I realized part of the way through A Mirror Mended, Alix E. Harrow’s follow-up to her 2021 A Spindle Splintered, that this was only sort of taking its inspiration from portal fantasy. Its true parentage, though? Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A Mirror Mended doesn’t map on to any of the films perfectly, but the spirit …
“The crew of the Rosebud are, currently, and by force of law, a balloon, a goth with a swagger stick, some sort of science aristocrat possibly, a ball of hands, and a swarm of insects.” I can’t really improve on that first line and so I’m going to reproduce it for my own review, which …
With the news lately and the general condition of the world, I don’t think it’s any surprise to see the argument in fiction that the monsters are us. J. M. Miro, whose fantasy debut Ordinary Monsters is out on June 7, has his share of concern and pessimism about the world, but his story about a ragtag …
Being alive, my grandfather always said, is not for cowards. Neither is being dead, according to Isaac Fellman, who in his sophomore novel Dead Collections explores the life of a vampire struggling to reconcile the life he wants with the life he has. It’s a thoughtful and, yes, profound examination of vampires: their mythos, their …
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo is a book that takes the magic of Hollywood quite literally, weaving pagan ideas into the glitz of the early silver screen era. It follows the movie star dreams of Luli Wei as she tries to make a place for herself as a Chinese American queer woman. Luli and the …
Whoever first uttered the phrase that it was about the journey, not the destination, never felt the heartbreak of having read a terrible ending to a series they loved. Luckily for all of us, reading Jenn Lyon’s A Chorus of Dragons, both the journey of the books so far and the final destination on the …
Pages 114 and 264. Those are the only two spots I stopped in Book of Night, the first because I fell asleep mid-page, and the second because I was pissed at the universe. Book of Night should not end. It needs to keep going. Only forty more pages and then the long, cold wait for …
Before Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade, it had been a while since both an inciting event and an ending took me by such a surprise. Though they were well done, making total sense within the story while being utterly shocking, one cannot lean on those types of moments without getting diminishing returns. Luckily, …
Horror is a fairly broad genre. Suspense and gore fall under its umbrella, the subtle and the explicit. Monsters both human and non-human, with and without motive, inhabit its works, and the architects of its worlds seek quite the spectrum of responses. Are you unnerved, or actively nauseous? Do you check under the bed for …
All good things must come to an end. It’s a cliché because it’s true, but less cliché is the truth that not all good things come to a good end. Fantasy buffs know all too well the disappointment of loose ends and failed character arcs. Therefore, fantasy buffs—rejoice! For The Discord of Gods is an …