Alice in Wonderland retellings seem to be everywhere these days, and they’re all over the map in terms of style and plot. This latest from Wicked author Gregory Maguire is something quite different from other Alice books I’ve read, and I quite enjoyed it. Would I recommend it to my readers, though? That’s the question. If you’ve read Maguire before—and seeing Wicked on Broadway doesn’t count!—then you will appreciate the author’s distinct writing style. I personally love his writing, although at times it’s a bit too much, as he tends to use words I’ve never heard of before. But in this case—a story set in Victorian England with all its social rules and society’s fear of a changing world—his style is perfectly suited to the tale. If you’re looking for a whimsical, lighthearted Wonderland story, however, you’ll need to look elsewhere. After Alice is a more contemplative examination of family and society in 1860s Oxford, with somber undertones. The story is made up of very short chapters that alternate between two groups of characters. First we have a ten-year old girl named Ada, Alice’s best friend, who has been sent to deliver a jar of marmalade to Alice’s family. She is…

Larry Correia is an author best known for his guns-and-monsters, no-holds barred, testosterone-soaked urban fantasy sagas, Monster Hunter International and the Grimnoir Chronicles. For those who were curious as to how he’d make the transition from guns to swords, Son of the Black Sword is pretty much everything you’d expect, with his macho sense of almost superhuman bravado slipping well into a pulpy heroic fantasy world. It’s not great literature, and lacks a certain polish in the narrative, but it’s an engaging bit of fantasy fiction. The world building and mythology encompass a very South Asian flavored world, which is a nice change of pace from mostly European fantasy, but there’s an important twist – instead of the seas providing prosperity and purpose, they are something to be feared, dotting the coasts and the beaches with the cobbled together hovels of the lowest of non-people. You see, due to an age old supernatural pact, man commands the land, demons command the seas . . . and the Law states that any who trespass must die. Lok is a bland, bureaucratic world, full of rigid caste systems, where faith and superstition are forbidden. It’s so deliberately constructed that if you don’t see the threat of rebellion coming in the first few chapters, and don’t anticipate the rise of a…

Last year, I became a big fan of Cassandra Rose Clarke after reading her adult novel debut The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, an emotional tale about love, loss and androids that shattered my heart to pieces and left me pining for more. So ever since I learned about her new book Our Lady of the Ice, I have been counting the days. Its premise sounded captivating too, a mystery drama unfolding inside a city encapsulated by a glass dome, the only protection against the frigid darkness of an Antarctic winter raging outside. The novel also features an intriguing cast. Eliana Gomez is a female PI, taking on as many jobs as she can in the hopes of scraping together enough money to get out of Hope City and head for the mainland. Her boyfriend Diego Amitrano is the adopted son of and right-hand man of Ignacio Cabrera, the city’s most notorious crime boss. Lady Marianella Luna is an Argentinian aristocrat and the celebrity face of an independence movement to build agricultural domes, a project which would help free Antarctica from the control of the mainland. Last but not least is Sofia, an android fighting for a different kind of freedom, envisioning Antarctica as…

Wake of Vultures is a western fantasy doused with folklore, and complete with vampires, werewolves and shape-shifters. Just don’t go into this expecting the sparkling variety of vampires or the happy, hunky type of werewolves. This is a darker book that left me mesmerized by the world and characters. Nettie has an incredibly hard life. She is the only non-white person around and was raised by a couple who told her that when no one else would have her, they showed her mercy by taking her in as a baby. But they show her no love, give her no support, and they certainly never took any steps to try and educate her. She may call them Pap and Mam as if they were her parents, but they treat her as a servant, without the pay. It really is a loveless and thankless life she has been living. But, she has found a passion, a love in her life. And that’s the animals. Nettie loves the horses that she is told to break. She uses patience and understanding to get the animal to submit to her will rather than force. This is the one part of her life that really makes…

An Apprentice to Elves is a rather beautifully written story that takes us to the land of the North, Iskryne.  This is a harsh place to survive, its people have withstood many attacks not least of all from the  Trells (trolls that seem to be able to move stone to their will) and have also learnt to stay alive during the fierce winters. Their metal is about to be tested greatly by the arrival of the Rheans.  It’s difficult to withstand an enemy that has seemingly endless resources and is both ruthless and determined.  This is book No.3 of the Iskryne Trilogy.  I haven’t read the first two books but feel that this reads well as a standalone and, whilst based on my experience with this I would quite like to go back and explore the previous novels, I don’t think it’s necessary to do so before picking up An Apprentice to Elves.  I would also mention that not having read the previous books I may unwittingly include spoilers so please be aware of that possibility before reading my review. At the start of the story we are introduced to Alfgyfa who has, in an attempt to establish better relations between men…

Amazing, if you think about it, how quickly the new and strange can be adjusted to. Ancillary Justice came out and took the genre by storm; I personally called it a glorious mindfuck for the way it played around with language and perception. This was a book that was lauded for many things: a great story, a unique take on immortality, and the ancillaries of a single mind in constant communication. Yet the conversation quickly narrowed in on one aspect of Leckie’s writing; the universal use of feminine pronouns. It was something of a shame too. Because while the game of trying to guess which characters were male and which were female before realizing how little it actually matters was a great experience it wasn’t the entirety of the book. But detractors quickly classified the book as a gimmick, fans often found themselves on their heels defending this specific aspect of the book, and amusingly certain groups with political agendas decided the book was everything wrong with speculative fiction when they fixated on ‘the gender thing.’ Ultimately the series got what it deserved; winning awards all over the place. And now here we sit with the trilogies conclusion. All of…

I was lucky enough to land one of the nifty hardcover ARCs of Illuminae, and that made all the difference in my reading experience. This is definitely a book you’ll want to read in physical form, although I’d love to hear from someone who’s read the digital version, and whether or not it works in that format. As many other reviewers have noted, half the fun of this book is the way it’s presented, a smorgasbord of epistolary goodness in the form of email exchanges, illustrations, video surveillance footage summaries and much, much more. The entire book is framed as a file compiled by the mysterious Illuminae Group, which provides proof of the horrific events that began with an attack on the small ice planet Kerenza and ended with the destruction of thousands of people. Little by little, the reader begins to piece together the characters involved and the events that took place on a fleet of ships comprised of the battlecarrier Alexander, the science vessel Hypatia, and the freighter Copernicus. Kady Grant and Ezra Mason are high schoolers living on Kerenza when the planet is attacked by a corporation called BeiTech, and in the confusion of the attack, they…

The Last Witness by K. J. Parker is dark and deceitful, yet addictive novella. These two aspects are spun together for a truly fascinating story and one hell of a protagonist that you might not like, but you can’t help but want to know more about. It’s a book that doesn’t shy away from the darker side of humanity, it actually relishes in it. I’ve only read one other book by Parker, but I feel this story was every bit as intriguing as The Folding Knife and has reinforced my need to read more by the author. The narrator has the unique ability to enter someone’s mind and remove their memories.  This can be to relieve a person of unbearable memories, or perhaps to clear a witness of potentially damaging knowledge. The catch here though, is that these memories then become his own. Since it is usually not happy, loving memories that people have removed, he is left with countless disturbing, graphic memories that can be haunting. And while the narrator never forgets a detail, he can sometimes lose track of which memories are his own versus which are memories he has taken from others. This provides an interesting perspective for the…

Julia Knight is also Francis Knight, an author whose name has been on my radar since her Rojan Dizon trilogy, though this is the first time I’ve read her work. As soon as I found out about Swords and Scoundrels I knew it was going to be just right for me. As it happens, I’m a super mega fan of anything to do with swashbuckling duelists, and I could always use more scoundrels in my life. That and the cover is stunning too, not to mention the tagline made me chuckle. Plus, a brother-sister team? Count me in. Older sister Kacha has devoted a lifetime to the training and mastery of sword fighting while growing up in the Duelist’s Guild, but she’s not content with being just good – she wants to be the best. Problem is, so does Vocho, whose whole life spent in his big sister’s shadow grates on him something fierce. Neither skill nor reputation would come to much use though, when both of them get thrown out of the guild for an infraction, and the siblings are forced to turn to banditry in order to make a living. One day, a routine stick-up of a carriage…

Last year’s Owl and the Japanese Circus was a solid 3-star read for me, an entertaining urban fantasy that managed to reignite my excitement for a genre that I felt had become tiresome and repetitive. Granted, the whole “Indiana Jane” aspect was a big part of that – I’m a sucker for any sort of archaeological, tomb-raiding adventure – but Kristi Charish really impressed me. I went into Owl and the City of Angels hoping for more of the same, but not really knowing where she’d take the story next. The simple answer to that? To a whole other level. This is one of those sophomore efforts that manages to top the book before it in every way. It’s a bigger, bolder story, and one that really does an exceptional job of building upon all the elements of the first. Owl is, as everybody around her likes to remind us, an absolute train wreck. She’s neither the smartest nor wisest of young women, her choices are often suspect, and her selective morality is . . . well, just about perfect for a professional antiquities thief. Owl is defined by her contrasts and her contradictions, and what makes her exasperating for some readers is what makes her fascinating for others. Personally, I…