On the recommendation of a friend, I bought The Wishing Spell for my 9 year old daughter last year for our family winter solstice book exchange. She devoured it and immediately began urging me to read it. “Mom, you’ll really like it. It’s so good!” So far in her life I’ve always been the one making recommendations of what to read. She was very excited to have a book she wanted to share with me. “It’s as good as Harry Potter!”, the highest praise she can […]
Shades of Magic
As with my last review, this was a re-read for me as well. Well, most of it was a re-read. I had actually read the first two books of this series, A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering of Shadows, previously and decided to re-read them before reading the final book, A Conjuring of Light. I really enjoyed these books and what I enjoyed most are the two main characters. The first character we meet is Kell. An Antari (blood magician), Kell is from […]
A quick sojourn in the world of The Wheel of Time
A few caveats before I begin: I read this novella in the collection Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg (thus the confusing author/title data provided above.) It’s also where I first read The Hedge Knight (George RR Martin). Even though it’s a novella, I’m counting it as a book–partly because I don’t really want to read most of the other entries in the collection. Maybe the Le Guin one someday, if I read more of the Earthsea novels, and likewise King’s if I read the Dark Tower novels, but I […]
“I’m just like my country. I’m young and scrappy and hungry.”
HALF CANNONBALL!! I don’t usually finish a book and then immediately pick up the sequel. Now usually that’s because I don’t yet own the sequel but also I tend to want a change of pace genre-wise. But in the case of The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen, I had to know what happened next. Fortunately, I had the first two books in the series already on my kindle (and I’m currently kicking myself for not picking up the third when I had […]
Transgender superhero YA.
Dreadnought (Dreadnought, #1) by April Daniels
Danny Tozer has always known she should have been born a girl, and we know this on the first page. The first scene of this book features her hiding in an alley, dressed otherwise like a male, and painting her toenails; this is the only outlet she has as a closeted trans fifteen year old in an emotionally abusive household (her dad is a colossal asshole). But everything changes when her toenail painting session is interrupted by a superhero/supervillain fight. Dreadnought, one of the most powerful superheroes, is shot […]
Solid fantasy with a comfortable feel
It has been months since I last reviewed a book! Shock, horror. Partly, it’s the fault of the PhD–I’ve had some busy deadlines for my thesis, as well as the teaching that comes with it. (Marking 80 essays in essentially 2 weeks is not recommended, nor is it conducive to a happy, relaxed mindset for reading.) I also am happy to report that I finished (the first draft) of a novel myself in that time (don’t try writing a novel while writing a PhD, peoples; […]