King-a-ding-ding! Hear that bell? It’s the sound of a brand-new Stephen King review from The Quill To Live’s only resident King reader—me! One of my goals this year was to listen to five Stephen King audiobooks. The Tommyknockers was my first of the year, and it was decidedly okay. The town of Haven, Maine is…
I am ashamed to admit how long Descendant of the Crane by Joan He has been sitting on my shelf. It’s been so long, in fact, that I forgot I had the book, and it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago I scanned my shelves and saw it there. However, I do believe books…
Continue reading ➞ Descendant Of The Crane – Can You Keep Up
I picked up We Lived on the Horizon, by Erika Swyler, because it tries to imagine a place designed to survive cataclysm. The book is an examination of utopia that falls short in many ways while offering an incredible look at an artificial consciousness inhabiting a human-shaped body. The city of Bulwark seems to stand…
Continue reading ➞ We Lived on The Horizon – Build It and We Will Leave
I have two novellas I want to talk about today, so instead of making a choice between them like a responsible adult, I have decided to cram both reviews into a single piece. My two victims are The Orb Of Cairado by Katherine Addison and Space Station by K.R. Gadeken. Orb is a spin-off novella…
Continue reading ➞ The Orb Of Cairado + Space Station – Spheres On Spheres
You may not know this, but The Quill To Live reviewers all play in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign together. Andrew is the DM (and a very good one, I might add). The rest of us (plus a few other friends) are subject to his dastardly ideas, attending a school that teaches students how to…
During my yearly visit to see my friends and fellow QTL reviewers, we ventured to New York City and escaped the cold, windy day in the OG Barnes & Noble bookstore. I couldn’t help but pick up the eye-catching pink cover of The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim while I was browsing. I discovered that the…
Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao, is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. I’m all for plots that revolve around choices and people having to reflect on whether they made the correct ones. But a story that centered on the romantic journey of two strangers as they wade through a world…
Self-help fantasy stories have been rising in popularity over the last few years, and there are a lot to choose from at varying degrees of quality. Despite the heart behind a lot of these stories, it can be particularly hard to balance making a story that catalyzes meaningful reader introspection while also telling a story…
Continue reading ➞ The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming – Step By Step
I’ve started the past three years with one of Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde books, and I always look forward to my yearly meet-up with the fae. The new year arrived, and shortly after, book three in the series followed. Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales is a beautiful culmination of all of Emily’s previous adventures.…
Continue reading ➞ Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales – A Boon
If 2024 was my year of diving into whatever the hell I wanted, 2025 is the year I become completely unhinged about climate change in fiction. Having grown up in the late nineties and early 2000s, I thought maybe, just maybe, the governments of the world would figure this shit out. But instead, we’re being…
Continue reading ➞ All The Water In The World – The Levees Will Break
