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: 

Fantasy Novella Review: The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox is the 14th novella in Lois McMcmaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona series (itself a spinoff of her World of the Five Gods series/universe).  I've read all of the series up to this one in audio, as audio reader Grover Gardner is typically excellent, and the audio narration is no less excellent here.  If you haven't heard of the series before it follows Penric ("Pen"), a low noble of studious persuasion, as he accidentally contracted a demon Desdemona ("Des") and as a result became a temple sorcerer.  Over the course of the series, we've followed Pen's life from a young man trying to figure out life (and his abilities with his demon) up through this novella, where he's a middle aged well established man respected for his skills and with three kids and several charges under his responsibility.   It's been a very enjoyable series, especially when Pen and Des get into new situations and experiences that require him to figure things out or do something new.

This Pen & Des novella is almost more focused upon two of Pen's children: Rina, his 12 year old going on 13 year old daughter who wishes she could have a demon or magical path to pursue as she reaches adulthood, and Otta, his 11 year old adopted daughter who does have a demon (see Demon Daughter) and is unsure how she wants to use it.  The result works really well as we see Penric deal with the next generation and how the next generation deals with Pen, although I'm going to be honest I kinda wish all the ages of the kids were a bit older.  

More after the jump (Again I read this in audio, so apologies for misspellings of names):  

Video Game Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon

 

Trails Beyond the Horizon is the 13th game in the Trails series of JRPGs, a series of interconnected games on the fantasy continent of Zemuria (it's also the third in the "Calvard Arc" of this series). As my few readers may know, I'm a huge fan of this series, whose first game just got remade last fall (see my review HERE), but whereas that remake was very approachable for new players, Trails Beyond the Horizon is obviously not - just like the 13th book in a long running fantasy series is not going to be approachable for newcomers, the same is true here. Instead, the series truly embraces its long-standing epic nature here by combining the continuing main Calvard arc plot of protagonist Van Arkride (Spriggan/Mercenary for hire) with two new subplots led by former Trails protagonists Rean Schwarzer (from Trails of Cold Steel) and Kevin Graham (from Trails in the Sky the 3rd).

The result is....both uneven and often exhilarating. The gameplay of Trails Beyond the Horizon takes the gameplay from the Daybreak games and enhances it further with new mechanics that are real general pluses (only one of which is super broken, which is a plus for Falcom), so the game is pretty much always a blast to play. I really enjoyed the character-work done with the old returning characters (even Rean, who I pretty much hated in the Cold Steel games) and the game's side quests and minor characters' character arcs remain excellent. And of course the way the story winds up, ending in a cliffhanger ending of epic proportions, is tremendous and has me desperate to see how the story continues/concludes. On the other hand, the game's new three route structure, where you switch between Van, Rean, and Kevin's plotlines on occasion, as well as other issues with how the plot proceeds, result in the game's pacing being immensely frustrating, and the story not always really feeling like it clicks together. I'll try to be more specific after the jump, but the result is an excellent game that just feels like it could have been streamlined far more effectively and wasn't in favor of trying to expand far more than Falcom probably should.

Note: I play JRPGs in many ways as a power gamer, trying to tune my characters' abilities and setups to be maximally powerful even though that may take me longer, although I don't try to grind deliberately to overlevel or anything. That said, I also love the flavor and story of these games, which further impacts my play (For example, I refuse to part Renne from Pater-Mater, despite it not being her best holo core). The result is that I played these games on Nightmare with certain self-imposed restrictions on myself, which affects some of how I perceived parts of the gameplay.

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Elysium Heist by Y.M. Resnik

 

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 31, 2025 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 Elysium Heist is the debut novel from author Y.M. Resnik and it piqued my eye when I saw it compared to Rebecca Fraimow's Lady Eve's Last Con (a book I loved last year) - especially as a queer sci-fi heist romance novel with a Jewish connection. The novel features 5 women as its point of view protagonist characters that, when combined with an AI* character form a trio of romances that develop throughout the book (with an awful LOT of pining). And the 5 women set their aim on a truly heinous target: a man who would blackmail one of them with an illicitly made/obtained sex tape and would deny his orthodox Jewish wife (another one of them) a divorce (a Get), luring him to a Casino Tournament in an attempt to take back what is theirs.

* An Actual AI, not some LLM nonsense. I hate that I even feel like I have to explain that.

The result is a short book that is really good on the romance department - although you may pull your hair out at both pairs of protagonists pining for the other without recognizing that their interest is mutual for sooooo long - even as it might struggle a little bit at times with aspects of the setting. Specifically, if you're very big into casino games and how they work....well, unless you really like queer romance, this might drive you a little batty. And the heist stuff is very very underwhelming to be honest. But the romance and interpersonal developments here were really enjoyable, making this one still a recommend.

Trigger Warnings: Sexual Harassment, and mention of Sexual Assault/Marital Abuse is prominent, but no sexual assault occurs on page or is described and none of it is gratuitous.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

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 January 9, 2024 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 Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a gothic novel by South African author Shubnum Khan. The story follows a girl, Sana, whose father takes her to live in what used to be a mansion, but is now a dilapidated house haunted by the past. The novel is more like magical realism than fantastical (or a horror) with the titular djinn being mostly just an observer who maintains the strong atmosphere of sadness and Sana's haunting being something that might not even be real. The book manages to set an incredible atmosphere, both as it tells a story in the present - with the house occupied by a bunch of older Indian Muslim residents all with various forms of heartbreak/trauma - and the past, as the story reveals what happened in the house that has haunted it all this time.

It's a story that is at times heartwrenching and sad but is ultimately hopeful, as Sana reads about the love and tragedy of the past and sees the heartbroken hearts of her neighbors and yet manages in the end to be captivated by the love she's read and finds some way forward. I'm not usually a person who loves reading bits that are based upon description to set atmosphere, but this one really worked, and the characters in both timelines work really well, as does the love between them and the traumas that many characters struggle with. The result is a really good novel that I would definitely recommend.

Video Game Way Too In-Depth Breakdown: Trails in the Sky

In this post, I'm going to go in depth into my thoughts on the systems and changes in Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter. Apologies if this is more of a ramble, but I need to get out my thoughts somewhere and they're way too involved for a review. I'm also not going to go too much into localization here - suffice to say I really badly miss some of the best lines that were removed from this game (an Evil Penguin? Do Not Insert Foot Into Mouth. etc), the terminology screwups here with "Orbal Golems" replacing archaisms among many other things, and just the lazy things like straight translating all monster ingredients as "Monster eyes", "Monster Tenders" so that they all seem the same unless you look carefully, which led to me being unable to complete my recipe book damnit. Others, especially those more familiar with the Japanese and translation, have covered those better elsewhere.

So let's talk gameplay changes - and spoilers here are present, so this will all go beyond the jump:

Video Game Review: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter

 

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a remake of the very first game in Nihon Falcom's now longrunning Trails series of JRPGs (itself a subseries of an even longer series, The Legend of Heroes). The series is probably the closest thing to a long running fantasy book series I've ever seen in video games, with the series now featuring 13 games, each of which continues a long running story - even if the 13 games are broken into essentially four different arcs that each follow a different series of characters (with old characters often coming back). The series started as kind of a mess in terms of how it got to English-speaking audiences, with the first Trails in the Sky game coming out in Japan in 2004 and not hitting the US until 2011 and the second Trails in the Sky game hitting Japan in 2006 but not hitting the US until 2015. So English audiences have always been behind - often very behind - Japanese audiences in terms of where the series is, although Falcom is now releasing the 13th game in the series (Trails Beyond the Horizon) this January, which will align the Japanese and English audiences for the first time. Given that the series is now more popular than ever and is finally being released worldwide at almost the same time, Falcom took the chance now to release this remake, which takes place in the very beginning of the series, hoping to give audiences a new entry point into the series that won't overwhelm them.

Just to be clear, I'm a bit of a Trails superfan here. I got into the original Trails in the Sky games after they were mentioned on Kotaku and have been hooked on Trails since, even buying Japanese versions of the two games that were originally skipped by localizations (and playing with a translation patch) just to keep myself fully up to date. Moreover, even after playing 12 of these games, the original Trails in the Sky games might be my favorite due to their simple but refined gameplay and incredible story and characters they contain, especially the slow-burn coming of age romance story of protagonists Estelle and Joshua Bright. The original Trails in the Sky games also contain what might be the most perfect localization, which really punches up the script to add fun and lovability to the characters. So yeah, this game is a remake of one of my favorite games ever, which means I'm holding this game up to an incredibly high standard.

And to its credit, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter does a remarkable job remaking the original game here into something more modern audiences might be willing to take a chance on and enjoy. The game has gone from mini 3d sprites to full cell shaded 3d graphics and looks absolutely beautiful, the voice acting is generally really great, and the gameplay mixes real time and turn based combat like the most recent Trails games in an excellent and addictive combination. They've kept the original story pretty much entirely, but thrown in a few extra new sidequests that flesh out a few of the side characters and are enjoyable in their own right without being too distracting, which I very much appreciated, and some of the rebalancing of existing abilities from the original game work pretty well. This is a really good game and definitely one I recommend playing either in general or for those who have always been curious about Trails and never knew where to start. That said, I do have a few complaints that make me wonder what could have been: the game loses quite a bit of the original's difficulty as it has added more gameplay systems and most importantly, the new localization by Gung-Ho Games doesn't adhere to long established series terminology (which is really annoying) and doesn't carry over some of the most charming and highlight lines of dialogue/translation that was present in the original localizations. But even this more literal localization still conveys about 95% of the charm and fun of the original to the extent that new players will still find out why I love this story so much, so it's not nearly the problem it could hav been.

I'm going to go into more specifics beneath the jump here, but not too specific since I don't want to bog down this review. I have made a separate post where I go way WAY too in depth into my thoughts on the gameplay and mechanics and localization stuff, for anyone who might care. You can find that overly specific breakdown HERE.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire

 

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 September 30, 2025 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.

Silver and Lead is the 19th mainline book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series of urban fantasy novels, one of my favorite ongoing series out there. It's the first book in basically 2 years, and also takes place after a major two part event in the series that took place over books 17 (Sleep No More) and 18 (The Innocent Sleep). I'm not going to spoil those books or that even before the jump (after is fair game), but it was a major gamechanger in terms of the mental states of the characters. This is something McGuire has kind of done a bunch of times in the series, and often it is followed by a novel that keeps up the stakes but ends in a way that calms things down into a more stable and temporarily happier status quo.

Silver and Lead doesn't quite go in that direction as much, (we end up with a new status quo change that is kind of happier but still extremely tense), and while it's another solid October Daye novel (I think my low score for any of these book is a 7.5, just to be clear), I struggled with some parts of this novel for a few reasons. We again have one old antagonist returning in a bit role, whose capabilities the main characters should be well beyond at this point, so say nothing of the "new" central antagonist. That's to be expected after our last book had one of the 3 essentially gods of Faerie as an antagonist I guess, but it rung me wrong. The central surprise antagonist of this book is what kind of saves this one from being one of the other books with this similar issue (Book 12, Night and Silence, comes to mind), and I'm intrigued on how things go from here so October Daye fans should still be satisfied, especially with the tease at the end of this book.

Spoilers for Books 1 through 18 below, I can't talk around them further here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I may post a spoilery post also for this book after this book's actual release too.

Fantasy Novella Review: Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

 

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 September 16, 2025 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.

Audition for the Fox is the first piece of long fiction by Martin Cahill, known in the SF/F space for short fiction and for being an editor at Erewhonian (and probably other places too before that). The story follows a young woman Nesi who desperately seeks a position as an acolyte of one of the 99 Pillars (deities) and reluctantly seeks the position from T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks...only for the Fox to send her back 300 years in time to the time her people were conquered and oppressed and challenged to find a way to start a revolution. The result is an excellent setting and world, with a really strong lead character, excellent storytelling, and some solid themes of family, oppression, emotions and hurt, and justice.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

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 October 21, 2025 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 Isle in the Silver Sea is a new stand alone romantic fantasy from award winning British fantasy author Tasha Suri. I've really enjoyed Suri's past work, as she deals with the historical colonizing of countries like India as well as themes of empire and oppression in what are generally all new fantasy worlds. Her work is not subtle, but it has always been incredibly creative with really strong (and often queer) characters who struggle with impossible choices set upon them by oppression and love. I've actually not finished her last trilogy yet despite enjoying the first two books and wouldn't have gone on to her new book...except that I kept seeing on social media advance reviewers I trust that were just utterly raving about it. And so I picked up The Isle in the Silver Sea.

And I'm super glad I did, because the Isle in the Silver Sea is utterly tremendous. The story is a romantic fantasy in a Britain that is sustained literally by the repetition of stories/tales, where incarnations of the characters in such stories are repeatedly reborn to play out the stories again and again so as to sustain the land around them. And the story follows two such incarnations - a Witch who is supposed to enchant innocents from her mountain abode and a Knight who is supposed to fall in love with her and then kill them both for honor - as they seek to find a different path and break the ties that bind them to this depressing fate. Like all Tasha Suri books, the book is remarkably unsubtle (maybe even less so than usual), as it plays with themes of power, of love, of the changing of stories and the different stories different peoples tell, and of what stories and which peoples really make up a nation like Britain. But it works so incredibly well, with the characters being tremendous and the themes being extremely strong and I suspect these themes and characters will play even stronger for readers who are not cis white Americans like myself (especially for British readers). An absolute must read.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Thief Liar Lady by D.L. Soria

 

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 June 6, 2023 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.

Thief Liar Lady is the first adult book by author D.L. Soria, who has published at least three YA novels under the name Destiny Soria. I've rather liked Soria's YA work, especially the very underrated Beneath the Citadel, which took what seemed like a classic premise (group of teens fight against fascist government which beat their parents) and took it in very wild directions, complete with a shocking to me ending choice by one of othe characters. Thief Liar Lady, despite being adult fic, is similar in that it is also taking a familiar premise - it's a Cinderella adaptation- and trying to take in very different directions. Here, Cinderella is a con artist using magic to attract her prince as part of a scheme by her greedy stepmother and also attempting to use her position to help her actual grandmother, who is a leader in a resistance movement of a people/country subjugated by the royal family. And so the classic dynamics of the Cinderella story change greatly.

The result is a story that is often compelling and got to the point where I found myself 60% through unable to continue for a while, for fear of what would happen to the protagonist and major secondary character I really liked. The conflicts in the setting, and the themes of power, of oppression, of what one should do for a people so oppressed that one only has a tenuous connection to, of heritage and sacrifice, and of how much use of power and control is too much...are well done and interesting, but the book kind of cops out in its last few acts as its protagonist Ash has to respond to events going seriously out of control, and the book's happy ending almost feels like a cop out. Worth a read, if one can handle the trigger warning (see below).

Note: Prior Soria books have featured a mix of straight and queer romances; this book however deals solely with a straight romance and I don't think any queer characters exist, so fans who enjoyed the queer parts of Soria's early works should know they aren't present here.

Trigger Warning: NON-CONSENSUAL Romantic/Sexual relationships. There isn't any traditional rape or sexual abuse on page, but the protagonist begins the book using magical power to entrance the royal prince....and as things get worse, there comes a moment she uses a stronger enchantment resulting in what can only be considered non-consensual sex or rape (with neither party really giving consent). It's very morally dark and while the book never pretends it's okay at all, it may be too much for many readers and the book isn't compelling enough in its themes for me to advise people to push past that anyway.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Our Lady of the Artilects by Andrew Gillsmith

Our Lady of the Artilects is a self-published Sci-Fi novel by author Andrew Gillsmith. It's also a Self-Published Sci-Fi Competition Quarterfinalist - as voted by a different judging panel than the one I'm on - and my judging group decided to take a look at it to see if it was worthy of being a semifinalist, with one member of my group thinking really highly of it. That said, the review she posted of the book noted that the book is very faith based and Catholic faith based in general and she wondered how someone who wasn't Christian might take the book. So I was really curious how this would or would not appeal to me as a Jewish Reader.

And well....the answer is, it doesn't really, due to a number of factors that made it hard to enjoy this book. The book is written generally well, and the author does a good job setting up plot threads and characters and writing in very readable prose, although that prose is based in Catholic thought that I am often unfamiliar with. But the book's future premise seems to be based upon a future version of our world that is filled with Catholics, Muslims, and almost no one else and uses past and current atrocities as setup for its ideas in ways that...was disconcerting in a sense. It made it hard to really recommend his book to anyone who isn't very familiar and into catholic or perhaps some other Christian liturgies, and that's not me and I don't think that's the general SPSFC4 audience either.

Book Review: No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo (Translated by Elizabeth Bryer)

 

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 December 10, 2024 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.

No Place to Bury the Dead is a novel translated from its original 2021 award winning release in Spanish (in Spain I believe), where the book was titled El Tercer País (The Third Country). For those who come to my reviews looking for SciFi/Fantasy novels, know that this novel only barely fits: set in 2019, the novel features as a background element a plague that robs people of their memories, but other than that there is nothing speculative here and this novel is more likely to be categorized as "literary". That is not a reason to skip this novel however, as it tells a rough story of pain, grief, resilience, and to a very small extent, hope of moving on in its entirety.

No Place to Bury the Dead follows mostly a woman named Angustias who, along with her infected husband, tries to flee her unnamed Latin American country when it is hit with the memory stealing plague. She carries with her her two twin baby boys, neither of whom survive, and she searches for a place to put them to rest. What she finds is an illegal graveyard run by the rebellious Visitación Salazar, in whose affairs she becomes entangled when she refuses to leave where her children are buried. It's a story about grief and resilience in a world that seems only to promise more and more tragedies and where the people in power are dangerous buffoons...but it also ends on kind of a hopeful note.

Trigger Warning: One character's backstory involves Male on Male rape/sodomy very briefly. Also deaths of children.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher

 

A Sorceress Comes to Call is the latest novel by T Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon) to be nominated for some major awards, in this case the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The novel is ostensibly a fairy tale adaptation of "The Goose Girl", but honestly it's an incredibly loose adaptation if that and I completely missed the intent to be such an adaptation until I read other pieces explaining the connection. It's also kind of a regency novel in setting, but not really. Honestly, I felt like the novel was almost more one of Kingfisher's horror novels (another of her common genres) as it dealt with the horrifying implications of a powerful sorceress - who can bind minds, has an extremely scary familiar eek - and the two protagonists' attempts to get free of and to stop her from taking over. Again, I don't think this was meant as a horror novel - it's been a long running joke on social media that Vernon's fluffy romance novels have horrifying moments just because of how her imagination works - but I found it quite chilling and I had to put it down a whole bunch at times to take a break before continuing as a result.

Notably, the horror does work to keep the story intense and strong the story's two main characters - Hester and Cordelia - are excellent in their own very different ways: Cordelia, as the daughter of the sorceress who feels hopelessly alone, unable to break free of her mother and unable to figure out if there is any way of escaping, but who finds some key moments of bravery to take steps forward; and Hester, as the unmarried older sister of the Squire the sorceress wants to seduce and who is desperate to find a way, with the help of some friends and the man she loves, to stop the person she recognizes as "Doom" from getting her way. The story contains some of the trademark T Kingfisher wit in the dialogue, especially when Hester calls for allies, which I think most readers will enjoy, and overall the story ends in a very satisfying fashion. It's not my favorite T Kingfisher book, but it's a very good one and worth your time.