy. I am deeply curious about the life that Ari leads and how he ends up growing, changing, learning, suffering, loving, losing. If the “present tense” of the story were written as engrossingly as the “past tense” section, I would unquestionably continue on this series and await the next book eagerly. As it stands, I am mildly hesitant but overall hopeful and look forward to seeing where Virdi goes with Book 2.

I recommend The First Binding for any reader hungry for an epic fantasy that builds on the tradition of the ‘classic’ greats like Jordan, Rothfuss, and Martin while integrating South Asian lore. I most heartily encourage curious readers to give it a try. I hope to see this trilogy become successful—I want more stories like this one in the world, and I think Virdi is a strong early voice to build on this branch of the genre.

The First Binding is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!

Reviewer Note: Quotations are pulled from the ARC of The First Binding; they may have been updated in the final version of the book.

 Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

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TL;DR: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas is a chilling, genre-bending gothic novel set in the wake of Mexico's War of Independence. Chock full of twists, it's a perfect read for anyone looking for a breathless read, including fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James.

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This column is usually about fantasy. But in late May, I told Jason that I really, really wanted to yell about this new horror book, and could I pretty please do so.

He obliged.

Readers, I am so excited to tell you about The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. Pitched as Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca, it tells the story of Beatriz, a young woman whose father was killed in the War of Independence. She and her mother can only find shelter with the disapproving Tío Sebastián and his cruel wife, Tía Fernanda. Beatriz knows her prospects are meager and dimming with every day she stays with her mother’s family, and so, she flees in the only way she can think of: by marrying Rodolfo, a mysterious young widower with an estate far from the city.

He spirits her away to his hacienda, San Isidro—and from the first moments, Beatriz realizes that this place is not what she thought it would be. The land is arid; the house is in disrepair; and nobody seems to have any kindness to offer her.

Soon, whispers begin to follow her. 

It is a standard haunted house narrative in that a person is trapped in a house first by their own hand, and then by the situation they have created, and they must learn to fight it lest it destroy them. Cañas captures the crescendo of the experience nicely, beginning with innocuous happenings and slowly bringing the reader and Beatriz herself to realize just how much danger she is in—and just how alone she is in her plight. Even as she finds an ally—more on him in a second—the house has ways of isolating individuals, speaking or acting only towards one person to further undermine their sense of self and leave the reader anxiously awaiting what will happen next. For those looking for an excellent spooky read, this will scratch all the itches you have.

But! The Hacienda weaves in so much more depth to the story. Like a typical Gothic novel, Cañas explores the horrors of societal expectations surrounding gender, leaving Beatriz stuck in dangerous situations because of social conventions, expectations, or simply because she is not seen as worth helping. However, the novel also focuses on classism and colorism, how dangerous and impossible power imbalances can be for the disenfranchised individual, religious zealots/pharisees, and the shape and impact of political revolutions. Each of the subplots and the themes they explore weave together into the main plot in a masterful way, making the story feel rich and complete. Perhaps my favourite part of the novel is one of the quieter question that many haunted house stories stop short of asking, let alone answering: what does it mean to find safe harbour after the violence and chaos of everything else that has passed? You’ll have to read and find Cañas’ proposed answer. 

Although I loved the book, I do want to note that the beginning read a little slow to me. This was in part because of the shifting perspectives. The appeal of gothic fiction to me rests, in part, from only seeing it through one person's eyes—especially as that person begins to question everything that happens and, eventually, their own sanity. To see the world through another character's lens was strange at first; it felt almost like cheating because I could see pieces of the puzzle I didn't feel like I should have access to yet. Perhaps because of this, I didn't initially click with the other point-of-view character: Andrés, a young witch who had grown up in San Isidro before fleeing into priesthood to avoid being caught by the Inquisition, and Beatriz's primary ally throughout the book.

If you find yourself in this position, I implore you to continue reading through it. Trust me: this book has one of the most perfect endings I have seen in a novel and it works primarily because of the dual perspective. I spent the last hundred and fifty pages curled motionless in an armchair; it feels like it's meant to be finished in one breathless sitting. I had already planned to recommend the book, but it was its ending that cemented the novel. 

Additionally, I also found Andrés' perspective growing on me throughout the story because it allowed me to learn about the house's past through a perspective that feels unique to horror. So often, houses are described as evil from the start, or not remembered as anything else. But Andrés shows us the love one can feel for a home that is now haunted and broken:

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"The house had more moods than a swallow had feathers. I was fond of its peevish spells; its impatient creaks and groaning inspired an urge in me to pat its side affectionately as I would a stubborn but lovable mule. As a child I knew this ancient house of spirits was unlike anything else I had ever seen. Now, after having stepped through the doorways of countless old houses, I knew it was unique." (p. 176)

There is something both magical and heartbreaking in seeing San Isidro through past and present, and witnessing the growth and change of Andrés and his power as well. His homecoming brings to mind the first moments of Rand's reunion with someone he thinks at first is a stranger at the Stone of Tear—long-awaited, desperately needed, and, in its initial moments, shockingly brutal. By providing two perspectives for the story, Cañas evolves the book beyond its Gothic roots, allowing her to address larger questions of home, family, and trust in ways that could not have occurred otherwise.

I absolutely loved this book and recommend it wholeheartedly for anyone who wants a delightfully chilling read. Cañas uncanny ability to weave the social realities of Beatriz's world into the supernatural horrors of the book makes the world feel lived in and real, rendering the things that go bump in the night that little bit scarier. I hope you love it as much as I did.

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

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TL,DR: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake is a fast-paced, high-tension magical mystery perfect for those who dream of having the knowledge of the world at their fingertips. The first in a series, it sets up a large, twisted world that will keep the reader guessing throughout. Especially recommended for fans of dark academia (such as The Secret History, Ace of Spades, or The Magicians) and authors like V. E. Schwab and Leigh Bardugo. 

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I came into The Atlas Six knowing too much about it, though I'd only read the publisher's blurb. Thus, my first recommendation to you is: if you haven't read The Atlas Six yet, put this review away and go read it now. Not the Goodreads summary; not the jacket copy; not this review. Just read the book.

Still here? Need a little more?

All right: in a version of our world where magic exists in the open, once a decade, six of the world's most talented magicians are selected for the chance to become members of the Alexandrian Society. Entrance to the Society will allow a magician to access knowledge beyond their wildest dreams—but they must make it through a year of study, first.
Now, if you haven't read it yet, I beg you: go away.

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The remainder of this review won't include spoilers, but will touch on aspects of the novel that may be better savoured while reading, so please tread carefully.

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake follows six of the world's most powerful, unique magicians: Libby Rhodes and Nico Ferrer de Varona, bitter rivals who can manipulate physical matter; Parisa Kamali, a telepath and seductress; Reina Mori, an historian with a difficult relationship with plants; Tristan Caine, an ambitious businessman with a penchant for seeing through illusions; and Callum Nova, a calculating trust fund baby who always gets what he wants. Each is recruited by a mysterious figure named Atlas, the Caretaker of the Alexandrian Society, which these six now have the chance to join. There's a catch, though: only five will become full members, and each candidate will have that year to prove they should be selected.

The novel is an excellent blend of suspense, action, and drama. It uses the mystery of a secret society to its fullest potential; while the six initiates are able to access the library of the Alexandrian Society, for example, they are not able to access all of the books—their requests can be denied, and frequently are. That both the characters and reader have the sense of seeing just a sliver of the whole is incredibly enticing and also serves the book well as a set-up to a series. 

The magic system is also exquisite, in that it is unknowable without being unbelievable. Each magician—the most powerful of whom are called medeians—has a specialty, which can range across fields from physical (manipulating fire) to mental (telepathy) and, presumably, anything in between. The vast landscape of the possible with magic means that the author can throw any number of twists at the reader effortlessly; Blake's talent lies in the fact that none of them feel like deus ex machina. None of the characters understand the true extent of magic's power or abilities, and so, even as they use their various skills and knowledge to help and hinder each other, they are constantly surprised by what they can do. The constant delight in learning what else is possible kept me reading, mostly in one sitting, so if you're going to pick up this book, I recommend clearing your calendar.

Throughout, the author also challenge's the tropes of the genre in which she is writing. I find it easy to get swept away in stories like this one: it's too easy to imagine myself as a powerful magician selected for a secret society where I'll have the world's knowledge at my fingertips. So easy, in fact, that I don't think to question too much of what the Society does, and the answers that it provides on its history—that it was founded to preserve the knowledge of the Library at Alexandria before it was burned—is enough. Yet the author managed to pull me up short without ruining my immersion: early on, the reader learns of the existence of societies "not unlike" the Alexandrian (p. 107), some of which believe "that knowledge should not be carefully stored, but freely distributed" and "greatly misunderstood" the work that the Alexandrian Society does. Later, the initiates make a discovery but do not share it with a greater world based on Atlas' oft-repeated warning: "most forms of knowledge [are] better reserved until it [is] certain that such revelations [won't] be abused" (p. 118). My spidey senses were tingling: these are colonialist talking points so frequently repeated by the British Museum and its ilk. While we don't wrestle with this too much in The Atlas Six, I hope (and trust) that we'll get to it thoroughly later on.

As quickly as I devoured the first half of the book, I found my interest waning later on—not because the book loses steam or control of its plot, but because the world grows vaster in a way that I had suspected it might, but hoped it wouldn’t. To be clear, that isn’t to say that the evolution is bad; it’s just that the risk posed by an opportunity of such vastness means that there will be a squillion plot possibilities, not a single one of which will make all the readers happy, but only one of which the author can choose and still write a cohesive story. I think I’m probably the one reader who was hoping for the story to go in a different way—and I'm still planning to keep reading the series and look forward to The Atlas Paradox's release in October 2022. There’s just too many questions that I want answered to not keep going.

In summary, The Atlas Six is a fantastic, fast-paced read for fans of dark academia, libraries, and twisty-turny plots. I recommend it wholeheartedly and look forward to continuing the series. 

The Atlas Six is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!

 
Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.
 

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 TL;DR: The Starless Crown by James Rollins weaves together multiple storylines into a tapestry about family in all its forms, nature, and surviving foretold doom. The book's strength lies in its interest in humans' relationship with nature and is a good match for anyone looking for plot-heavy science fantasy.

Please note: This review contains very mild spoilers (first ~15% of the book). The spoilers are marked in the text and should be easy to skip.

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The Starless Crown by James Rollins is a long book by any count; clocking in at about 560 pages, it felt longer in the reading.

Part of this is the complexity of the tale. The author chooses four primary point-of-view characters: a young, blind student named Nyx; a thief who stumbles upon an alchemical secret while escaping the mines in which he has been imprisoned; a wayward prince living in the shadow of his older and evermore talented twin brother; and a knight who has broken his oaths. The author takes a page from Robert Jordan—whom he thanks in the acknowledgements—by adding in further, smaller POVs.

The pacing of the novel is as rapidfire as its shifts between narrators. I hadn't heard of the author before, but his publications seem to tend to the thriller genre, and this influence is clear. The story moves along with constant twists and turns; there is no situation that can't possibly get worse. There is death, violence, and betrayal; anything that can go wrong, will, especially in the case of our mainest main character, Nyx. 

Because of the combination of points of view and breakneck pace, I found it difficult to root myself in the book and feel like I was a part of the world. The signposts of the worldbuilding were certainly interesting; the action takes place on a planet called Urth, whose denizens worship the Father Above (the Sun); the Mother Below (the Urth); and the Son and Daughter (the faces of the moon). One part of the Urth is eternally in shadow, the other eternally in light: as you may have guessed, the world is a tidally locked Earth—and, as we learn throughout the story, a planet that natural catastrophe is yet to truly strike.

The question of humans' ability to understand and control nature is central to the book. Most clearly, this appears as the central Big Bad of the book: convincing other humans that this natural disaster will come to pass—and all of the politicking that goes along with that—and then deciding how to act in the face of impending doom. However, throughout the novel, natural phenomena feature as impediments at least as frequently as other humans do. Animals have evolved into unfamiliar and often dangerous beasts; there are few scenes in the wilderness, and even among civilization, that don't feature an animal behaving in an unexpected way. Some characters have unusual and deeply special links with various creatures—and even of the protagonists that don't, we still see an overarching care for other living things: cognizance of never hunting more than their allotted share; pain at the suffering one's actions bring. 

In spite of this theme, which intrigued me deeply, I found myself wanting more as I read. While the world had a lot of potential, I was ultimately left unsatisfied by how much is unchanged between our current society and this world's—not because I was looking for a utopia, but because it made the world feel incomplete. For example, young women are expected to be virgins to enter their Ninth Year at the Cloistery, but young men are not; the reason for this is unclear, aside from being a familiar callback to our own society's puritanical values. 

In addition, certain fantasy tropes are also inserted into the story without due consideration, and often pulled me from immersion in the book. For example, a character named Pratik, who was imprisoned only to make another character's life more difficult, is described:
 

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 "...as if a shadow had been given form, a sculpture of polished ebonwood. ... He had been stripped naked, except for the collar of iron forged around his neck. His black skin, from buttock to shoulder, bore a map of white scars from the bite of whips. [... He] turned, revealing eyes of a mesmerizing violet—along with a feature unique to the Chaaen. Between his legs was nothing but a tuft of hair and a mutilation." (p.190)

 

A POC-coded character defined by the violence done to his body is suboptimal at best, even without the cliché of uniquely coloured eyes. Furthermore, the society from which this character comes is described as cruel and bloodthirsty, but the character's face is "placid, as if he had accepted such cruelties as part of life." His ‘goodness’ is signaled by this stoicism and further emphasized by Pratik’s response when a character accidentally causes a number of Pratik’s countrymen’s death: "Despite the tragic outcome, there was wisdom in your plan." (p. 193) This benign goodness flattens everything that Pratik could be and places him as one-dimensional support. At best, these descriptions and character choices are thoughtless regurgitation of antiquated tropes; at worst, it’s something far more harmful. I’m still not sure if the author’s use of the phrase “noble savagery” (p. 246) was ironic or oblivious or had some other intent. This uncertainty isn't comforting. 

All told, it feels as if this book was written with an eye to diversity without wanting to engage in what diversity means. This goes beyond race and gender. It is somewhat rare, for example, to see disabled protagonists in fantasy; thus, I was really excited to follow Nyx's story. A seventh year student in her town's monastery, Nyx is visually impaired: though not fully blind, she has never seen more than the shadows of the world around her. 

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I was surprised—and not a little disappointed—to discover that she's miraculously cured early on in the book. While her healing reveals something for the larger plot, her disability felt a little like a dangled carrot that got quickly snatched away (I will note here: while I can’t see more than a foot in front of me without my glasses, I am not blind myself). 

As an aside, her new sight also draws larger sociopolitical issues to mind without fully resolving them. For example, the head of the Cloistery where Nyx studies, Prioress Ghyle, is "darkly complexioned, her skin far darker than Nyx had imagined" (p.72) —yet there's nothing in the world of the book that suggests this might be surprising and why. It felt more like the author's hand drawing the reader's eye to racial representation in the book than a natural elucidation of social structures in the book's world.

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Lastly, this book felt like it needed another editing pass. In some parts, the prose is purple and rhythmless, so focused on using a thesaurus for each word that the sentences lose their poetry; in others, it's jarringly direct ("She was shapely of form and generous of bosom", p. 336). Often, a word is repeated multiple times within a sentence or two. While these certainly aren't dealbreakers—and only came to mind in some parts of the book—readers who are particularly sensitive to language may want to come into this story with their loins girded. 

Ultimately, this book did not rise to its promise on the jacket copy: this is not “a fantasy series unlike any attempted before.” It doesn’t feel like it’s tried covered much new ground at all. Still, there are images in the world building—the grandiosity of the structures; the overwhelmingness of nature—that will appeal to certain types of readers, especially those who want a lot of plot decorated with a lot of pretty things. It will be particularly enjoyable for those who love a good bit of wilderness in their stories. 

The Starless Crown is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

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TL,DR: Mordew by Alex Pheby is a grim, subversive fantasy about a young boy, Nathan, who lives in the slums of the eponymous city and bears a magical Spark. It's a solid read for those who aren't looking for a lighthearted escape, who are comfortable with stories that don't give all the answers and are told at an emotional distance.

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  Mordew is a hefty first entry of the Cities of the Weft trilogy written by Alex Pheby. It follows Nathan Treeves, a young boy living in Mordew with his mother and very sick father. The world-building is gloriously grimy, reminiscent of the cover itself: all grays and grimness. Living Mud coats the streets of the slums that Nathan calls home; this mud can spontaneously create mutated-looking creatures called dead-life that may or may not remain viable. At the start of the book, we see Nathan wading into the Circus on the west side of Mordew to 'fish' for self-sustaining dead-life: anything he might sell to purchase the medicine his father needs. Nathan can Spark—call up some sort of wild magic from deep within himself—and, in spite of his father's command never to do so, uses this ability to find one such creature. It is "a bundle of infant limbs—arms, legs, hands, feet—a tangle of wriggling living parts" (p.23) made even more horrific by Nathan's cavalier attitude towards it. He sticks it into his bag and trots off to sell it; such abominations are commonplace in this world.

The services of the medicine woman he purchases with the money from the sale is insufficient. Thus, in order to pay for her husband's medicine, Nathan's mother sends her only son to the mysterious Master who rules over the city in hopes that Nathan will be chosen—for what? Nobody really knows, but needs must: a consistent refrain of Mordew.

A sense of hopelessness runs throughout the story and never truly goes away; this isn't a book—or, presumably, a series—made for happy endings or shiny, escapist magic. Just as Nathan fights constantly for his own survival and that of his father, so too does the Master of Mordew fight a seemingly eternal war against the Mistress of Malarkoi, who sends Firebirds to break the city's walls. There is little room for love or joy in these pages, so if that's something you're looking for, then this isn't the novel for you. 

It also isn't for readers who want all the answers. The book begins with a very clear warning: to take care in referencing the glossary, which clocks in at over 100 pages long, as it contains information that the protagonist doesn't know; and that "perhaps the ideal reader of Mordew is one who understands that they, like Nathan Treeves (its hero), are not possessed of all knowledge of all things at all times. They progress through life in a state of imperfect certainty and know that their curiosity will not always be satisfied immediately (if ever)" (p.7). 

My memory isn't the best, so I'd forgotten those cautionary words by the time I was a bit into the book. It wasn't until I rediscovered it that I felt like I understood the author's intent. To put it plainly, the reading experience, after the first few pages, feels like one is observing the action through a thick pane of glass. Nathan's feelings are, for the most part, inaccessible, though the reader follows him closely throughout the story. This often felt frustrating, as the character's reactions and motivations were, for the most part, opaque. For example, one character dies in a fall, seemingly pushed by another who had already shown rather suspicious tendencies. Nathan and an accomplice conclude that they have to confront the "pusher" to understand what happened, rather than dismiss them as a traitor. While this might certainly be a reasonable reaction, especially given the child in question is a lonesome one who might be desperate to cling to any semblance of friendship, it felt like it was left up to the reader to ascribe motive and rationale to the actions rather than truly understanding them. The same is true of Prissy, the book's primary love interest: Nathan's devotion to her is clear, but it's hard to understand why it exists and, thus, to truly feel it.

At first, I thought this might be because the author was hesitant to write the inner monologue of an impoverished thirteen-year-old boy—which seems somewhat understandable, given how a combination of desperation and Big Teenage Feelings might be hard to do without veering into the maudlin. But I think, given the introductory warning, it's a more purposeful move on the part of the author. The narrator itself seems to confirm this by not being as close a third person as one might initially expect; at least twice, the book reveals moments that "Nathan saw none of" (p. 380) but that the reader has clearly witnessed. It's unclear who, in fact, is telling us the story—one character is conscripted to help with a task, but "he was sworn to secrecy on the matter, so no more will be said of this." The magic system, too, is tenuous at best, the reader's knowledge of it as patchy as Nathan's. The book is a consistent exercise in incomplete information, whether on the part of the characters or the reader.

Ultimately, this construct doesn't work for me simply because it doesn't give me the emotional investment that I (personally) need as a reader. Being on the outside like this makes it feel like I am seeing the hand of the author too clearly, like he is moving chess pieces around on a board in order to progress the plot in a way that he deems fit. I was drawn to the beginning of the novel, yet felt myself dragging through the vast majority of the rest of it, with the exception of several sections. Indeed, the word that stuck out to me most at the start of the novel was "purpose"; the text questioned what function a machine, or a chain, or some other object performed, often without providing an answer. The author appears intent on subverting the idea of purpose. You can't truly know what function everything in the world has, and thus you can't know what you're doing or what effect it'll have on the future. There's a potential pointlessness to everything our hero does, then, that speaks to an existential ennui. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly not for everyone, and it wasn't what I needed or wanted two years into a pandemic. Still, the ending of the book felt immensely satisfying in that I understood, I think, what the author wanted to achieve, and I believe that he achieved it. Teasing apart what in the novel worked for me and what didn't was deeply delightful in and of itself, and even though I don't plan to continue reading the series, I'm glad that I pushed through.

At my most judgmental point of reading, I might have said that this book is one for those insecure about loving genre, who need to prove to themselves or others that fantasy can be 'literary' in the way that any depressing story seems to be when contrasted with a joyful one. But I think that does Mordew a disservice: it is a book for those who realize that, if magic were real, not every story would culminate in a satisfying hero's arc complete with enlightenment. We might begin in hopeless circumstances with no guidance, leaving us to use our adolescent imaginations as best we can to figure out what to do and take our beatings when we get it wrong. It isn't satisfying, per se, but it is an exploration that might provide a sort of pleasure to a certain sort of reader. For those intrigued by such a premise, I recommend Mordew heartily. 

Mordew is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.

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TL; DR: A Marvellous Light is a delightful Edwardian fantasy and the first in a series. Centered around a murder and a mysterious curse and heavily interspersed with both humour and steamy scenes, it’s perfect for fans of Sorcerer to the Crown, Magic for Liars, and Silver in the Wood.  

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A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske is set in Edwardian England where magic exists, but is a secret kept by those who can use it. Robin Blyth—decidedly not a magician—is thrust into what seems to be a dead-end government job as a minor act of social revenge, only to learn that he has become a liaison between the magical and non-magical worlds since his predecessor disappeared two weeks before. It is there he meets Edwin Courcey, a gentleman from a long magical line who has very little power for himself. When Robin is cursed by a man wearing a mask made of shadows, Edwin takes it upon himself to lift it before it’s too late. 

There are dozens of books set in some historical version of England, so starting this story can feel like donning a particularly cozy sweater that you’ve owned for many years. While there’s a certain delight in familiar tropes, it can be hard to make these kinds of stories feel fresh. What really sold me on this particular one was the way magic is described in the books. Using it relies on “cradling” one’s spells using one’s hands. Children learn to do this using string, much like one might play a game like cat’s cradle; most adults dispense with the aid. The imagery of this made me think very much of a “modern” version of channeling that one sees in The Wheel of Time. The system itself is relatively soft, with many open questions and unknowns, but there’s a decided academic bent to it: I would love, for example, to see an illustration of the system of notation used to communicate these spells.

I would also kill to be able to see the murderous hedge maze in the flesh. But not, you know, be murdered by it. That’s no fun.

The magic is immersive partially because of how mundane it is. That isn’t to say that we only see individuals stirring their coffee with a levitating spoon in the book (though that does happen); rather, throughout the course of the novel, we get to see the inventiveness of magicians in all aspects of life, whether it’s home security or afternoon games for rich young adults with nothing better to do. There’s a constant feeling of play within the magic that makes it feel a million times more desirable to me.

Interestingly, contracts and consent also play a large role in the magic system. To start, humans have been able to do magic due to a contract that’s been passed down through generations (which brings up a fascinating question around the distribution of magic: why do some children receive more magic than others, and some none at all?). But magic itself also has contractual constructs within it. For example, having a pen write by itself requires imbuing the pen with the desire to be helpful and setting out the terms and parameters of the spell; every spell seems to be a negotiation of sorts. A family setting up a home can also make a blood bond with the land using similar terms, asking it to accept them and receiving certain protections in return. Given Britain’s history of colonialism, this makes for an interesting perspective on what it means to have and own land as a magician and would certainly make for interesting inheritance-related shenanigans (could I run over to a friend’s house and claim it for my own if the land liked me better?). 

This constant focus on contracts and agreement also makes it feel utterly natural that Edwin is a particularly thoughtful romantic lead when it comes to consent. I don’t read a lot of romance, so I don’t have a strong understanding how writers have treated consent in the past, but I did appreciate how Edwin always checks for enthusiastic consent in a way that never intrudes on the scene or makes it any less steamy (I’d argue that the anticipation only adds to the effect, actually). 

On the note of romance: this book is heavy on romance, to an extent that I didn’t quite expect from the marketing, and there are scenes that made me double check that no one was reading over my shoulder on the subway. It certainly wasn’t a drawback for me—I loved every moment of Edwin and Robin’s growing relationship almost (but certainly not quite) as much as I loved Nynaeve and Lan’s storyline in Wheel of Time. A nerd and a himbo, an introvert and an extrovert, a magician and a non-magician—they balance each other out marvelously well on the page. The tenderness with which they treat each other’s differences is also particularly well rendered. One line that particularly struck me:

“You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you.”

I don’t think I’m the only one on this site who grew up loving something (like, say, a book series that’s just now becoming a TV show) and being shut down from talking about it, so hearing someone say this—even if it was a fictional character, even if it wasn’t to me—was a balm. With all this said, however: the focus of the book lies equally on them as it does the mystery of the murder and the curse, so if you’re looking for just the latter with none of the former, this might not be the right book for you. 

In sum, I read this book in two sittings and wish I had the luxury to do it in one (it would’ve been if the past few weeks hadn’t been a hellish chorus of responsibilities all coming to a head). The combination of mystery, magic, and romance was utterly enthralling and perfect for the exhaustion brought on by the end of the year/everlasting pandemic. I recommend this book heartily to anyone who enjoys historical fantasy or magical mysteries, or who is looking for a steamy queer romance. It combines the humour of Sorcerer to the Crown with the academic overtones of Magic for Liars and combination of romance and magic of Silver in the Wood.  

A Marvellous Light is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!