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A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
How did I decide to buy this book? I must have seen a review of it somewhere and added it to my wishlist.[1. Previous to it winning the 2014 World Fantasy Award for best novel. Congrats!] It’s exactly along the lines of what I like best in a fantasy book: non-European style countries, travel, adventure, and intrigue, with spooky magical things. The only thing that would’ve made it better is if there’d been dragons somewhere and if the protagonist were a woman.
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A Case of Possession by K.J. Charles
So remember how much I loved The Magpie Lord? Take that love and apply it to A Case of Possession, because it was just as good a read! All the great stuff from the first book is in here– great characters[1. including Stephen’s magic partner, who I was very excited to meet. She is snarky and hard as steel, but with a marshmallow center. Love her!], and interesting setting/worldbuilding, fun (yet scary) magic stuff, tricksy mystery, etc. etc. It’s not just a copy-cat of The Magpie Lord, though. For one thing, there are Chinese vampires instead of evil wizards. Also, things are complicated from being in the city rather than…
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The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles
My friend Memory, who is a total book enabler, talked a lot of positive talk about The Magpie Lord earlier this month. I stared at the cover for a few days and then finally took the plunge and bought it once my other friend, Jenny (also a book enabler[1. She also has a podcast! Go listen to her podcast, it is awesome.]) started talking it up, too. Turns out I am very susceptible to peer pressure! Current feelings about this book can be accurately represented with this gif: HOLY HELL was this book fun! It has a lot of things I like in it, all wrapped up in a big…
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The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson
I really wanted to like this book more than I did! The first third of the story is kick-ass: contemporary setting with wonderful characters, strong protagonist voice, and mysterious foreshadowings. Then the rest of it happened, and I lost the plot. Part of the problem is that the first third is so VERY strongly rooted in contemporary YA language/style. It’s Real Life and it’s totally convincing. And then the Chaos incident happened and things got weird.
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Runaways, Vol. 1-3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona
Okay, so this is the first major story arc for Runaways (I think). These three volumes comprise a complete story, so theoretically you could stop there and be perfectly happy![1. Especially because I’m in the second series right now and it’s not as good, nope.] I was perfectly happy, because I love stories about teenage superheroes having personal problems. The fact that their personal problems consisted of evil supervillian parents was just icing on the cake. Other personal problems: friendship, learning to trust, betrayal, romance and squishy teenage feelings, sometimes sounding like they spent too much time watching Dawson’s Creek or whatever show was popular back when this series ran,…
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Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi
I bought Ascension because of some review I read somewhere on a blog (which I can’t find now), because I love scifi and I love space stories and I’m tired of scifi space stories with straight white people in them. Ascension, while not a perfect book, has a LOT of exciting things in it that should make any scifi fan happy to read it. It started off very strong. The first half of the book was fantastic; it introduces us to the world of Ascension and the people who navigate through it. There are alien planets! Creepy aliens with creepy alien technology! Spaceships and space pirates and also psychics who…
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REVIEW: Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott
This is an AWESOME book. What makes it awesome? I’ll tell you what makes it awesome: 1. the characters! Specifically, Suzume and her development over the course of the book. She goes from spoiled normal kid to PTSD-ed refugee with magical powers to someone with a lot of spoilers hanging around. It’s great!
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REVIEW: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Read for The Women of Fantasy Book Club I’ve written and rewritten this review three times now, and I’m getting really sick of it. So this review is now going going to be short, to the point, and AWESOME. It’s always good to start on a positive note, right? So: I loved The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I love the writing, the themes, how it doesn’t gloss over important issues that pop up in the relationship between humans and gods or humans and humans. I like the action, the intrigue, the characters, the setting. I loved the language, especially in the parts that tell stories about the mythology of the world…