Category: Fantasy

The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night by Jen Campbell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Playful, surreal, and piercing, these stories each experiment with fairy tales. Campbell’s voice unifies the collection with a mastery of juxtaposition. There’s a theme of disperate parts. Things that are removed or rearranged or from different times or interpreted in multiple ways are drawn back together in these stories. You can almost feel these knots tightening, exacting both pain and whimsy. A great read to begin the year: a little curious, a little cutting, a little spellbound.



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Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung by Nina MacLaughlin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


WAKE, SIREN: Gripping, fearless, violent, and uncompromising. Ovid’s Metamorphoses are ancient stories of mythological transformation, and the cost of those transformations (as anyone familiar with this work will know) is paid with the bodies and hearts of mortal women. These are not happy tales, but they never were. Nina MacLaughlin frees the victims of mythology to scream and rage in the context of our current time, released from their silence, come back to let us know they haven’t forgotten their much-sung fates, or who, in the end, was to blame. One of the most challenging and strong collections I’ve ever read.



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The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


THE DEVILS is my first foray into Joe Abercrombie’s work, and I may be hooked. This novel is a genuine adventure, with a strong ensemble cast, an ever-morphing plot, gorgeous worldbuilding, and no easy solutions. It succeeds in delivering big fun while still letting darkness be darkness–a playground for the morally gray. The characters are all richly realized, deliciously despicable and endearing.



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Journey Man by E.S.H. Leighton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


ESH Leighton’s debut novel JOURNEY MAN is both gritty and glittering, corporeal in detail and cosmic in consequence. Itself a kind of mythical place for every artist, NYC serves as a capable portal through which Leighton thrusts a world-weary protagonist we can all recognize ourselves in. This book is sexy, slick, and one hell of a ride!



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Red Tempest Brother by H.M. Long

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


RED TEMPEST BROTHER is a satisfying conclusion to H.M. Long’s pirate fantasy trilogy. This installment takes us further out to sea, and further into the forces that govern, haunt, and disrupt the Winter Sea and beyond. Old friends (and enemies) return, ploys cross and double-cross, and Long’s expansive imagination is on full display with one of the most exciting examples of fantasy worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long time. This is a world and a “comfort read” trilogy I know I will long to return to.



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The Sea Gives Up the Dead: Stories by Molly Olguín

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


THE SEA GIVES UP THE DEAD sings across the water with a startling voice, rich with haunted children, final chances, cursed dilemmas, and full-blooded enchantment. Molly Olguín’s stories feel very new and very old at the same time: delicate, deft, disruptive. Prepare to be sad. Also, prepare to be wowed.



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Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It is always such a pleasure to read Guy Gavriel Kay. He does this magic trick in all his writing, in contextualizing well-known footnotes of history within a narrative style that uses the smaller moments of being alive as the palette for painting characters. And he so clearly loves these characters. Kay’s voice is distinct, and I think that might be his signature at heart-even in a literary landscape where it’s not always considered cool to do so, he does love his characters, and the world, despite all the things it does and has been doing for all these centuries. Kay’s generous humor, his romance, and his optimism are all on unabashed display in WRITTEN ON THE DARK, which I found deeply enjoyable and more than that… also quite fun.



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