Birth of a Dynasty, by Chinaza Bado, is something a little bit old and a little bit new. It has the bones of many modern-era epic fantasy hits, and it's dialed in to a lot of the strongest tropes that make this genre popular. While it isn’t reinventing the wheel, it is also an African-inspired…
Continue reading ➞ Birth Of A Dynasty – Noble On Noble Action
On September 1st of 2025, the conclusion to one of my favorite recent fantasy series is releasing. With seven installments, this novella saga is criminally underread, and the final entry sticks a ten-point landing. I am talking about The Infernus Gate, novella seven of The Seven Swords by Anthony Ryan. I don’t know what I…
A little side project I have been pursuing is diving into fantasy series from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, to see if I can dredge up some hidden gems to recommend. I don’t often see many series from these decades recommended to me and I thought I might do the generous work of sifting through…
Do you know what is not a wise decision? Picking up an enormous ten-book series when you are a reviewer trying to get out weekly content. But as everyone, absolutely everyone, says: wisdom is for fools. So today, I am here to talk about Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt, the first and largest series…
The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch came out over ten years ago, and ever since the massively popular Gentleman Bastard series ground to a standstill, there have been any number of debut heist books that generate tons of excitement as something to fill the gap. This comparison is almost always deeply unfair to debuts…
Continue reading ➞ The Silverblood Promise – He’s Just So Dumb
I am back with a report about another Darkwater Legacy book. For those unfamiliar, The Darkwater Legacy is an epic fantasy series by Chris Wooding that currently comprises two gigantic volumes: The Ember Blade and The Shadow Casket. The Ember Blade came out all the way back in 2018 and followed the story of an…
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to another year of The Quill to Live. Our first review of the year is of a fabulous book I read over the holidays that greatly impressed me. Empire of Exiles, by Erin M. Evans, is a hit-the-ground-running mystery about four POVs in a giant society locked in a…
Continue reading ➞ Empire of Exiles – Shapeshifting Salty Mysteries
There is a very confusing forward to Sidewinders, the second book of The Fire Sacraments by Robert V.S. Redick. In it, Redick very helpfully recaps the major events of book one (which I would have been lost without) and then goes on to say that he sees Sidewinders as something between a sequel and a…
If I was going to say only one thing about Speaking Bones, the final book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty quartet, it would be that it is certainly its own thing. I know all of that sounds inelegant, but I got into a heated Reddit argument about this series earlier today, and arguing on an…
Picking up any epic fantasy series can be an intensely intimidating experience. With their huge page counts, multiple volumes, expansive worldbuilding, and intricate magic systems, fantasy epics can easily overwhelm readers. These enormous series are often recommended by fantasy fans as “must-reads,” but how can you tell if you will like something that big before…
Continue reading ➞ Seven Epic Fantasy Series Worth The Time Investment
