Sam Hawke’s debut novel, City of Lies, is the first book in The Poison Wars series. Though it’s mostly set in one city, this thick epic fantasy novel becomes increasingly large and sweeping, beginning with mysteries involving sudden deaths and an unexpected siege that lead to deeper discoveries about the past. It’s also an intimate, character-driven story narrated by two siblings who face deeply personal stakes—from their own survival to that of their friends, their family, and their people—while tenaciously pursuing […]

Magic Triumphs is the tenth and final book in Ilona Andrews’ New York Times bestselling Kate Daniels series, though it won’t be the last book set in this world since there are two more Iron Covenant books planned. The epilogue of this novel also teases another spin-off, but I’m not planning to read any of them: as far as I’m concerned, this series should have ended earlier, and many of the issues I’ve had with the later books were present […]

Iron and Magic is the first book in the Iron Covenant trilogy, a spin-off from Ilona Andrews’ New York Times bestselling Kate Daniels series set between the ninth and tenth books (Magic Binds and Magic Triumphs, respectively). This novel focuses on Roland’s former warlord, Hugh d’Ambray, as he fights an internal battle and mysterious magical forces—and his new wife, a powerful woman known as the White Warlock. After a prologue showing how Roland had Hugh brought to him as a […]

The Poppy War, R. F. Kuang’s fantastic debut novel and the first book in an epic fantasy trilogy inspired by Chinese history, is partially based on the Second Sino-Japanese War, particularly the horrific massacre that came to be known as the Rape of Nanjing. As such, it’s a story that unflinchingly examines how war shapes and changes people, for better and worse—with heavy emphasis on worse. The heart of The Poppy War is Rin, a war orphan determined to avoid […]

A Study in Honor is the first book in the Janet Watson Chronicles, a new series by RT Reviewers’ Choice Award–winning author Beth Bernobich writing as Claire O’Dell. This reimagining of Sherlock Holmes is set in a not-too-distant future America during a second civil war and recasts the detective and Dr. Watson as two black women living in Washington, D.C. This novel, told through Janet Watson’s first person perspective and journal entries, starts with her journey to and arrival in […]

Nancy Kress’ Nebula Award–winning novella Yesterday’s Kin grew into a trilogy of the same name, beginning with the expansion of this work into the novel Tomorrow’s Kin. The first third of this expansion is the previously published story of visitors from another planet coming to Earth, and the rest of the book covers the ten years following their departure—including the aftermath of the imminent event of which the aliens warned the people of Earth before they left. It shows how it […]