Publishers Weekly: Stories of the Raksura, Vol. 2: Wells (The Serpent Sea) fleshes out her Books of the Raksura series in this strong short story collection. As readers follow a shape-shifting Raksura called Moon through a series of encounters, plenty of vivid descriptions help newcomers get up to speed. Moon is always at the center of any conflict, whether it’s learning the secrets of a long-buried city (“The Dead City”) or defending his adoptive Raksura community of Indigo Cloud from a foe that can’t be seen (in the longest and best entry, “The Dark Earth Below”). The Raksura world features innovative and alien creatures; Wells thinks far outside the humanoid fantasy box. The line between animal and person is drawn extremely thin, and the power structure among the races resembles nature more than it resembles any human civilization. With a strong sense of adventure, horror, and mystery, this is an enjoyable read for fantasy fans seeking a new series to sample.
Apr 202015
April 20, 2015
Publishers Weekly: Kowal’s tense conclusion to her highly praised Glamourist Histories magical Regency series (following Valour and Vanity) sees happily married Sir David and Lady Jane Vincent caught up in the intrigues of Sir David’s manipulative family. When they receive a letter indicating that Sir David’s father and eldest brother have died, the Vincents are askedto retrieve a new will from the family estates on Antigua. While en route, they discover Jane is pregnant and so must conclude their business quickly if she is to deliver in England. All is not as advertised when they arrive, and in addition to contending with the oppressive heat and trying to halt the vicious and inhumane management of the family slaves by the odious and presumptuous Mr. Pridmore, the Vincents find themselves once again maneuvering against the machinations of relatives. 
Publishers Weekly: In this disturbing and original fantasy, set in a dark world run by the Theocrats, perception is reality, and altered perceptions can alter reality. The most insane, labeled with Germanic diagnoses, are also the most powerful. Three adventurers–a scary, lethal Kleptic thief; a preening Gefahrgeist (sociopathic) duelist; and a scarred warrior forced to violate his few remaining scruples–stumble onto a Gefahrgeist Theocrat’s plot to raise the first designed god, and they decide to kidnap Morgen, the boy who’s intended as the initial sacrifice. Before the Theocrat’s delusions can do him in, he unleashes his Hassebrand (a pyromaniac) and his assassin squads (including shape-shifters and walking dead) to kill the conspirators and ensure Morgen’s ascension. Fletcher populates the landscape with an array of mental disorders, turning a well-thumbed psychiatric manual into a dramatis personae. His protagonists worry about their fate in the Afterdeath as they commit their crimes, but they always keep their slim hopes for redemption. The dystopia and its victims never quite collapses under the weight of the horror, and their perseverance encourages the reader to endure the grimness until the thought-provoking conclusion.
Publishers Weekly: Downum (the Necromancer Chronicles) grounds this tale of friendship and love in a community of artists and magic users. When a ritual goes terribly wrong and leaves Vancouver artist Blake Enderly in a coma, his best friend, Liz Drake, and her stereotypically English boyfriend, Alex, travel to Vancouver to find out what happened to him. To save his life, Liz must navigate deadly magical peril in the waking world and undertake a quest in an equally dangerous dream world that leads her to Robert Chambers’s Carcosa and its ruler, the Yellow King. Downum’s narrative is packed to excess with artists and hangers-on, a dangerous drug with connections to the dream world, bloodthirsty maenads, and gun-toting cleanup artists specializing in supernatural mishaps. Readers eager for diverse characters will delight in the casually displayed variety of sexual and romantic orientations, including Liz’s comfortable asexuality. 
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Library Journal: VERDICT: Craft’s second novel (after 2014’sThe Art of Falling), this title is based on the author’s experience with a standoff involving her husband, which adds real, raw, emotion to the plot. Framing the novel within a 12-hour period keeps the pages turning. Ronnie Farnham is divorcing her husband, Jeff. She is tracking his excessive credit card spending; he is noting her numerous phone calls to Kevin, a man she is featuring in one of her freelance articles. On the day Jeff says he will move out of their Pennsylvania farmhouse, he gets drunk, grabs a shotgun, and holes up in their vegetable market. When police remove Ronnie and her two young sons from their home, they are placed at the local firefighters’ social hall for 12 hours until the standoff ends. The story unfolds with internal dialogs from Ronnie; her mother, Beverly; and Janet, Jeff’s mom. Conversations among the women reveal family secrets. Hour by hour they try to understand why Jeff is threatening to kill himself.
Publishers Weekly: Genre-busting author McCammon (The River of Souls) pulls out all the stops for this exhilarating alien-invasion epic, which harkens back to his 1987 blockbuster, Swan Song….This story blends the gripping horror and action of McCammon’s earliest novels with the empathy of his more recent work, making it one of his finest.
The Monitor: 
Publishers Weekly: Griep’s captivating debut weaves together traditional fairy tales with scenes of 21st-century Los Angeles to create an exploration of the conflicts between destiny and desire, with parental influence or absence as a strong subtheme. CeCi (Cinderella), Bianca (Snow White), and Rory (Sleeping Beauty), three princesses of Grimmland, are devastated when their friend Zell (Rapunzel) unexpectedly moves to Oz to manage a unicorn preserve. The three friends each write letters to Zell, both to deal with her abandonment of them and to keep her involved in their lives despite her physical absence. Through the letters, they all reveal the events, tensions, and misunderstandings that make up their lives, particularly CeCi’s trips to the human world, where she hopes to obtain a culinary degree, and Rory and Bianca’s attempts to reconcile their predetermined destinies with their own dreams. 
RT Book Reviews: Top Pick! The vampyre (aka Nightkind) world is once again at the center of Harrison’s latest fabulous release. Events pick up where the previous book, Night’s Honor, left off as ancient vampyre Justine attempts a coup against Julian, the Nightkind King. Treachery and betrayal, both old and new, place Julian and Melisande (“Melly”), the daughter of Tatiana, the Light Fae Queen, in a desperate fight for their lives. A true gift for storytelling is rare, but Harrison unquestionably has it!