Amid epic battles and dazzling spells, the best fantasy is often about people. In some novels the protagonists are so complex, their development so intense, that they take over the story and make us ache in every nerve ending when bad things happen to them. We almost become the character as we’re reading, so invested […]
Marie Rutkoski’s The Winner’s Curse dropped last year to immediate fan-fare. While technically a fantasy novel, you won’t find any magic or dragons in this book. Instead, it’s all about fantastic characters in all their emotional complexity. Set in a world reminiscent of ancient Rome, it follows Kestrel and Arin, two people from very different cultures, as […]
Alywn Hamilton’s debut novel, Rebel of the Sands, combines a hardbitten western setting and hardboiled narrative style with eastern myth and a restrictive, patriarchal social structure. Heroine Amani is an orphan forced to live in her brutal uncle’s home, in a tiny, dusty town without prospects. But she’s also a brilliant sharpshooter who dreams of using her talents […]
Recently my first niece was born, and judging by the brilliance she has already displayed in her first six months of life, I can only assume she’s destined to be the next Leslie Knope, or maybe the founder of a NASA competitor. I’m already curating the list of books I want to give her throughout her […]
Like so many readers, I first discovered Robin McKinley’s Newbery Award—winning epic fantasy novel The Hero and the Crown as a teenager. Dragged along to a yard sale with my mother, I decided to look through a jumble of old books piled into a crate marked “.10 cents each.” The novel was buried at the bottom, and while […]