Review of Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Book Description: An engrossing tale of colonialism, conquest and revenge, Queen of the Conquered starts a fantasy series perfect for readers of S. A. Chakraborty, Ken Liu, and Tasha Suri. On the islands of Hans Lollik, Sigourney Rose was the only survivor when her family was massacred by the colonizers. When the childless king of the islands declares he will choose his successor from amongst eligible noble families, Sigourney is ready to exact […]
Review of The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Note: You may want to read this review on the website (instead of by email or feed reader). There are spoiler tags toward the end that should be hidden on the website but may be visible elsewhere. Terror is twofold in The Year of the Witching, Alexis Henderson’s dark fantasy/Gothic horror debut novel, with its story involving mysterious witch spirits as well as the everyday atrocities that occur in a patriarchal […]
Review of Crown of Coral and Pearl by Mara Rutherford
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Sometimes I wonder if it was our names that determined our fates, or the other way around. Nor and Zadie: coral and pearl. Both precious to our people, both beautiful enough to adorn the necks of queens. But whereas a pearl is prized for its luster, its shape, its lack of imperfections, coral is different. It grows twisted. In its natural form, it can hardly be considered beautiful at all. I […]
Review of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Silvia Moreno-Garcia weaves Mexican history and supernatural elements into an increasingly unnerving tale of Gothic horror in her latest novel, Mexican Gothic. Set in the 1950s, the spookiness unfolds in a creepy mansion owned by a creepy family in a mountain town inspired by Real del Monte, a place with architecture influenced by the British who arrived in the nineteenth century. Like the British who left their mark on Real del Monte, the fictional […]
Review of The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Obsidian Tower was easily one of my most anticipated books of this year after reading Melissa Caruso’s first trilogy, Swords and Fire (The Tethered Mage, The Defiant Heir, The Unbound Empire), and I loved it as well. This novel is the first book in the Rooks and Ruin trilogy, a series with new characters set in the same world as Swords and Fire about 150 years after the end of the previous books. Given […]
Review of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by K. S. Villoso
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. “They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.” Thus opens The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, the first installment in K. S. Villoso’s Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy. Both this and the second book in this series, set in an epic fantasy world whose “worldbuilding is a love letter to the Philippines,” were originally self published, and […]
