Readings

The story I’ve been reading lately is Kay MacLeod’s Heirs of Power. This is a fun, curl-up-able fantasy of magical gifts and the quest to free a kingdom. (And one roguish hero, Asher, has a limited teleportation magic he never runs out of trick uses for — Paul and Mark would approve.)

What really shines here is how the characters themselves are together. Watching them spar and adapt as their group slowly grows, and watching the well-meaning narrator try to smooth out their rough edges as a team, is the kind of fun that makes pages fly by.

Claire Luana’s The Confectioner’s Guild is a mix of things. It starts with a magic cupcake that wins its creator a place in said guild, with moments as sweet as that sounds. There are more candies, learning the guild’s magic, making friends and a rival or two, and our heroine slowly coming out of her shell. Then there’s the past that made her build that shell, and the poisoning that’s she’s immediately framed for.

So many fantasies combine elements like this, and I’m always curious at how their tones work together. How much will a guild like this be a backdrop for dark secrets about the world and the protagonist, and how much should it be a more playful coming of age story? I admit, I picked the tale up because of the opening scenes’ sense of fun (I mean, it’s a cupcake), and I sometimes wish those were played up more. The mystery itself and the sinister forces behind it sometimes come out of nowhere, but they do have their own logic behind them. Of the story’s two sides, both hold together.

Kevin Potter’s The First Overlord is the first story in the buildup to his Blood of the Dragons/ Val-Harra series, where the uneasy peace between the world’s dragons and humans takes its first steps toward what humans will call the Calamity. And it definitely shows the focus of these stories: the dragons.

Kwallindauria (alright, “Dauria” mostly) is very much a dragon. She’s a loyal member of the Conclave that keeps order among the world’s wyrms, but it’s a simple request for help from nearby humans that brings her into the story. Has a garnet dragon (D&D players are free to read that as “red dragon”) really started demanding human sacrifices from a village? What has changed that pushed him over the edge, and just how well-defended is his lair? Reading this is all about how, if dragons fight, it’s with more than fangs and fire — though it’s a buildup to that too.

Despite its name, Janice Hardy’s YA book The Shifter isn’t about werewolves: it’s about healers, and the gift to pull someone’s injuries out of them for a magical price. That’s a volatile concept for any story, but especially so because its heroine, Nya, has the unique talent of getting rid of absorbed pain by simply putting it into someone else. You can imagine the worlds of conflict there, for a decent young girl who’s only starting to learn how many people will trade or demand one person’s health for another’s… Oh, and she and her sister are part of the underclass of a conquered city where Nya has to steal to eat. And then her sister goes missing.

If that sounds too dark for any YA tale, Janice also runs the award-winning Fiction University blog, and she knows writing. So the story keeps Nya’s life relatable, with friendships, clever escapes, and conspiracies that can slowly lead a young reader –or anyone– into understanding what a Pandora’s Box she really lives in. Especially, the tale has a knack for making Nya’s and others’ voices genuinely feel like they’re living this edge-of-desperation life and have learned to cope with it. I’ve read “mature” or “grimdark” tales where the Hard Knocks weren’t half as convincing, and definitely weren’t as easy to keep reading through.

In the age of clickbait links, it’s hard to imagine a juicier name for a book than Viola Carr’s The Diabolical Miss Hyde. Yes the late Dr. Jekyll has a daughter, with her own sinister side. And Eliza Jekyll is a crime scene consultant who has already captured Jack the Ripper (sorry, Razor Jack), and is now investigating new killers and trying to stave off the witch-hunting Royal Society while flirting with their best agent. And many more gaslamp delights thrown into the pot.

Note, this is more than a trope-chasing penny dreadful. Eliza brings enough sass on her own to light up a crime scene, and that’s without the times “Miss Lizzie” speaks in her head or adventures on her own terms. A colorful story is one thing, but a colorful story that embraces its characters’ sheer fun is a different pleasure. And the “Electric Empire” setting has its own moments: not only automaton Enforcers and whispers of alchemy, but radicals shouting on the London streets, and always that Royal Society ready to burn you for a rumor. Like Lizzie herself, this can be addicting.

When a series as action-heavy as the Dresden Files announces the next book as Peace Talks, I can only think the implied meaning is “but when Peace does, who’s listening?” Sure enough, when the supernaturals of Harry Dresden’s Chicago get together to discuss their fraying truce, the typical phrase heard is “common enemy” (and it’s no secret that the next book is Battle Ground), alternating with “guest rights” and “attempted murder.”

The story’s as much a lull in the buildup as any Dresden tale can be. We see Harry with different sides of his growing family (“why is it so hard to believe that I have a girlfriend?”), and his different allegiances being strained tighter than ever. Especially, him and his mentor… the weaponized, levitating boulder is the least painful thing there. If you know these characters, it’s priceless and over too quickly. (If you don’t, I expect Battle Ground will blow you away anyhow.)

Some things in life are worth a bit of rationing, like Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards books. Republic of Thieves is a bit different from the others. Instead of a high-stakes heist or scam for the greatest thief in the world, it’s a lower-key battle of wits between Locke Lamora and the other greatest thief in the world, his long-lost childhood sweetheart Sabetha. The great unspoken question in the other two books has always been, who was this One Person you just don’t mention around Locke, even when she grew up in the same gang we’ve come to know so well.

The result is a constant flurry of Gentleman Bastards’ trademark wordplay, Locke trying to keep his usual wits about him while Sabetha lays out how earning a dishonest living looks a bit different from where she stands. The chases and fights aren’t as close together, but the characters never let it get dull.

–That is, that’s most of the book. It also springs some large surprises on Locke when it wants to, mostly at the end. But most of the story isn’t that.

One collection I’ve been devouring: the first backwoods monster-hunting and humor adventures in Gail and Larry Martin’s “Spells, Salt & Steel.”

They’re a juicy couple of tales, though a lot shorter than the full collections. Mark Wojcik has to face a Japanese fish-man while stumbling through a carp fishery. Or there’s the actual Nazi sharpshooter, or the bull that has zero respect for an honest hero…

There’s a bit of the Supernatural feel here, if any story without the Winchester boys could be said to be close to that show’s fun. Action and moments of sheer silliness, with a background and deeper story that goes well beyond that. There’s not so much of that in the free part, but the Martins can always be counted on for a solid tale.

The Queen of Sorrow is the conclusion of Sarah Beth Durst’s Queens of Renthia, and it brings so much together. This is a world where humanity is under siege by the nature spirits all around them, protected only by when power people have to control them, and of course the human Queen that each realm’s spirits allow to rule them. And after two books of watching how very different people are driven to become queens, we now get a full look at the conflict between the changing rulership in Aratay and the exiled, arrogant, would-be messiah who’s become the neighboring land’s Queen Merecot. She’s already tried poison and an invasion, so what will she do now?

In Renthia it’s never simply good and evil. Merecot has reasons for her conquering ways, in fact layers of them, that all lead back to the threat of spirits. And where Merecot takes pride in being “a good queen, not a good person,” her old friend Queen Daleina is still struggling to reconcile ruling with her own forgiving nature, while Queen Naelin is more war-hungry than either of them if anything endangers her children. Exactly whose plan will actually get control of spirits, crowns, or the lives caught between them makes a fast and fun read — Renthia is a world where any village girl might be the next queen, so the characters are more approachable than epic.

For a fan of urban fantasy action, a new Dresden Files book is a big deal. When that book is Battle Ground…

An angry god with an Eye of Mass Destruction leads giants, mystic Huntsmen, and hordes of shark-people in a public attack on the whole city of Chicago. The whole book (since it takes up where Peace Talks left off, big surprise) is one grand, Jim Butcher-skilled battle, plus the mid-chaos twists a concept like that deserves. Characters we’ve known from Book One are transformed — or die. Magic on levels we’ve never seen before comes out, and Harry Dresden finds whole new limits to be pushed to. And the populace of Chicago turn out with a lot of shotguns.

Battle Ground is basically truth in advertising. The usual intrigues and character twists of a Dresden book are there, but paced to work as quick moments in the ebb and flow of the battle. (Mostly.) It’s not a Dresden PI mystery or a Magical Courts political/fighting thriller, it’s a war story. And since Jim Butcher was already writing some of the best urban fantasy fights ever, including the buildup and the consequences, it’s a pleasure to see him kick it up a couple of notches.

And there’s a whole new enemy revealed. And — completely unrelated — the moment when a saint learns to swear.

The Knight’s Secret by Jeffrey Bardwell is a fun, slow-build of a story — the “secret” is that the famous Sir Corbin is actually his own granddaughter, who’s magically taken his shape to cover up the knight’s death. It’s only supposed to be for a week, enough to go to a reunion of the regiment and collect some much-needed money. What could go wrong?

Quite a bit, of course. Since this book launches a series named “The Mage Conspiracy,” there are magicians around the empire brewing rebellion — or are they simply being persecuted? “Corbin” is in the center of a battle of intrigue, with military mages he’s known for years needing his help, while other teammates offer him a place in the mage-hunters. And the knight’s split in two himself, trying to reconcile young but savvy Kelsa’s real self with the larger-than-life role of Corbin. Actually that’s not so difficult, because Corbin’s boisterous ways are easy to follow, so “he” at least gets a long look at the problem before deciding how to weigh in. Especially since the most prominent mage is a woman who has a history with Corbin himself. Again, it’s an appealing slow build of a story, that sets so much up for the next books.

I’ve found a quick little intro to one of my favorite series: Janci Patterson’s Thousand Faces prequel “The Numberless Voices.” This is a sweet tale, somewhere between a slice of life and a caper story — because of course for the teenage face-shifters Kalif and Jory, breaking into a corporate building to steal its secrets is an ordinary day. With one exception: it’s the first time Kalif and Jory have worked together without their parents looking over their shoulders. For Kalif it’s a dream come true to spend time with the girl he’s been falling for. The downside, though, is that he might actually have to tell her.

Along with the mission itself, of course. This is a low-key scheme compared to the multilayered intrigue and secrets in the full novels, but that only makes it sweeter.

One of the pleasures of life is rereading one of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books now and then. This time it’s #6, Blood Rites. Like the name suggests, this is Harry Dresden investigating a murderous magical ritual… no, it’s his enemy vampires… no, it’s one set of bloodthirsty vampires plus a second set that feed on something more dangerous than blood: lust. And one group of those has an interest in that killer ritual too.

Like most Dresden tales, this scores very well for likable characters, chilling suspense or really creative action, Harry’s and others’ famous wit, heart, and sheer fun. (Opening line: “The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”) Especially, it’s the book that gives us our first closer look at the reluctant incubus Thomas Raith, his family and his secrets, and his struggles to control his hunger.

Plus, Mouse as a puppy.

Sarah J Maas’s Throne of Glass is one of the most famous fantasies to come out in recent years — after all, it’s been billed as “Cinderella as an assassin.” To my surprise, it’s more of a slow burn, as Celaena competes with other candidates for Royal Assassin (officially, King’s Champion) while getting to know the brutal king, charming prince, hostage princess, and hints of dark magic stalking the court. Maas thinks in terms of true epic series, and there are six books after this.

There’s no question the story makes each moment appealing. The early elimination Tests are fun but less a challenge to Celaena’s skill than her patience, since she hates hiding her full ability. It’s her friendship with some of the court, notably the cryptic princess of the conquered land and of course Prince Dorian, where it shines more often. There’s a big story ahead, but every small step is worth seeing.

It took me a while (no surprise), but I finished Brandon Sanderson’s marvelous Rhythm of War, the fourth epic of what’s meant to be a ten-book colossus. (This is the series that makes me say “But what do I do with my other two wishes?”) Despite the book’s name, this may be the most battle-light (so to speak) of the series so far: the war with the “Voidbringers” is already well underway, and now many of the leading plotlines here are stories of siege, desperate diplomacy, and memories of the enemy’s rise or research into possible weapons against them. Sanderson takes pride in making his Unearthly Creatures much more than any cliche, and this book brings a real chance to see the world(s) through their eyes. There are reasons they call humans the monsters.

Still, this time one of the biggest spotlights goes to Venli, the “singer” who led her people into (re)bonding with the old powers and fighting the humans. She’s a tangle of old jealousies, racial pride, new regrets and amends, and quite a bit more. Meanwhile, the secretive scholar Shallan is still Shallan (more or less), and everyone’s hero Kaladin can always find a new challenge pushing him into a corner. By the end, a few weapons, agreements, and possessions take shape that could rewrite huge parts of the struggle ahead. Sanderson says Book Five will be a real turning point for the ten books…

There’s a unique joy in finding books that are small-ish and fast-paced, but so elegantly designed that every few pages brings a new revelation. That’s Sebastien de Castell’s Spellslinger series, and I just let myself savor the second one, Shadowblack. Here our outcast magic-novice (“spellslinger”) Kellen encounters a town infected by the same arcane plague he’s struggling with himself, making it his first job as what passes for an independent wizard. Except there’s also a girl in the mix, and a rival spellslinger who might know the cure, and even a rival to Kellen’s foul-mouthed mentor. Also a swamp witch. And a crocodile.

But since it’s a Spellslinger book, the real joy is watching them all unveiled, at what could be a textbook example of how quickly a story can get us invested in one character or one expectation and then yank it around a right-turn while we’re still struggling to cope with the last twist. Or sometimes a scene will simply slow down and make us appreciate what’s going on right at the moment—say, Kellen trying to talk with ordinary kids his own age and trying to win their respect. Or his troublemaking squirrel-cat whispering “Kiss her!” for different reasons…

Just read it.

Ilona Andrews always stands as one of the best writers (well, writer teams) in urban fantasy, and the Hidden Legacy books have a certain elegance where a Kate Daniels tale tends to go gritty. Sapphire Flames is the fourth book, or arguably the start of a new trilogy, with the House Baylor torch passed to a new family leader, Catalina. Sure enough our new heroine has powerful magic, a case to investigate with innocent lives at stake and her family’s well-armed support, and her own dashing and powerful man in the shadows determined to upend her life.

This time the threat hints at the source of the world’s magic, the unstable Osiris Serum, with the chance of some uniquely dangerous mutants appearing in future books. This tale, though, is a straightforward Hidden Legacies tale: Houston’s magical Houses jockeying for position, spells and bullets flying, and above all the Baylor women and their cousins sticking together as the kind of family every urban fantasy heroine wishes she had. If only they’d stop teasing her about Alessandro for two seconds…

Blood, monsters, horror and nightmares… there’s nothing quite as terrifying as Faerie, with a writer who knows what the dark side of that could be like. Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books actually have more sense of lightness and hope than many writers bring to the fae now. In An Artificial Night, Toby’s fighting for her friends and the fae community — against the Firstborn fae who slips out among them and steals their children to make his Wild Hunt.

“Can you get there by candlelight? Yes, and back again,” just maybe. Artificial Night does an excellent job of spinning a faerie web of legends, games, and sheer power into a nerve-wracking mission against an enemy far too strong for one little changeling to face. Every step has the sense that the faerie world has its loopholes and its friends, and they have a real sense of mythic authenticity to them, and yet it only takes one wrong move to be spotted and overwhelmed. (And, this book is almost a side story from Toby’s main journey.)

It’s hard to turn down an archeology mission to a lost temple, and Jacquelyn Benson’s The Smoke Hunter delivers all that — in Victorian times with a fearless young heroine plus some sinister magic. Ellie Mallory’s adventure is the kind that’s presented in different stages: sometimes the simple outrage of an educated woman fighting to discover anything but the Old Boys network, sometimes a parade of natural, human, and supernatural dangers in the jungle, and sometimes her own feelings for her handsome guide.

Too many books like this take their trappings lightly and strictly for entertainment. This is very much about the obvious thrills (it would be nice if our “independent” heroine wasn’t such a novice in survival that Adam has to do most of the rescuing), but it does know how to play them well. The jungle is huge and darkly beautiful, and the criminal treasure-hunters have their own pasts that almost make us hope they’d survive. And the final gauntlet through the temple hazards is a pleasure, especially when we reach the “angels of death.”

One story that I jumped at is Miranda Honfleur’s Winter Wren, a prequel to her Blade & Rose books. This is a short but fun tale that introduces the mage Rielle and the vital parts of her world: battle magic and the Tower that rules its mages, paladins that fight for the innocent, and Rielle’s conflict between her orders to protect the powerful and her wider wishes. Though you have to go to the series to see why she’s also so desperate to stay in the Tower’s good graces (there’s an embittered ex and a werewolf), and the rest of the series’s world-building, including the slow-burn romance with one particular paladin.

It’s always a fun read to look between a prequel story and the larger world it leads into. (There are certainly reasons why my own Solo Flight contrasts with the Spellkeeper books after it.) Winter Wren focuses on what the world’s mages and paladins are, both in a fight and their different philosophies, while the Blade & Rose books turn that into their romance and show the rest of the world around it to stir up much bigger conflicts. Imagine that story’s Rielle with a forbidden love, and you start to see where the books can go.

How to Become Golden is a prequel story to J Bennett’s quirky “Henchman’s Survival Guide” series. Those books tell how one of the contestants on a semi-real superhero reality show is the conman with a heart of… well, his henchman name is Gold. This story tracks Darius’s beginnings in an orphanage (“dropoff site”), wheeling and dealing his way to Big Little City determined to join up with the heroes. Or with anyone who’ll give him enough screen time to work his way toward that goal, hence the henchman gig.

It’s a crisp, appealing tale that really shows how to dig into a world. Bennett’s Henchman/ BLC society has always been a low-key dystopia, but here we see that even more from the inside. Darius begins with a race to trade the orphans’ ration of sweets (“blueberry-vanilla pufferies”) into one massive deal that can start him toward his goal — while watching his alliances and doing everything to keep his stash location hidden from all the thieves. That’s a sharply specific set of battles he wages, and they turn out to be easier than the fame-chasing of his real fight. A good study in building suspense and making a character you’d never trust (in someone else’s story) into someone you’d want to.

I’ve been especially devouring: “Hook, Line, and Slinker” by Martin Shannon — and the next book it introduces, Dead Set.

Shannon bills these as “Tales of Weird Florida,” and they do cast some exciting shadows over the Sunshine State. My first impression is, an actual Harry Dresden with a wife and children. Yeah, that much potential for anything to come hunting a poor Magician. only Gene Law has so much more to lose. These tales really do have a touch of the same Dresden thrill, where you just don’t know what twist an attack is going to take next, but you know you’ll be wincing right along with our all-too-breakable hero.

On the one side, it has those playful touches that are the kind of local history and color that take Florida a bit beyond the news jokes. Well, a bit — there’s also an enchanted lawn flamingo. On the other, “Hook” starts out with a simple demon-pest infestation and gets complicated, while I count four different Forces Of Evil (not counting the demon lord that’s mostly off-scene) maneuvering by the time Dead Set ramps up to its climax. And all through that book, Gene’s wife, little boy, budding-magician daughter (eep!), and even his friends at work keep showing different sides of our hero’s life. “Hook, Line, and Slinker” doesn’t much as have room for those, but it does feature a colorful car mechanic, and a crotchety ghost, and…

There are many ways to do a ghost story. Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed In Blood is one of the best: a boy raised to put ghosts to rest, who finds one who’s a bit different. Picture one of the Supernatural boys as a teenager and an only child, pushing through the backwoods grit, the grim truths about killer spirits, and, yes, always being the new kid at school too. The last thing Cas wants is to have locals getting involved in his hunt or his life — but that’s because he never thought the most dangerous ghost he ever met would also be the most conflicted.

This is a book with some of everything: ghost magic that turns up the chills, old family secrets and new drama, awkward friends, and more. And it knows how to play them off each other, and has some definite twists in the works. “Anna” really isn’t your typical ghost.

Middlegame is one of the more unique tales that Seanan McGuire has ever brewed up. It’s about alchemy, assassination, conspiracy.. and two kids that were created to rewrite reality with no idea what they’re in for, except for the cross-country psychic bond between them. So mostly, it’s about being raised ordinary when you’re anything but — and how many ways that can go wrong.

Roger and Dodger are, of course, twins separated at birth. He’s the born master of language, she owns mathematics — and she’s fearless, merciless, and generally a battering ram except when Roger’s able to slow her down (and there are reasons that may not work). Watching them grow up with their gifts and fumble their way toward understanding is a particular treat for anyone who’s ever felt misunderstood or unappreciated. Except that if they grow up too fast it really can be the end of the world, and if they grow up slowly the conspirators that made them will come to wipe them out. It’s a unique not-always-slow burn of watching our heroes grow and wondering how free they’ll be, and for how long.

When Mike Carey calls one of his Felix Castor books Thicker Than Water, it’s because it has plenty of blood of both kinds. London’s toughest exorcist has already been dodging a ruthless church sect that will break skulls or destroy innocent souls trying to free the world of ghosts — now he discovers a whole neighborhood haunted by a spirit with a fondness for wounds. But it also leads back to Castor’s past, and his own brother the priest.

Like all the Castor books, this is hip-deep in atmosphere and narrative wit. (All fans of Harry Dresden’s attitude really need to check out this across-the-pond counter to him, and Constantine fans should be already lining up for it.) All that mood serves especially well with a building project setting, a history, and a being tied to the particular suffering of kids that cut themselves.

And, a few new insights about demons. Castor’s had a couple of deeply unpleasant demons loose in his life, and this time things get as big as a riot and as personal as… you’ll see.

Viola Carr’s Electric Empire steampunk series has always been a thrill for me — when slashers and mad scientists are hunted by a forensic doctor named Eliza Jekyll (and Lizzie Hyde), what’s not to love? But the third book, The Dastardly Miss Lizzie, is a whole lot wilder than that. One crazed killer helping to hunt down a second… Eliza and Lizzie at open war with each other for her head and her life… the King, a French invasion force… two kinds of apocalypse… even Eliza’s shapeshifter boyfriend doesn’t escape unscathed.

For some books, all you can do is hold on and appreciate the ride, as much for its reckless pace as for anything the characters actually do. (Though Lizzie’s still the saucy scene-stealer she’s always been.)

A Court of Mist and Fury is the second book in Sarah J. Maas’s Court series, and it’s decidedly different from the first. A Court of Thorns and Roses was a gritty retelling of the Tam Lin legend, with a hard-bitten heroine imprisoned beside a tormented fae lord, and facing fiendishly cruel challenges to free him. This book is all about repositioning its peasant girl Feyre as a paranormal-romance warrior princess, with a definite plot escalation at the end.

Technically it’s Feyre recovering from the PTSD she’s been through, and a slower look at the fae world around her — sometimes disillusioning, sometimes beautiful. Mostly beautiful, since so much of its space is introducing bantering friends, glittering cities and clothes, half-controlled powers for Feyre to explore, and a couple of fae males (well, mostly just one) to show their different approaches on what a heroine needs. Along with a couple of deadly old grudges and a looming new invasion to work against, but mostly this is a breather between adventures. That means fewer surprises and large sections given over to sheer fun or open angst, and it might have been dull, if Maas didn’t know her material so well.

Rosemary and Rue is Seanan McGuire’s first October Daye book, but it’s actually the second I’ve read, which makes it all the more intense to follow. At this series beginning we have our halfblooded fae heroine alone after long years of imprisonment — very much alone, until her one last fae contact drags her into solving one more mystery. This is a Toby who’s tired, bitter, and trying to get by on a convenience store salary rather than reconnect with her old life. So in true Noir PI fashion she trudges from one clue or resource to the next, trying to dodge assassins before the curse on her kills her.

It’s those “resources” that make the story, and how they contrast with Toby herself. It’s obvious she has a number of good friends, and even a daughter she’d die for, but she’s simply too beaten down by her past to show her face to them until she’s forced to. (Of course, them being fae, none of them is quite as straightforward as they seem.) But for us, it means we get to use her jaded eyes to fully appreciate people like the Duke and Duchess that Toby once served (good friends but with some grudges in their family), the Court of Cats (whose king is more interested in tormenting Toby), or the house of runaways she lived in for years. All Toby herself wants is to live through the next night, and the odds of that look worse every chapter.

I’ve been reading Andy Briggs’s Marlow. It’s a fun, focused horror story, a good take on the idea of people’s literal nightmares come to life. Marlow is the woman who’s been battling these “Infiltrators” all her life, and that mission has left her bitter and exhausted… even before she meets the boy whose demons won’t stop appearing.

This is a streamlined kind of story: several family secrets and a lot of Marlow’s own weary character, and everything’s set up for chases and battles with the Things In The Dark. The world just might start and stop depending on if a boy can stay awake more than a few minutes. — or if the police, shocked bystanders, family, and Marlow herself can keep from arguing with him. There’s always something else going wrong, and the monsters themselves are suitably brutal. Fast-paced and fun.

D. Hale Rambo’s Tools of a Thief is an odd little tale, that’s really about exploring its world and the predicament its heroine is in. Zizy is a gnome who’s always been better at surviving than magic, and she’s just trying to get away from her manipulative aunt — and have a few adventures with the pretty scholar she’s falling for. But poking through the wilds or cleaning out a magically-trapped tower always has another complication in it for them.

Some stories are more about charm than suspense. Zizy stumbles through some of her surroundings, and her friend Laysa has a naive streak that keeps her a bit out of step with Zizy’s capers. It rarely keeps them apart for long, and there’s always another twist in how the world is laid out. A fun study in simple strangeness.

For all the Harry Potter fans who wonder why students are sent to a magic school that”s so constantly unsafe… consider Naomi Novik’s Scholomance book A Deadly Education, where the school is essentially trying to kill some of them, as the price for protecting them from the many more monsters outside. It’s also the story of one stubborn girl .who knows all the angles for avoiding critters and slowly building up the power she’ll need for her future, but can’t stomach the cliques and alliances that could make a real difference for her. Cue the school hero…

“I decided that Orion Lake had to die after the second time he saved my life.”

–No, El doesn’t mean it literally. But what’s a savvy, antisocial young witch to do when some do-gooder keeps blowing up the monsters that come after her, and getting all the respect she needs? Just fight harder to keep her guard up and push through her projects, and just maybe she can keep the rich-kid clubs from incinerating her for messing up their political games. And then there’s the next hour…

(Did I mention Novik’s releasing a Scholomance sequel next month? And I actually didn’t know that when I started — leave it to this world to drop in a surprise or three.)

One tale in particular caught my eye: Christine Pope’s Hidden Gifts, It’s a style very different from my own, a paranormal romance on extra-slow burn that spends more time with its heroine simply being awkward with her witch-clan arranged fiance than about her emerging powers. Or the even slower build of the Sinister Forces that will be filling the next few books.

Still, what is it like to head toward an arranged marriage, for witchy reasons nobody can give a clear answer to? How does an aristocratic family welcome the new girl in, and how much does the guy resent it? Paranormal romances explore this all the time, but it’s good to see one that’s this comfortable with the world and making it all come to life in its own time.

Bone Crossed is the fourth of Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson books, always one of the best shapeshifter series around. Like much of the set, this is a bit low-key in much of its adventure — much of it is followup from the last book. That would be fallout from a scheme of the local vampire seethe (perfect name for a group of vamps, innit?), and a shameless cliffhanger on Mercy’s love life. But then, continuity and the lived-in feel of the characters’ lives is always much of the appeal here. Mercy being a were-coyote, she’s been living in and out of werewolf society all her life, and she knows these people.

At the same time, there’s another threat at work. A bit of a road trip: an old friend, a favor, and a different vampire for Mercy to walk into, It’s a pleasure to see a tale that keeps that side of the story just big enough to have its moments without crowding the ongoing tale.

Day Killer is the fifth of Clara Coulson’s City of Crows books, and it’s more streamlined than usual. Instead of Cal Kinsey doing the bulk of his monster-hunting alongside his colorful teammates in PSI, he’s dragged straight into a VIP bodyguarding situation that’s so drastic, his first instructions are “Don’t tell your friends — anyone could be a mole.” (To be fair, he’s just had a bad experience with high-powered mind magic, so his sharing that fear is more believable than it might be.)

That makes a good part of this story an injured, isolated Cal plus one immature vampire prince, scrambling to avoid a whole court of fanged killers, foil a mass assassination plot, and dodge Cal’s teammates. Not easy. Still a simpler plot than some of the investigations his Crows have had to unravel in other books, and the action is a notch wilder than most urban fantasy. Cal might need some real help to get out of this one alive… and he doesn’t exactly get it.

A story of magic can always use a few magical books, and those grimoires can use a good library and librarians trained to protect them… but what if the books are magical creatures themselves, halfway to needing to be locked in their shelves? That’s the beginning of Margaret Rogerson’s Sorcery of Thorns, and it’s a fun little world. Elizabeth is a foundling child raised in one of her nation’s Great Libraries, who wants nothing more than to protect those books and protect the world from them. So a shadowy enemy begins sending demons to attack the Libraries, forcing her to break the Wardens’ greatest rule and join up with a certain young sorcerer.

Some stories simply remember they’re there to entertain. Sorcery of Thorns keeps its heroine appealing, its brooding hero believable, and its books a pleasure to watch. (Even between  their major transformations, there are moments like a grand lady’s history turning up its pages at another book’s flicking bits of ink around the shelves, and the biblio-brawl that breaks out.) Page by page, it’s a fun read.

Fated Blades is the latest novella from Ilona Andrews. It’s a fun thing to read, watching that Andrews writing push such a complete character arc into these pages: a reintroduction to the “Kinsmen” world. The Heads of Houses rivalry between Matias and Ramona. The backstory each has, that forces them to work together. The industrial spies, conspiracies, and armies in their way, all lining up to get wiped out by their wits or their nanotech secare swords.

Under the vivid action and the far-future intrigue, this is really a character study and a romance, of quickly building two alpha characters that are certain to either kill each other or wind up together, with no surprise which it’ll be. It’s not easy to form all of that in a just a novella’s pages, so it’s a pleasure to sit back and watch it all fall into place.

One of the “simple” pleasures in a reader’s life (as Ferius might put it) is Sabestien de Castell’s Spellslinger books, and Charmcaster more than delivers. It’s the third book and the follow-up to an arcane conspiracy that renegade mage-boy Kellen discovered last time, and the story only gets bigger and harder-hitting. Here Kellen and his mentor Ferius are led to the most advanced city in the world, where the head artificer has built a clockwork bird that threatens the balance of power between nations. Just the place for a shadow conspiracy to strike, and also for an old friend of Kellen’s to turn up.

All through it, the book has that delicious de Castell touch. That is, one moment after the next are simple, clever twists of drama or a battle of wits, always told so cleanly there’s nothing in the way of appreciating every one of them — and yet they keep building on each other to a story that’s deeper and twistier with every chapter.

Fury of a Phoenix is the first of Shannon Mayer’s Nix books — and it’s a more gritty, grounded adventure than it sounds. Its “Phoenix” is simply the name of its assassin heroine, and Nix actually isn’t a creature of magic at all. Instead it’s the underworld family she was an enforcer for has a whole range of “abnormals” in its ranks, from shapeshifters to illusion-casters. (Though she does have a pair of talking guns, with definite attitudes.)

This tale is one that moves from gambit to gambit, following Nix from how her retirement-in-disguise is interrupted (as expected), to each contact or assault or escape she burns through in tracking down her enemies. Where some books would try to play up one encounter’s suspense and then let it fall again, this book reads more like a constant simmer where the next scheme is simply the next thing an assassin picking up the trail would do. A steady kind of excitement that might be just the thing to settle into.

On The Edge is a bit different from the better-known Ilona Andrews stories. Our heroine Rose might have some powerful defensive magic, but she’s not an elite mercenary or noble house head: she’s a single mother (well, big sister) trying to hold onto the gas money to drive into the mundane world for her housecleaning job. At least, until a certain noble swordsman picks her out of the ramshackle Edge community, and monsters start stalking her brothers.

And that family matters. Both little boys are already struggling with magical gifts that could destroy them. Rose is the town outcast, for what she could do, the enemies she’s already made, and what her family’s already put her through. No outsider is going to understand just how to put the family back together — but Rose on her own isn’t strong enough to either. So by the end, it’s her, her family, and the whole Edge community along with the hero that stand up to evil.

Naomi Novik is becoming more of a favorite of mine all the time, and she’s just released her followup to the first Scholomance book — so in the meantime, picking up Spinning Silver was an overdue delight. Like Uprooted, it’s her take on a fairy tale, but this one builds a broader scope through a range of unassuming characters. There’s Miryem, who “spins silver into gold” first as a money-lender’s daughter and then in her own “spin” on “Rumplestiltzkin,” but there’s also Irina the Duke’s daughter who gets too close to a whole other kind of magical peril, and farm girl Wanda who’s just trying to save her brothers from their drunken father. Later there are more, many more.

These are “Russian” villagers, or a plain and forgotten daughter in Irina’s case. And they bring a certain groundedness to their angle on the world. One minute we see how the “Staryk” fey are slowly freezing the land, and the village could be one shout away from rioting against Miryem’s people; the next we’re following a very in-the-moment little boy making sense of it in his own way. And the way they each piece their way through their problems is its own kind of slow-warming pleasure. By the time this tale is done, you’ll know exactly how cold a winter gets if you can’t gather firewood, as well as who’s been holding that weather there. And why.

Hold on to your slime-repelling hats, I finished Naomi Novik’s new Scholomance book. And true to form, The Last Graduate is a deep dive into the most dangerous, murderous magic school ever — and the dark and tangled emotions of the witch who’s trying so hard not to blow up whole corridors as she watches for the next ambush. Or at least, get through it without making more friends, and El isn’t doing too well at either.

Scholomance books are honestly a challenge to describe. They simply immerse us in the school’s crazy scramble to work out spellcrafting and dodge monsters, all seen through El’s deeply jaded eyes. And watching the characters is the same way: when El calls the selfless hero Orion an idiot for sticking his neck out (or risking magical backlashes by neglecting his own studies), we know just how right she is, as well as how wrong. And then there’s watching their alliances slowly take shape, or just being swept up in the growing horror when students try ambushing El and unleash something different, or…

One tale I’ve been hearing about for a while is Shelby Mahurin’s Serpent and Dove. Unlikely couples are a common element in storytelling, but it’s not every day a witch is matched with a witch-hunter… and a real sense that they are worlds of conflict apart. In this French-inspired city of Cesarine,witches do act like monsters, floating down onto a royal parade and casting deadly curses on everyone they pass. But they have their own story behind their rampages — and Louse le Blanc has hers, for trying to escape from them.

But when that escape plan begins in a brothel (because, how could it not?), it then being tied to the life of a dedicated witch-hunter was the last thing you’d expect. Lou and Reid, Captain of the Chasseurs, work their way through falling for each other, while Lou’s secrets and her ties to her last few years in hiding as well as her larger fears… all close in at their own times. As a straightforward YA journey for them, it’s a pleasure to follow.

Skinwalker is the first of Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock books. A shapeshifter/ were-cougar woman, hired by the vampires of New Orleans to hunt one of their own… if you think that sounds like it’s keeping close to what makes urban fantasy tick, you’d be right. What that doesn’t capture is how well it covers that, and how confident Hunter is in making Jane do this her own way.

One minute there’s a not-quite-calm confrontation with local vamps’ chain of command, yes. The next, Jane is trading information with the predator-spirit in her head (“Beast,” because what other name suits her?), or going through mercenary logistics with a love most writers never find, or just taking time to go dancing because the trail goes cold during the day. The mystery of just what creature she’s stalking takes its own time unveiling, and so do the first steps about Jane’s own missing memories and her heritage. There are flashier writers out there, but not many that bring this kind of honest skill to the monster-hunting world.

C. L. Polk’s Witchmark is a surprisingly small story, for one with so many big ideas. Start with a gaslamp fantasy about a military doctor trying to solve the problem of veterans haunted by a something worse than shattered nerves — when he can’t even keep them in hospital when new patients keep flooding in from the front. Add Miles’s own secret past, as a mage and a nobleman in hiding from his family’s plans to chain his power to them, “for the greater good of the Realm,” naturally. Or the mysterious and too-attractive man that leads him into investigating a murder, that goes so much deeper.

This story moves with an oddly brisk pace. Miles struggles over how much to risk himself and which of his colleagues he can trust, but there’s always another twist coming up to keep reshuffling his world. All he wants is to live free and do some good, but what that means gets harder and harder to see.

With Seanan McGuire’s Late Eclipses, October Daye’s life is heating up. It’s one thing to be a half-faerie knight putting her life back together after years under a spell, or defending her friends at court from some of the darker things in Faerie. But when the Queen that hates her gives her a dangerous gift, and Toby starts seeing visions of one of her oldest enemies, while her closest friends begin falling sick, with signs of an assassin on the loose..

There are no “typical stories” for Toby — but here with the fourth book it’s definitely taking things up a notch or three. I wouldn’t say that everything blows up, it’s more that there isn’t much that doesn’t change, from her friends to her position to who she is. And so many doors left open…

I never get enough chances to read sweeping epics of military fantasy — mostly because too few turn out to be like Miles Cameron’s The Red Knight. This is the tale of a siege and the campaigns that mesh with it, fought between “irks” and other Creatures Of The Wild, against a mercenary captain and the patchwork forces and unlikely allies he welds together. There’s the savvy king and his even smarter queen, the escaped slave who joins the rebels, the abbess leading her nuns in magical defense, the once-human archmage leading the assault, the foreign knight with a private army who’s probably a worse ally than an enemy (except he’d be a strong enemy)…

Mostly, it’s the Red Knight and his very motley crew of professionals. Everyone from the lieutenants to the woman who sews the uniforms might get a moment or more, in this boots-on-the-ground view of how it looks to be in the middle of a raid, or to try lancing down a wyvern. Or keeping the troops away from the village girls, or fighting off poison gas spells. Or the quiet moment when prostitute-turned-soldier “Sauce” has her real name mentioned in the archives. And then there’s the careful reading and wondering just how many odd Arthurian elements are going to turn up.

Brandon Sanderson is the kind of writer who keeps getting attention because he deserves it… and all that makes me realize I hadn’t gotten around to his space opera tale Skyward yet. This is a different kind of tale from the grand fantasy epics he’s most famous for. It’s a YA that’s mostly about the sheer coolness of training as a starfighter cadet — played against the unfairness of the heroine’s life circumstances and the secrets that might be behind them (no spoilers to what those are).

It’s sheer fun, except when the darker sides of it edge in. Practice bagging simulated aliens with the ships’ energy ropes (why yes, they’ve got energy ropes), or get the by-the-book flightleader the call sign “Jerkface”… if there’s anything it reminds me, of it’s a lively space opera anime series, but of course adding some of Sanderson’s layered world-building for their alien home. He drew the line at giant robots, but you can tell it wants some. As a heroine, Spin (“Spensa” outside of the academy, not that that happens often) is a bit manic and crazy-talking at times, but she’s got a lot going on. And just because so many pages are playful doesn’t mean her friends –and her illusions– aren’t dying around her, and this is still the first book of a series of four.

I’m back to Sabastien de Castel’s Spellslinger books, with Soulbinder. This one is a little different from the last three tales, because for the first our young outlaw is separated from his deliciously prickly mentor. Kellen is also surrounded by strange magic, conspiracies, heartbreaking losses, and being betrayed by his tribe of mages — which might make it exactly like the other three. Only it’s, well, more.

From the series’ first page, Kellen always seems to find himself the outsider, the one who never fits and ends up taking the blame. This time… his search for his shadowblack curse may have actually led him to a community that might help. And even if it were that easy (one guess), it means friends who do accept him on his own terms, even if it takes losing everything he had to get there, and all his usual enemies are still working their ways outside.

There aren’t many writers who can make a story as epically big and yet as moment-to-moment intense as Jay Kristoff. So when he puts out a book called Empire of the Vampire (and why aren’t there already a dozen books with a title that good?), you can expect a vamp-hunting hero worth remembering. From tortured training methods and his world’s monastic traditions, to the mocking laughter and ancient powers of the Dead, to the deeper mysteries of what Gabriel is, what happened to blot out the sun years ago, and if there’s anything at all that can stop the world’s slide into doom. Plus a romance that you know can’t end well, but you can’t look away.

Being Kristoff, it holds that much material together by balancing several time frames. playing our hero’s escalating early missions against his grimmer older years and the… situation he’s struggling with right now. But either way, a story like this relies on Gabriel’s courage and the sheer weight of his haunted world each time it comes crashing down on him.

“Who told you I was a hero?”

You’d think a book called Gallant would be a study in knighthood or romance. Nope — V. E. Schwab gives us a gothic tale of a mute orphan girl who just might have a home after all. “Gallant” is simply the name of the house she’s called back to, the one that her mother’s diary always warned her to stay away from. The reason for that is a little more specific than “it’s haunted.”

This is YA gothic more than many books might be, so it moves faster and keeps its subjects lighter than it might have. But it never stints on the vivid description, or the sense of who Olivia is: the tough, self-contained girl who’s grown up seeing dead people and standing up to orphanage bullies she can’t even yell at. Offer a girl like that a home and a family, and then reveal just what’s lurking in the shadows and how it haunted her mother… Olivia has a history of opening doors nobody wants her to, but can she close them?

Take six of the most spectacularly gifted wizards in the world, put them together for an advanced study in the Library of Alexandria… mix in rivalries, conspiracies, seduction, and just a couple of murders… Olivie Blake’s Atlas Six is as stately and personal as being shut in with this many colorful people deserves to be.

It’s the Six themselves that make the difference, of course. One struggling young woman seethes with frustration against her more privileged rival, but through another character’s eyes we see how insecure she comes off as; keep an eye on that seductress too. And all this is while they’re tinkering with spells to master time, enter dreams, or sometimes kill someone with their own thoughts — and just when you think you know who’s likely to do that, the book tosses it up in the air again. Read slowly, ready for anything.

We haven’t heard anything from Rachel Aaron in a while, but she’s come roaring back with something wild — the wild, Weird West, The Last Stand of Mary Good Crow. This is the Sioux Wars with a game-changing new wrinkle, the mining of magical “crystal” in a town that’s the center of attention for miners, a sinister criminal syndicate, an even worse criminal syndicate, the native tribes, and the cavalry. Just the place to have a rich girl from the East show up looking for her uncle’s lost Mother Lode and the guide that can lead her there.

Rachel Aaron always knows how to position her characters around her world-building. So what happens when the secret of the crystal is discovered by the shy, cave-savvy Mary Good Crow… and the business-savvy “Miss Josie”… and Josie’s old friend Rel, the hired gun with more secrets than any of them? That is if they can raise any help to get back in the caves at all, and get through the angry spirits and the crystal-skinned, corpse-stealing bandits and… Yeah, this is a Weird West with plenty of Weird in the mix. And there’s more story there to be dug up too.

For four books, Mike Carey’s exorcist Felix Castor has battled conspiracies and worked his way through the secrets of the haunted era his London has entered. But now in The Naming of the Beasts, he has his final clash with the two enemies that have haunted him from before the first page. One is the demon (“Asmodeus,” just to leave no doubts how evil the thing is) that he trapped inside his best friend by mistake. The other is the scarily-not-mad scientist who’ll do anything at all to tear secrets out of the ghosts, loup-garous, and other creatures. So when Asmodeus finally escapes his prison and rampages through the city, still with Castor’s friend as his puppet, what’s an exhausted exorcist to do?

The Castor books are always a rare pleasure, for their momentum and Carey’s fondness for twisting even a simple line into a quiet gem of backstreet wordplay. This one takes its time too — there’s a conventional case in the middle with its own horrors, and some slowly-unraveling weirdness with Juliet (a reformed succubus, more or less, or maybe less “less” than we thought). But make no mistake: this is the book where everything comes together, and most of it explodes.

I’ve been hearing about Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage series for a while, and now I have to say I’m hooked. Promise of Blood starts with… a mysterious summons to the king’s palace in the dead of night, emphasis on “dead,” and it escalates from there to conspiracies, war, ancient secrets, and more war. All featuring McClellan’s signature concept, where gunpowder is the most promising new discovery in industry and magic, with magical flintlock snipers who just might be able to pick off classic sorcerers from across the battlefield. Or maybe not, depending on what’s being unleashed now.

It’s an intriguing shift from the familiar sword vs sorcery, that opens up all kinds of military fantasy, along with the political shifts of old and new magic — alongside the shifts in politics, economics, religion, and everything else these kingdoms are going through. It’s not a story that goes especially deep into one character (our viewpoint characters are two soldiers, one detective, and a refugee), but there’s certainly a variety of potential friends and foes drawn from different layers of the world. Nobody sees this fight from quite the same angle, and that makes a difference when you’re lining up a shot or a stab.

There are post-apocalyptic urban fantasies, and there are post-apocalyptic urban fantasies. And this is one I’ve been meaning to get to for a while: Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning. You’d have to walk a fair distance to find a monsterslayer with an attitude as convincing as Maggie Hoskie, one of the Dine’ (Navajo) trying to survive in a half-flooded world. It would be simple to call this the story of her adventure beside a handsome medicine man and a reluctant friend or two, trying to repair her past and track a witch and fulfill a mission for Coyote…

Simple, but that wouldn’t do it justice. Maggie’s a woman with “clan powers” that make her a little too good at killing, in a world where it doesn’t take much to turn everyone against you. She’s been losing friends, to enemies or just to suspicion of what she is, for so long that she has real trouble seeing anything better. And then there’s what this version of Coyote is: the spirit that looks like a movie riverboat gambler with fingernail claws, and appears to a scared little girl to tell stories about how many different ways he’s been killed. From there, it gets dark.

Sometimes you want to see a vampire staked — and sometimes it’s just as important that the stake is a Victorian lady’s hairpin, and how fashionably made is the parasol that drives it. That’s the premise of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate books, starting with Soulless… a title that doesn’t refer to the monsters but to our heroine Alexia Tarabotti’s nature for cancelling out their supernatural powers. Though if she were born less different than she is, she also might not be quite so willing to meddle in vampire and mad scientist schemes, or keep a certain werewolf earl flustered. (Yes she would.)

This is a book that’s always willing to pause the story for a loving description of its furniture and clothing, or a faithful but less loving description of a young lady’s role and how Alexia is almost able to fit the mold for a while. That gives us fun little lines like

“Please do, Mr. Siemons. Directness is a very admirable quality in kidnappers”–she paused in thought–“and scientists.” She was nothing if not fair, and she had read her share of scientific articles that prevaricated and waffled most dreadfully. A strong thesis was very important. 

It’s like that. Rarely serious for too long before stepping back to its playfulness. And then returning to how that was a kidnapping…

Of all Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson books, Silver Borne is one of the most oddly immersive. On one side of this story there’s a fae queen out to take some decidedly dangerous magic from Mercy, and friends caught in the middle. But on the other…

It’s the werewolf pack, that Mercy (a coyote shifter and a natural loner) is learning to live among. There are a lot of wolves in that pack, from gullible tough guys to a gay cowboy, and Patricia Briggs really is the best at making us feel we’ve been dropped into a crazy family reunion where everyone knows everyone and we’re about to get an earful of who’s in who’s business. And with everything from pack mind control to exploding houses to leadership challenges to a bounty hunter, there’s a lot of business to get into. And then there’s the time that the youngest of a horde of human girls looks at a half-feral werewolf and screams “Pony!”

I’ve never read Michael J. Sullivan before, and Age of Myth is a pleasant surprise. It’s the first of his Legends of the First Empire, a prequel series to later books… and it has an appealing small scale to it. Most of the action is centered around one village, where leadership is determined by duels with axes because swords are rarely seen — except for the advanced Fhray nation nearby that’s grown angry with them. The reluctant “God-Slayer” who’s taken refuge there may have something to do with it…

But the Fhray question is only one part of the story, at least for this first book. The village’s struggle to deal with it really comes down to that leadership, and the last chief’s wiser widow and the weird mystic girl from the forest and a camp full of other colorful characters, slowly unraveling what’s going on. This is an epic that feels like the small but colorful seeds that can sprout into a clash of nations, once there are more nations there to clash.

JL Bryan’s Ellie Jordan books are a kind of comfort reading for me. That probably says something about me, since each one is a ghost-trapping story that’s mainly a slow-build study in exploring dark places and the darker history behind them, and waiting to find out what it takes to discover a new way ghosts can kill. With Lullaby, it’s a ghost that sings to babies and might be killing them.

It’s also well into the series, so there’s a lot more going on. Ellie’s also reeling from an attack by her old nemesis, a firestarting spectre, and trying to research how to pin him down. Which would be a lot easier if her new nemesis, a big-name ghost-hunting firm, hadn’t bought up her little operation and started making their own kind of psychic threats to keep her following the company line. Which starts with ignoring the fire ghost and devote herself to the paying case. I can see bigger booms (or boos) waiting in the wings, but a good ghostly attic-crawl is always good for right now.

One series I’ve written about before is Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books. Of them all, A Local Habitation is a bit different — it’s right there in the title, that this is Toby visiting a neighboring Countess’s tiny court to unravel the latest faerie mysteries. And that isolation matters, when so much of Toby’s life is her playing off her usual friends and frenemies, and the ongoing riddles of her world. A “road trip adventure” like this could be a liberating run at a whole different challenge, or a shallow story with not enough to care about.

This turns out to be a bit of both. This court is a number of faerie who’ve set up a computer software business, so we get hints of how magic and tech might mix while Toby struggles to understand the modern side of it. On the other hand, spooky empty cubicles and Toby rubbing whole new people the wrong way are the kind of scenes that work best if there’s enough going on in the middle of it. In this book it’s a slow build that leaves the story a bit stretched. Even with the bodies that are dropping.

The Palace of Lost Memories features more or less what you’d expect from its title: a castle full of people that have mysteriously forgotten who they are. Except, C J Archer’s book is less about that than the poisoning attempt on one of the nobles… and it’s less about that than watching the doctor’s daughter who investigates it learn to find her way around the castle’s people, including the Captain of the Guards.

Josie’s an interesting heroine to follow through all this: determined to help her patient (although legally she can’t be more than a midwife) and nosy about the mysteries, quietly gawking at the castle’s wealth, and never sure how much danger she might be in. She usually isn’t — the story’s more about her joking with the guards and her neighbors, and making friends and enemies among different nobles. There are larger mysteries to unravel, but this is only the first book, and everyone’s happy to take their time.

The Crimson Campaign is the second of Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage military fantasy series. And it delivers more struggling-kingdom, magical-sniper action.

In particular it does what many second books do to shift the pace. That is, after the first book set up the series’s direction, the second finds specific ways to stall it and put the characters in holes to climb out of. So we have Field Marshal Tamas leading his nation’s defense, only to find a key battle going… rather wrong for him. His son Taniel Two-Shot has consequences from the last book to recover from, followed by him being trapped by military protocol and corruption. And Adamat the investigator is dealing less with the conspiracies that had been swirling around Tamas, and is free to track down his own family, that were kidnapped as part of those schemes. Each of those leads to more revelations about the overall war and some of the powers behind it, but only in their own time.

It can be a fun thing to see in a second book, stepping back from the main story to double down on one part of it, at least if the book does those parts justice.

For the holiday, I’ve been pushing the assorted life and death adventure tales back to look into Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes. It’s a tale that really delivers on what it says: a fantasy adventurer hanging up her sword to open a coffee shop. Or as the tagline puts it, “high fantasy and low stakes.”

Recruiting a few uniquely talented partners, check. Watching the town warm up to coffee, check. Rapturous descriptions of the baked goods, plus amusingly quirky customers, all check. This is a true cozy story built around small arcs of micro-suspense (and some longer ones about the local mob) and larger helpings of sheer satisfaction at each usually-quick victory or oddity — and it succeeds by making each one work. It’s simply a nice place to visit and you would want to live there.

Wayfarer is a superhero story… set in Dickensian England, by writing guru K.M. Weiland. That makes it a briskly-paced tale (befitting a hero with super-speed), but also a richly detailed one. Not every author could pick out “a blacksmith’s apprentice” out to “save his master from debtor’s prison” and make everything from the London class system to street gangs of children feel straight out of the classics.

Where another “young hero” might take on evil for its own sake, Will Hardy tries to keep his eyes on the one person he thinks he can help — along with a few others he meets on the way, anyway. And he has an orphan’s eye for how hard it is to be seen as anything more than a poor boy, when lords and all soldiers have their own rules about what he has to be. And then there’s the language; Weiland is clearly loving a chance to write this with as many period phrases as she can dig up, without making it awkward or alien to the modern reader.

Scott Carson’s The Chill is a, um, slow burn of a horror story. The kind that starts with simple things like a girl’s eccentric family and a sheriff’s troublemaker son, and has so many places to go. Like a murder that isn’t a murder, or a whole haunted dam and the lake behind it and more.

By developing so slowly, The Chill does the classic horror job of letting us appreciate the people caught up in this, each on their own terms. It’s the back and forth of that sheriff’s son not sure if he still cares about anything, and what he witnesses — or the contrast between his father and another police leader with her own past in the town. It’s generations-old grudges in a little town that has its history upstream from New York City, and how much the mechanics of the water system itself have shaped all that. It’s an involving, meticulous tale to get pulled into… especially for a rainy day.

The Battle of Medicine Rocks is the second of Rachel Aaron’s Crystal Calamity books—and because it’s Rachel, it delivers on that Wild(er) West battle, and all its cavalry charges, spirit-enhanced Sioux war drums, and slow-waking apocalyptic forces in the background. (Really, nobody out there is making a world-threatening spirit quite so human as Rachel Aaron does.)

And that’s after layer upon layer of buildup with Mary Good Crow, the orphan woman who’s just found maybe three families to belong to (one guess how many sides of the battle they’re on). Or gunslinger Rel Rainer, who ended the last book snared by a decidedly nasty moment to let her guard down. Meanwhile Josie Price is trying to hold the town together and even finds a way to restart her mining business while keeping everyone alive, if she can just watch her back…

Yeah, there are a few things going on here.

Michael J. Sullivan is always a pleasure to read. With Age of Swords, his Legends of the First Empire enters the book where… well, this is the first empire, or at least the first reluctant confederation of tribes, and this is the quest where they went beyond stone spears to get actual swords for their war with the Fhrey — or as one of the dwarves call them, the “elves,” meaning “nightmares.” And that means not only keeping the human tribes from killing each other before the Fhrey arrive, it means a bargain with the dwarves that involves a certain monster in their mines.

Familiar epic storylines, maybe. But that doesn’t do justice to how much fun Sullivan gives us, on pretty much every page. We have slow, reluctant growth with the hard-bitten warrior who’d never see himself as a leader (“You’re sending a Dureyan as your ambassador — because you want to avoid trouble?”) or just how brilliant little Roan is and how we all want to yell that at the poor girl until she finally believes it. And when that monster finally stomps up through the tunnels… Fun.

Starting the long-awaited The Golden Enclaves gave me a moment of “Mockingjay” worries. Like the Hunger Games books, the Scholomance series found an outstanding central concept in its killer wizard academy (hence A Deadly Education) and in the second book managed to repeat that structure while topping it (The Last Graduate) but also leading to the point that the story wouldn’t and couldn’t revisit that concept a third time. So could a Scholomance book without the Scholomance have anything to say?

I needn’t have worried — Naomi Novik knows better than that. Golden Enclaves really is the proper payoff for all the tension that’s been built up over two books, and some real understanding of what’s been going on all along. (And, no spoiler, part of it is going back to the Scholomance on different terms.)

Harry Connolly’s Twenty Palaces books really do root themselves in a hard-edged take on urban fantasy. In Circle of Enemies, our mage-hunting thug Ray Lilly has already taken on two books’ of horrific “predators” with the unreliable support of the Twenty Palaces Society… but this time it’s some of his old gang that are playing with magic. Including the conjurer who shattered his life once.

Ray’s an interesting hero to watch on some “ordinary” hunt, because in spite of him being a former street punk and convict he’s usually the first one in an infestation to stop and think about the lives in danger, while the Society would be quite proud of burning the building or the whole town down to stop a predator from getting loose. Seeing him trying to calm down his old friends, or his not-so-friends, or his boss who’s leading the extermination plan, is a whole new level of tension. (Also, where else do you get to see dimension-spanning killer parasites get named “drapes”?)

Over within the Shadowed Hills… I’ve been following Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books with One Salt Sea. By this point in the series, our Toby’s got responsibilities bigger than just her friends, and now that means trying to head off a war in Faerie. A war that might have an old enemy or two behind it, and several children as the first victims if she can’t find them in time.

The October books are all about Toby’s attitude, along with the strangeness of Faerie. (Yes you can make a phone call to the Sea Witch, but it involves a spell involving phone error messages and “warrior grasshoppers.”) At the same time, many of their pages are simply a mystery-plot under that: Toby began as her court’s detective, and she goes from one witness or victim or piece of evidence to the next until things come together. This book is more about that investigation process and less exotic than some of the series — even though some of that mystery ends up turning very personal for Toby.

I’ve been visiting urban fantasy’s YA side, or maybe “coming of age” really is a better term for Bridget E. Baker’s Displaced. Fantasy has had 17-year-old princesses of a superhuman race before, but not many have hooked me as fast as Chancery and her Evil Twin, and the rest of the tension they squeeze out of their ruthless royal court. This is a girl who, for all her gifts, is much too nice to survive in a viper’s nest like this unless she really works out how to make that kindness an advantage.

Then again, the tale does find its way to sending her to an ordinary (well, super-rich) human high school where she gets to be the best among the supposedly-best crowd. Chancery has her reasons and the issues she’s wrestling with while she’s there, but it does feel like the story trading in its sharpest features to a section of familiarity for its own sake. Not that that lasts, since there are six books after this.

Lilith Saintcrow, where have you been all my life?

There are so many authors to explore, it’s a true pleasure to pick up a book as energized as Night Shift. This is the first of the Jill Kismet series, so I’m carefully not looking ahead and have no idea how many twists it’ll take in the next dozen books. If anything, this first book seems a bit comfortable with its monster-hunter, her tragic past, and of course the “hellbreed” that gives her power for a price.

What that doesn’t capture is just how much joy it takes in pushing Jill to her limits, or describing the feel of a magical trap exploding or waking up exhausted to find the blessed but impossible smell of pancakes in the next room. And of course her friends on the police force, and several FBI agents that happen to be recruited from the Were tribes. All chasing the hellbreed — or is it a Were? — that’s cutting its particular swathe of death through her city, with a revelation or two waiting in the wings. There are only so many true revelations in this first book, but who’s counting when each moment is this explosive?

I’m always up for what Rachel Aaron writes. But On A Silver Thread had me, well, roped in from the first lines about a tragic little “monster” that becomes the latest scrabbling survivor in her Detroit Free Zone. Lola is a fairie changeling (yes, the DFZ has fairies now — dream-eating shapeshifters) struggling to hold her doomed body together and keep some semblance of a life among the fellow servants of the wizard who keeps her alive. Until that goes very wrong.

This may honestly be Rachel’s best book yet. As we’ve come to expect, it’s got inventive but thrilling traps to keep its heroes in, appealing characters, and a knack for introducing threats bigger than most writers would touch with such a well-grounded mythos. But this time… just watch for a few of the scenes that come up, from battles to love scenes. This is what you call good.

Queenslayer is the fifth of Sebastien de Castell’s Spellslinger books… and as the name says, outlaw magician Kellen isn’t tracking exotic magic or possible cures for his curse this time. He’s dealing with something much worse, assassins and conspirators and the nobles they might be targeting.

If anything, this installment feels a bit less solid than the previous books. De Castell has always been good at giving us interesting characters where we need them, but it’s still a stretch how quickly a child queen and various courtiers decide he’s their one ally or maybe a guaranteed threat. (Well, the latter’s less of a surprise, with Kellen’s talent for trouble.)

There’s actually a reason for that: it turns out it was originally the first Spellslinger book, and so it feels a little too willing to rush Kellen and the court around him through its different twists because his arc didn’t have the same weight at the time. But sudden or not, the twists still have the kind of heartfelt impact that a Spellslinger book should have, along with a few moments of his scheming sister and plenty more with his squabbling don’t-call-him-a-familiar Reichis.

There’s nothing quite like Patricia Briggs and her Mercy Thompson books — they have a way of making shapeshifters and monsters more thoughtful than most urban fantasy. River Marked is a case in point: it’s Mercy and her new husband (after an amusing twist or two for the pack at the wedding itself) on their honeymoon coming across a hungry river creature. Not that that was a coincidence, of course.

But it’s also Mercy away from the pack and all her other friends, leaving a lot of open space around her. Which gives the story a chance to explore more of her tribal roots, and even some about her lost shifter father. (Is he really dead? Which coyote or Coyote was he?) That makes for a lot of history and mysticism, all combined with a monster-hunt that’s got a few of its own quirks. Like mind control, and a fondness for taking hostages. Or a few other native legends.

If you’ve heard about Fonda Lee’s Jade City, it’s all true. A yakuza-flavored struggle for control of the streets and the future of an island nation, all wound around with martial-arts enhancing jade.

Actually, the book’s more City than Jade. Yes, this is a magic system perfect for recreating kung fu movies (its six disciplines include the “Lightness” to run up walls), and it could have been a high-flying action story, but that’s only a limited part of it, Even with a clan war threatening, this book is very much about the leaders and some of the people caught in the middle — the action strikes a good balance of being in service to the story, and usually short and decisive, but it’s always interesting.

Meanwhile we get a cautious gang lord trying to ease his famous grandfather out of power… his sister back from oversees… a street punk desperate to get his hands on his own jade… and a memorable look at a people trying to survive the larger world and each other. A favorite moment of mine is a newly-made leader staking everything on the ability to appeal to two reluctant lieutenants in just the right ways, and then use that to persuade key people across the city. Perceptive.

In Michael J Sullivan’s Legends of the First Empire, Age of War is the climax of, well, the war arc of the series. This is the invasion of the elves (“Fhrey”) crashing against all the alliances and weapons our bronze-age heroes have spent two books gathering, and it’s some of them meeting their destinies, one way or another.

Like the other First Empire books, Sullivan makes it more about individual characters and their arcs as the larger question of defending themselves as a whole. It’s village-chief Persephone facing personal choices about the cost of holding the alliance together. It’s Fhrey leaders learning their magic makes them a target, and even older beings trying to hold the world together. It’s little Brin getting another taste of her greatest fear, and abused Roan hating herself as she leads the smithy in arming the human world. And it’s Gifford, poor broken and always-smiling Gifford, going on what everyone calls a suicide mission until… Yeah.

I think I’ve called it “parapsychology as comfort reading” before: JL Bryan’s Ellie Jordan: Ghost Trapper books. The Keeper is the one I’m on now, and it’s another fun mix of different elements. On one hand there’s the latest case, a lighthouse with a ghost and a history in Ellie’s childhood (and a celebrity owner who’s obviously not a certain superhero actress). On the other hand is the careful search for the trail of the flame-throwing psycho-spirit that’s been stalking Ellie. And on the third hand (appropriately awkward) are Ellie and Stacey’s new bosses that have forbidden them to work on something as unprofitable as that floating fire hazard.

It’s always interesting to see how one series manages its books different from another. The Ellie books are practically stand-alones, each one about its own setting’s history and clients and potential creepiness. That puts our heroes literally racing back and forth between the current plotline and the ongoing ones, but it also finds a time or two to surprise us when one breaks into the other after all. And meanwhile it’s one of the more stubborn clients a ghost trapper could “want.”

August 18, 2023

Hunter’s Prayer is the second of Lilith Saintcrow’s Jill Kismet books. And it delivers, more and more of what Kismet adventures are meant to do: High-powered action, led by one monster that’s clearly out of Jill’s league in a fight. Her hunter’s attitude, and the pressure of an especially nasty scheme brewing in her town.

More than that, this book is almost a checklist of Jill’s own personal issues woven into the case. Her own years of life on the street are haunting her now, with some of the girls that are targeted. The priest she always respected might be on the wrong side of certain clues. Perry — the too-smooth hellspawn who traded Jill her powers in a long game of getting into her head — is pushing closer into her life, for reasons that may or may not be just a reflection of how much trouble she’s in. And there’s one other old wound of hers being ripped open, that makes it harder yet to stay in control when she has a city to save.

That’s a lot of buttons being pushed at once, for what’s already a high-powered adventure. This could have been the last book of the series (it’s not), the way it calls in all of Jill’s past markers as if there were no plans to write any more. Which is how she faces every day anyway.

Martha Wells must have a fondness for distinctive characters. I’m not even talking about the famous tales of a certain snarky security robot, but The Cloud Roads — set in a world of not-quite-human tribes, where a character once is advised to hide her tail, because its heavy tip is too distinctive. These are called the Books of the Rakshana, the Rakshana being a race of scaled, sometimes-winged shapeshifters, not to be confused with the ruthless Fell hordes.

The book starts with Moon, an orphan who’s been living in disguise among various groundling (human) settlements and never able to hold onto a place there. That changes — or doesn’t, really — when he’s caught up between Rakshana and Fell battles. The more he learns about what being a Rakshana means, the more complicated it becomes for him.

Ebony Gate is a pleasant surprise, with an unpleasant one attached. The unpleasant one is that it’s a brand-new start of a series (The Phoenix Hoard) so there’s no more of it I can get yet, and only a couple of other books each by authors Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle — we’ll have to see if either of them are as good on their own.

And this is definitely good. Not every urban fantasy starts out with just the aftermath of a night of monster-hunting (yeti blood all over Emiko’s armor, ick) and gets us so invested in our heroine’s semi-quiet life at the edge of the Clans she’s retired from… before even springing its annoyingly handsome intruder, let alone the actual mission.

I’m always a fan of more magic in my fantasy, and Robert Jackson Bennett has an intriguing bookfull of it in Foundryside. This is a world where the secrets of “scriving” the right symbols can provide anything from wall-piercing arrows to self-powered carriages to holding whole buildings together. Naturally that means the competing merchant houses that develop scriving formulas will control most of the so-called country, and they’ll move heaven and earth (or wish they could) to get their hands on any forgotten secrets from the past age. Cue Sancia, the slum-dwelling thief who has her own history with experimental scrivings, who’s hired to steal something dangerously promising…

This is a fast-paced tale, often keeping close to the capers and living-on-the-run that Sancia’s at home at. But with the right other characters joining up, it works its way into some of the larger mysteries of this world, from the differences between Commons life and the luxury of the Campos, to some nasty sides of the world’s history and how that might explode again.

Speaking of the spooky… if there’s one series I make a point of going back to read from, it’s the Dresden Files. Lately that’s been a book that’s often neglected: Ghost Story. This is the tale that — for various Harry Dresden reasons — has our wizard as, well, a ghost, floating around his Chicago and almost powerless to protect it from a whole new level of increased nastiness. For a guy who’s become famous for sending evil running with a fireball, it’s quite a learning experience.

It is for us too. Not only does Harry have whole new ghost-rules to learn to pull his weight, he has more time where he simply can’t do much except watch, regret what he’s left undone (or what he’s done), and wish he could so much as nudge a part of the real world — we start to understand why ghosts are famous for their groaning. But there are still innocents to rescue, and small and large evils to fight, both the ones he can’t touch and the ones that surely can touch him. A few extra moments of gloom don’t make the rest any less exciting.

Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage books are defining gunpowder fantasy, and The Autumn Republic settles in to complete the trilogy. This is a book where some of the previous twists are worked out and new ones are revealed. Field Marshal Tamas is back at the head of his army and facing his showdown with the invading Kez forces, while other characters find new roles to grow into or new reasons to fight. As for the other opposing army and its ties to their own home city, and the mystical forces behind the scenes…

In some ways, this book feels like it’s backing up from being a true finale. There are grand battles and deaths, but not as much sense of its arcs brought to a full conclusion. And there’s another trilogy after it, that it needs to plant some clues for, so that takes some of its focus too.

With A Golden Sword is the second of Rachel Aaron’s DFZ Changeling trilogy… and it’s very much a “bridging book,” and a short one at that. The first book introduced struggling fairy changeling Lola and the people pulling her strings, and led to a climactic battle that changed their technofantasy world. That leaves her here trying to rescue some of her friends as the promised even-more-epic battle closes in around them.

And that’s the story. There are good reasons this clash is still able to happen after the last one (and the promised final book has its own reasons), but right now the book seems to have settled into a common pattern. That is, the really surprising, fun business of getting to know the characters happened in the last book and there isn’t as much of that left to reveal, while the most decisive decisions and destinies are saved for the finale, apart from this book’s closing twist. That’s a problem for most books, but Rachel Aaron can make characters coasting and an “intermediate Armageddon” action more fun than many writers going all out.

Plus, she drops a piano on someone. A piano made of solid lead.

One thing that makes Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson books distinctive is how clearly they dig into the dynamics between their characters. What that means is that when Night Broken announces that Mercy’s husband’s troublemaking ex-wife has to take refuge with their werewolf pack, it doesn’t come off as the cheap shot too many books would want it for — you know it’s going to be a meticulous study in frustration, sympathy, and watching the fuse burn. In this series, a plotline like that could be the woman hiding from a perfectly mundane stalker, and savoring the fully ordinary nature of it all.

Spoiler alert: it ain’t.

Instead she just had to attract the attention of something a lot older and more dangerous, and even Mercy’s concrete-reinforced garage doesn’t emerge unscathed. Meanwhile there are past plotlines continuing with the local vampires and with the fae (that stubborn little walking stick is prying its way into the plot again), but of course what we’re really here for is to see Mercy and Adam and their pack face down the thing that’s after them.

I’ve never actually had a look at Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International books before. So when I found myself in a position to grab Legion, I dove right in — jumping blindly right into the fourth book seems like an MHI-appropriate way to get to know the series. As promised, I found one lovable association of gun-toting misfits trying to face down and figure out a threat that manipulates multiple beasties, government oversight, and pending interdimensional wars. Schemes, monster guts, and cameradie in the face of endless assaults, all check.

All centered around a Las Vegas hotel that’s hosting the first world Monster Hunting convention, starting with a group of pompous hunters itching for a bar fight. And that’s before the slow build of trying to network with their colleagues about the rising threat, or the first look at a monster that’s not nearly tough enough for whatever’s going on. This book has rapid-fire, heavy-caliber action, but that’s not all it’s got.

There are dragon stories, and there are dragon stories. Moniquill Blackgoose’s To Shape A Dragon’s Breath is a dragon-training academy tale that’s only a little about the dragons — it’s about the native girl who bonds with the first dragon her people have seen in generations. and the maze of “Anglish” customs she endures. Along with the questions of how her people are already trying to keep their place at the edge of that empire, and whether they should be punished for discovering a dragon egg at all,

It’s an unusual read, with an often understated style that does feel a bit like how Anequs would simply tell a long story that she knew was becoming history. That approachability makes it even easier to fall into, and so does the vocabulary (Anglish duels are “holmgangs” in the Norsman tradition, and “skiltakraft” studies the “aethers” that dragon breath can break matter down into and rearrange). And most of all it’s the story of those different peoples, and one girl who only wants to keep her dragon and stay herself.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Ilona Andrews, but I’ve never gotten around to Iron and Magic — since it’s a side book about a character I never quite cared about. Hugh d’Ambray made an okay but uninteresting lieutenant for Kate Daniels’s nemesis, but would he be worth a book of his own if he were cut loose? The answer is, not in his own right; the story’s solution is to say that once the ruthless warlord loses his master and picks something he needs to protect to survive, that mostly leaves him a brutally effective hero. With only occasional nods to the issues behind that.

Still, it’s Ilona Andrews. These books have always offered great fun in seeing their leads organize a town or plan tactics against an unknown magic. So we get to follow Hugh rebuilding his power base from a limited force (one word: “moat”), along with sparring with a certain witch he’s in a “marriage of convenience” with (again, “moat”). Although “convenience” is a word that sums up the story even better, but it’s all in service to the kind of building, bantering, and battle that makes all these books the success they are.

Coming back to Michael J. Sullivan’s First Empire books is always a pleasure — and with Age of Legends, the fourth book changes the pace a bit. Where the three previous books followed early humanity beginning to rebel against the Fhrey (aka elves) and some game- and character-transforming events that gave Stone Age heroes a chance in the war, this book has the war dragging on. It catches moments across several years to show how the time of easy victories is over, and something may have to change.

And it does. This is one time I won’t flirt with spoilers, so let’s just say it involves one character’s defining decision, and then the slow revelation of several pieces of magical world-building that have been left underused for a while. Including one jaw-dropping name drop (you’ll know it when you see it) that turns out to be not what we’d expect but more complicated yet. This is a book that takes its time to come together, but Sullivan never disappoints.

Every now and then I have to go back and reread something from the Dresden Files. The fact that I’m going through Cold Days in the depths of winter is… just a coincidence, right?

The Dresden books are (by this point) deep into a long, spoileriffic arc, so I won’t say exactly how deep Harry has gotten himself into Winter Fey schemes this time, but it’s a whole lot nastier than his usual hero work. What makes this book interesting is that Jim Butcher throws so much more into the scenarios than he might have, and he makes it all hold together. We’ve got our wizard’s dread obligation (and dread complications) from Winter, while he’s still picking up the pieces from how the last two books uprooted his whole life. And other fey piling on (from the Winter and Summer Court too) with their grudges against him. And a certain magical stronghold he knows revealing its apocalyptic potential, while old enemies reveal they’ve been developing apocalypses on two levels all along…

Yeah, there are things going on. And part of it is Harry getting a much bigger look at his world(s) than he ever thought existed. Fighting through it all the way.

When it comes to urban fantasy, you can always count on Lilith Saintcrow to add some extra kick to the tale — a steel-booted, magic-boosted spinning kick, that is. The third of the Jill Kismet books, Redemption Alley, finds its demon-hunter in what almost seems like a lull after recent adventures. Her boyfriend’s called out of town, the hellbreed she’s been matching wits might have backed off a little, and the biggest new case is a human cop asking her to look into his old partner’s death. How bad could that be?

As you can guess, they go bad. With no immediate ties to Jill herself, that leaves the story free to dig a little deeper into its police story in its own right — along with the infestation of the one monster type the books have hinted is the most dreaded of all. And of course that hellbreed had been hinting from the start that he wasn’t done with her, so it’s only a matter of time before they all collide.

I’m not always looking for fantasy in the epic form, and when I am it’s not usually the world-building that draws me in. But with W.F. Wiles’s The Last Blade Priest, nothing’s quite what you expect. That blade priest is a reluctant young member of an ancient faith that’s only recently renounced human sacrifice… the other protagonist is an architect in a conquered kingdom dragged into an unlikely mountain trek by an ambitious soldier. The religion of the Mountain is full of old secrets and growing feuds, even with the gods’ messengers growing discouraged by it. New nations are pushing at their boundaries, if only to stop the enemy who–

There’s a word I’d like to use here, that fantasy keeps finding different versions of. But I’ll leave you to come across that word yourself if you read the book, and see how it uses the concept — because it’s not the way most of the genre does, and it is horrifying. (Hint: there are mushrooms involved.) Meanwhile we have these two very unlikely non-heroes who find themselves in the center of the secrets of religion, empires, magic, and more.

One writer I always stop to look in on is Rachel Aaron, and she’s finished her DFZ Changeling trilogy with To The Bloody End. Like all her books it’s managing the trick of putting appealing, fun characters right in the middle of some world-shaking amounts of magic — and this time it’s our heroine’s own turn. Lola has come a ways from the frightened little fairy changeling of the first book, and this is her chance to connect with her magic, her friends, and her heritage on the way to finally bringing down her enemy.

Many series feel like they have more happening in the first book, with the later ones filling up with less layered but bigger or deeper changes. That’s been my sense with Lola’s story too: by now there’s less to introduce or surprise us with, more to settle in with and appreciate.

Jade War is the second of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone books and it’s all set to nudge its magical/ martial arts/ gang war forward. The street battles of the first book are supposedly under a cease-fire, but that only opens up space for both the Mountain Clan’s subtler attacks and for international threats. That means ruthless (and honorless) smugglers trying to steal jade, powerful empires leaning on the clans for help in their wars… and Anden (always the outsider among the protagonists) forced to start a new life in a foreign ghetto where jade powers are illegal.

And it delivers. Lee’s books are an immersive read that brings Kekon and its clans to life, with characters ranging from No Peak’s reluctant leader to his clever sister (and his wife that may be even smarter in her quiet way), to a couple of street scum we’ve known since the first scene, to Anden trying to rediscover who he is. Schemes, political and family struggles, and bursts of martial arts action all fit together here, sometimes slow but never dull.

Taran Matharu’s Summoner: Novice was an odd surprise for me. It’s a straightforward tale of a young hero’s journey to and through an academy of magic, complete with elves and dwarves (rumbling at rebellion against the human kingdom) and the frontier of huge orcs and their shamans and demons. But it stands out in several ways.

There are smarmy villains you can love to hate, starting right with the first chapter — it’s impressive how much those do to keep the story fun. And the world has its twists, with the layers of history that summoning magic has in both what we see of the orcs (still only the first book) and how it’s changed among the human noble lines, along with gunpowder weapons too. And of course there are the demons and the related magics that Fletcher and his friends and rivals tame. Mostly, though… this is fantasy that works because it knows who you’re siding with, and how the reasons for it may not be quite that simple but the result is always that clear.

It’s always a particular kind of fun to come back to Patricia Briggs and her Mercy Thompson books, and Fire Touched is full of that fun. On the one hand it’s fae forces threatening terrible things on Mercy and the werewolf pack she’s married into, starting with a troll tearing its way up a suspension bridge. On the other, it’s Mercy’s particular eye for seeing which of the pack needs a moment of comfort, a joke, a purpose, or a kick in the tail to keep them together, and we get to watch it all.

With the fae in play this time, that means chances to meet old favorites like Zee and Uncle Mike and… well, I shouldn’t tell you “witch” others turn up, along with new ones. It means new members of the Grey Council, and also the “fire touched” almost-a-boy on the run from them. Like most of the Mercy books, events unroll in their own time as the different fae sides make their claims on that boy, or side with Mercy and Adam on keeping him safe without unleashing much bigger problems than trolls.

Dragonsbane. What can I say about this moody, intricate, trope-twister of a tale? Yes there’s a knight summoned to slay a dragon, but John Aversin is a quirky, clever scholar-soldier who’s already killed one and knew from the start it could never be like the ballads. It’s his lover Jenny, a middle-aged hedge-witch decades before that was a trope, who’s the center of the story, the one who starts to unravel what’s really going on at court. The illness of the king… the brewing rebellion with both the Gnomes and one troublesome lord… the power behind the throne… how they all relate to the dragon’s arrival… and the choices Jenny has to make when she dares to face the dragon herself.

Barbara Hambly’s adventures are layered, beautifully crafted concepts that all come together perfectly when you reach the end. But Dragonsbane is unusual among her classic work, because it’s a stand-alone novel that does all of that in a few hundred pages. A story this good and this tight is always a privilege to read.

I never do give Jim Butcher enough credit, for when he’s writing outside the Dresden Files he’s so well known for. But now I’m on the second of his steampunk Cinder Spires books, The Olympian Affair, and having all kinds of fun. That “Olympian” means the setting for a trade and diplomatic gathering, where Captain Grimm and a few of his friends are representing their nation as war gathers, and that means diplomatic byplay and… well, mostly assassinations and duels, since we all know that’s what we’re here for. Some very important duels, that shouldn’t be happening and really shouldn’t go wrong.

Along with the rest of the plot threads. One enemy officer who gets a reluctant close look at his people’s dreaded secret weapon, plus has a tie to Grimm’s past. Other characters from the last book on their own mission (on the monster-filled surface world), including several of this world’s talking cats and their endless attitude. (We humans can’t be blamed for not being so perfect.) But are all those threads going to come together in a scheming, swashbuckling, energy-raining battle? I know what my money’s on.

Part of the fun of Fonda Lee’s Green Bone books is that the scale of the concept keeps changing. Where the second book expanded what had been a nationwide war of clans into a conflict with international implications, the concluding Jade Legacy draws it out over the years, and begins to follow new generations of warriors (and supposed noncombatants) as the original leaders fight on.

In this book, the nation of Kekon itself is under a fragile truce, or more of a stalemate as the two clans look for their own answers about the larger nations out to use them — and the unique power of their jade — for their own advantage. That means new choices about the old feud, struggles to change the place of jade in a world that’s never understood it, and taking down anarchists that might still be a true home-grown threat to the whole jade warrior way of life. It might even mean allying with the enemy… but who would have to die to make that possible, or to break a truce like that? And there’s still the largest, grandest scheme of all in play to take control of that changed world.

Since I had so much fun reading Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage series, it was only a matter of time before I got to the sequel series, Gods of Blood and Powder. (Already, yipes! Considering what he’s already done with “Gods” the last time…) And the first book, Sins of Empire, does take a nice start on repositioning itself after the original series — years have passed, and we see powder mage Vlora is now ‘Lady Flint,” general of the best mercenary army around (and sure enough the tireless Olem is second in command). That leaves other old favorites missing but not forgotten, while we get to know savvy secret police agent Michel and disgraced military legend “Mad” Ben Styke.

Instead of a grand war, this time it’s a potential uprising: a small empire out to catch a revolutionary leader before trouble starts, and Vlora’s Riflejacks hired to do it. But when the authorities are as ruthless as the Blackhats, with Michel on one side of that hunt and Styke on the other, expect trouble… even before the secrets start to come out. And there are definitely secrets.

Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals an interesting little tale. On the one hand it’s clearly a romance, with an appealingly mismatched non-couple facing off over a newspaper desk while getting to know each other’s real selves through magically-shared letters. On the other… there’s the big news story in the air, the nation-threatening war between two gods and their faithful volunteers (like Iris’s brother), and that doesn’t stay in the distance.

It makes for a good mix of perspectives. Iris and Roman have their own challenges and tend to keep the spotlight on them, as they grow separately and together. Though we do keep thinking the tale has settled completely into being their story, and bringing the war side of it (and the gods’ own backstory) back in when we’ve gotten comfortable without it. That makes some of the twists more abrupt than others — but war and romance ought to have their surprises.

So I finally got around to Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing… yup, now that’s a story. If you’re going to write about a dragonrider cadet (or does Violet end up bonded to a dragon? no spoilers), you can’t do better than to dig in to being the weakest, most breakable kid in a class where bloodthirsty competition is the standard, and her family history just puts a bigger target on her. There are enough friends and enemies and survival schemes to keep the book hopping before we even meet the dragons, plus ready hints about what they are and the larger war waging around them.

But mostly, this is Violet’s survival, step by step. One unfair, survival-of-the-fittest challenge at a time, and how she gets through them. The rest of the world-building and the romance (for a while anyway) stay to the side as she drags herself through an academy that’s more Hunger Games than Hogwarts, and leave us wondering what kind of bigger picture could be pushing them all this far.

Even for the Dresden Files, Skin Game is Jim Butcher at, well, the top of his game. I mean, after the world-threatening forces that were loose in the last book, Harry in a heist plot is a simple, grounded operation, isn’t it? Even if it is an operation where he’s forced to work under his most deadly enemy (because if Nicodemus didn’t seem like that before, he certainly locks down the position now) and it keeps dragging Harry’s friends into things they’re officially outclassed by.

And that’s before they actually head off for… oh hell.

This is a book that has a way of being subtly smarter than even Harry’s other adventures. With him thrown into one extended mission and set of, um, allies from the beginning, it can sit back and experiment with one devious trap/puzzle after another. After all, he’s surrounded by several savage enemies and a few friends, on top of all the heist’s complications, and it never takes much to set them off against each other. And after building and juggling and racing through all that, it and some of the other things that have been going on come together in one of the coolest moments in Dresden Files history. After all that, I may never stop picturing composer John Williams as looking into this book and thinking “An angel likes my work.”

(Bonus point: this is a book that had a video trailer even before the official one was made, and it’s dazzling. Search around and see which ones you like more — it’s just hard to do this book wrong.)

Silence Fallen might be called “Mercy Thompson’s European…” vacation? escape? It certainly has its escapes, which tend to happen when someone tries to kidnap our favorite not-quite-a-were-coyote. This is mostly Mercy on the run, surviving and hiding and making friends and enemies on the way.

Or half of it is. The other half is her Alpha husband getting his own viewpoint, forcing himself to play diplomat with the vampire that tried to take her and managing not to run right off in search of her. Not that vampire arrogance and werewolf tempers make that easy.

So it’s two different perspectives on some ancient and modern European cities, landmarks, and the supernatural power-brokering that’s been (mostly) keeping creatures from each others’ throats — and what’s upsetting that now. It’s also a bit short considering how much might be happening within it (some of the Mercy books are like that), but it always has its fun along the way.

The action and the adventuring life definitely come first here. Each of these characters and their friends are straightforward people, with goals that rarely go beyond glory or revenge unless they’re in a moment of rest. The fights come thick and fast, and so does the authentic education about life on a longship… while all the while they’re in a world where the gods killed each other centuries ago, leaving half-breeds and monsters to linger around the world to stir up trouble. There are kings and older forces at work in the background, that we mostly see when they cross the path of our warriors.

Mostly, it’s in-the-moment fun, being there in the shieldwall or around the campfire, knowing there are bigger things building but enjoying the moment.

Peter V. Brett’s Demon Cycle books have been a clever and exciting epic, so I had to find out what he’s up to with his sequel series. The Desert Prince takes the challenge of finding a place in a world that had (temporarily) freed itself from demons, and makes it about characters finding their place.

That would be Leesha’s child Olive, raised as a princess but also potentially either meeting or becoming that Desert Prince. And Arlen’s son Darin, also born with magic but not interested in being a hero — after all, there are only a few straggler demons left haunting the now well-warded world, aren’t there? Of course it’s not so simple, and we get to see both the “peaceful” Hollow towns and Brett’s desert boot camps as they’ve evolved a generation later.

Lock the doors, clear the decks, and batten down the hatches! –Alright, that’s a severely mixed metaphor since you don’t find a lot of sailing in Empire of the Damned, but Jay Kristoff’s work brings out that kind of reckless excitement. This is the second in his vampire series, and like the first it’s a blood-cocktail of dark fantasy action, gothic world-building, well-placed wit, and a way of giving small scenes and large plotlines twists so sudden they’re downright addictive. (There, that’s a properly vampiric way to put it.)

Where the first book (Empire of the Vampire) spent much of its time following hero Gabriel’s past years with his vampire-hunting Order, this one has more time watching the titular Damned themselves. That means some news about how the vampires’ wars have been involved with the human kingdoms and the church (back when there were more human kingdoms), but mostly it’s a close look at how monstrous these monsters are. It’s also got a different method for juggling its several narratives and playing them against each other, where the first was simply Gabriel jumping around his history.

Brian McClellan’s Gods of Blood and Powder continues with Wrath of Empire. And that means the Dynize are in full invasion, with both Vlora and Mad Ben Stykes leading their troops on separate, frantic marches to cut them off from the artifacts they’ve come for. It means running battles, broken by moments of intrigue or personal secrets.

Meanwhile, spy Michel is in deeper than ever. Betrayed by (or betraying) his own secret police force, he’s helping the Dynize occupiers hunt down his former comrades, as his best chance of getting hold of their secrets, and it gets harder and harder for him to know where he stands.

Of course, while second books like this are common places to line up battles and twists for their own sake, they’re also books where we start to see new things revealed. And we do learn a few things about the Dynize, and about characters we never understood that well even in the first trilogy, that all point their way to the next book.

V E Schwab is a writer who can keep me guessing — but this is my first time “digging up” one of her darker stories, her tale of supervillains: Vicious. Not that they wear capes or metal masks, since they’re really just people who stumbled over the secret of an EO (that’s “ExtraOrdinary”) ability. But when a story starts in a graveyard and hops back and forth to slowwly fill us in on what’s happened to bring such different people there, it’s a pleasure to see what’s unearthed.

The series is named “Villains,” for good reason. It centers around two potentially-mad scientists in college (that do give a couple of Fantastic Four vibes) and expands to include other a few people, either slowly rationalizing themselves into their feud or simply being victims and tired of it. Watching them scheme and drag themselves in deeper is its own kind of dark pleasure — none of these people were going to be heroes, even the ones who think they are, but all of them are compelling. Some literally.

Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle’s Phoenix Hoard series is back, with Blood Jade, and the excitement continues. This time our not-quite-outcast assassin Emiko has put down a few more roots in her San Francisco home, but that only sets her up for more clashes between her family, her friends, and everyone else out for advantage in the contest between magical clans.

And this time… the action does come closer to home. Emiko’s younger brother is about to compete in his school’s graduation battle (the one she never got a chance to prove herself in), and it not only makes him a target but brings a piece of Emiko’s past out of the shadows. And her new connections might even shake something loose about her own original problem, her blocked power — just don’t call her broken, although she might wish she was. Along with a name we’ve heard in the background of the last book: the General.

The Hoard books are a lot of things, starting with action and family drama, and endless world-building about the conflicts and the magic behind them. But one thing they always are is fun.