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Review: Trouble with the Cursed by Kim Harrison

Apr 042022
 

Publishers Weekly: Following 2020’s Million Dollar Demon, the 17th installment of Harrison’s Hollows series proves that heroine Rachel Morgan’s adventures are far from over, with a new set of complications expanding her circle of influence and magical skills. After transforming the vampire Constance into a mouse, witch-born demon Rachel acts in her name while secretly running Cincinnati with her partner in crime, Pike. As the demon subrosa, Rachel is responsible for keeping the city’s supernatural population in line, but her position remains tenuous. When a vampire representative from D.C. arrives to meet with Constance, Rachel must find a way to cover Constance’s absence without revealing her own involvement and while avoiding accusations of murder. Meanwhile, the local demons start acting up, with Rachel’s housemate, Hodin, behaving suspiciously and another apparently kidnapping mortals. And with her closest friends distracted by their own lives, Rachel is especially vulnerable when an unexpected foe makes their true agenda clear at last. More personal subplots—including Rachel’s upcoming wedding to the elf businessman Trent Kalamack—move forward at a leisurely pace, while the return of Rachel’s best friend, Ivy, offers a welcome adjustment to the cast dynamic. Fans will be pleased to see plenty of life left here.

Starred Review: The Void Ascendant by Premee Mohamed

Mar 232022
 

Publishers Weekly: Mohamed’s stunning finale to her Beneath the Rising cosmic-horror trilogy (after A Broken Darkness) reunites readers with Nick Prasad following the implosion of his former friend Joanna “Johnny” Chambers’s last-ditch plan to save the Earth from the Ancient Ones. Thrown through dimensions, Nick lands on a faraway planet that did not resist the Ancient Ones’ dominion, where he’s treated as a divinely ordained prophet. Then the planet’s royals capture a strange chimeric creature trying to steal information from their archives—and it turns out to be Johnny, or most of her. She abducts Nick to help her execute her most ambitious plan yet: to release the Elder Gods that the Ancient Ones overthrew and imprisoned in hopes these old enemies will destroy each other. Can Nick trust Johnny’s unparalleled genius and magic to defeat the Ancient Ones at last, while knowing that in the wrong hands, she’s a weapon powerful enough to cause the destruction of every dimension left? Mohamed sends her characters careening through a multiverse of astonishing worlds, all lushly described and often unforgettably creepy, and holds them together with an intricate plot and gripping emotional tension. It’s a mind-bending and thoroughly satisfying conclusion to a truly singular series.

Review: Heroic Hearts by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes

Mar 042022
 

Library Journal: In this new collection, editors Butcher and Hughes introduce a dozen short stories by some of today’s best urban fantasy writers. Standouts include Anne Bishop’s “The Dark Ship,” where, across the ocean from her tales of the Others, an act from a young woman brings her, and her town’s troubles, to the attention of great powers. Two powerful women face grief and hope on a search for their daughter in Annie Bellet’s “Train to Last Hope.” Werewolf Asil discovers that online dating may not be the trial he believes it is in “Dating Terrors,” by Patricia Briggs. Jim Butcher centers “Little Things” on the pixie Toot-Toot as he defends Dresden’s new castle, with an uneasy ally in Mister the cat. Avid fans of these authors will enjoy where their stories intersect with favorite characters, while new readers will find the shorts accessible and filled with vivid worldbuilding and interesting figures.

VERDICT A resoundingly successful collection of stories focused on heart, humor, and the strength of courage.

Starred Review: Second Spear by Kerstin Hall

Feb 252022
 

Booklist: The second book in Hall’s Mkalis Cycle will not disappoint readers of her standout fantasy The Border Keeper (2019). When readers reenter this rich, complex world of twisting godly politics and rule-based realms, Hall zooms them in on Tyn. She’s still recovering from the last book’s events, hurt and reeling, trying to balance new revelations with her loyalty to Res Lfae, ruler of Tahmais. When a lying villain with an impossible weapon comes to her realm to tear it apart, Tyn has to band together with the reticent First Spear Vehn, who hates her, and the cynical Rion, who’s still new to Mkalis and completely lost. All three characters go through convincing transformations in this eerie, suspenseful story based in Hall’s deeply unsettling world that gleams at the corners. The scenes are cinematically visceral, with pages soaked in sensory detail, atmosphere, and the tense promise of danger lurking at the edges of every rule-bound realm. Readers will feel they’re dropped into the story—and that will undoubtedly make their skin crawl, in all the right ways. This horror-fantasy will have readers waiting impatiently for the next volume in Hall’s dark series.

Review: Locklands by Robert Jackson Bennett

Feb 212022
 

Publishers Weekly: Gods collide in the high octane finale to Bennett’s epic fantasy Founders Trilogy,… Bennett advances the plot precipitously and raises his characters’ power levels to the “nigh-incomprehensible,” but the grounding themes of family and love as Sancia and Berenice risk their happiness to save the world, are what readers will take away.

Review: A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

Jan 072022
 
Locus: I’ve seen Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth described as young-adult fantasy and young-adult science fiction, but it’s really young-adult Indigenous futurism.

In a novel full of remarkable things, one of the most remarkable is the narrative itself….The way Little Badger jumped between Oli and Nina, between first and third person, between mainstream and traditional narratives, is really quite something. It should feel jarring and disjointed, but it doesn’t. It flows seamlessly while also letting the structure act almost like a third main character.

Even the endings – Oli’s, Nina’s, and the book as a whole – show the depth of Little Badger’s vast talent. Throughout A Snake Falls to Earth, Nina and Oli encounter inexplicable things or mysterious animal people, but they never let their curiosity intrude on another person’s life. They recognize that they don’t need to have the answers to all their questions in order to be able to empathize, make wise decisions, or behave in a socially responsible manner. They can be respectful without analyzing or critiquing. Sometimes we can just let things be as they are without demanding “why” and “how.” These are not plot holes or loose threads but a clever, powerful way to bring Little Badger”s cultural storytelling traditions into a Western medium.

If Elatsoe was a ten out of ten, then A Snake Falls to Earth is a solid 11. This book could have been twice as long and I still would have begged for more. Although aimed at a young-adult audience, it has the kind of easy appeal and heartfelt tone that will entice younger kids and older adults as well. Anyone reading or buying YA needs to add this to their shelves immediately.

Starred Review: Howl by Shaun David Hutchinson

Jan 062022
 

Booklist: Shortly after moving from Seattle to his father’s hometown of Merritt, Florida, Virgil Knox, 15, is attacked by a monster. Barely clinging to his sanity and bleeding copiously from his injuries, he makes his way to a parking lot and collapses. In spite of his wounds, however, people either don’t believe him, laugh at him, or say he asked for it by walking alone in a deserted area at night, and when he starts school, the pranks and teasing are nonstop. Virgil relives the attack at the slightest trigger, but all anyone tells him is to get over it. Virgil has more to worry about, however; he wonders whether he will become a monster as well. Hutchinson is known for offbeat, edgy books, and this is no exception. Convincing, well-rounded characters come to life in Hutchinson’s lyrical, punchy writing, and his skills for maintaining suspense and intrigue mean the story never drags. There are echoes of a werewolf story here, but Virgil’s experiences after the monster attack mirror the treatment of victims of sexual assault, which adds a dynamic level to the story. As Virgil starts to make connections in his new home, from irrepressible classmate Tripp to his seemingly dour grandmother, he realizes that he has more choices than he thought. Hutchinson never misses a beat in this gripping, dynamic novel.

Review: Crowbones by Anne Bishop

Dec 082021
 

Library Journal: A new entry (following Lake Silence) in Bishop’s “World of the Others” urban fantasy series set in an alternate North America. It’s Trickster Night in Lake Silence, a celebration of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. Lake Silence is a mostly human settlement in an area controlled by the terra indigene, or the Others (a group of supernatural beings and cryptids), making Trickster Night a perfect chance to generate tourism from humans who want to walk a bit closer to the real wild side. It’s all fun and games and just a bit of a fright, until someone uses those small fears to turn humans and terra indigene against each other in order to cause trouble and learn how to get the better of the powerful Others. It’s up to the human storyteller, the police chief, and the local vampire leader to figure out what’s gone rotten in town before the overseeing council sweeps in with a permanent and deadly solution.

VERDICT A compelling exploration of manipulative personalities, small town murders, and the lengths to which these fascinating and beloved characters will go in order to protect one of their own.

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