I feel particularly blessed by Del Rey recently as this is the second major title they’ve let me review recently! The Winternight Trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy series, so when I learned Katherine Arden was coming out with a historical fiction with a speculative twist (but I call it Magical Realism), the book bounced to the top of my anticipated reads for the year. Arden explores combat nursing and trauma in Flanders Fields as the characters learn the reality that one way or another they are going to lose their souls. *Shudders* Let’s look at the book facts and I’ll share my thoughts. B ..read more

In my myriad GoodReads and Twitter interactions over the years I’ve ended up chatting with many different authors from all over the world. Kevin Ansbro has been a social media acquaintance for a few years now and he also won the game to name my rescue pup back in 2022. Long story short, here I am finally getting around to reading In the Shadow of Time. Let’s take a look at the book’s info and I’ll share my thoughts! Bookish Quick Facts Title: In the Shadow of Time Author: Kevin Ansbro Published: 2QT Publishing (Indie), 2001 Length: 379 pages Rate & Recommend: for fans of magical realism ..read more

Thank you so much to St. Martin’s Press for the gorgeous finished copy of Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen! From my favorite non-SFF genre, this is a wonderful magical realism book about stories, secrets, acceptance, and the ghosts we hold onto. It’s packed full of great characters and themes that I love. This comes with my apologies as I should have read and reviewed it already but had a terrible incident of dog vs. marshmallow from the press box (she is ok now!) and needed a little time. So let’s look at the book, which I am highly recommending for new adult readers and all fans ..read more

I feel like I should talk about these books a little bit since they were sent as ARCs but honestly I just want to scrub them out of my mind and not talk about them anymore, so here is a brief summary of my rationales. I was trying to (see the post’s main image) use a pretty tree to downplay how much I really did not like either of these arcs, my apologies to the publishers How do you handle your rating system? I don’t have many 2 star reads, 1 is my DNF and 3 is my so-so/average/neutral rating… and that gray zone in the middle that is my 2 star rating, is hard. The Outside is by an Icelandic a ..read more

The only thing I knew about Rushdie going into this read was that 1) his eyebrows are terrifying and 2) about 30 years ago he really, really pissed off the Ayatollah enough to receive a death warrant. I knew that he was known for magical realism and I thought a book about Djinn would be a fun place to start – plus Ursula LeGuin plugged the book, and it pays tons of homage to Scheherezade and the 1001 nights (see title). I expected a stuffy old idealist, which meant that while reading I was shocked by the humor and strangeness mixed in with the idealism and colorful characters, sex and profanit ..read more

Another week, another awesome interview! Episode 13 of the Sunday Brunch Series features local author M.A. Philips, writer of the Rituals of Rock Bay trilogy! I found M.A. totally by accident while looking at Shadow Spark publishing titles, and thought it was absolutely incredible to find someone writing books in and about NNY & the Thousand Islands area. What a thrill to have worked at the hospital mentioned in the book, picture the waters of the St Lawrence, and learn a bit about Irish Legends! Come to find that M.A. is also an absolutely lovely person to chat with, and I was floore ..read more