Heartless Cover Photo

Heartless – Jokes On Me

Heartless by Marissa Meyer is a prequel story about how the Queen of Hearts came to power in Wonderland. The book pays homage to Lewis Carroll’s world and the well-known characters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But Meyer expands the story, giving us insight into the fury-filled, unreasonable queen Alice eventually meets. Catherine would rather…

Villain – Endless HR Violations

The long-awaited sequel to Natalie Zina Walschots’ Hench is an extremely weird follow-up titled Villain that goes in directions I absolutely was not expecting. This itself is not surprising, given how refreshing and weird Hench was when it burst onto the scene, so it remains doubly impressive that Walschots was able to still surprise me.…

The Gunslinger – Bullet Hell

Few fantasy series kick off with lines that reverberate through the genre’s collective consciousness quite like Stephen King’s The Gunslinger. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” It summons an urgent and barren image: one man midstep atop a sandy dune, following his quarry across a vast, dying landscape. It…

Pulling The Wings Off Angels – Helluva Novella

Oh lord almighty, it’s another K.J. Parker novella! Pulling the Wings Off Angels embroils readers in a quickfire theological conundrum with a divine winged being at its heart. We’ve praised Parker in the past for Prosper’s Demon (a novella masterpiece) and many other works. Does Pulling the Wings Off Angels have the same heft? Let’s…

And Side by Side They Wander – Galactic Art 101

On some level, I think art is the singular most important element of the human condition. So let's talk about it. And Side by Side They Wander, by Molly Tanzer, is a short novella about an intergalactic art heist. Unfortunately, I think this powerful short was done dirty by the marketing tactics. Looking at the…

First Mage On The Moon – Divine Home Invasion

I am always game for a mix of Fantasy and Science Fiction, so a book about a space race to the moon by wizards immediately caught my attention. First Mage on the Moon, by Cameron Johnston, is a clever little book about reimagining the space race between the US and Russia, but set in an…