Archivist Wasp was one of my favorite books of 2015 and up there for one of my favorite new fantasy titles, period. It was such a rough, raw book, the literary equivalent of a rebel yell, and not just because it was a debut. Furious and dreamlike and achingly emotional, it was everything I never …
Bright We Burn (Kiersten White) – July 10 – WHY is this trilogy ending? I mean, I know it has to. It’s not a series. Also, it’s based on historical figures who are extremely dead. (Well, one of them is a reinterpretation of Vlad Tepes, basis for Dracula, so maybe it could go on a …
Out of the Blue is Sophie Cameron’s debut novel about how the world continues after tragedy. It isn’t a morbid or cynical social commentary but a beautiful matter of fact. The novel is written in first person from the point of view of protagonist Jaya, a teenaged Sri Lankan girl from Scotland. The story begins …
I live in the heart of a major city, and I almost never think about the fact that nature wants to kill me. Everything I fear on a daily basis is to do with my own species, and not the plants and animals that I mostly observe for their adorability, not edibility. But in the …
Prior to the release of Only Human, the final entry in the Themis Files trilogy by Sylvain Neuvel, I did a little research. I wanted to see how many Sci-Fi titles include the word human. It seemed like there should be a fair few, since most SF is painstakingly concerned with the human condition, but …
Wonderblood, by author Julia Whicker, is an exploration of science, magic and religion. The novel follows protagonist, Aurora, a fourteen year old girl who goes from carnival member to queen. This novel uses universal themes to navigate a future society where people worship the remains of NASA. So what happens when future humans find space …
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) – April 3 – Earth finally makes first contact with alien life, only to find that battles are fought in song and dance rather than with laser guns and battle cruisers. Now a small group will have to burst quite literally on to the galactic stage if Earth wants to …
People often repeat the truncated quote “blood is thicker than water,” forgetting that the full quote is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Impressively, both of these mutually contradictory statements are true of The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton. Family, its pull, and its limits …
The kingdom of Karthia is ruled by the dead and sustained by the living, and mediated by those with the Sight. It is a world so perfectly balanced that change itself has been forcibly banished: the undead King Wylding has decreed that all remain as it was when he lived, and for two hundred years …
This is my favorite of the Wayward Children series thus far, and it’s not like the first two were slouches. After a stint on the moors in Down Among the Sticks and Bones, we now have the chance to return to Miss Eleanor West’s home for Wayward Children and see how everyone is faring after …