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 […]
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 […]
Unexpected, in some ways that you want and in some that you don’t
In a comment collection on a CBR post not too long ago, I snarked about the tendency of romance authors to make their rakes all superior lovers. On its face, it doesn’t seem that unlikely: practice makes perfect, right? It’s one thing for a man to hone a set of skills over time that most women might appreciate, but these rakes are uniformly self-described scoundrels who care very little for the women they are bedding and admit to considering sex something like a standard bodily […]
If only he just had one special friend.
“Please, bring a special friend for Larry,” says Larry’s mother when she prays, despairing for her son’s lonely existence and wishing better for him. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a good, if somewhat predictable, mystery story that’s elevated by the quality of the prose and the character profiles of its two leads. From Goodreads: “In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32” Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son […]
“You have to find your own rules.”
I became interested in American Dervish because I wanted to read something from a different perspective: in this case, a novel by a Pakistani author reflecting on a young American Muslim boy’s experience. The story opens with Hayat Shah when he is college-aged, as he attends an Islamic Studies class. The professor, with whom Hayat is friendly, makes statements that are blasphemous to some of the other Muslim students in attendance, but Hayat himself has a somewhat blasé attitude toward his professor’s claims. Afterward, a friend […]
Contains music, sex, and musical euphemisms for sex.
The Stage Dive series by Kylie Scott is two books deep, and by the end it is likely that each member of the fictional world-famous rock band Stage Dive will end up with his one and only. I saw Malin’s review of Play, the second book in the series, and thought it sounded like fun. I don’t read a lot of straight-up contemporary romance, possibly because it’s easier for me to process these happily-ever-after stories in worlds that don’t exist or that I don’t have context […]
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