Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed The Underground Railroad has been on my TBR for quite some time, and when it got picked up by one of my book clubs, I was excited to finally give it a try. Anyone who’s the least bit familiar with the book will probably know the central conceit: the historical Underground Railroad… Continue reading Alternate History Novel Review: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich is one of the few self-published novels that I’ve actually picked up in its publication year. A glowing review from someone who likes a lot of my favorites and a selection for an online book club was enough for me to take the plunge and see what… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich
The Phoenix Pencil Company seems to have gotten more hype in general fiction circles than speculative fiction ones, but author Allison King caught my eye with her interview in Clarkesworld, and given my recent fascination with stories that play with memory and family, it moved up my TBR quickly. The Phoenix Pencil Company is essentially… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King
When Ella Enchanted came out, I don’t think I even knew it existed, despite its popular acclaim and the fact that someone in my immediate family was reading it. Had I known about it, would I have appreciated a book that was For Girls? It’s hard to say. But as an adult, I had no… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Summer War will be released on September 16, 2025. I haven’t read much of Naomi Novik, but I’ve liked what I’ve read, and given that I’m always looking to try novellas from… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: The Summer War by Naomi Novik
I’d been following Jon Bois on Twitter for quite a while before the publication of 17776, and I’d greatly enjoyed the first few chapters before beginning to suspect that it was too long to finish in a single sitting. I set it down and forgot about it for years. But when a Not a Book… Continue reading Weird Internet Sci-fi Review: 17776 and 20020 by Jon Bois
When I returned from genre-reading hiatus in the mid-2010s, Malazan was inescapable. Tell someone you read fantasy and they would inevitably ask about one of three things: Kingkiller, Malazan, or Brandon Sanderson. At the time, I’d read none of the three (apart from Sanderson’s Wheel of Time co-authorship), but a decade later, I finally decided… Continue reading Fantasy Book Review: Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. These Memories Do Not Belong to Us was released on August 12, 2025. Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed myself immensely enjoying stories that play with memory in interesting ways. So… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma
Despite an impressive collection of genre awards, Amal El-Mohtar had not published a solo work longer than a novelette until this year. So perhaps it’s no surprise that her first solo novella would be one of those books with hype levels that were off-the-charts. It was only a matter of time before I got to… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the author in exchange for an honest review. The Memory Hunters was released on July 29, 2025. Seeing a romance reference and an Indiana Jones name-check in the first line of the blurb had me ready to skip Mia Tsai’s new fantasy, The Memory… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai
