SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Star Wars: Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed

 

Reign of the Empire is a new trilogy of Star Wars books, set between Episodes III and IV, written by a trio of really great authors - Alexander Freed (book 1), Rebecca Roanhorse (book 2), and Fran Wilde (book 3).  Wilde and Roanhorse have excellent track records in non Star Wars SF/F (and have I think both written some Star Wars stuff) and Freed - who as far as I can tell has only written licensed work - is responsible for the really excellent Alphabet Squadron trilogy, so I was really excited when this trilogy was first announced.  This first book in the trilogy, which unfortunately has way too many words in its title, deals with the aftermath of the founding of the Empire and the reactions of several individuals to its emergence: Bail Organa, Saw Gerrera, and Mon Mothma most prominently but also a few other newer characters who have to figure out what to do in this post clone-war, beginning of Empire era.  

The result is a really excellent look at how people dealt with the emergence of the Empire, why it was able to consolidate power so quickly, and how the fighting styles of people like Organa, Mothma, and Gerrera were so different and also so similarly ineffective at first at combatting the rise of tyranny.  Obviously being an interquel book, nothing super canon altering can occur to the main trio of characters, but seeing how Mothma reacts to try and politically win back power for the senate, how Organa desperately searches for justice for the Jedi, and Gerrera looks to fight back with violence for his people really works well.  Its aided by several other minor characters being excellent viewpoints even if I'm not sure they'll be back in the rest of the trilogy, most notably an old republic/Imperial spymaster looking for her old agents and a separatist cyborg who was trained to be their final weapon and now has no clear path forwards.  This is an excellent novel on its own and is entirely stand-alone, but I look forward to seeing from here how the other two authors take what this book built.   

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in exchange for a potential review as a Hugo voter. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Raven Scholar is an epic fantasy - and I mean epic, the book is listed as 700 pages long - and the first of a new fantasy trilogy. The novel has been incredibly well regarded by other authors I follow on social media and is now a Hugo Nominee for Best Novel, so it's been incredibly intriguing to me for a while despite my struggles to get back into reading. The story features a world with eight animal gods - Fox, Raven, Ox, Monkey, Dragon, Hound, Bear, and Tiger - whose existence is questioned but whose return is feared to bring absolute destruction. And then it follows largely a scholar of common birth who is drawn into the Kingdom's competition for succession and a murder mystery and is forced to unravel the mysteries and conspiracies around her before the competition gets herself killed.

The result is a story that uses some interesting and unusual tricks of narration and viewpoint changing to slowly unravel its secrets in a way that feels both really fresh and really engaging, such that I had a hard time putting this really big novel down. This is the first of a trilogy, so the book is in no way stand alone, but it does resolve the arc it starts in a way that doesn't feel like you were cheated out of getting a full story here. And the characters it introduces, particularly protagonist Neema and a few others, are excellent and fascinating to read about. There are some negatives - if you're looking for a potential court intrigue setup or for the conspiracy reveals to make a ton of logical sense, you're probably in the wrong place here - but overall I really enjoyed The Raven Scholar and am excited to try to read the sequel next year.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do (Translated by Anton Hur)

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 28, 2026 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Heart of the Nhaga is the first in a four book epic fantasy series ("The Bird that Drinks Tears") that was originally published in Korea in 2003 as an online serial.  The series is now coming to America in an official translation and I wanted to give it a try, being unfamiliar with the Korean SF/F scene (outside of following one Korean webcomic, Tower of God) and generally really interested in seeing how different non-Western cultures might interpret and play in the genre.  

The result is....interesting and it's going to make this kind of an all over the place review I suspect.  The story jumps all over the place within its chapters, often jumping back to characters' whose place in the larger story seems done or unclear before jumping again to the more prominent main characters.  It also features a journey and quest whose purpose is never explained in this book, and setting aspects that are hinted at but also kind of not explained whatsoever, making it hard to really care too much about certain beings and objectives.  And yet while there isn't a super focus on any given character and there's more mystery about certain characters that explored depth, the writing still drew me in quite a bit and I couldn't help but keep reading to see what would happen to a lot of the characters as the journey went on, even if I couldn't explain what the journey was about or why.  And parts of the fantasy were compelling and often quite amusing and fun (one bit with Kings in the final act gets kind of ludicrous in a good way).  So I think I'd recommend this one, even if I'm almost as confused as I am satisfied.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 25, 2026 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Love Me Like a Rock Song is the second book from queer Jewish author Shelly Jay Shore, after 2024's phenomenal Rules for Ghosting. As a Jewish reader, that book just really felt perfect for me, with its queer Jewish romance steeped in Jewish culture and religion (and queerness) in a way that I often miss in reading Fantastical Romance books, and it was really really well done. Love Me Like a Rock Song is another Jewish Queer Fantasy Romance and although it didn't promise to be as steeped in the practice of Judaism as Rules for Ghosting it was a book I was super eager to try when I got offered an advance copy to review.

And well, I really enjoyed Love Me Like a Rock Star quite a bit. The book features a roadtrip through queer spaces and a queer romance between Delilah, a Jewish singer songwriter left at the alter, and Emmett, a golem created from clay to serve his now deceased father/master. The result may not be steeped in Jewish religious tradition - although golems come from Jewish myth and the book features quotes from Jewish texts - and yet it really still feels Jewish in its own different way from Rules for Ghosting. It's also excellently queer as Emmett is taken by Delilah on a road trip of queer discovery and the romance is again really well done. Overall, this is a really wonderful queer Jewish romance that I can again highly recommend.

Trigger Warning: Discussion of past suicidal ideation and depression is in this book as a plot point. It's treated respectfully and is part of Delilah's past, not present actions on page, but just be forewarned if that's an issue for you.

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: Daggerbound by T Kingfisher

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an audiobook e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on August 25, 2026 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Daggerbound is the long awaited stand-alone sequel to Swordheart, T Kingfisher's (aka Ursula Vernon's) fantasy romance series that deals with a trio of warriors who 500 years in the past were each cursed to live forever inside a trio of magical swords, which forces them to defend the wielder of said sword.  Swordheart is one of the few books I've ever given a perfect 10 to and is one of my favorite fantasy romances of all time: an incredibly witty, fun, fantasy romance from beginning to end.  That book focused upon two very different partners whom I really loved: Halla, a middle aged widow who was really smart but used a bumbling fool persona and constant babbling to disorient others, and Sarkis, a warrior stuck in the sword from ages ago who feels burdened by his sins and without the patience Halla possesses.  

Daggerbound is a really great follow-up.  The book features a similarly oddball pair: Learned Edmund (who was originally a character in T Kingfisher's Clocktaur Wars duology), a scholar despondent at the misogynist and prejudiced nature of his order trying to walk away from it all; and "The Dervish", the flirtatious dagger-wielding warrior in the sword.  The two could not seem more opposites: Edmund is obsessed with knowledge and goes on long tangents about things that occur to him on the journey while the Dervish loves to fight, flirt, and f*** and has little patience for standing still or impractability.  Yet when the two go on a very weird, strange, and dangerous journey together, well...this is a fantasy romance, you may get some of where this is going, although you'll be very surprised by how it goes down.  As I'll explain in more detail below, it's a really really fun adventure/fantasy romance filled with Kingfisher's fun quirkiness that I have to highly recommend.

Note:  Daggerbound is the sequel to Swordheart, but as noted above is also very much a sequel to the Clocktaur Wars duology.  That said this book can be read entirely stand-alone, although I'd recommend reading Swordheart first.  While references to the Clocktaur Wars books are not infrequent and readers who read that series will have a greater understanding of some matters than those starting with this series, everything you need to know about what happened there is explained herein so you can skip that duology to start here.  

Note 2: I read this in audiobook format.  The reader is very good and thus i would recommend this book in that format.  However, if I misspell any names or terms, it's due to not having a print version with which to compare and I apologize in advance.  

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

 

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society is the third novel from author C.M. Waggoner, author of one of my favorite books over the last few years: The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry. That novel, and to some extent its stand alone predecessor (Unnatural Magic) featured some lovable if zany characters in a fantasy world featuring magic, humans, trolls, and more to go along with fun queer romance. I'd missed that Waggoner wrote this third novel, which is set in our world with less of a fantasy touch, but immediately knew I had to buy this book when I saw it in a bookstore.

And really, the Village Library Demon-Hunting Society was exactly what I needed and was looking for - a light, fun, mix of murder mystery and fantasy with an excellent lead character in Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle. The story takes on the Murder She Wrote pastiche of having the amateur (Sherry) solve way too many murders in a small town in upstate New York for it to be normal, introduces a supernatural element Sherry must discover amidst a mystery, and brings it all together quite nicely. The book begins a little slow, but once the main story kicks in it becomes really hard to put down and is just excellent fun.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 14, 2026 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Dragon Has Some Complaints is the third novel by author John Wiswell, whose prior two books - Wearing a Lion and Someone You Can Build a Nest In - were incredibly fun, queer fantasy novels that dealt with family drama and abuse as well as unusual relationships between unusual beings (often non-human), and more.  They were really delightful stuff even as they sometimes dealt with some pretty serious themes (abuse, justice, accountability, etc.) and were some of my favorite reads of the last few years.  So I was super excited to get an advance copy of this third book, which was described like more of classic Wiswell: the story of a dragon who pretends to be tame in order to get care/food and finds himself frustrated by the conflict caused by his desire to eat his new eccentric rider and his need to keep that rider alive.  

The Dragon Has Some Complaints is actually quite a bit more than that, as it deals with the dragon Garrodigh becoming part (unwillingly) of the dragon-riding flying country of Kardoša, which faces besiegement from both a mysteriously powerful and tyrannical enemy and the overtures of a different puritanical and colonizing third nation.  The result is very good, although I don't think it reaches the heights of Wiswell's other two novels, as it deals with themes of fighting for freedom, the acceptance of refugees, and the relationships (often if not always queer) of those who are trying to make it in the new freer nation and trying to either live there or defend it.  And of course, as always with Wiswell, you have fun questions of humanity and what that means, even as the novel's centerpiece is actually a dragon.  

More specifics after the jump: