Category: Fantasy

Book Review, Fantasy, Fantsy, Fiction

The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

As with Sarah Penner’s previous books, The Amalfi Curse does a wonderful job intertwining a historical fantasy storyline with a present-day story. Haven, a nautical archeologist (insanely cool job title), is exploring the Amalfi Coast with her team. Little do they know that her dad had also dived in the same location and left Haven information about sunken treasure in the area. In the past, Mari, a sea witch living in the same area, finds her community torn apart as men begin to kidnap other witches for their control of the water.

Mari’s community and storyline was really rich in detail. Her relationships were well thought out and the struggles her community faced made me understand her motivations well. She was fierce and protective. I would have liked a little more detail on how the sea witches’ magic actually worked, but I was mostly able to suspend reality.

The present day setting was spectacular. I could feel the heat and color and vibrance of Positano. Haven and her storyline felt a bit flat and confused to me. There was a lot going on, which I felt detracted from really fleshing her out as a character. I found her hard to root for because I didn’t really know her.

The plot of this story felt really fresh and the descriptive writing was captivating. The story didn’t quite uphold itself throughout the full book, but I still enjoyed it.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Fantasy
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

It’s rare that I dive right into a sequel after reading the first book, but I was so excited to get back to this world. In Crown of Midnight, I feel like I got to know Calaena better and appreciated her character development, especially her actions in the face of becoming the king’s assassin.

I also really enjoyed Dorian’s plotline in this book and the changes in himself he’s grappling with. I didn’t see it coming based on his character in the first book and it made me excited to see how his story unfolds and how it changes his relationship with Calaena.

It seems like a lot of people found the ending to be a huge sudden twist, but I..didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Maybe I’m not fully understanding the implications. It’s definitely enough for me to want to keep reading though! I’m excited to see how the mysteries surrounding magic continue to be uncovered and how it changes their world.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Mass ~ Book Review

Morgan

Genre: Fantasy
My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪🍪

I have heard sooo many good things about the Throne of Glass series and despite my difficulty getting into fantasy, I’m so glad I picked it up. I think part of what was helpful for me is that there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of worldbuilding at the beginning. It was integrated really naturally throughout the story. 

Celaena is an assassin fighting for her freedom. She has been chosen to compete against twenty-three other people and if she wins, she will leave prison and become the king’s champion. Before too many of her competitors are disqualified, however, they begin to show up dead.

There were so many pieces to this book that made it really bingeable: a love triangle, the competition itself, the mystery of what was killing people, the glamor of the castle and royalty within it, and hints of magic. I found the competition maybe slightly less compelling than the rest of it, but I loved Celaena’s solo adventures through the castle she was staying in and seeing her relationships grow and change.

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Book Review, Fantasy

Bride by Ali Hazelwood ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Romantasy

I had fun with this book. I’m not a huge fantasy reader, but a vampire/werewolf romance seemed pretty palatable (despite the choice to spell both creatures in a random different way). Misery Lark, a Vampyre, agrees to a marriage of convenience to the Alpha Were, Lowe. Misery, however, has an ulterior motive to her agreement and is really on a quest to discover what happened to her best friend.

The intricacies behind how the Were/Vampyre worlds and politics came to be did not particularly interest me, but I liked that there was a mystery that was central to the plot. This made the story feel like a little more than a fluffy romance. I found that I wanted to know what was going on that had led to the disappearance and I was looking for clues along the way.

The romance between Lowe and Misery was a slow burn and I enjoyed watching it unfold. The somewhat forbidden nature of it made it especially fun. The details about Were anatomy were…less fun. Honestly it really took me out of the scenes that were supposed to be steamy.

Overall I liked this more than I expected to. I liked both main characters and found the plot intriguing. 

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction, Romance

The Love of My Afterlife by Kristy Greenwood ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Romantasy

The Love of My Afterlife begins with Delphie choking to death on a microwave hamburger. So sets the scene for the type of humor that permeates this story. When she arrives in the afterlife at the same time as an extremely hot man who she seems to have an instant connection with, only to watch him be sent back to earth, she’s given the opportunity to go back to the land of the living and stay there if she can get him to kiss her.

The satirical humor made this such a fun read. It reminded me a lot of Molly Molloy and the Angel of Death. I had no idea what hilarious actions or commentary were coming next.

Delphie joins up with an eccentric cast of characters on her quest to stay alive, from her non-verbal elderly neighbor, to an intensely passionate librarian. My favorite was her hot grumpy neighbor who coincidentally needs someone to pretend to be his girlfriend in front of his family. Their antics were almost heist-like at times and truly a joy to read about.

The story dragged on just a tad too long for me, which bumped it down a star or so, but it had such a heartwarming ending and I truly enjoyed spending times with these unique characters. They’ll definitely stick with me in a way that few do.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: (Cozy) Fantasy

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries was suchhh a cozy read. Emily, a professor, goes on an expedition to a small village to study the faerie folklore there. Emily is not a people-person and has a little trouble interpreting what other people’s actions mean. This element of her personality was really refreshing to see illustrated and it helped a lot with understanding her character. What Emily is good at is research into faeries. She has a wealth of knowledge about them and when her academic rival, Wendell Bambleby, shows up to disrupt her work she is not pleased.

I really enjoyed the setting of the little village of Hrafnsvik and the cast of characters who lived there. To be honest, I’m a few weeks out from finishing this book and I can’t say any of them particularly still stand out to me, but the close-knit community feel was there and I really appreciated it.

I don’t feel like all that much really happened in this book and, as is often the case for me and fantasy, I struggled to wrap my head totally around the world the story existed in. I enjoyed the general plot, but kind of skimmed a lot of the magical lore. I had a nice time with this book, but that was about the extent of the impact it had on me.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

The Lost Story by Meg Shaffer ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fantasy

Meg Shaffer is great at coming up with concepts for her fantasy novels that somehow don’t feel entirely fantastical. Jeremy and Rafe disappeared in the forest for six months when they were kids only to reappear healthier than ever with no information about what had happened to them. In the present, Jeremy finds missing people as his profession and is not in contact with Rafe. That is, until Emilie comes to Jeremy asking for help finding her sister and Jeremy knows it’s time for them to venture back to the forest as a group.

This book was inspired by The Chronicles of Narnia and it definitely has the charm of a fairy tale. It was so comforting to get lost in this kind of world as an adult. Seeing inside the imagination of someone else was such a treat. That said, it was also imbued with a seriousness from the things that each character had dealt with in their life. The relationships of each of the three main characters with their families were nuanced and helped me to understand their motivations. There were definitely some heavy themes that made the urge to escape to the fantastical all the more understandable.

The magical world was whimsical and fun and I liked Rafe and Jeremy, but Emilie and another main character fell pretty flat for me and much of the second half of the book felt rushed. Overall an enjoyable read.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Mille r~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪.5
Genre: Fantasy

The Song of Achilles is a retelling of Achilles’ life as told in The Iliad. It focuses on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as they meet, fall for each other, and go to battle in Troy. We know all along that this story won’t have a happy ending and the wonderfully organic unfolding of their feelings for each other made it all the more painful to become immersed in their world and their story.

The source material for this story is an epic, but it felt to me like making this adaptation could have been an opportunity to stray from that format. The parts of the book that were character-driven were beautiful, but it seemed like nothing really happened for the majority of it and then there was a lot of rushed action at the end. In my opinion, it could have been shorter and more focused and packed a greater punch.

I enjoy Greek mythology and many pieces of this story were familiar to me. I enjoyed getting to reimagine them through the lens of this romance. Achilles and Patroclus were flawed and often frustrating, but I found myself rooting for them nonetheless and the ending absolutely gutted me.

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

When Woman Were Dragons is set in almost our world, but not quite. The Mass Dragoning of 1955 saw thousands of women spontaneously turn into dragons, but it’s not spoken about anymore. Even Alex’s aunt, who has since transformed herself is no longer spoken of.

The concept behind this book and the way that society responded was fascinating and applicable to real life. The repression of women and conversations about their experiences was blown up to dragon-scale, but was still relatable. That said, it was someone one-dimensional and repetitive.

Alex finds herself raising her younger cousin, Bea, who she has been trained to introduce as her sister so as not to reference the aunt that became a dragon. Bea, however, is preoccupied with dragons, which consistently gets her in trouble. Alex must navigate empathy for her cousin with the expectations of society. Alex’s circumstances made her a compelling main character. She was forced to grow up so quickly and come to her own conclusions about the world around her.

The situations that Alex and Bea dealt with began to feel somewhat repetitive to me after a while and often didn’t seem to move the plot forward. In contrast, a lottt happened at the end of the book that I think could have been slowed down and explored more fully. This lack of balance kept me from fully loving this book

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Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune ~ Book Review

Morgan

My Rating: 🍪🍪🍪
Genre: Fantasy

Wallace lived to work. He was seen as ruthless by all those around him and kept most everyone at arm’s length. When he finds himself at Charon’s Crossing, a tea shop owned by Hugo who informs Wallace that he’s dead, Wallace begins to question whether he ever really lived.

Conceptually, I loved the idea of this magical tea shop and the cast of characters who owned it ferrying ghosts to the afterlife on the side. It was charming and whimsical and I enjoyed seeing them interact with customers and explain how things worked to Wallace.

I found there to be a lot of characters to keep track of, and to me things seemed a little jumpy. Wallace suddenly becomes a better person, a romance pops up out of nowhere, the rules of their universe change. These big moments didn’t feel believable to me because they happened seemingly without build-up. 

This was a sweet book, but it was kind of slow and I didn’t take too much away from it besides a contented warm fuzzy feeling.

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