Saint Death’s Daughter, by C.S.E. Cooney, is a complicated book to review. It is a clunker of a story with an almost 700-page count, and it has a strange identity that is going to be very appealing to a small niche of people but will frustrate a broader audience. Ultimately, its biggest point of contention…
Continue reading ➞ Saint Death’s Daughter – Straddling Humor And Drama
I have been reading a lot of urban fantasy lately, more by an artifact of my review schedule than by conscious effort. My high-level takeaway from this experience has been that I don’t actually like urban fantasy. I often find their worlds surprisingly shallow, their themes uninteresting, and their characters somehow less relatable than those…
Continue reading ➞ The Unseen World Duology – Shadow Carpentry
Vlad Taltos, by Steven Brust, is a sleeper series that has now officially been coming out for 30 years. Planned as a nineteen-book series and still going strong, Tsalmoth is the sixteenth entry in the story and one of my favorites. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this series and feel like I…
I have been hearing excellent things about Victoria Goddard for a long time. Although she seems fairly underread, several people I trust mentioned that she is making fabulous books with little comparison. When I asked where I should start with her works I was given numerous different answers, but I eventually found this list on…
Continue reading ➞ The Hands Of The Emperor – Family And Fun In The Sun
If you could, for a moment, please picture me with my hands on my temples, eyes closed, and letting out a sigh of frustration. That is where I find myself trying to figure out how to review today’s book. The Lost War, by Justin Lee Anderson, is one of those inherently difficult books to talk…
Happy Summer everyone! We here at The Quill to Live are looking back on everything we have read so far this year and have put together a short list of our nine favorites so far. Each of these is a fabulous read and has our full review linked to their picture. We highly recommend you…
Today, I get to review one of my most anticipated books of the year, which is always very exciting. The Archive Undying, by Emma Mieko Candon, is one of those rare books that I don’t know if I recommend. The novel has clear strengths and weaknesses, but the way the scale tips will depend on…
I love me an adventuring party fantasy. You are telling me you’ve got a crew of weirdos with unique skills who are all going to come together to save the world? Sign me up. I can’t wait to see all the extraordinary things they bring to the table as they save the world and bask…
Continue reading ➞ The Sword Defiant – Friendship Is The Sharpest Blade
The Combat Codes, by Alexander Darwin, is the latest in a series of new-age magical school stories with fresh settings and ideas on what constitutes a school. In this case, the reader will find themselves presented with a mashup of MMA fighting and your typical zero-to-hero schoolboy coming-of-age story. Darwin’s injection of passion for gritty…
Continue reading ➞ The Combat Codes – MMA (Magical Masters in Asskicking)
Martha Wells, of All Systems Red fame, is putting out a new stand-alone book about witches, kings, and murder. Everything in that sentence excited me, and I could not wait to get my hands on this new story about an amnesia-riddled demon on a quest for truth. The book turned out to be very different…
