Bisou is a girl who holds herself apart. She’s friendly but has no real friends, except now, perhaps, for her sweet and loving boyfriend James. She would be happy to just spend time with him and her grandmother indefinitely, but the world intrudes: a boy at her school is found dead in the woods. His …
Purists beware: Prosper’s Demon, by K. J. Parker, is not a tale of good versus evil. This is mostly a tale of not-as-bad and maybe-worse fighting it out, ostensibly for a greater purpose, but maybe just in a never-ending cycle of retribution. But as a world champion player of Petty Petty Princess, I can say …
When you think of orcs and wizards, chances are you’re thinking of some variation of Saruman with his nameless minions, the wizard in control, the orc eager to be told what to do. Standard, right? Well, not anymore. A.K. Larkwood takes that concept, runs with it for a bit, and then utterly obliterates it in …
Like the immanently forthcoming Prosper’s Demon, My Beautiful Life is a pure K.J. Parker novella. It’s snarky and cynical, fascinated and repelled by power in equal measure. Bad men doing bad things for arguably decent reasons. And in My Beautiful Life, the narrator isn’t even that bad! Sure, he accidentally puts out his brother’s eye …
The Wells of Sorcery is the trilogy everybody should be talking about. But the trouble with things published in January is that they’re good for buying with Christmas gift cards, but bad for making it on to best-of lists. Which is a shame, since Ship of Smoke and Steel, the first installment, was a rollicking …
Lillian is wasting away in a dead-end job and marinating in her directionless rage when she receives a letter: will she, a person who has no experience with kids or teaching, come be a governess to her former BFF’s new stepchildren? It’s intriguing, and more importantly, it pays well. Lillian can’t refuse, even though she …
Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series has been brilliant from start to finish, book to book, and she’s so prolific that I’m running out of ways to encourage people to read it. Would threats work? Read this book or your life will be just so much emptier. There will be a sorrow you’ll only be able …
Maybe you’re really feeling the season. Maybe you watched Frozen II and want to keep up the ice vibes. Maybe you’re someplace warm and want the illusion of cold as you swelter. Whatever your reasons for wanting more snow in your life, here are ten books that are wonderfully wintry and icily incandescent. The Cold …
’Tis the season for Top Ten lists, but I couldn’t narrow things down that much (let alone do any kind of list for the entire decade), so here are my top 17 books that I read in 2019. Most, but not all, of these books came out this year. They are in no particular order. …
You know why you should read Sisters of the Vast Black, the space opera Lina Rather condensed into a novella? Because it’s Firefly with nuns. Well, more specifically it’s Serenity with nuns, not least because it’s a self-contained narrative. And okay, there’s less humor and hijinks. But they have equal amounts of heart, daring, and …