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The Obsidian Tower

3/5. Fantasy about the woman who is the one with apparently necromantic magic in a family of vivomancers, and what happens when the door her family has guarded for thousands of years (they have a stupid rhyme about it and everything) is opened.

I picked this up because I liked her more recent release. This has many of the same good elements: bisexual heroine, complex webs of relationships, actual politics, and interest in friendship and teamwork. But I did not like this one nearly so much. I am generally in a bad mood right now, so take this as you will, but the protag’s repeated emotional victimization by two-thirds of the people in the book (including herself), and how she takes on guilt for basically everything, and her self-sacrificing tendencies really irritated me. I imagine the arc of this trilogy will be towards better relationships and some actual self-worth but meh, I’m not along for the ride.

Content notes: Torture.

Asunder

4/5. For reasons, an isolated death speaker, who gained her powers through a deadly compact with an eldritch demon thing, gets bound at the soul to a man from another culture. Their attempts to separate take them on a long road trip across this strange fantasy world with a complicated recent political/religious history.

I liked this. It is about many kinds of joining and sundering – social, political, romantic, familial, religious. But the heart of it is the relationship that forms between two people unwillingly joined and forced to trust each other. Our protagonist is the sort who has a really hard time understanding when people are kind to her, because she’s had almost no experience of that. She doesn’t really figure it all out in this book, but she does come a long way.

I will say, there is supposed to be a sequel to this book, but my understanding is that the publisher didn’t buy it. Yet, hopefully? This got a surprise award nomination, so. But my point is, if the sequel happens, then great. If it doesn’t, then this ending is really not okay.

Content notes: Recollections of child abuse/domestic violence, a threat of . . . forced pregnancy by a demon is I guess what you’d call it.

The Last Hour Between Worlds

4/5. A single mother, just two months post-partum, gets out for one night to attend a ball in her fantasy city. Which gets complicated when the whole ballroom keeps falling through levels of reality each time the clock strikes, and when her former crush turned professional enemy, the hot lady thief, is also on the case.

This is a lot of fun, and very stylish. Visually, I mean – there’s a lot going on here with what people are wearing and carrying, and with the shifting esthetics of each layer of reality. And you know I’m in favor of adventure books about mothers, particularly very new mothers like this one.

If you’re paying even moderate amounts of attention, none of these plot twists will rock you. But they are all pleasing to unwind, as is the whole book.

Content notes: Violence, temporary character death.

A Drop of Corruption

4/5. Sequel in this fantasy biopunk Holmes & Watson universe.

One of the more successful sequels I’ve read in a long time, in the sense that this accomplishes the task of really blowing up and blowing out the world. I continue to be only middling interested in these characters (and also continue to be puzzled about why this series is first person, aside from the obvious stylistic nod). But the construction of this empire, whose people’s bodies and minds are modified in ways beyond our understanding by methods beyond their understanding, all while the leviathans come ever closer to breaking down the sea walls, is incredibly interesting to me.

I think this book is not as successful in its project of talking about kings and power structures by blood in general. It does that, but our protagonist is not really clocking the implications for his own life as an imperial subject, so it doesn’t quite come together the way intended. The first person gets in the way there, specifically, given our protagonist is not, shall we say, a political or philosophical thinker.

Still, I am way more interested in this now than I was after the first book.

Content notes: Body modification and body horror, threats of infection/contamination.

The Tomb of Dragons

4/5. Third book in this series about a – call him a cleric, I guess -- who can speak to the dead.

This series continues to grow on me. Our protagonist is deeply wounded before we ever meet him, and his glacial progress is not so much towards healing as simply acknowledging the pain he is in. These books resist catharsis almost entirely, which I appreciate. Also recommended if you enjoy the trope of ‘rather darling protagonist does not know he is darling, goes around being confused when people like him.’

I do continue to be confused by many of her pacing choices. These books are often of the ‘and then the thing, and then the other thing’ style where there aren’t A and B plots so much as six largely unrelated things rattling around at the same time. I am fine with this until I’m not. See me going oh, come on! when we had a side quest at 95% of the way into this book.

On the plus, Maia cameo! If you know you know.

Metal from Heaven

4/5. Where do I even start? The problem is, attempting to describe this book will make it sound like something you have read before, and I assure you that is incorrect. An industrial fantasy about labor rights and queerness in which our narrator survives a massacre of her factory-working family who dared to strike for better working conditions, including some help for what the fantasy metal they are working with is doing to their kids.

This book has the distinction of containing more lesbians by volume than anything else I’ve ever read. And they’re all—

I was about to say that they are all feral. Which they are. But it would be truer to say that this whole book is feral. It will eat your ideas of good narrative structure and spit out the bones. It is absolutely ungovernable. Punk without the self-consciousness. Bloody and messy and incredibly queer. If you try and shove this book’s ideas of gender or sexuality into a box, the box will implode.

Challenging, frustrating, interesting, different. A giant splatter of a book. A roar of a book. It does revenge and industrial fantasy and fantasy of manners and queer liberation, and there’s a whole section in the middle that gives big Gideon the Ninth vibes. Is it good? I mean, yes, but also no, but also you are asking the wrong question.

Anyway, I liked it, though I suspect this one will be divisive.

Content notes: A lot of violence.

Bitter Medicine

3.5/5. Urban romantasy about two fae-blooded people (well, technically she’s descended from a Chinese medicine god and he’s a half-elf), one a talented artist and magician, the other a sort of enforcer cursed with a terrible reputation and an actual curse.

I liked this ~~even though it’s het~~. The emotional beats are complex and thoughtful, and the writing is pleasant. Also, it’s so nice to have a romantasy about goddamn adults, you know? I mean, in this case they are both over a hundred, so they’d better be by now, but you know how it is.

Marking down for that thing where, if I poke the worldbuilding, it doesn’t so much poke back as jiggle alarmingly. There are fundamental facts about how this fantastical modern world works that I do not understand at all. So just go in with those senses turned down and you’ll have a good time, kay?

Content notes: Violence, magically-enforced obedience, shitty parents

Malice

2/5. Chonker epic fantasy that is the first of four books about a prophesied god war where the avatar of good will fight the avatar of evil. Yeah, you’ve heard this one before.

The booktube girls got me again. They love this. I do not.

Partly, sure it’s the women problem. This book has many points-of-view. They are all men except for one, who is a girl but wait, come back, it’s fine, she’s not like other girls, you see, she likes knives. This is relevant because every single other male POV is drowning in boring warrior culture masculinity issues. Several of them are young, and all of them are concerned with what it means to be a man. And the ven diagram in this book between ‘man’ and ‘warrior’ is a near perfect circle. I don’t caaaaaaare.

Also, I was told that these books were “twisty” and would “make you really think about who is good and who is bad.” Except I got literally a third of the way through the first book, saw the writing on the wall and went ‘oh no, is what they’re talking about this?’ And googled, and, uh. Yep. The book is trying to set up this ambiguity where you supposedly aren’t sure who is the avatar of good and who is the avatar of evil, because their actions are deeply contextual and blah blah, you get it. Which, (1) I figured out who was who plain as day apparently more than two books before I was supposed to; and (2) it kind of offends me. The book is, it appears, trying to trick the reader by deploying some epic fantasy tropes and cliches, and it will then presumably do a rug pull at some point and go “ha ha, I fooled you into believing my cliché of believing in what it means to be noble and a good man, you should be a smarter reader.” Which, okay, fine, but to make that work, you have to write a book that doesn’t entirely depend for its every beat and gesture on boring tired epic fantasy cliches that it takes staggeringly seriously.

Anyway, whatever, I was pretty bored and annoyed from that point on.

Content notes: Animal harm, violence, bullying.

This Inevitable Ruin

4/5. Seventh book. Do not start here.

What a ride. I waited for the audiobook to come out (trailing the ebook by months) and I’m glad I did because the production is, as always, excellent. Anyway, what a time. This is the war book. They have all been war books, but this one is more literal about it.

Things I liked: More time with the AI, which raises waaaay more questions than it answers; Pony; the way this definitely felt like a turning point book; okay the entire ensemble let’s be real; how I was worried about the title going in particularly given this was a war book, but finished it knowing that the ruin isn’t just for our guys; the running theme of being known as of by a god, someone who can see entirely into you, and what the cost of that is to both parties.

Things I tilt my head at: The bigger politics picture, which is basically a giant crazy spaghetti yarn diagram at this point with the author slapping his hand down on one spot and screaming, “see! See!” While everyone is like “no? Not really?”

Anyway, I continue to have a great time and will be happy if he lands this massive messy thing with even part success.

Content notes: Violence, gore, many kinds of body modification.

Five Broken Blades

3/5. A group of six people come together to murder the unkillable god king, but they’re all liars, it gets complicated.

This is mis-marketed as gritty-ish twisty fantasy when it’s actually most interested in its romances (there are six characters, they enter the arc two-by-two). So just know that going in. Also, I feel I should warn for the thing where this has six points-of-view and they are all written in first person present, which is . . . a choice.

Anyway, this has some amount of intrigue and charm going for it, but I tired of the steep dips in writing quality whenever it came to the romances (and the writing is never good to start with). And also the thing where we get first person POVs of people and everyone is hiding something from the reader, which is hard to pull off and Corland does not have those chops. This is a particular peeve of mine.

I read it, it reads fast and easy, I enjoyed parts of it, but now I have no interest in the sequel, even though it promises to blow the worldbuilding wide open.

Content notes: A lot of violence and murder, references to gory execution methods, child trafficking and child abuse.

The Book of Phoenix

3/5. A person in a post apocalyptic landscape comes across a recording of Phoenix’s story, as told by herself. Of her creation by a corporation, her accelerated growth and torture at their hands, and what she does when she escapes them and finds her way into an African identity.

I wish I like Okorafor’s books more than I do. They always sound great, then land noticeably off center of my tastes. Because of the narrative mode it’s in, this book (deliberately, I think) leans hard into ‘all white people are evil and all brown people are good.’ It then complicates the brown people end of that (a little, anyway), leaving the white people end cartoonishly flat. Deliberate, like I said, but not my idea of an enjoyable storytelling device.

Some good revenge here, with the usual accompaniments of ‘what will this revenge make me, the revenger?’ etc. But I won’t remember this in a few months.

Content notes: Imprisonment, medical experimentation, reproductive exploitation, violence, all with a strong racial overtone

House of Bane and Blood

2/5. Romantasy about a sort of arranged marriage for reasons between a magic dude and a not magic heiress who both have secrets.

So boring. Also, if you think you know what is up with the heroine and her tattoo and all that within the first 10%, yes, you are correct. I think the thing that offends me most here is actually the sex scene. It employs kink (breathplay) in the most boring way. It just came out of nowhere exactly in the way kink should not. Why were these two people interested in that? And in that moment? What did it express about their developing relationship?

Nothing. The answer is nothing. It came completely out of nowhere and expressed or explained nothing, aside from a sort of obvious shallow thing about (unearned) trust. It’s exactly what good kink writing should not be.

Content notes: A lot of violence, false imprisonment, exploitation.

The Sky on Fire

3/5. Fantasy set in a world where dragons pair with riders, but the riders aren’t the ones in charge. A ragtag group of dragons and riders and thieves and dissidents get together to do a big heist on the evil head dragon for reasons, then stuff happens.

This is okay, but did not excite me. That is sad because it features the development of a polyamorous triad, which is my jam, but not this unsatisfying iteration. See also other things I like: heists, dragons, a queer-norm and kink-norm world, and yet, eh. It’s fine. I DNF’d her other fantasy series, so maybe I should just cut my losses here.

I would be curious to know if anyone else who read this found the back third kind of disorienting? Did I miss a step, or was the book casually connecting threads that just did not meet?

Content notes: Violence, graphic description of falling and fear of heights.

Penric and the Bandit

3/5. A Penric novella, this one half outsider POV as Penric falls into the company of a man trying to rob him, but it’s a bit more complicated. I read this entire novella while cooking dinner* (crispy tofu and green beans in peanut dressing with smashed potatoes) and it was pleasant for that purpose. Slight, zero stakes in that way where there are stakes on the page, but absolutely none in a doylist sense. Comforting, is what I mean.

I do wonder where she’s going with this thing where Pen is not aging. Recompense for killing Miles so young….?

*Yes, I read audio at a very high speed

Black Water Sister

4/5. A young closeted woman begins to hear the voice of her dead grandmother when she returns to Malaysia with her parents. This leads to encounters with gangsters and gods, and some family reckonings.

Ah, now this is the Zen Cho book I’ve been waiting for. My wife absolutely adores her short fiction, but neither of us have been really impressed with any of her novels. But this one. It’s depiction of this extended Asian family – its secrets and lies and religious conflicts and the gifts and failings of its women – ah. It’s so specific and perfect. I also particularly recommend the audio, which lends a wonderful cadence to the dialogue, much of which is spoken in English translation for the reader, but is not in English within the story.

All of that wraps what is at its heart a simple story of a girl working her way around to come out to her conservative parents in a blanket of complexity and nuance. Lovely.

Content notes: Threatened rape, allusions to past domestic violence/rape/murder, homophobia and fear thereof.

The Spellshop

3/5. Cozy fantasy about a shut-in librarian who escapes the city convulsed by revolution with a load of illegal magic books, which she takes back to the tiny island of her childhood where she starts a jam shop and begins providing it’s-totally-not-magic “remedies.” Also, there’s a hot boy.

I should just quit on cozies. This one started out quite nicely. It’s all extremely to spec – jam shop (you must have a small business in a cozy, it’s the law), Cute talking plant companion, small town shenanigans. But then it overstayed its welcome by a good 25,000 words, and the romance did nothing for me, and it took a distinct bend to the saccharine. I think I should just go to fanfic when I want the particular satisfaction of a cozy.

Long Live Evil

4/5. A young woman dying of cancer is given the chance to go into her (sort of) favorite dark fantasy series. She arrives in the body of the villainess the night before her execution. But changing that changes all sorts of other things.

This was, on the one hand, delightful and absorbing. It’s obviously very metatextual – our protagonist is forever commenting on genre convention, sexism in fantasy, the shape of stories, etc. And it’s also very funny. There’s an “as foretold” joke in here that made me straight up cackle. Also, I detect some Tamsyn Muir DNA in here, if that’s an inducement.

On the other hand, this did not reward any look beyond the surface. I think it meant to, but I didn’t find anything that stuck to me in all the talk of stories and conventions and villainy. I’m not mad about it, to be clear. I still had a pretty great time. But I did think there could have been more. Maybe the sequel will provide.

Content notes: Zombies, violence, threatened rape, recollections of terminal illness.

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea

3/5. Cozy sapphic fantasy about a queen’s guard who runs away with her powerful mage girlfriend to start a tea/book shop (which is immediately successful, that’s how you know it’s fantasy), also dragon stuff.

This is fine. Cozy fantasy is as particular and personal as romance, and my hit rate is correspondingly low. This one is fine and hits the expected beats (small town politics, renovating to open your business, cute companion animals, you know the drill) but did not distinguish itself in any way. Not even the established relationship, which is normally my jam, but these two did nothing for me.

An Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

3/5. An extremely silly “historical” romance about two rival ornithologists competing (and accidentally working together) to find a particular magical bird.

I think I’m over India Holton now. This is her fourth book, and to say they are variations on a theme is to vastly understate their repetitiveness. It’s a pleasant enough theme – a cartoonish approach to plot, a romance with little real conflict but hitting the same general notes every time of reaching each other through loneliness, banter, entirely unexplicated worldbuilding, a light narrative voice that says things in the general tone of “he kissed her so quickly the narrative could not come up with a metaphor.” Some playfulness with tropes, but it never amounts to anything, like the inn room they are forced to share that has not one bed, but seven. Cute, but nothing other than cute.

A pleasant diversion, but I’ve had four of them now and I think I’m good.

The Fireborne Blade

3/5. Novella about the lady knight (gasp) who sets out to retrieve a mythical sword to reclaim her honor and reputation, also dragons are more terrifying even in death than in life.

A mix of high fantasy and horror, with a bit of a queer love story. This will be totally awesome for certain other people. The horror vibes, in particular, are on point, and there’s all sorts of interesting dragon lore that I’ve never seen done like this. But it’s not to my tastes or interests.

Content notes: Violence, hauntings, horrible ways to die by dragon

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Entries tagged with fantasy

The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso

Asunder by Kerstin Hall

The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke

Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Malice by John Gwynne

This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor

House of Bane and Blood by Alexis L. Menard

The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons

Penric and the Bandit by Lois Mcmaster Bujold

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

An Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love by India Holton

The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond