Fairy tales are a double edged sword. I think all of us have been inclined toward reboots not because we’re Hollywood dupes or whatever the alarmist discourse is now, but because the familiar is comforting—and after these past few years, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting comfort. But it puts authors in a bind, because …

It’s a lovely morning in the village, and you are a horrible girl. Wait. Goose. You’re a horrible goose. Well, you’re a horrible goose girl. The Goose Girl, to be more specific—or both of them, the princess with the disobedient servant and the servant who steals her mistress’s place in the Grimm’s version. The fairy tale is about punishing those …

I only meant to start this book. I did. And then suddenly it was way too late at night and I was several hundred pages deep, reading the same paragraph three times because I was falling asleep but not even mad about it. Reading Caitlin Starling’s prose is a pleasure no many how many times …

It’s spooky season! Time to curl up with a cozy blanket, something warm to drink, and a good book. This October has an embarrassment of riches as far as horror goes, and we have recommendations for whatever poison you’d like to pick. Gothic, slasher, futuristic, slow dread…the list does go on, so take a look …

Imagine a mouth full of teeth that are black instead of white. Are you thinking of tooth decay, of weakness and rot? Are you thinking of darkness, the primal kind that lives in a gaping cavemouth or a leech’s maw? Probably you are. That’s a good place to start when you start Nothing But Blackened …

Did you know that T. Kingfisher, authoress of the phenomenal horror novels The Twisted Ones and Hollow Places, heroine of the pandemic who gave us A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, and the brilliant imaginatrix of fairy-tale reimaginings like Briony and Roses and The Seventh Bride also does high fantasy? Of course she does. She …

I must shamefacedly admit that A Spindle Splintered is the first book by Alix Harrow that I’ve read, but I can at least say that it certainly won’t be the last. This tiny powerhouse of a book made me a believer, and it started with a fairy tale that Harrow herself points out is “no one’s …

This book, friends. THIS BOOK. Do you want to read something you will then have to close and hug to your chest partway through? Do you want to read a book that never flinches from the truth but never gives up on beauty? Do you want a queer loves story, a celebration of so many …

If Charles Dickens had been locked in a room, given only 20th century fantasy to read for five years, and then told to produce a novel, he would have produced Mordew. Alex Pheby is only ostensibly the author; I’m still not entirely convinced that it isn’t an elaborate misdirect, and that Dickens isn’t really scribing …

In the Watchful City is an amazing novella, a stories-within-a-story narrative that unfolds and expands in bright fractals. We were lucky enough to be able to grab some of S. Qiouyi Lu’s time in advance of the book’s release on August 31 and ask her some questions about her work and philosophy What inspired this …