War for the Oaks is widely considered to be the establishing foundation of the urban fantasy genre. Setting a war between the Seelie and Unseelie (or, Light and Dark) Courts of the Fae in modern-day Minneapolis (or, at least, modern in 1987, when this was written,) Emma Bull established a paradigm. One: in contemporary times, in recognizable places, there are intersecting magical realms and accompanying magical beings that are invisible to most humans. Two: certain humans have an aptitude for magic, even if they haven’t […]
Because the Disreputable Dog, that’s why.
So there’s this girl, and she lives in a Glacier. Yes, a real glacier. It’s in a tall mountain at the very tip-top of her country, and she lives there with thousands of cousins, who are collectively called ‘The Clayr,’ most of whom are female and have the pale blonde hair and tanned skin that marks them as one of their own. They are entitled to this sobriquet because every single one of them can see the future. Every single one of them, except Lirael, that […]
Great young adult fantasy before young adult fantasy was cool.
Before the internet, the way I found new books to read was very different, if more simple. I would go to the library (or, on the occasion I actually had spending money, the bookstore), pick every book up that looked even remotely interesting, and take it home. Then I would read it. I was in no way discerning about which books I would read. This method had its downsides, the biggest of which was that I frequently ended up reading books I didn’t care for […]
As told by a dead bunny and a butterfly
This book is mysterious, intervowen, beautiful, almost childish in its narrative, but definitely not in plot. It is a story told in past tense between a skeleton of a rabbit and an orange butterfly traveling across an unknown place. The rabbit tells the story of Sissy; a young girl with two different colored eyes. She travels with a man named fox from city to city, earning a living as story tellers. In one of the towns a man gives Sissy quite an important piece of […]
Words are wind.
Well, here we are. By “here,” I mean the part of the books where the book readers all say GRRM’s editor settled in for a nice, long nap and hasn’t since reappeared. (Except she apparently does exist, and is awake, and is somehow okay with the idea of an eighth book?) Spoilers for the prior three books obviously follow. Given the grumbling over this book and its successor, I liked A Feast for Crows more than I expected to. Yes, certain words and phrases are repeated […]
This review is acceptable to the forces of Darkness
Target: Sergei Lukyanenko’s Last Watch. Translated by Andrew Bromfield (The Watches pentalogy #4) Profile: Modern Fantasy, Suspense, Urban Fantasy So, I spent a really unreasonable amount of time waiting for and then looking for the Harper paperback release of Last Watch. I waited so long that the fifth book in the series was published stateside and my copy actually started to gather dust on my shelf. Eventually I contacted Harper Collins which prompted a very curt autoreply informing me that they didn’t have the publication rights. Although the […]