There’s a quote from Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” that I particularly like: “The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.” This is, of course, a riff on Isaiah’s oft-misquoted poetry about—not the lion and the lamb—but …

We’ve survived half a year beyond 2016! What an accomplishment, and what better way to celebrate than to look yet further forward. Deliberately without an order of preference and in order of release, here are my most anticipated titles of the coming six months. Wicked Like a Wildfire – Since magic is so often utilitarian …

There was a spate of SFF Westerns a year or so ago, but now YA SFF has turned its attention to Russia. We already had the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, but with Crooked Kingdom, The Crown’s Fate, and The Bear and the Nightingale there’s a definite trend. And now we have The Five Daughters …

Before I begin reviewing the book, I must first review the title. At least enough to say: it sucks. It sucks! It sucks, it sucks, it sucks. Rather than intriguing me, it actively put me off picking this book up. I am sick to death of books with “the girl” or “the woman” or “the …

(Look, if Cindy Pon can reference Jay Chou, I can reference Jay Chou, okay?) Taiwan of the future is a great place to be–if you’re rich. In fact, the world is a pretty great place in general if you have the cash–but if you don’t, the world is even worse than it is today, with …

In no particular order, some of the books I have read this year or am reading and feel like talking about. 1. Frogkisser! – It’s so cute and absolutely trademark Garth Nix. He’s like the Australian Neil Gaiman if you don’t know him; if you do, and you haven’t read this, why on earth not!? …

The minute I saw the name for this book, I exclaimed—ostensibly to my husband, but my cat or the open air would have sufficed—”of course this needs to be a book. Why has no one thought of this before? The Refrigerator Monologues—it’s so obvious.” But like many of the most interesting things, it’s only very …

Continuing the theme of Russian-related YA, I wanted to draw attention to a 2015 release that is a little younger than YA and a lot more amazing than anticipated. Very–very–loosely based on the tale of Red Riding Hood, it tells the tale of Feo, a “dark and stormy girl” who has no fear of the …

Graham-Jones’s Mongrels was a sleeper hit for me from 2016, a story about a young man who’s a late-bloomer in his family of werewolves. Did it say anything new about that beaten-to-death subject, the werewolf? Not really. Did it say anything new about the people who are werewolves? Hell yes. It stripped away all the …

Aurora has a big secret. She’s not special. Oh, she’s a princess. She’s heir to a city-state and has never known physical hardship. She’s lovely, adept in languages, a gifted horsewoman, and a practiced fighter. But Aurora has no magic, and in Caelira, that’s the only skill that really matters for a monarch. After all, …