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, …

When I was younger, I always wanted a twin. Siblings were fine, but a twin–that would really have been something. Someone just like me who I could always depend on, who would be there to play with and comfort me no matter what. Twins, I believed, were just a little more magical. Actual twins can …

Breathing new life into old characters is the second-oldest tradition in storytelling, right after making those characters up in the first place. Oh, I could tell you about modern trends, what Wicked and The Red Tent and The Mists of Avalon did, but then I’d also have to mention Chretien de Troyes’s Arthurian retellings from the …

A note before I get started: this book should come with one of those advisory warnings, except instead of warning parents against explicit lyrics, it should just warn everyone about lyrics. Just lyrics. Because this song has been stuck in my head for a week. Do you know how many years it’s been since I …

Even though Mindy McGinnis is an accomplished author, this feels very much like a first book. I suppose it’s because Given to the Sea is her first foray into fantasy, a genre divide that strikes some more than others. And it seems to have stricken her as a dramatic one, since that’s the first thing …

Killing Gravity is a novella by Corey J. White that is hopefully the first in a series featuring Mars, a void witch, space witch, a living psychic weapon. She and her…pet…a creature named Seven, are the result of heartless military experimentation by a would-be dictator-general, on whom she wants unending vengeance. He wrecked her childhood …

There was never going to be a question of whether City of Miracles, the final installment* of the Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett, was good. Of course it was going to be good. The question was how good. Good enough to close one of my favorite fantasy series ever? Good enough to be …

Well! Waking Gods certainly doesn’t waste any time, I’ll tell you that much. Despite taking place about ten years after the first book (Sleeping Giants), everything is as urgent and immediate as ever. Global cooperation is tenuous; scientific advancement is not as far along as anyone would like; and another giant robot shows up in …