Tag: Books: Fantasy

Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones

Posted 22 June, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 2 Comments

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)
By: Seanan McGuire
Format/Source: eBook; courtesy of Tor.com reading club

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you’ve got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

I read the first book, Every Heart a Doorway (review) a few years ago, and made a note to check out the rest of the series when I get a chance. So naturally I downloaded this book when it was featured in the Tor.com Book Club a few months ago.

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Review: Truthwitch

Posted 5 June, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

Truthwitch (The Witchlands #1)
By: Susan Dennard
Format/Source: eBook; courtesy of Tor.com reading club

In a continent on the edge of war, two witches hold its fate in their hands.

Young witches Safiya and Iseult have a habit of finding trouble. After clashing with a powerful Guildmaster and his ruthless Bloodwitch bodyguard, the friends are forced to flee their home.

Safi must avoid capture at all costs as she’s a rare Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lies. Many would kill for her magic, so Safi must keep it hidden – lest she be used in the struggle between empires. And Iseult’s true powers are hidden even from herself.

In a chance encounter at Court, Safi meets Prince Merik and makes him a reluctant ally. However, his help may not slow down the Bloodwitch now hot on the girls’ heels. All Safi and Iseult want is their freedom, but danger lies ahead. With war coming, treaties breaking and a magical contagion sweeping the land, the friends will have to fight emperors and mercenaries alike. For some will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch.

I downloaded this book as part of Tor.com’s First Reads Book Club a few months ago. I had seen this book in passing in the past but reading the premise of the book this time around I was curious and decided to check it out.

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Review: The City in the Middle of the Night

Posted 1 June, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 2 Comments

The City in the Middle of the Night
By: Charlie Jane Anders
Format/Source: eBook; my purchase

“If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams…And from there, it’s easy to control our entire lives.”

From the brilliant mind of Charlie Jane Anders (“A master absurdist”—New York Times; “Virtuoso”—NPR) comes a new novel of Kafkaesque futurism. Set on a planet that has fully definitive, never-changing zones of day and night, with ensuing extreme climates of endless, frigid darkness and blinding, relentless light, humankind has somehow continued apace—though the perils outside the built cities are rife with danger as much as the streets below.

But in a world where time means only what the ruling government proclaims, and the levels of light available are artificially imposed to great consequence, lost souls and disappeared bodies are shadow-bound and savage, and as common as grains of sand. And one such pariah, sacrificed to the night, but borne up by time and a mysterious bond with an enigmatic beast, will rise to take on the entire planet–before it can crumble beneath the weight of human existence.

The premise of the novel sounded really interesting and I had All the Birds in the Sky (review) lined up to read at the time so yeah, I picked this book up too. I read this book right after her debut novel.

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Review: All the Birds in the Sky

Posted 27 May, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

All the Birds in the Sky
By: Charlie Jane Anders
Format/Source: eBook; courtesy of Tor.com reading club

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.

I’ve long been following io9.com back when Charlie Jane Anders was editor of the site. So naturally I was curious when I heard she had written a book and was stepping down from that site to write full time.

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Review: The Raven Tower

Posted 20 May, 2020 by Lianne in Books / 0 Comments

The Raven Tower
By: V.E. Schwab
Format/Source: eBook; my purchase

Listen. A god is speaking.
My voice echoes through the stone of your master’s castle.
This castle where he finds his uncle on his father’s throne.
You want to help him. You cannot.
You are the only one who can hear me.
You will change the world.

A triumph of the imagination, The Raven Tower is the first fantasy novel by Ann Leckie, New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Gods meddle in the fates of men, men play with the fates of gods and a pretender must be cast down from the throne in this breathtaking fantasy masterpiece.

Ann Leckie writing a fantasy novel? Yeah, count me in! And isn’t the cover gorgeous?

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