To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles – this they name empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. Arkady Martine’s sequel to her Hugo-winning novel A Memory Called Empire picks up two months after the end of Book 1. The hardliners at Lsel Station have gotten exactly what they
“Welcome to the Hooflands, ” said Pansy. “We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.” Seanan McGuire is up to Book 6 in Wayward Children, the series where children stumble across one of an infinite number of doors, each one opening to a different magical realm. This installment features the
The Chicago Review of Books website this month published a fantastic resource, 28 Stories You Can Read Online For Black History Month. The items on the list cover a whole range of genres, and include links both to the story and to the collections they come from. This week I decided to take a look
I was looking for something new to read for Black History Month, and one name that kept coming up was Colson Whitehead, award-winning author of several novels including The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. Since I haven’t had a chance to read any of Whitehead’s books up until now, I decided to start with
“I don’t have a plan. But now I have a goal. The plan I just have to make up as I go along.” Loretta signed and leaned back, rolling her eyes so hard I thought she might detach her retinas. “Of course. Why did I even get my hopes up? Imagine a star pilot being
We won’t get another installment in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb Trilogy until 2022, so let’s take a look at her novella from last November, a fairy tale that’s as different from her Gothic space saga as you can get, while still being very very dark. Floralinda is a lonely princess in a tower, waiting to
I decided that Orion needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Welcome to the Scholomance, high school for a few thousand budding magic-users. Also home to an uncounted number of deadly magical creatures (“mals”) lurking in cupboards, under desks, in the bathrooms, crawling through the air ducts, and slowly congregating in
It’s been a pretty chaotic year, what with family medical emergencies and other craziness (said other craziness being…more family medical emergencies), so I’m pretty happy to see the last of 2019. I don’t usually quote myself in these reviews, but for crying out loud, that comment from the end of 2019 is just too ironic
2021 is almost here, time for one more book from 2020! This week we’ll take a look at T. Kingfisher’s A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. The city of Riverbraid has always been fairly nice for wizards. Not everyone is okay with magic, so in other towns Mona might have had to deal with registration,