Review of The Starless Sea

When an author produces a masterpiece on her first attempt, it’s tempting to compare her second novel to her first. For Rita Morgenstern’s first two works, I won’t compare The Starless Sea to The Night Circus. They are different and only connected by the author’s literary talents. Zachary Ezra Rawlins, […]

Review of Might of the Divided City

Might of the Divided City by Jeremy Gordon Grinnell accomplished a rare feat while I was reading it. I planned to review it, I planned to take notes on it, but suddenly, I was so wrapped up in the plot and characters, I was just reading it with the abandon […]

Review Blood Secrets

Morgan L. Busse’s Blood Secrets is the second of the Skyworld duology. In SkyWorld, the land has been overridden with a green mist containing deadly spores that reanimate corpses. Called “The Turned,” these zombie-like creatures roam the countryside. But the mist hasn’t reached the higher altitudes, so many people live […]

Review Children of the Wild

Children of the Wild by debut author Krysta Tawlks is a historical fantasy about magic and creatures with a hint of steampunk. But what it’s really about is family, loss, guilt, and revelations. While the setting may adhere close to certain Steinbeck novels—a rare choice for a fantasy novel—the plot […]

Review Legend of the Tempest Teaser

Legend of the Tempest Teaser is the third entry in the award-winning Stormwatch Diaries series. This MG / YA offering by Kristiana Sfirlea advances the characters and plot of the first two novels of a world populated by character angels, inherent magical abilities, ghost wargs, time paradoxes, sentient stormclouds, and […]

Review of Potion

Potion is the first in a set of planned novels by Dorlana Vann in the Witchy Fairy Tale series. The narrative was assembled from a Kindle Vella offering into a novel for consumers who binge watch an entire series rather than week by week (raises hand). Melrose is a loner […]

Review of Bearly Free

The Emerald Realm Series continues with Bearly Free by Abigail Manning. A minor character in the first novel of the series, Aurelia Lockly takes center stage in this novel about a young woman whose parents arrange her marriage without informing her of her upcoming nuptials until the day she meets […]

The Curse of the Fourth

The Phantom Menace. Halloween 4. Alien: Resurrection. Jaws 4: The Revenge. Why do we make fourths in a series? As the titles above prove, they rarely measure up to the first, or the first three. Is the fourth in a series cursed? Money is behind a lot of fourths in […]

Review of Idriel’s Children

Idriel’s Children by Hayley Reese Chow is the second in a series of novels set in the fantasy world of Okarria. I don’t remember the events that led to picking up the first in the series, Odriel’s Heirs, but I was glad that I had. A richly visualized fantasy world, […]