Nico
This finally concludes The Witches Discworld subseries for me. I'm kinda disappointed! It just wasn't to the level of the others, and is my second least favorite Discworld after Soul Music. Also the fat shaming and poorly written fat female character continued from the Maskerade to this one. Very annoying.
LOVED this, very twisty, fast-paced and doing something different with something familiar. Huntress Agarwal arrives at Spindle Manor where a group of patrons are staying the night — but she knows not all is as it seems. The series is like Christie's Perot but in a supernatural world and our investigator is actually a huntress of things that go bump in the night. The series would be an excellent Halloween read for anyone looking for creepy vibes. For folks looking for deep character work this might not work.
Sequel to Shutter, this was a pretty solid crime paranormal thriller-lite set in New Mexico. With the first book I loved the timeline about our protagonist's upbringing, Dine heritage, and grandmother, and I wasn't so into the crime plot. With this one, I wasn't more into the crime plot than the POV following our killer. Regardless, I enjoyed it and highly recommend the series for folks who already read in the genres.
3.5 stars. I avoided this book because the circus setting always put me off. Now that I've read it, it's not about a circus. It begins as a beautifully told, effed up story about two selfish magicians who raise two children in isolation for the sole purpose of a game and the innocent lives who get entangled into the plays decade after decade. I was hooked by the lush writing and desire to know how the game would end. It began to lose me when it leaned into a romance built on infatuation (vomit) and I felt like I was just being told what was happening by the end, it became less about my connection to these characters.
This is a mystery crime thriller story enmeshed with a mysterious entity “The Strangeness” that links living beings into a sort of hive mind. The writing was great, but I struggled a bit with what the book was. Was it about family searching for and missing their missing loved ones, commentary on SA, or sci-fi in the format of mystery? Overall I liked it, especially because I loved the woods setting, and I would recommend it.
Even though this is technically dystopian science fiction, it really felt more general fiction with a sprinkle of spec fic. It follows a mother who is detained in the near future when her risk score dropped because she supposedly had a dream about killing her husband. Its main theme is around the industrial prison complex, which was compelling, and the last 50% was pretty darn interesting, but the first half was so slow for me and could have been cut in half.
A spec-fic that leans historical with gothic/eerie vibes following three women, one in 1908, one in 1934 and one in 1998 either in Mexico or the US. Each is dealing with the disappearance of someone and they suspect it is because of witches. This was a good release from Moreno-Garcia and the writing was great, but I suspect this one will not be memorable for me.
This was a fun, campy story of fairytales come to life — with their own spin. Melilot is a princess and the middle child of a blended family who cannot match the powers of her sisters nor meet her stepmother's expectations. She's sent to marry the king of a distant land and discovers someone is trying to kill her along the way. It has a simple, modern dialogue that makes it accessible and easy and I had a good time with this mostly, but then I was feeling over it somewhere in the second half. By the end I couldn't decide if the MC is a petulant adult or a young adult justified still grieving the loss of her mother and navigating complex emotions that come with a toxic stepmother. For folks who've read This Lightning Struck Heart by Klune, it's like that but way less crude and crass. You might like this and vice-versa. For lovers of Rupunzel, The Princess and the Pea, or other stories like those, this is a must read.
Not much to say, it was a fantastic installment in the Nevermoor series. It didn't get into the social themes of the last one, but it was a brilliant, complex plot rooted in a murder mystery and a reveal about Morrigan's family with lots of endearing moments between old and new friends and Jupiter. For folks looking for something like Harry Potter, this could be it.
What a delight! I killed this in less than 24 hours and I think I liked it better than The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, which is honestly a surprise because I really loved that book (yes I'm on that hype train). It is completely stand alone so you could start with this one if you didn't read the other. If found family, a zombie chicken, and a romance to root for sound like it could work for you, but under the surface it reflects a relatable story of coping to loss of a life lived and how you grapple with that well after the fact. I think the writing and character work were great in both this one and the former and is the most satisfying “cozies” I've read this year.
Gwendolyn is a successful career woman and event planner whose event is sabotaged and the cops can't explain the blood-like substance or the temperature change — and she thinks she might have been the target. It reminded me of Venco by Dimaline in some ways and it was pretty cool to follow the dual Afro-Panamanian-American POVs. This is a solid paranormal thriller solo-debut and I recommend if the above seems intriguing or you like urban fantasy or paranormal that has an air of literary fiction.
A coming of age story following Ru, born to a family who keeps him in a haze about their caretaking of dragons and he feels stuck between worlds. Ru struggles with friendships and identity, but is transformed by the end of young adulthood. I'm happy I finally read an Indra Das and the writing and descriptions were beautiful, but this work was a tad flat for me. Even though I could glean the emotional struggle of Ru I was at arms length for some reason and never quite felt like I was moving through a story. This will likely not be for plot-driven readers, but is better suited for those who like literary fiction or to really linger in the character or in moments in time.
Not gonna say too much, but this is book 6 in the Thursday Next series, and if you want a great series that is urban fantasy, mystery, humor, historical fiction, but fantasy in the literal world of fiction, this could be for you. 5-star series hands down. First half of this one was pretty slow, but second half wowowow.
Another contender for my top read of 2025 and disappointing to see this missed a chance for 2024 awards. This far, far future sci-fic-fantasy mashup is both nostalgic and modern, eliciting the familiar memories of adventure and whimsy from your favorite fairytales but incorporating a new spin on what humanity could look like thousands of years from now. Around every corner was something unexpected, and there were a lot of corners. A chronicler who has been deep in slumber realizes it is not a century that has passed, but much, much longer. A young boy who lives by a castle where a wizard resides and a sword is stuck in a stone, has the wool over his eyes wrenched away. I think this will appeal to the folks looking for something different, those who enjoy classic SFF, and those looking for a lighter read (but with a large cast of characters and worldbuilding).
How to talk about this? It's kinda about a bunch of doors that appear around the world, how society reacts, and how religion can unite, break apart or harm, and some other social themes and issues, but this is a story about a twin and her love, her family, her grief, her friends, her joys, her depression, her confusion, basically it's about her life from birth to her 30s — and it's like a lot of lives, quite the rollercoaster. I guess this is literary-spec-fic that started speculative and went literary with a healthy sprinkling of paranormal. I super liked this. It is beautifully written and exceptionally told, I feel like Ayonna is real and I was given a gift to see through her eyes and know her raw thoughts and feelings about everything. I never read Lakewood or The Women Could Fly, so I'm glad to have finally picked up a Giddings and this was the one. I know it won't be everyone's thing, but it has under 100 GRs ratings so far so I hope it finds its audience.
First, I'll say that I think for what is available to the American market this is a gem. This collection of 10 short stories is a mix of tales — some including Hindu gods, historical fiction, kings, conquerors, a bargain with a witch, talking birds — each followed by a vegetarian Indian recipe. My favorite stories were: The Travels of Sansubek (a young boy with wanderlust and a knack for cooking ultimately realizes a fate he must keep secret), Chef William and Captain Tyrant (about a British chef who falls in love with Indian cooking and befalls tragedy), The Cries of Animals (well, really the first couple pages, which felt like its own short story about a king's wager with a mysterious court visitor), and The Emperor loves Mangoes (again, I just liked the first part of this story, about a ownership dispute over a mango tree). I found the first two stories to be the weakest and overall I wish a lot of the stories had been edited with a critical eye on the storytelling. For that reason I don't think it's the strongest collection, but one I am glad I read it and do recommend if you're looking to read stories set in South Asia or are on a food SFF/spec fic kick like me.
I never really know my subgenres, but this felt like Arthurian meets gothic, but VERY body horror with cannibalism. I binged it once I got passed the 2/3rds mark, but really around 15% is when it starts to move. A castle under siege is starving, so when their saviors come many welcome them with open arms while a few are skeptical. There's this question Starling explores that I enjoyed around what will these characters, this castle do when it is truly starving, truly exhausted, truly desperate? Some minor quibbles: it took me a minute to get into it, I was initially confused, there were some convenience plot things, and I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, but overall a fantastic, even if absolutely chilling, story.
This is pretty layered novella, but it's about a young boy who lost his father years ago and now sees him moving around the house, just within his periphery. Very character focused, which seems to be what Jones does best and what his fans enjoy. I think for me what stood out to me because of my own life experience, was a story about a young boy who lost his father, wants his father back, wants to save his brother, and how he makes assumptions about his mother's love towards his father and his own attitude towards her. Again there are many other layers to the book and things to pull apart from the 108 pages, looks like from reviews we all latched onto different things. The ending...was not what I was expecting and definitely horrific in a very human way.
“I check for heat signatures. Nothing. Oh. They're all dead. Well. That's awkward.” LOVED this, killed it in a day. Star Trek meets Guardians of the Galaxy, but like if the ship was Murderbot/Art and there's supernatural monsters in addition to aliens. It was a page-turner with a lot of heart and blood, and I had tons of fun with it. If you do not like book spoilers, do not read the blurb, it spoils the book up to the 66% mark. Basically, it opens like one of those ominous and eerie Star Trek episodes where something is wrong. The story follows a ship with a lot of death on its hands, I mean Dracula is just in movies. Can the ship overcome the bullying and pressures of protecting its last two small humans when it's failed before? I very much hope this becomes a series.
