Rotherweird, by Andrew Caldecott, is a fascinating book that fights you every inch of the way. The story spans over 400 years, but only a few square miles in location. It does an impressive job building a quaint and homey English village that feels like the perfect place to put your feet up, while also…
Month: February 2021
Battle Ground – A Literary Crime
Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files has always been a complicated subject for me. On one hand, Butcher has a special knack for melding lore that is modern, ancient, well-known, and obscure into a giant melting pot of exciting action that gets the blood pumping. On the other hand, the series has a number of issues…
A Desolation Called Peace — A Sequel Deemed Magnificent
A Memory Called Empire is easily one of my favorite debut novels of the last several years. Not a lot of other books captivated me with the levels of palace intrigue Arkady Martine was able to stuff inside it. Not only that, but the book massaged my big brained ego with its exploration of identity…
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Book Talk: Moby Dick And The Black Leviathan
We here at The Quill to Live like to have weird and frankly bizarre conversations about books, and we decided to record one of them. This time Alex and Andrew decided to compare two books that are similar to one another, but have an outrageous time gap between them. Not only that, but they take…
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Fireheart Tiger – Frigid And Brittle
Having spent the last two years digging into the world of novellas, I feel I am starting to get the hang of consistently identifying stories I am going to enjoy. Unfortunately, there are always going to be wild cards that slip through the cracks and ruin your day, much like Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de…
The Black Coast – Right Message, Wrong Words
The Black Coast, by Mike Brooks, is the hardest type of book to read and review. There are a variety of different aspects of this fantasy story that I like greatly, but many of them are hampered by noticeable problems with the writing. The book was compelling enough that I absolutely wanted to finish it,…
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The Echo Wife — Echo, Echooo, Echoooooooooo
Yeah yeah, the subtitle is easy pickings, but sometimes it’s the simple things in life that are the best. It’s very hard to come up with a pun that combines the act of echoing and the myriad themes Sarah Gailey has packed into this book. There are questions about the debate of nature vs nurture,…
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The Silence of the Lambs — Fantasy Villainy In A Crime Thriller Mask
“Clarice.” Two bone-chilling syllables, monotonously uttered by a verifiably insane Dr. Hannibal Lecter. The power doesn’t lie within the name itself. Rather, it’s how “Clarice” pops up throughout Thomas Harris’ seminal thriller, The Silence of the Lambs. When FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling interviews the mad doctor, the name beckons, practically begging to be pronounced. Start…
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The QTL Best And Worst Romances Of Fantasy
We are not a site that is well versed in the subgenre of romantic fantasy. I am absolutely positive that there are hundreds of fantastic fantasy romance stories that we have never heard of. And yet, in our time reviewing the larger fantasy landscape, we have come across a number of beautifully heartful, and catastrophically…
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Tower of Mud and Straw — Colossal in its Brevity
They say it’s never a good idea to judge a book by it’s cover. After a while, when it comes to actual books, that advice gets harder and harder to follow. It’s not easy with all these amazing artists out there, providing color and form to black and white text. Some of my favorite covers…
Continue reading ➞ Tower of Mud and Straw — Colossal in its Brevity