Um, have you ever read a book and throughout felt like the luckiest person ever? That was me with The Once and Future Witches. I loved every page and I think getting to read this super early might be one of the highlights of my blogging days so far. It is the queer, witchy, feminist historical book of my dreams. I will buy and read everything Alix E. Harrow writes & I am incredibly grateful to Orbit and Netgalley for sending me an eARC of this wonderful book.

RELEASE DATE: 13/10/20

STAR RATING: 5/5 ✶ (or, like ALL THE STARS)

SUMMARY: In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters – James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna – join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote – and perhaps not even to live – the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be. (from Orbit Books)

OPINIONS: This is a grandiose book. Wonderfully written, full of issues that matter without ever being preachy, great, complex characters and a story that packs a punch. Alix E. Harrow managed to snag a Hugo nomination for her debut The Ten Thousand Doors of January, which came out last year, and already won one for her short story “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” (which you can read here) last year. So it comes as no surprise that her sophomore novel manages to immerse the reader in the world of the Eastwood sisters and their quest to return witching to the modern era.

All three of the sisters are unique and captivating characters that the reader will fall for. They all have their strengths and, importantly, their weaknesses and flaws, none of them anywhere near infallible. But more than anything, they are interesting. To me, that is more important than any other quality. I wanted to know more about what makes these women tick and spur them into action. James Juniper, riotous rebellion leader. Agnes Amarath, fierce mother and protector. Beatrice Belladonna, sapphic librarian and guardian of knowledge. Each of them made me fall for her in turn. The secondary cast is no less enchanting. And the villain of the story, Gideon Hill, is so damn creepy because he is so believable. He is the kind of man every woman, even now, has encountered in her life, who has made life difficult for those who don’t just accept him as their superior leader. But then you find out that there might be more to him than meets the eye…

The story of The Once and Future Witches focuses on the return of magic to the world in a period historically associated with the quest for suffrage. It shows women banding together in secret to overcome obstacles and create a world more open and tolerant. It is ultimately a story of hope in the face of adversity, something which is crucial at this particular moment in time. And it is so well written. It is full of stories within a story, crafting together a world of magic evolving over the centuries, culminating in a coherent and complex system that makes sense. There are rules, there are traditions, and there is a history to it all. It is wonderful.

As you can see, The Once and Future Witches is an absolute treat, and is one of my new favourite books of all time. I will probably be getting myself all kinds of special editions as soon as they are announced, but until then, you can add it on Goodreads here, and pre-order it from Waterstones here and Book Depository here.

Long time no read! I’ve been occupied with a migraine for the past week, so I haven’t managed to write up any reviews, but I do have some fun things planned for the days to come! I’m hoping that I can catch up over the course of the next few days given that I will be home rather than going to New York for BookCon (SOB – good for my wallet and bookshelf but I’m upset about missing out on the trip, NYC and all the BOOKS). But I’ve still been reading a lot during lockdown, much of it medieval-inspired – can you tell that I’ve started on my dissertation? One of those books was The Ghosts of Sherwood by Carrie Vaughn.

Thank you so much to Tor.com and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC of this novella in exchange for an honest review!

RELEASE DATE: 09/06/20

STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶

SUMMARY: Everything about Father is stories.

Robin of Locksley and his one true love, Marian, are married. It has been close on two decades since they beat the Sheriff of Nottingham with the help of a diverse band of talented friends. King John is now on the throne, and Robin has sworn fealty in order to further protect not just his family, but those of the lords and barons who look up to him – and, by extension, the villagers they protect.

There is a truce. An uneasy one, to be sure, but a truce, nonetheless.

But when the Locksley children are stolen away by persons unknown, Robin and Marian are going to need the help of everyone they’ve ever known, perhaps even the ghosts that are said to reside deep within Sherwood.

And the Locksley children, despite appearances to the contrary, are not without tricks of their own… (from Macmillan)

OPINIONS: The Ghosts of Sherwood is a really short novella. Even for Tor.com standards, it is a slim volume – their website says that the print version is just 128 pages. So it’s a very quick read, and I’m happy to say that it’s sequel will already be released in August, which means that there shouldn’t be too much of a wait in between volumes.

This version of the Robin Hood legend takes the story as we know it for granted, and uses it as a building block to put its own twist on the legend. Robin has grown up and become respectable, and built a family with Marian, as well as sworn fealty to King John. Many of the Merry Men known from the various stories are mentioned, though not quite all of them have turned respectable with Robin, leading to the mysterious Ghost of Sherwood Forest… It is interesting how this novella deals with the legendary nature of its characters within the text itself. While the Locksley family is very much aware of the stories and tales, it seems that Robin is trying his best to distance himself from who he used to be and re-brand himself a respectable man, someone to be taken seriously within Anglo-Norman society.

The Locksley children are adorable, and I enjoyed reading about them, and their different personalities. Mary, John and Eleanor are all interesting in their own way, and I’m not sure I could pick a favourite between feisty Mary and clever, underestimated Eleanor. However, the plot is a bit too deus-ex-machina at times, which is likely due to the extremely short format of the novella. A few thousand extra words of space would have allowed the story to develop more organically and helped add another layer to The Ghosts of Sherwood.

All in all, I really enjoyed my brief visit to medieval Nottingham in The Ghosts of Sherwood a lot, and I do recommend you pick up this novella if you feel like time travelling too! Add it on Goodreads here, and pre-order it from Blackwell’s or your local indie of choice.

Fierce, blade-wielding women? Deals with the devil? Opulent French-set novels? Now if only this was set in the Middle Ages instead of the seventeenth century it would tick all of my boxes!

The Devil’s Blade was on my most anticipated list for April and I actually read this just as it was released – and somehow forgot to review it! One of those books that I was convinced I had already written about until I checked my list, so off to the review machine I go. Many thanks to Will O’Mullane from Gollancz for sending me a review copy!

RELEASE DATE: 02/04/20

STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶

SUMMARY: A group of men tried to sacrifice Julie in a ritual. However, things did not go as planned, and instead, young Julie ended up making a deal with the devil in order to take her revenge.

Today, she is famous as Julie d’Aubigny, opera singer, duelist, raging bisexual and woman who flaunted all convention of her time. But in this story, all she wants is to kill the men who tried to kill her, and fulfill the terms of her own deal with the devil.

OPINIONS: The devil is a woman! Or at least she presents herself as such in The Devil’s Blade which is a deliciously refreshing turn of events and one of my favourite twists. Cunning, deceptive and entirely devoid of emotion, Alder’s devil is not the dark and twisted creature of popular imagination, but an elegant and nuanced antagonist, fighting her battles with intelligence. I loved every bit of her scences.

The book is full of similarly surprising characters. Standing out, apart from Julie, are Monsieur, the King of France’s brother (Philippe, the Duke of Orléans), who prefers to dress as a woman, and Charlotte-Marie, Julie’s aristocratic lover, whom she meets while trying to enact her revenge on one of the men who tried to kill her. While the book is excellently researched in terms of historical detail, it is never overloaded with it, and uses that background as a playground for the breaking of gender-based stereotypes – there is a wonderful scene where Julie is in danger of being executed due to having broken dueling law. However, as the law states that men are prohibited from dueling, she ends up being set free on the technicality that she is, indeed, a woman wearing men’s clothes. While that is of course not historically accurate, it makes for great storytelling, which I believe is the most crucial quality of a novel. [EDIT: The author has just informed me that historical Julie has indeed been let off dueling charges for being a woman, so there goes history surprising me!]

The Devil’s Blade is smart, seductive and a treat of a novel. I wish these kinds of stories centering little-known historical women and giving them grand narratives were more common! Another aspect of the novel I thoroughly enjoyed was its framing in the format of a play in acts and scenes, with scene descriptions. This worked exceedingly well, especially given Julie’s operatic aspirations, and added an extra layer to the story. For those familiar with the classical three-act structure it adds expectations and anticipation about the coming scenes, which for me personally made the reading all the more delicious.

However, I need to end my review on bad news: while The Devil’s Blade very much reads like the first book in a series and ends on an epilogue that to me reads as “TO BE CONTINUED…”, Mark Alder has stated that, as of now, there are no plans for sequels. This leaves the story somewhat unfinished, and I do hope that there will eventually be a continuation.

If you are intrigued, add The Devil’s Blade on Goodreads, or order yourself a copy from Hive!

Years ago, I devoured Robert Muchamore’s C.H.E.R.U.B. series about a group of kid spies, until I believed myself too grown up to read children’s books as I grew older. Now, supposedly adult and wise, I am happy to report that I have gotten over myself and LOVE reading children’s books again! No pretensions here, I unashamedly read whatever entertains me, I have read enough smart books to last me a lifetime (unless, of course, I want to read them for fun). And now that I am writing a dissertation on modern retellings of medieval legends, I get to claim that reading books like Robin Hood: Hacking, Heists & Flaming Arrows counts as work!

RELEASE DATE: 02/04/20

STAR RATING: 4/5 ✶

SUMMARY: Locksley City has been on a downward spiral since the last car plant closed. Schools and hospitals are falling apart, abandoned houses get trashed by vandals and the Police Department is controlled by local gangster, Guy Gisborne.

When Robin Hood’s dad speaks out against corruption, he’s framed for a robbery and thrown in jail.

Twelve-year-old Robin finds himself on the run. The only place to hide is Sherwood Forest, which stretches hundreds of kilometers, from Lake Victoria to the Eastern Delta. It’s a dangerous place, where the bears and snakes are almost as scary as the human population of bandits, terrorists, cultists and biker gangs.

Robin wants revenge on the people who threw his dad in jail. But first, he must learn to survive in the forest. (from Robert Muchamore’s website)

OPINIONS: In terms of story elements, this is a fairly close retelling of the classic tales of Robin Hood, although seamlessly transplanted into a twenty-first century setting. The only concession to the medieval origin of the legend made is Robin’s talent for archery, which he cultivates even in a time when this is rather unusual (this is even featured on the cover). As the book is based on the transposition of medieval legends onto a modern story, many of the characters are largely grounded in stereotypes of good and evil, black and white. This lack of space for gray areas is further cemented by the fact that this is a middle grade book, allowing for less nuance than adult or even YA would.

Nevertheless, it is a thrilling, fast paced read featuring a pair of charming heroes, eponymous Robin Hood and his companion Marion Maid, who is rather formidable in her own right. There is some rather interesting backstory to the villains, and I am looking forward to seeing how that is going to be explored in the coming sequel(s). In typical Muchamore fashion, there is no shying away from a bit of violence, but also a fair share of humour, and some arrows hitting in …rather unfortunate places.

I very much enjoyed returning to Muchamore’s imagination after probably almost a decade away, and I encourage you to give his latest a shot! Add it on Goodreads here, and order it from Hive or your indie of choice directly. Remember, Robin would want you to support the little people!

So I had originally planned to write about a completely different book today. But then I went back to read some more of The Court of Miracles yesterday and completely got sucked in and fell in love with Nina and Ettie and their world and now I need to yell at all of you about how great The Court of Miracles is immediately.

Thank you so much to Kester Grant and Harper Voyager for providing me an eARC of this book, all opinions are entirely my own.

RELEASE DATE: 04/06/20

STAR RATING: 5/5 ✶

Liberty

1828 and the citizens of Paris still mourn in the wake of their failed revolution. Among them, in the dark alleys and crumbling cathedrals of the city, the most wretched have gathered into guilds of thieves, assassins – and worse. Together they are known as The Court of Miracles.

Family

Eponine has lost more than most. When her father, Thénardier, sells her sister to the Guild of Flesh she makes a promise to do anything she can to get her sister back, even if that means joining the Court of Miracles, the very people keeping her sister a slave.

Treachery

Eponine becomes perhaps the greatest thief the Court has ever known, finding a place among them and gaining another sister, Cosette. But she has never forgotten the promise she made, and if she’s to have any hope of saving one sister, she will have to betray the other. (From Harper Voyager)

OPINIONS: THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD YOU NEED TO READ IT IMMEDIATELY. I always say that I rarely ever give out five star ratings as I have to fall in love with a book, although I’ve had quite a good handful this year already – there’s a strong batch of books being published! It took me a little while to really get into The Court of Miracles. I started reading it a few weeks ago, and then got distracted by more pressing review copies, and didn’t pick it up again until yesterday, when I absolutely devoured the rest of it. There were moments when I almost threw my Kindle across the room from pure glee and excitement. I fell in love with Nina, got exasperated at the various men in her life making things difficult, felt for Ettie and her troubles and could not put the book down.

I can’t quite believe that this is a debut novel – it is incredibly well developed into its details, every single character is frustratingly multi-dimensional and driven by intrinsic motivation, and few things are as they seem. This has been taken on as the lead title for Harper Voyager for Summer 2020, and The Court of Miracles deserves all the hype it gets! There’s various special editions announced, it looks like it’ll be featured in an awesome bookbox (hint hint, check out Illumicrate’s June theme)… I’m also extremely glad that it is the first in a trilogy because that means MORE NINA and more of KESTER GRANT’S WRITING in my future! Also, Nina is dark-skinned in a traditionally super white setting, which I love, bringing in much needed diversity and it’s written by a British author of colour, of which there are way too few, making this a book extra worthy of support. I am so glad that this is being pushed so hard in the current publishing climate!

Now you better go off and pre-order a copy – HarperCollins has usefully put together a site with all your convenient buy links here and the Goodreads link is here!

Happy book birthday to this quirky little book out today! A series of interconnected, but utterly different, novellas featuring characters from the world of Christina Henry’s Alice, a dark Alice in Wonderland retelling, Looking Glass follows that twisted fairy tale vibe…

Many thanks to Lydia Gittins and Titan Books for the review copy in exchange for this honest review!

RELEASE DATE: 21/04/20

STAR RATING: 3.5/5 ✶

SUMMARY:

• Lovely Creature: In the New City lives a girl with a secret: Elizabeth can do magic. But someone knows her secret – someone who has a secret of his own. That secret is a butterfly that lives in a jar, a butterfly that was supposed to be gone forever, a butterfly that used to be called the Jabberwock…

• Girl in Amber: Alice and Hatcher are just looking for a place to rest. Alice has been dreaming of a cottage by a lake and a field of wildflowers, but while walking blind in a snowstorm she stumbles into a house that only seems empty and abandoned…

• When I First Came to Town: Hatcher wasn’t always Hatcher. Once, he was a boy called Nicholas, and Nicholas fancied himself the best fighter in the Old City. No matter who fought him he always won. Then his boss tells him he’s going to battle the fearsome Grinder, a man who never leaves his opponents alive…

• The Mercy Seat: There is a place hidden in the mountains, where all the people hate and fear magic and Magicians. It is the Village of the Pure, and though Alice and Hatcher would do anything to avoid it, it lies directly in their path. (from Titan Books)

OPINIONS: I loved how this was a book of novellas, separate stories, but still interconnected through their characters and a slight overarching plot threading through. As my attention span has suffered massively through this pandemic, I’ve been turning to shorter fiction wherever I can, so it’s been a treat to read something that is both shorter in itself, requiring less attention span, as well as part of a larger narrative.

My favourite of the four must have been “Lovely Creature”, with its classic portal fantasy atmosphere. It is written in a way that lets the reader lose themselves completely in Christina Henry’s world, trying to solve the mystery of Elizabeth’s heritage and magic. Most out of all of them, it is reminiscent of the original Alice in Wonderland tales in its spirit if not direct content, as well as linking back to the beginning of Christina Henry’s Alice.

I also really enjoyed “When I First Came to Town”, another origin story, that of Hatcher. While this did not give off such strong Wonderland / fairy tale vibes, it still had an innate focus on character and character development, which continuous readers of this blog will recognise as something I look out for. In this, Hatcher was exceedingly well written, and as a reader I ached and longed with him.

Sadly, I did not connect as much with the remaining two stories. Focusing on the real-time characters of Alice and Hatcher after the events of the earlier two books, it felt like they relied on reader loyalty too much. As someone who had enjoyed Alice and Red Queen quite a while ago, I have forgotten much of what happened, and thus feel quite disconnected from the characters, and it seemed like there wasn’t enough effort made to move them forward, making Looking Glass hard to access for new readers.

If you are curious about this collection of novellas, here is the Goodreads link, and you can order a copy from Waterstones here, or your indie of choice!