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 …
This is a difficult time of year. Not quite winter and not quite spring, there are few holidays to celebrate and precious little opportunity to adjust to Daylight Savings if you’re in the U.S. Plus, you know, the many ongoing crises of the world. No wonder more people are complaining about reading slumps! To help, …
As someone who has read a hefty amount of detective novels, I knew precisely what Richard Swan was doing in The Justice of Kings, the first book in his The Empire of the Wolf trilogy. It’s written like a classic Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot in a fantasy setting, with elements of both making up …
The Maze of the multiverse and our friends from who explore them are back in A.K. Larkwood’s The Thousand Eyes in the second book in The Serpent Gates series. According to the author, this sequel was not planned initially, and this will be the end of the adventures with Csorwe, Shuthmili, and Talasseres. Whether that …