Amanda

An academic writing an encyclopedia about faeries travels to northern Europe to investigate a previously unstudied type of faerie.

I really enjoyed the story and think Fawcett did a good job of including different types of lore without making the book seem like a dry academic text.

I think the book's weakest point is the characters. Emily is supposed to be an expert in her field and an experienced field researcher, but she often makes amateurish mistakes, and is only shown to be competent when it's convenient to the story.

The journal format didn't really work for me. The story is written as a pretty straightforward first person point of view narrative, so pretending it's a journal and including a few unnecessary footnotes comes off as a pointless affectation.

I did have fun reading even though I don't think the writing is great, and I wouldn't mind reading the next book in the series.

Received via NetGalley.

Mages in war-torn theocratic land attempt to build a rocket to reach the moon.

This is a wonderfully imaginative tale with a great mix of magic, science, politics, and religion coming together to create a rich world. The reason I don't rate it higher is because I found the technical details of building the rocket to be excessive; this is largely a matter of personal taste, and people who enjoy nuts and bolts will no doubt get more enjoyment out of that aspect.

Received via NetGalley.

A vast collection of folktales from the Sámi people of northern Europe.

This book is a treasure trove for anyone who enjoys folktales, with hundreds of tales on a wide range of themes. It showcases the rich culture of the Sámi people and is a delight to dip into.

The introduction by translator Barbara Sjoholm is not to be skipped. She provides interesting and helpful information on Sámi culture, the original collectors of the tales, and more.

Received via NetGalley.

Six teenagers bond during their last summer before adulthood.

The writing is pretty, but it's all sun-drenched angst and heartache. There's not a lot of story here, and what little there is reads kind of like a Call Me By Your Name knockoff.

Received via NetGalley.

A young girl seeks to undo a curse she unintentionally cast on her brother in this fairy tale-inspired novella.

I loved the story and dug the writing style, so why am I not rating this four stars or higher? It's the wrong length.

Novik has hit a great fairy tale vibe here with the story, but there's some substantial backstory that interrupts it and feels more like an epic fantasy. If she had leaned into fairy tale and made this a short story, it would have been great; if she had explored the backstory and beefed up the worldbuilding it would have made a great full-length novel. As a novella it is entertaining, but it doesn't quite reach its potential.

Received via NetGalley.

A young woman disappears during a prestigious writing residency; a year later a true crime podcast inspires her sister to start her own investigation.

Honestly, the writing feels self-conscious to me and the layout of the podcast sections gimmicky. Tsamaase does make a number of astute observations about the commodification of African writers by publishers—and the inherent racism of it—but this book often reads more like one of the homogenized products of the system rather than a critique of it.

Received via NetGalley.

Buried secrets about Inspector Raquel Laing's family are uncovered when she is assigned to the Cold Case unit.

I was surprised Raquel Laing was made the protagonist of a series becuase I thought she was the least interesting character in Back to the Garden. Despite how much more time is spent with her in Those Who Are Gone than in the first book and the revelations about her past, I can't say I find her any less boring than I did before; she's a cookie-cutter "outsider" and the entire book felt interchangeable with any other police procedural out there.

I've read Laurie R. King's books for years and expect I will continue to do so, but I'll be giving any future Raquel Laing books a miss.

Received via NetGalley.

The art in this one is extraordinary. It's full of incredibly detailed black and white illustrations of Hong Kong landscapes that I could stare at for days.

I could go on for days about how much I love the art, but I can't say I have the same appreciation for the writing. The dialogue is mostly the kind of inane crap that passes for profound on social media. I think the book would have been much better if Pen So had dropped most (or all) of the text and told the story strictly through illustrations.

Five stars for the art and two for the writing, so three and a half stars overall.

Received via NetGalley.

After reading her debut novel, I thought Neena Viel was an author with potential who was in need of a strong editor; reading her second novel has not changed my opinion.

There are some great characters and creepy horror scenes here, but I often felt like I'll Watch Your Baby was actually three or four loosely connected stories which had been shoved together without a thought to making them a coherent whole.

Received via NetGalley.

Politics, religion, imperial ambitions, and personal greed intersect in this stand-alone installment of the Imperial Radch series.

This is the first Imperial Radch book I've read and if this is indicative of the rest of the series, then I must say I'm not sure what the fuss is about. The story itself is interesting, but it's dragged out unnecessarily and the characters are poorly developed.

If Radiant Star had been a novella, I would probably have given it four stars; as a novel, its maundering makes three stars feel generous.

Received via NetGalley.

A clown steps out of a cornfield and starts massacring teenagers.

People who love slasher movies will probably love this book, too. Adam Cesare has written a story that has the feel of a classic slasher, but also has a modern sensibility.

One thing I greatly appreciate is that unlike so many modern horror stories, the teenagers in Clown in a Cornfield aren't irremediable assholes: they're a little dumb, bored, and don't always think about potential consequences—so, typical teenagers—but they are, for the most part, decent people just trying to get through life.

I had a blast reading this and already have the second book ready to go.

Received via NetGalley.

A retelling of the legend of Lancelot and Galehaut.

Kudos to author John Glynn for choosing a lesser known episode from Arthurian legend, but this book is very talky, with not much of substance being said and there's not a lot that actually happens in it. I think it would have been much better if it had been about a hundred pages shorter.

I don't regret reading The Lost Book of Lancelot and I did kind of like it, but I think my time would have been better spent revisiting The Ill-Made Knight.

Received via NetGalley.

This review is of the audiobook read by John Pirhalla.

Calling this one "Game of Thrones meets The Truman Show" is spot-on: there's a richly imagined fantasy world combined with entertainment industry shenanigans.

I do like the concept of this one, but I had trouble following the different realities in audio. I feel I probably would have liked it more if I had read it in print—this isn't to knock the narrator, who did a fine job, but a statement about the intricacies of the story.

I'll rate the audio three stars, but I may have rated the book higher in print.

Received via NetGalley.

The story of what happened to the crew of the Event Horizon.

The movie Event Horizon is, despite a few rough patches, a very effective cosmic horror story. Its universe is inimical to humans and the gory scenes are shown in a way that makes viewers both believe they saw more than they did and question what they are seeing. It's still disturbing people three decades after its release.

Sadly, this prequel comic does not live up to its source material's legacy.

Dark Descent does start out well, with hints of things being not quite right before the inaugural mission of the ship, but it rushes into full-blown gore before we've even gotten a chance to figure out which character is which. There's just page after page of characters wallowing around in blood and little story involved.

The book's worst misstep is replacing the unknowable malevolent force of the movie with a garden-variety demon. A giant red monster is nowhere near as scary as an entire universe that is out to get you!

Despite my criticisms, I don't think this is a bad book; the art is good and it does answer the question of what happened to the crew. I just wish it had shown a little less gore and a little more creativity.

Received via NetGalley.

A vampire and a werewolf become infatuated with each other in this graphic novel adaptation of Alicia Wallace's Bite Me.

This is an adaptation, so I can't fault the adapter for the story being unoriginal and the two leads being juvenile assholes who use their female friends to screw with each other.

I can blame the adapter for the uninspired page layout, the lack of detail in the art, and the weird character placement in panels.

Received via NetGalley.

A humorous look at 30 fictional men and how they're prime boyfriend material.

The layout of this book is good: each man gets an illustration, a character description, one page on why they're worth swooning over, and a quotation from their book. A couple of quizzes are included, giving the book a fun, magazine-like feel.

Where the book fails for me is in the selection of characters. Westley from The Princess Bride? Sure. Aragorn from Lord of the Rings? Why not? But Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff, the poster child for abusive stalkers? Or Pedro Muzquiz from Like Water for Chocolate, whose idea of romance is to marry a woman he doesn't love so he can have unfettered access to her sister? I get that this book is supposed to be about fantasy rather than reality, but maybe don't romanticize characters who are really abusive jerks?

Received via NetGalley.

The scariest stories are true stories, or at least stories inspired by truth. In this novel inspired by the 1957 Kyshtym nuclear disaster, Pulley has crafted a tale where horrors are quotidian. The characters are exquisitely drawn, with every interaction cloaked in layers of mistrust and a desperate, strangled need to speak freely.

Received via NetGalley.

A brilliant young financial secretary gets swept into a fantastical world of angels and time-traveling fascists in the early days of WWII.

Oh, this was a treat! Some might consider it a slow start, but I think of it as starting with very solid character development; by the time the adventures really kick off I had become so invested in Iris's story that I had to keep reading just to know how she would fair. It was a welcome change in pace from books where character development is sacrificed to plot.

The only thing I disliked about the book is that it ended with those most dreaded of words: "To be continued."

Received via NetGalley.

A fact-based look at eight legendary creatures.

This book is well organized and presents its discussions clearly. Each section covers one creature, with a look at the myth/folklore and gives possible real-world explanations about how the legend came about, like narwhal horns contributing to stories about unicorns.

The only thing that keeps me from giving the book four stars is the paucity of pictures. Having more pictures of the real animals beside the legendary ones would have helped illustrate the authors' points.

Received via NetGalley.

A guy falls in love at first sight and suddenly remembers he's the reincarnation of the little mermaid.

The story in this one is...weird. The only way I can think to describe it is that it's like someone ran the story of the little mermaid back and forth through google translate a dozen or so times and this is the end result.

The art didn't do much for me, but YMMV.

Received via NetGalley.

An "odd couple" story of two teenagers in 1929 Korea.

The art in this is beautiful. It's full color and there's a vintage feel to it that makes it simply lovely to look at.

I like the story and loved seeing an era of Korean history I'm not familiar with. I kind of wish the story wasn't mainly from Jun's, the male lead, POV: constantly seeing his anger and resentment of the Westernized female lead, Arisa, got old fast.

Received via NetGalley.

Comics about dating and romance done in the style of medieval art.

It's you. It is you, even if you refuse to admit it. What's being portrayed as humorous is actually insufferable behavior, written in an annoying "ye olden times" English.

As much as I dislike the writing, I have to say I kind of loved the art. Tudor caught some of the bizarre aspects of medieval art and did apply them well here.

Received via NetGalley.

The spirit of a man wronged in life returns and starts murdering seemingly unconnected people.

This reads less like a cohesive story than it does a group of short stories the author tried to bully into being one. It is disjointed and the prose borders on the purple.

Received via NetGalley.