Sigh this novel was, if possible, even more disheartening than the prior Stormsong. Again, I think your mileage might very much vary–and as before I will attempt to give a non-spoiler review before diving into some of the plot specifics from the prior novels (no specifics per se about this novel, though). If the first book, Witchmark, was 50% mystery 25% magic 25% romance, and the second was about 25% mystery 25% romance 50% politics, with this third novel we’ve moved to 75% politics, 15% magic, 10% […]

I had really high hopes for this series, but as it turns out the enthusiasm I felt for the first novel wasn’t truly sustained throughout this one (or, for that matter, the third and final novel). I think it’s more of a ymmv type situation, though, so I’ll try my best to frame out my take. First note: I have found a word for these novels along with a whole Wikipedia article! They are apparently called gaslamp fantasy/gaslight fantasy, to distinguish from using steampunk (which […]

I have no idea why I didn’t pick this up when my library card sister Sandhya was reading them. Something about the covers? They sort of looked like super generic trilogy-of-magic and I wasn’t really feeling the vibe, despite not having even cracked the first one open. Clearly, that was a mistake. It does take a bit to get into the novel–I found it pretty easy to set it aside when I first started. But once the outlines of the magic system started to take […]