Reviews & Essays

When Women Were Dragons By Kelly Barnhill I received an ARC of When Women Were Dragons from Doubleday Books in exchange for an honest review. Kelly Barnhill (author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon) makes her adult fiction debut with this alternate history of America in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, after an … [Read More]

The Hacienda By Isabel Cañas I received an ARC of The Hacienda from Berkley Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review. Isabel Cañas’ debut novel is an anti-colonialist take on the haunted house genre set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence. It follows two characters: Beatriz, who has recently married a … [Read More]

Elektra By Jennifer Saint I received an ARC of Elektra from Flatiron Books in exchange for an honest review. Jennifer Saint’s follow-up to Ariadne is called Elektra, but that is somewhat misleading—the titular character shares this story, which encompasses events prior to and during Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, with Clytemnestra (her mother) and Cassandra … [Read More]

Kaikeyi By Vaishnavi Patel I received an ARC of Kaikeyi from Redhook Books in exchange for an honest review. Circe is the book that launched a thousand female-forward retellings of ancient stories: The Silence of the Girls, A Thousand Ships, The Witch’s Heart, Ariadne, and seemingly countless others. Kaikeyi, a refreshing departure from the Western … [Read More]

Spear By Nicola Griffith   I received an ARC of Spear from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review.   It has been almost a decade since the publication of Nicola Griffith’s Hild (which I haven’t read—I know, I know!—despite having owned it for nearly that long), and while the sequel is still forthcoming, Spear … [Read More]

The Atlas Six By Olivie Blake I received an ARC of The Atlas Six from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review. I’m always intrigued when a self-published phenomenon such as The Atlas Six gets picked up by a traditional publisher. Why did this book blow up? How will going through the channels of traditional … [Read More]

All the Horses of Iceland By Sarah Tolmie I received an ARC of All the Horses of Iceland from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review. All the Horses of Iceland is a short book, about a hundred pages, so I am going to keep this review short too. The story follows Eyvind, a trader … [Read More]

Age of Ash By Daniel Abraham I received an ARC of Age of Ash from Orbit Books in exchange for an honest review. As co-author of The Expanse, Daniel Abraham’s star has risen considerably over the past decade; now, hot on the heels of Leviathan Falls, comes his first entry in the Kithamar series. Age … [Read More]

Goliath By Tochi Onyebuchi I received an ARC of Goliath from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review. I seem to have bad luck with books called Goliath. Scott Westerfeld’s Goliath left me disappointed a decade ago, and now I’ve had the same experience with Tochi Onyebuchi—but with a key difference: Onyebuchi’s Goliath is much … [Read More]

The Starless Crown By James Rollins I received an ARC of The Starless Crown from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review. James Rollins is best known as a writer of thrillers, but The Starless Crown is far from his first foray into fantasy: he previously wrote The Banned and the Banished series and the … [Read More]