2022 on River's Fantasy Reviews

"Re: Apotheosis" ARC review

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 03:25:37 +0000

Re: Apotheosis is a fun popcorn read that delivers on its premise of bringing Japanese and western media characters to life and having them meet their creators, with varied reactions - leading to an intense “us vs them” battle. The beginning is a little slow, and the characters' reactions to finding out they’re fictional often feel a bit unrealistic, but once you get past the setup the pace picks up quite quickly and the novel is engaging with excellent action scenes and lovable (or love-to-hate-them) protagonists.

"Nightwatch Over Windscar" ARC review

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 17:29:10 +0000

Nightwatch Over Windscar continues The Weep series, with all of the strengths of the first (Nightwatch on the Hinterlands) and not a single bit of mid-series downturn. Iari and Gaer are back, and Gaer’s chapters continue to be my favorite (and we also get a bonus Char chapter partway through!) Eason sustains character voices masterfully, and as in Hinterlands it’s delightful to see Iari and Gaer adapt each other’s speech patterns.

"Light from Uncommon Stars" review

Fri, 06 May 2022 05:04:24 +0000

From video game and anime music to holographic displays to Asian food, Light From Uncommon Stars takes the reader on a journey that encompasses all of the senses, with picturesque descriptions that fully immerse you in Southern California. And both the characters and the story that accompany the setting do it complete justice. Katrina’s experiences in particular are intense, and I definitely cried for her at a couple points, both sad tears and happy tears.

"The Goblin Emperor" review

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 03:41:32 +0000

The Goblin Emperor is one of those few novels that makes me regret giving out five-star ratings to so many things that I’ve read, because it doesn’t let me adequately express how much I enjoyed this masterpiece. It came highly recommended by the /r/fantasy subreddit, and it did not disappoint in any way. Maia makes a wonderful protagonist, newly and quite unexpectedly made Emperor after a tragic airship disaster killed his father and three older brothers. He is quite unprepared for this turn of events, uneducated about courtly matters or how to rule a country, and needs to learn all of these things immediately.

"Saint Death's Daughter" review

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 03:40:35 +0000

Saint Death’s Daughter is an elaborate family drama centered around the Stoneses, a line of royal assassins and necromancers. The current necromancer Stones is Miscellaneous Stones, known as Lanie, who grows up isolated from the rest of her family (to keep her safe from their influence, as she’s allergic to death and violence, including mentions and intentions of it) and tormented by her older sister Nita.

"Vita Nostra" review

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 06:04:40 +0000

There’s a lot of symbolism and metaphor; some of it is literary, some of it philosophical, and some of it religious. The book starts out as a magical school plot, with some possibly-snarky societal critique of baroque application processes and studying requirements in modern universities. Then things start to get…extremely weird (they were already weird).

"The Broken Earth" review

Tue, 12 Apr 2022 06:04:33 +0000

N.K. Jemisin is known for being a master of worldbuilding, and her reputation is absolutely, definitely, no question deserved. The worldbuilding in The Broken Earth is incredible. But…I kind of hated everything else about the trilogy. The second-person narration was unbelievably annoying, the plot was uninteresting, and I don’t particularly like reading plots that involve coerced breeding, even if they make a lot of sense in a very well-explained world that does have excellent worldbuilding.

"Zeroth Law" review

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 06:04:20 +0000

With zero-indexed titles and a protagonist named Ada Liu (after Ada Lovelace) who’s a Coder, I was pretty excited for Zeroth Law - and Ada’s half of the novel was indeed as entertaining as expected. Sadly, I found her co-protagonist Isavel’s arc to be rather generic and boring, and decided not to continue with the series after book 1 because half the chapters made me want to stop reading.

"A Hunter Among Wolves" review

Sat, 02 Apr 2022 04:35:58 +0000

From its frenetic pacing to its video-game-NPC dialogue to its uncomfortably erotic torture scene, A Hunter Among Wolves has a lot of issues. This probably should have been a DNF, but the one thing it does have going for it is that it’s short enough to not be too big a time investment so I figured I may as well finish it so I could write a full review and see if it got any better (it did not).

"Meet Me in Another Life" review

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 04:35:51 +0000

To be honest, the more I think about Meet Me in Another Life, the more holes I see in it and less I’m satisfied with it. The ending does not make very much sense and I’ve become more and more bothered by it. However, much of it is very sweet, and I did enjoy most of it quite a bit while I was reading it.

"Mother of Learning" review

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 04:35:36 +0000

I binge read all of Mother of Learning in four days. It’s wonderful fun fluff progression fantasy. Don’t expect any kind of deep meaning or metaphor out of it, just go in and have fun in a time loop with Zorian as he learns from his classmates and builds a bunch of cool toys and tries to save Cyoria from invasion.

"The Sanctuary Duet" review

Sat, 26 Mar 2022 04:34:58 +0000

The Sanctuary Duet takes place at the same time as the Lighthouse Duet but should be read after Lighthouse. However, if you avoided the other duology because you didn’t want to read something quite so dark, but you still want to read something set in Navronne, it is possible to read Sanctuary Duet on its own; you just might be a bit more confused about the worldbuilding than you otherwise would be, because some things are explained less directly than they might otherwise be, assuming the reader already understands what’s going on from having read Lighthouse.

"The Lighthouse Duet" review

Sun, 20 Mar 2022 10:07:07 +0000

The Lighthouse Duet takes an entire book for the main plot to start, but once it gets there, it’s absolutely incredible. The protagonist is Valen, a “cartographer” with a tormented past who ends up at an abbey in training to be a monk. Most of the first book is almost slice-of-life at this abbey, before the real adventure begins. Once it does, though, you’re in for an incredible epic that you won’t want to put down.

"The Darkness Outside Us" review

Tue, 15 Mar 2022 09:46:51 +0000

The Darkness Outside Us from its cover looks like a young adult romance set in space. And indeed it is set in space, its protagonists are young adults, and it does have a fairly significant romance subplot. But do not think for a minute that this incredible novel is anything other than a science fiction thriller/mystery written for adults with all of the what-if? philosophical questioning requisite of any classic you can think of.

"The Actual Star" review

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 07:56:49 +0000

The book is a mixed bag; its format and bold worldbuilding choices make quite a statement, but at the same time, it falls short in a lot of areas. As is often the case with mixed-timeline, mixed-point-of-view plots, when you take a step back, you realize that almost nothing actually happened in the story; it’s relying on the whole being significantly greater than the sum of its parts. But in this case, the individual stories are so simplistic, and particularly the Maya past one, that I’m not sure the novel quite managed to achieve that greater whole.

"The Atlas Six" review

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 05:30:19 +0000

The Atlas Six follows six medeians who become candidates to join The Alexandrian Society, a secretive and extremely exclusive organization that invites only the best of the best to join its ranks. After a year of study, five of these six will become members of the Society. The novel focuses on their year of study and the competition that this exclusivity creates among the group as they fight not to be that sixth person, creating alliances and picking sides, taking advantage of the Society’s resources, and attempting to manipulate each other - while at the same time being brilliant medeians experimenting with and studying magic.

"Fid's Crusade" review

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 05:30:13 +0000

Fid’s Crusade is the story of genius supervillain Doctor Fid in his quest to, er, save the world. Because the superheroes make terrible role models. And also one of them caused the death of his baby brother, and he needs revenge. It’s at times funny, at times heartbreaking, and at times adorable. It begins as a criticism of celebrity worship culture, turns into a mystery, a found family, and a pretty traditional save-the-world story. Which is to say, it meanders quite a bit before we get to a clear, established goal.

"Legendborn" review

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 05:30:05 +0000

Legendborn tries to do a few too many things at the same time, and as a result is a bit messy and inconsistent when it could have been great. Bree Matthews is a gifted high-school student who gets accepted to an “Early College” program at UNC Chapel Hill along with her best friend Alice. She’s excited to attend, but everything changes when her mom dies in a car accident the day after she receives her acceptance. When she arrives at UNC, she’s dealing with her grief, being a Black girl in a mostly white campus - and a secret society of demon hunters called the Legendborn.

"Red Dust" review

Fri, 11 Mar 2022 05:29:56 +0000

Red Dust has a great premise that it ultimately fails to live up to. Set roughly fifty years after first contact, the novel follows positronic robot police officer (pozzie) Raymond Chandler (yes, named after that Raymond Chandler) in his attempt to hunt down escaped criminal Makrow 34. Chandler teams up with another convict, Vasily Fernández, chosen because he shares the same psychic (Psy) abilities as Makrow 34: the Gaussical ability to manipulate the probability of nearby events to occur.

"Disfigured" review

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 22:25:16 +0000

Disfigured is an engaging look at the topic of disability in fairy tales. Why do so many fairy tales deal with disability? Why do the happy endings insist that being able-bodied is a requirement for a happy ending? Through the lens of the social model of disability as well as that of an author seeing her life as a story, Amanda asks why characters in fairy tales must behave certain ways, and explains the damaging consequences stories can have on real people as they shape our real expectations.

"Fine Structure" review

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 22:25:02 +0000

Fine Structure is one of those books that you read once, then you either read again two or three more times, this time taking notes, or you immediately google “Fine Structure explanation” and read the results of other people doing the same. I’ll save you that googling part for the second option and link the FAQ (yes, the author has an FAQ page). It does, at least, make a lot more sense than Primer.

"The Economy of Blessings" series review

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 17:53:37 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book or series so filled with compassion for a protagonist as The Economy of Blessings. Charlotte Kersten’s Iraluri starts out in what’s clearly (to the reader, to any outside observer) an abusive marriage, but Iraluri doesn’t know it; not only does her husband keep her from realizing it, but also the oppressive classist and colonialist society that she lives in keeps her from realizing it. But Kersten is here to help Iraluri heal, and while the Economy of Blessings trilogy is one of the most emotionally raw series I’ve ever read, and full of painful scenes and has a bunch of content warnings, it’s also incredibly beautiful, and you can tell Iraluri’s journey is facilitated not just by her in-universe support system but also boundless love and care from the other side of the fourth wall.

"Meadowsweet" review

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 07:05:44 +0000

Meadowsweet is, on the surface, a charming slice-of-life novel about a young boy who goes to live with a distracted sculptor in a magical mountain where the sculptures come to life. The boy lacks a father figure, the sculptor lacks a family (though he has a well-meaning-if-a-bit-scary brother-in-law who visits for about half the novel), and the two of them adopt each other over the course of some exploration, picnics, and a scary thunderstorm while preparing for the winter.

"Daughter of the Empire" review

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 07:05:32 +0000

Daughter of the Empire begins with Mara, seventeen-year-old heir to the Acoma family, inheriting the title of “Ruling Lady” after her father and brother are tricked to their deaths by the rival Minwanabi house (boo, hiss, we hate them). Mara spends the rest of the book plotting both the survival of her own house and her revenge against the Minwanabi. From needra dung estimates to soldier recruitment to Mara’s own marriage for political gain, Daughter of the Empire considers problems of rule both small and big, and follows Mara’s triumphs and mistakes, but mostly triumphs.

"Empire Under a Dying Sun" review

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 21:13:40 +0000

Empire Under a Dying Sun is set in a Greek-inspired fantasy world experiencing a calamity straight out of science fiction (literally, if you’ve read for example Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary) - the sun is dying. With this backdrop, we have four POV characters: A young Empress struggling to find her confidence; her husband, who needs to learn to see the common people as real human beings; an old army general struggling with alcoholism; and his second-in-command, who needs to overcome her childhood trauma at the hands of the empire, and find something worth fighting for other than money. The novel explores these individual stories as well as the ethical dilemmas that arise from limited resources and the dying sun.

"Legends & Lattes" review

Tue, 22 Feb 2022 23:14:44 +0000

When the world is a bad place, sometimes what you want is a quiet, comforting, feel-good, slice-of-life novel that’s the literary equivalent of a kitten and a warm blanket and a fireplace and a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, depending which one you prefer. And that is precisely what Legends & Lattes is: a low-stakes novel about an orc barbarian-turned-barista where the magic is the friendships we make along the way.

"Ink" review

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:38:53 +0000

Ink follows four lives: a journalist, his source, his brother-in-law, and the daughter of a government worker, through a dystopian America in which immigrants have their status tattooed on their wrists and are treated as less than human by the majority of the population. At the start of the novel, the government is opening “inkatoriums,” centralized holding facilities for immigrants (“inks”), and the plot glides between following this development and following our characters as they go about their individual lives, through joy and heartbreak.

"Five Magic Spindles" review

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:38:46 +0000

Five Magic Spindles is a collection of five retellings of Sleeping Beauty. They range from fairly traditional (the second one, extremely skippable) to barely recognizable as a Sleeping Beauty retelling (the first one) to somewhere in between (the rest). Sleeping Beauty is a hard fairy tale to do a good retelling of, but perhaps that’s why (other than the one that’s a very faithful retelling) these retellings ended up so incredibly goddamn cool!

"Masquerade" series (1-3) review

Sat, 19 Feb 2022 08:38:30 +0000

This is the best series I’ve read since Green Bone Saga, and it’s not even close. If that’s enough of an endorsement (and it should be), just go read it without knowing anything else.

"Bluebird" review

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 18:54:37 +0000

Features of Bluebird include a librarian girlfriend; strong anti-military, anti-colonial messages; a great reluctant partnership complete with nicknames and banter; and a very Firefly, space-western vibe. It’s written in a stylized third-person present-tense that works about 95% of the time. The character relationships are excellent and believable, the banter is well-written, and the factions' mythology sets a great backdrop for the story.

"Cradle of Sea and Soil" review

Thu, 10 Feb 2022 01:51:20 +0000

Cradle of Sea and Soil is a coming-of-age story with a few twists set in a unique world that I wanted to love, but I only mostly liked. The story has two third-person POV characters: Colibrí and her son Narune, both “Halfborn” with island coyote ears and tail who are scorned by the island’s “Trueborn” humans. Despite their status, both of them are proud fighters and do battle against the Stillness, the deadly opposite of the Flows of Creation; and the halja, unnatural, hollow beasts that spawn from the Stillness. At the start of the novel, Narune is beginning to enter adulthood, and he wants to shake off the stereotypes that come with being Halfborn. Unfortunately, these stereotypes are rooted in tragic reality, and his dreams may be harder to achieve than he realizes.

"Battle of the Linguist Mages" review

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 05:54:31 +0000

Battle of the Linguist Mages has one of the most off-the-rails wild bonkers plots I’ve ever encountered in a fantasy novel, ever. First of all, it’s called Battle of the Linguist Mages, and it’s literally about mages who use linguistics to do battle. Features include an incredibly snarky protagonist named Isobel, who happens to be the best player in the world at the virtual reality game Sparkle Dungeon (secretly a method of training linguist mages), sentient alien punctuation marks that have formed symbiotic relationships in humans' brains, power morphemes, and more uses of the words “instantiate” and “ontological” than I expected to see in a fantasy novel, ever.

"CatNet" series review

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 05:45:06 +0000

What would happen if, in the not-to-distant-future, a benevolent AI who likes cat pictures were unleashed upon the Internet? And what would happen if it became the administrator of an online chat forum with a bunch of high school students looking for a community? Catfishing on CatNet tells the story of Steph, a lonely teenager who lives with her mom, the two of them constantly on the run from her dad and always moving from small midwestern town to small midwestern town. Steph’s one constant is her “Clowder,” an online community administrated by CheshireCat - who happens to be a benevolent AI who likes cat pictures.

"The Thirteenth Hour" review

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 05:44:57 +0000

A dark gaslamp fantasy with a unique world and twelve original races, each with its own god, The Thirteenth Hour is worth reading just for its premise and setting. But its characters and plot more than do it justice too, as it follows co-protagonists Kayl and Quen through a reluctant partnership to solve a case that begins as a simple murder mystery and turns into something much, much bigger.

"Wizard's Bane" review

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 05:44:49 +0000

A truly great concept (let’s bring a computer programmer into a fantasy world that currently has no governing principles) executed in an extremely mediocre fashion and with cringe-inducing levels of sexism. Roughly the first 50% of the novel is a boring journey through a forest which the two protagonists resentfully undertake after a plot device dumps them together and from which they’re saved by a deus ex machina. The next 10% is a boring story-within-a-story that introduces new characters that we don’t really care about in the slightest; and finally, the final 40% covers the plot we actually care about, but at this point there’s no time left to spend on the concept we actually wanted. Really, I was hoping for something that had more in common with a compilers textbook.

"The Changeling Sea" review

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 04:52:46 +0000

I didn’t love The Changeling Sea as much as I was hoping. It’s a sweet slice-of-life, fairytale, romance story set by the sea. Peri’s mother is swallowed by depression after her father dies, and so Peri goes to live with an old woman instead. When the old woman disappears, she lives alone. She decides to hex the sea because it has taken too many people from her, and she hates it, and the novel is about her learning to find connection to people around her again when strange events start to take place. I’m not sure if I would have liked it more if I’d read it when I was in a different mood, or if I was just never going to love it, but it just didn’t quite give me the feelings I knew it was trying to.

"Piranesi" review

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 04:52:56 +0000

Piranesi is just a wonderful piece of literary fiction that I cannot recommend enough. Wait to read it until you’re in the mood for a patient read; it’s short, but it’s not fast. If you’re not enjoying it within the first few pages, put it down and pick it up again later. I’d encourage you to pick it up without reading anything else about it; the less you know going in, I think, the more you’ll enjoy it. If you’re convinced, then stop reading now.

"Scales and Sensibility" review

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 23:51:07 +0000

Scales and Sensibility is a fun, cute, what-could-possibly-go-wrong case of mistaken identities. The plot revolves entirely around the fortunes of a couple families in 1800s England-but-with-dragons and takes place over the span of about a week, so it’s a very low-stakes, lighthearted comedy. Our heroic and sensible protagonist is one Elinor Tregarth, split off from her sisters and living with the insufferable Penelope after her family’s ruination by an investment scam and the subsequent death of her parents.

"The Queens of Renthia" series review

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 04:52:51 +0000

Okay this fantasy setting is just, the coolest. Any plot set in this world would be worth reading just because the world is so damn cool. And admittedly, the plot in the first novel isn’t the greatest, but it does subvert a bunch of expectations, and the plots of books 2 and 3 are much more interesting. And the world is SO COOL.

"Iron Widow" review & plot summary

Sun, 23 Jan 2022 09:39:18 +0000

Iron Widow is not a subtle story. Wu Zetian seeks revenge for her sister’s death at the hands of war hero Yang Guang, a Chrysalis pilot who regularly kills female concubine copilots during battle. Only her sister wasn’t killed during battle; instead, he killed her for some unknown reason outside of combat, and her family wasn’t given any monetary compensation as a result. Her family isn’t upset about the death, they’re just upset about the lack of money. Wu Zetian’s upset about the treatment of women in society.

"Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower" review

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 09:40:07 +0000

Fairy tale meets dungeon crawl meets queer romance in this bizarrely adorable novella by Tamsyn Muir. The witch wants to make art, and so she locks Princess Floralinda up at the top of a tower with forty flights. She does it all quite properly, with one challenge per flight, and any prince that wants to rescue Floralinda must face all forty challenges. Unfortunately, even the first challenge is too difficult for every prince who attempts it, and Floralinda remains unrescued. Upon discovering a quite concerning diary, Floralinda decides to take matters into her own hands and attempt to escape the tower. This task would seem insurmountable for a princess, but the fairy Cobweb shows up in a storm, and together they take on the tower’s obstacles.

"The Faithful and the Fallen" series review

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 08:41:57 +0000

After a dreadfully boring first 250 pages of Malice, The Faithful and the Fallen turns into an amazingly action-packed, emotional, and tense epic fantasy saga that I couldn’t put down. It’s an incredible turnaround, and most definitely worth the wait; however, if you don’t want to suffer through that 250-page beginning, at the end of my review I’m including a summary of events that I wrote as things were starting to pick up so that you can skip straight to the part where it gets amazing.

"And Then There Were (N-One)" review

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 04:29:27 +0000

And Then There Were (N-One) is a delightful, almost warm and fuzzy murder mystery novella. It was originally described to me as “cozy,” which is also a great adjective for it. Sarah Pinsker investigates the death of Sarah Pinsker. The suspects? All different versions of Sarah Pinsker from alternate realities, attendees of SarahCon. While investigating, Sarah is confronted by her “Divergence Points” and forced to question her life’s every decision, relationship, and mistake. But I promise, it’s all done in a delightful, warm, fuzzy, and cozy way! It was a joy to read, and I highly recommend it.

"The Last Uncharted Sky" review

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 06:36:48 +0000

I don’t think it was possible for this series to fully live up to the standard set by book 1, and it didn’t, but by no means does that make the next two books unentertaining or low quality. Book 3 falls off a bit more even more than book 2 did, but it’s still a very fun, fast-paced adventure story set in an vivid steampunk world with a deep lore and cool magic system.

"A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery" review

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 04:15:15 +0000

In short, A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery is a very satisfying continuation of the trilogy, much more so than I was expecting or hoping for, after such an excellent and well-self-contained book 1. It’s definitely worth continuing the trilogy for more of what An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors had to offer!

"Stariel Series" review

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 22:36:28 +0000

“The Lord of Stariel is dead. Long live the Lord of Stariel. Whoever that is,” proclaims the blurb, and The Lord of Stariel begins with a prologue literally titled “An Ominous Prologue.” What follows is a delightful quartet that is not at all as un-serious as one might expect from such a first impression, but still retains a relatively light-hearted atmosphere with an intimate scope. There’s magic, minor battle scenes, and other standard fantasy fare, but the focus is primarily on Hetta dealing with her family, potential lovers, and increasingly complex politics.