Starless Is a Shining Example of the Power of Epic Fantasy
Jacqueline Carey has a fiercely devoted fanbase. Her Kushiel’s Legacy saga introduced us to a heroine who is deservedly featured on…
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The Desert Heat Gets Intense in A Veil of Spears
Two years ago, Bradley Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai took me by surprise. From the cover and blurb, I expected…
Anne Bishop’s Lake Silence Is an Urban Fantasy About Strong Women and Good Men
Anne Bishop blazed onto the genre scene in the late 1990s with the Black Jewels Trilogy, a fantasy epic filled…
The Queens of Innis Lear Gives New Weight to Shakespeare’s Greatest Tragedy
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit of our own…
Quietus Crosses Time and Space to Deliver a Different Kind of Strong Female Character
Who among us has not played the Tardis game? If you could go anywhere, anywhen in the whole universe, where…
Blackthorne Deepens a Fascinating Flintlock Fantasy World
As we pick up with our heroes from Cold Iron, the first installment of Stina Leicht’s exciting flintlock fantasy series the Malorum Gates,…
A Fading Sun Shows Wielding Power Is Harder Than Winning It
Epic fantasy has also been a great vehicle for analyzing the follies of empire, and it has certainly done so…
The Reluctant Queen Is a Fantasy That Celebrates the Virtues of Domesticity—and Thrilling Action
“Who I am is a mother, woodswoman, a charm maker… It is my right to define me, not yours.” The…
Soleri Is a Game of Thrones with Intimate Stakes
Author Mary Robinette Kowal, one of the great book people to follow on social media, recently tweeted a bit of…
Miranda and Caliban Looks at Shakespeare Through Different Eyes
“I long to hear the story of your life, which must captivate the ear strangely.” ― William Shakespeare, The Tempest…
With Blood Upon the Sand Returns to an Immersive Fantasy Landscape
Bradley P. Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings of Sharahkai was one of the most delightfully vivid and promising fantasy novels of 2015, building…
After the War, Winning the Peace in Ken Liu’s The Wall of Storms
“We have won the war, and not without pain, but now we must win the peace, and that will perhaps…
In The Queen of Blood, the Trees Really Do Want to Kill You
“It’s like Hogwarts, but with trees! And the trees want to kill you!” Or so goes my elevator pitch for…
Of Sand and Malice Made Offers Blood-Soaked Fantasy Fun in the Sun
Bradley Beaulieu’s Twelve Kings in Sharakhai was released last summer to much deserved acclaim (including my own). A Silk Road/Arabian desert/magic…
Alt-World Takes on 5 Familiar Empires
“His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was inconceivable how he had…
6 New SFF Books Invading the Literary Fiction Section
I sometimes think of SFF as the home base of genre crossover. The speculative genres’ interest in reshaping old stories into…
Just One Damned Thing After Another Is a Time-Travel Romps That Earns its Title
What a mess. A glorious, glorious mess. Let no one ever say that Just One Damned Thing After Another is a book that fails to…