Synopsis:
Master thief and con artist Locke Lamora is back with his steadfast sidekick Jean Tannen, both set to pull off the scheme of a lifetime when they are coerced into becoming–pirates?
Review:
Red Seas Under Red Skies is the follow up to Scott Lynch’s debut The Lies of Locke Lamora, a smash hit which placed a Sopranos-esque [...]
Popularity: 36% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
The conclusion of the epic battle against the darkness.
Review:
I’m sorry to announce to everyone who has been excited I’m reading Kay that I found The Darkest Road to be a slog… around page 275 I realized that I had nothing invested emotionally in any of the characters or their journeys. I just never really [...]
Popularity: 43% [?]
Tags: Canadian Literature
Synopsis:
Book 2 of the Fionavar Tapestry finds five Canadian students returning to an alternate universe where they continue to fight an epic battle against a demonic demigod and step further into their unique destinies.
Review:
As with any good second book in a trilogy, The Wandering Fire deepens the Fionavar mythology and heightens the stakes for all [...]
Popularity: 46% [?]
Tags: Canadian Literature
Synopsis:
Five Toronto college students are pulled into an alternate world where they discover their true destinies at the outset of a war that could affect all worlds, including their own.
Review:
Yep, another hard-to-synopsize epic fantasy book. The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay employs one of the standard fantasy templates–ordinary people drawn into an extraordinary [...]
Popularity: 53% [?]
Tags: Canadian Literature
Synopsis:
To fulfill an ancient prophecy, dark magic is woven around a baby girl so that she will appear to be a boy, but the cost is the life and soul of her twin brother whose ghost now violently haunts the castle.
Review:
For some reason I thought The Bone Doll’s Twin was a one-off, so towards the [...]
Popularity: 39% [?]
Tags: American Literature
Synopsis:
A legendary folk hero tells the first part of his life story, encompassing his early years as a vagabond and his time spent at University studying alchemy and magic.
Review:
It’s not for nothing that The Name of the Wind has been touted as a great fantasy debut. It absolutely is. I am leery of [...]
Popularity: 48% [?]
Tags: American Literature
UPDATED–Due to a Wordpress error, this post auto-published today instead of Friday like it was supposed to. The contest will remain open until Thursday at midnight, and the winner will be announced Friday morning. Meanwhile, enjoy the interview!
I was mighty impressed by Jeffrey Overstreet’s debut novel, Auralia’s Colors, and am so pleased that [...]
Popularity: 21% [?]
Tags: On Reading
Synopsis:
In a world where color has been banished, a young woman defies the king with a cloak woven from all the hues of nature, throwing the fabric of society into chaos and turmoil.
Review:
I became a fan of Jeffrey Overstreet after reading his book on film, Through a Screen Darkly, and subsequently become a reader of [...]
Popularity: 41% [?]
Tags: American Literature
I tried really, really hard to finish this book but halfway through it got deemed “life’s too short.” Winterbirth is epic fantasy of the George RR Martin variety–lots of loyalty oaths, warring kinsmen, and creeping winter. But the emphasis is on war, not on character adventure, and I find it hard to get [...]
Popularity: 37% [?]
Tags: Scottish Literature
Synopsis:
The orphaned daughter of Henry VII’s widow Katherine Parr finds herself at court, ostensibly as a lady-in-waiting but in reality to serve Queen Elizabeth as a white magician.
Review:
The Red Queen’s Daughter is one of the last of the galleys I picked up at Book Expo this year. I don’t read a lot of historical [...]
Popularity: 29% [?]
Tags: American Literature
