Perhaps you, the humble wizard, are deep within the stacks of the archives, but when it comes to those tomes on the arcane arts you’re having a hard time of it. You’ve been pouring over glyphs, runes, and cryptic dead languages trying to brush up on your school of magic. While you examine those dusty …
“It’s like Romeo and Juliet meets Mad Max meets X-Men with a little bit of Blade Runner cheering from the sidelines.” With a tagline like that, there was no way I wasn’t going to pick up Lifel1k3, even though the leetspeak title made me wince. But the problem with comparing yourself to an iconic work …
The Poppy War is the debut young adult novel written by R.F. Kuang, inspired and set in China’s 19th and early 20th century. War orphan Fang Runin, aka Rin, seeks to escape being married off to an older man for his influence on trade for her drug dealing adoptive parents. She spends two years preparing …
I have a confession to make. I judged this book by its cover. I almost didn’t buy The Epic Crush of Genie Lo because it looked like a combination of bad military SF from the color scheme and bad YA romance from the title. I was wrong. Forgive me, Mrs. Sharrow—you were a good kindergarten …
The Smoke Thieves by Sally Green is an intriguing high fantasy with excellent political intrigue but which lacks the grit and pathos of the Half Bad trilogy. It is Green’s first foray into a wholly fantastical world, and her tentative approach undercuts some of the drama and intrigue. Still, with its complex, interwoven story lines, …
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 …
The Iliad and the Odyssey are incredible collections of tales of wit, bravery, courage but also murder, deception and greed. Have you read either of these and wondered about the backstory of the characters who flitted on then off scenes between the pages? More specifically, did you read of Odysseus visiting Circe and wondered more …
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 …