The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik, is one of the best books of the year for many readers. I don’t think that will surprise anyone who has read A Deadly Education, which was one of my top picks of last year. The Scholomance series stands out from the pack with a unique narrative experience, fabulous setting,…
If you are in the market for something different, Star Eater by Kerstin Hall has you covered. Set in a grimdark world, the book is about an authoritarian and aristocratic order of nuns that consumes the flesh of their order members to maintain superpowers similar to Spider-man. So, it's certainly different from anything else I…
Yoon Ha Lee is a science fiction writer with a penchant for the strange and the imaginative. His Machineries of Empire series came out of nowhere a few years ago and wowed the pants off of myself and many other reviews. His work has a tendency to be surreal and confusing but with clever guardrails…
Happy new year everyone! We started 2020 off strong with a whole slew of reads over our break and will have a number of interesting reviews and other pieces in the coming weeks. Up first we have the sixth, and final, book in the Spellslinger series, Crownbreaker, by Sebastien de Castell. This YA series has…
Continue reading ➞ Crownbreaker – Don’t Need A Crown To Be King
I am running out of inventive and original ways to say I really like almost anything that Sebastien de Castell puts out. This is something like the eighth book of his that I have reviewed and the worst thing I have had to say about any of his works is that you should go read…
Continue reading ➞ Queenslayer – Captivating But Showing Wear
While updating my Goodreads reading status for Charmcaster and Soulbinder, books three and four of the YA Spellslinger series by Sebastien de Castell, I noticed an upsetting fact: Spellslinger has a depressingly small number of reviews for its high level of quality. I have already spoken at length about both book one and book two…
I received a copy of The Tethered Mage, by Melissa Caruso, from Orbit in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. This book was sold to me as wizards in Venice, which I honestly don’t think is quite right. Another reviewer I spoke to described it as “YA Lies of Locke Lamora”, which I think…
Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo, has been sitting on my to-do list for a very long time. The book is a wildly successful YA heist novel that is a spin off of another wildly successful YA series, the Grisha Verse. I have had a ton of people I know tell me they loved the…
Continue reading ➞ Six of Crows – Finding Out What Everyone Is Cawing About
When I was a kid, I didn’t have very much money for comics. As such I decided that I should stick with the one comic franchise I was really enjoying, the X-Men, and get as deep into their story as I could. While reading the X-Men, I fell in love with one of their classic…
Continue reading ➞ Shadowblack – Same Great Writing, New Darker Color
Series transitions can be rough. This year Sebastien de Castell stuck the landing as he wrapped up his astounding Greatcoats quartet and sealed it as one of my favorite series. Simultaneously he has launched the first book in his second series, Spellslinger. It is always interesting to see the direction that authors go post-series completion.…
