Fantasy

This isn’t Hogwarts or Narnia, exactly. It’s more like a dark reflection of those popular magical fantasy novels. In the first season of The Magicians, based on Lev Grossman’s novel of the same name, Quentin Coldwater discovers magic is not only real, but potentially fatal. While studying at Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy, Quentin and his classmates are attacked by a magical being that is linked to their favorite childhood fantasy series about the land of Fillory that the author never completed. 

Can they use magic to enter this other world and finish the story? The real question

When Le Cirque des Reves appears out of thin air, in the middle of the night, you can't help but be curious about what is inside. And once you step inside, you will not be disappointed. Intricately organized as an elaborate stage for two magicians - Marco and Celia - to compete on, the various tents and stages amaze the nightly visitors. However, the magicians don't know the full details of their competition, nor who they are competing against, and the story that unfolds is one of romance, magic and heartbreak. 

Erin Morgenstern has written a mesmerizing tale of forbidden love. The Night

A mysterious, transdimensional library that sends its librarians to alternate Earths to procure rare books? Brilliant! A clever, witty librarian and her new assistant, who is clearly hiding something, sent to find a collection of Brothers Grimm fairy tales? Cool! A steampunk/gaslight fantasy alternate Earth that operates along the lines of narrative drama and comes complete with sharp-as-tacks consulting detective and a host of conspiratorial secret societies? Wonderful! Faeries, dragons, and weird magic? Fantastic!

The Invisible Library, first book in Genevieve Cogman's new series, presents

"I've always been a monster," begins the jacket flap of Drift & Dagger. Mal keeps that a secret, though. More openly, he's something of a cross between a pirate, thief, smuggler, archeologist, and bounty hunter. He is a world-traveling adventurer who specializes in acquiring and selling magical artifacts, often through underhanded means. He frequents ports and bazaars, black markets and bars, dense slums and dense jungles and everything in between. He's lived his teen years in underworlds across the world learning how to survive, and lives only for the present.

It's the middle of the

Seattle Private Investigator Harper Blaine is just a woman trying to pay her bills. But after a near death experience, her life is changed forever. Since the accident Harper has not been feeling well and sees strange shadows during the day. The doctor is no help and she slowly begins to realize she is seeing into the Grey, a place between the living and the dead. The Grey is full of vampires, ghosts and magic unknown to the everyday human. Harper needs clients and she cannot ignore the "Grey creatures" that seek out her help. Now, she must decide how much help is too much . . . because she

This series. Wow. So different and unexpected than most everything else out there. And this second book that is so unexpectedly different than the first, that reframes and deepens and changes The Riverman as it expands that book's universe exponentially.

In my review of The Riverman I wrote, This is a mystery book. But is it a fantasy book? That's the mystery. That's because Alistair was an observer in the first book, slowly drawn into caring about a strange world that might have been a fantasy horror and might have been a psychological thriller--with drastic consequences either way.

Now

"Genre mashups," where an author takes two different genres or sub-genres--for example, romance and steampunk or hardboiled detective and science-fiction--are not exactly new, but they have become a hot topic lately. With her debut novel All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders has done something different, taking a character in a modern fantasy story and a character in a near-future, dystopian SF story and having their lives intertwine in friendship and romance, without mashing up the different genres they belong in. It's like if Harry Potter and Katniss Everdeen lived in the same world

In this prequel to the great graphic classic, The Sandman, you learn how Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, ended up so weak and tired that he was able to be captured by mere humans. If you haven't read the original work, then really, go do that. Now. It's well worth your time. It will also help you to understand the magnitude of what is revealed in this.

If you have read the original work, then you will certainly recognize Morpheus' arrogance (which even he notices when faced with multiple aspects of himself), understand why it matters that he speaks to Delight, be shocked when there is

It's an occupational hazard that I read lots of different things for lots of different reasons. Don't get me wrong, they are almost all very good and I enjoy almost all of them, but there's the underlying awareness that I most likely wouldn't have read the majority of them if not for my job so they always feel just a little bit like work. Then there are books like this one that feel completely and entirely like fun.



Droll and witty in that particularly British way. Nerdily intellectual yet mocking of stuffy intellectualism at the same time; magic, computers, linguistic nimbleness, and

I happened upon Witches of Lychford as it lurked, unnoticed amongst row upon row of bestsellers, midlist titles, and forgotten classics--not unlike the way Autumn stumbled upon the gateway to another world. It was there all along, simply hidden in plain view.

Cornell, writer of comics like Batman & Robin, Wolverine, and Doctor Who, puts a witch, a reverend, and a non-believer of both in the middle of a clash between quaint little town lovers and the corporations that want to modernize them with big box stores. The threat of modernization is both tantalizing and threatening. The town is

I am not naturally drawn to graphic novels, but am quite willing to dabble in them. And in doing so I’ve discovered gems like Will Eisner’s A Contract with God, David Small’s Stiches, and Guy Delisle’s Shenzhen. Each is non-fiction, intriguing, and surprising in its delivery. Yet at the start, I was still skeptical of Batman. I mean, it’s still just a comic book, right?

As usual, I quickly realized I was making the same mistake I always make with graphic novels. Charging through and not studying the pictures. They matter. In fact, the pictures often make the point. You have to slow down and

What a fabulous movie version of this amazing musical! This is arguably Stephen Sondheim's best musical with lyrics that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you rewind to listen to them again. Though I was nervous when the movie rights were sold to Disney, I was delighted to find they did not sugarcoat the potentially risqué topics of infidelity, child abandonment, and death.

The singing is fabulous with the two exceptions being the two biggest names, Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences clearly disagrees with me though, since Ms. Streep got

Johnston weaves a beautiful tale of sisterhood and love, while re-creating the story A Thousand and One Nights. Similar to the original story, this is a desert setting and the king has taken 300 wives, one from each village, before coming to the village of our unnamed heroine. She asks her sister’s mother to help ready her for the king. She wants to take the focus off of her sister and offer herself to the king instead, in order to save her sister. She is swept away with the king, as he has chosen her, and taken to his palace. Each night the king comes to her to listen to her tell stories of

The princess is soon to be married and not very excited about the prospect.  She believes a life of matrimony will be the end of her ability to live her own life and make her own choices; she will be required to live and choose for the king and the kingdom.

Three dwarves wind their way through tunnels beneath the mountains to reach a city on the far side. They are seeking the most beautiful fabric available to offer as a wedding gift to their beloved princess. When they reach the first village on the other side, terrible news awaits them. A sleeping sickness is slowly creeping across the land

Audiobooks are my preferred method of distraction during my daily commute, and while The Bone Clocks didn't grab me immediately, eventually its clever interlinking story arcs lured my mind away from the surrounding river of taillights and exhaust.* Like Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, this novel hops through various time periods, each time switching to a different main character and point of view. The result is a multifaceted story told across many generations and narratives, but all connected to independent and resilient Holly Sykes.

Her story begins in 1984, when she leaves home in a fit of

The wild, unpredictable shapeshifter Nimona has just appointed herself sidekick to archvillain Lord Ballister Blackheart, promising to aid him in his quest to prove to the kingdom that the Institute of Law Enforcement and Heroics is up to no good.  But NImona doesn't play by the normal rules, and she quickly has everyone in an uproar wondering just who she is and where her mysterious powers come from.

What starts as a whimsical, frivolous parody of traditional heroic notions of good and evil quietly and unexpectedly becomes a meaningful investigation into the concepts, couched in deep

Alternating chapters tell the intertwined stories of Laia and Elias, who find their paths converging through Keris Veturius, Commandant of the Martial Empire's elite military academy.  The Commandant loathes Elias, her accidental son whom she tried to abandon as a newborn, only to see him rescued by others and become the top student of her current graduating class.  Elias wants nothing more than to escape his future as an enforcer of tyranny, but to cross the Commandant and the Empire is sure death.  Laia's parents found that fate by leading the resistance movement of her conquered Scholar

The Elliott family is not exactly usual. They dwell in an ancient and very much haunted manor perched on the top of a lightning-struck hill. Not only do some of their members predate time, many are undying, undead, or some variation thereof. Their story is told in a series of chapters that read like vignettes of various extraordinary family members. Some of these stories are bitter, some sweet, most are a bit of both.

Cousin Cecy has the unusual ability to inhabit the minds of any living thing, from the smallest blade of grass to a newborn baby across the world. Cousin Angelina Marguerite was

The weather clock said, "Knife o'clock." So I chained Dad up in the shed." So begins The Motherless Oven.

On its surface this is an intentionally opaque story, with a world so drastically different than ours that it's impossible to not feel unmoored as you read it. In this world it rains knives and the gales blow laughter, parents are mechanistic beings created by their children, devices and gadgets are talking, singing "gods," school subjects include circular history, mythmatics, shrine mechanics, and god science, and so much more that is utterly alien, all presented as normal and matter of

As he does for everyone in the end, Death has come for Granny Weatherwax.  The finest leader the witches never had, indisputably first amongst equals, Granny bequeaths her legacy to young Tiffany Aching.  Tiffany struggles to do the job in front of her when she has to manage her own steading, Granny's steading, train a new apprentice (and never before has a boy wanted to be a witch!), and stop the elven incursion into her world.  Not to mention reining in the Nac Mac Feegle clan.  Crivens!

I gave this four stars for lack of ease for new readers.  Even if you've read all of the Tiffany Aching

Husband and wife co-authors, Clay and Susan Griffith have put a new twist to an old tale in this first book of their Vampire Empire trilogy. 

In 1870, vampire clans rose from underground and the fringes of society to unite and overcome all of North America and Europe, causing the surviving humans to flee south. The Greyfriar begins in the year 2020 when two of the largest human societies are about to be united by marriage, so they can start a war to retake the north. Princess Adele, heir to the Equatorian Empire (think of the old British Colonies), is doing one last diplomatic foray before doing her duty and marrying Senator Clark...

In The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves readers were introduced to four wealthy boys of Aglionby Academy: Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah. And to Blue Sargent, an eccentric teen raised by a family of psychics who have predicted that Blue's true love will die if she ever finds and kisses him. Despite the differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds the five become comrades in the search for the elusive sleeping King of Wales, Owen Glendower, around the ley lines of their small town, Henrietta, Virginia. So far we have seen them tackle ghosts, dream manifestations that become real, and confront

Imagine a land far, far away where an evil Wood marks the boundaries around small towns. This Wood is a constant reminder to the citizens of Dvernik and other towns that they need the wizard called Dragon to protect them from its powers. In exchange for protecting them, he comes every ten years and selects a young girl to live with him and those girls never return to live in the valley. So it is not surprising that the girls up for the choosing do not want to leave their families and their lives, both of which they hold dear. One choosing day, the Dragon mistakenly chooses clumsy Agnieszka

Steven Universe is everything I never knew I wanted in a show.

I was initially put off by the animation.  The character designs just struck me as weird and more than a little doofy.  Still, I'd heard a lot of good things about it, and I figured it couldn't hurt to try—each episode is only about eleven minutes, after all.  Plus, it's created by Rebecca Sugar, best known for her work on Adventure Time.

I was instantly captivated.  The titular character is extremely doofy in the most charming ways imaginable.  Steven is the kindest, most loving and generous soul you could imagine, while still

What happens when you wake up in the middle of a park, with no memories, surrounded by bodies?  If you're Myfanwy (rhymes with Tiffany) Thomas, you find a letter in your pocket written by the person you used to be and take over her life.

The previous Myfanwy was a high-ranking agent in a secret society that protects the world from supernatural dangers.  The previous Myfanwy was also a shy clerk, terrified of her own abilities, and unable to ferret out the traitors in her ranks after discovering them through accounting discrepancies. New Myfanwy may not know what's going on, but that's not

Setsuna Mudou is a teenager in Tokyo with a lot of unusual problems. First, he’s in love with his sister Sara--like real love love--and as if that weren’t enough, he’s also the latest reincarnation of the cursed female angel Alexiel, who rebelled against Heaven and defied God. When his powers start to awaken he’s approached by Kurai, a demon princess of Gehenna who was Alexiel’s follower, hunted by Alexiel’s insane twin brother Rosiel and his puppets, and viewed as a savior by an underground faction in Heaven. After he’s involved in the death of a classmate Setsuna finds himself on the run

Trickster. Father of Lies. Wildfire. Lucky. He goes by many names, but we probably best know him as Loki. Before he was an Avengers fan favorite, Loki was playing tricks on the Norse gods of Asgard, sometimes as a tenuous ally, other times as the villain, but if Joanne Harris’s The Gospel of Loki is to be believed, always a bit misunderstood.

The tricky part about novelizations of mythology is that readers know, more or less, how the story is going to end; the journey there must be an entertaining one, and The Gospel of Loki certainly is. Everyone loves a trickster, and Loki is in fine form

If you’re expecting something akin to Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, you will be in for a disappointment. Lydia Millet’s Mermaids in Paradise is both hilarious and heart-wrenching. Narrator Deb has just gotten married to Chip, her positive, gregarious partner. They are on their honeymoon in the Caribbean when they become involved in a mermaid sighting, a questionable death, corporate greed, a kidnapping, and a myriad of other activities. The supporting cast of characters includes best friend Gina (“Everything’s performance art with her, she lives in a world of irony”), a hipster

Amber Benson is mostly known as an actor, primarily for her role as Tara Maclay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she's also an accomplished author with a number of books and other projects under her belt. Her latest novel, The Witches of Echo Park, is the first in an urban fantasy series about...well, witches. In Los Angeles. Echo Park, to be specific. Basically, it does what it says on the tin.

Lyse is a young woman running a plant nursery in Georgia. She returns home to LA when she learns her great-aunt Eleanora has terminal cancer. It's there that Lyse slowly learns about the coven of

In a world inspired by ancient Rome, Laia is a Scholar, a member of a conquered people who were once the greatest minds on earth. Laia ekes out a living making jams with her grandmother, while her brother and grandfather provide health care to the needy. Until one night when her brother is accused of spying on the Martial Empire for a rebel group. Laia’s grandparents are murdered in front of her face and her brother is thrown in prison. Laia only escapes this fate buy running away. Ashamed of how she has behaved she tries to barter with the rebel group for her brother’s freedom. But they ask