One For All: A Review

Tania de Batz is most comfortable with a sword in her hand. When she practices with her father, a former Musketeer, Tania knows she is more than the “sick girl” with the sudden and debilitating dizziness that no one can explain.

But no number of drills or practice positions can prepare Tania when her father is violently killed with the murdered escaping into the night. Without Papa to champion her, Tania isn’t as confident that she can follow in his footsteps as a Musketeer–an uncertainty that grows when she finds out his last wish is for her to attend finishing school.

Upon arriving at L’Académie des Mariées, Tania soon realizes that it is no ordinary finishing school. Instead of preparing girls like Tania for marriage, the Academie is secret training a new type of Musketeer: one that most men are all to quick to take for granted.

With the other young women, Tania refines her swordwork alongside skills like disguise and seduction to protect France from outside threats. Instead of feeling stifled or othered at the school Tania feels like she’s found her purpose with girls who feel like sisters and new ways to navigate her chronic illness.

When the students are tasked with stopping an assassination plot, Tania’s loyalties will be tested as she tries to gather information from a dangerously attractive target. Training as a Musketeer is everything Tania has ever wanted, but even she isn’t sure if she should trust her newly honed instincts or her heart in One For All (2022) by Lillie Lainoff.

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One For All is Lainoff’s debut novel. Tania’s first person narration immediately draws readers into her richly detailed world while making the frustrations and limitations of her chronic illness immediately understandable. As the author’s note explains, Tania’s experiences are informed by Lainoff’s own life as a competitive fencer who has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Tania and most main characters are white. There’s some variety of skintones among secondary characters as well as characters across the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

This gender-flipped retelling of The Three Musketeers imagines a world where girls like Tania are able to find sisterhood and purpose operating in the shadows. With the Musketeers limited in their reach compared to the peak of their power, the stakes have never felt higher as Tania works to earn her place at the Academie. High action and cinematic swordfights move the story along while tender moments between Tania and her fellow Academie students show the importance of community and friendship. Tania’s illness is integral to her character and explored with nuance as she not only has to learn the limitations of her own body but also explain them to her new friends so that they can all work together.

Hints of romance permeate the story but at its core One For All is a story of empowerment and sisterhood where one girl learns that coming into her own can change everything.

Possible Pairings: Valiant Ladies by Melissa Gray, The Game of Hope by Sarah Gulland, The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath, Courting Darkness by Robin LaFevers, Of Better Blood by Susan Moger, Scavenge the Stars by Tara Sim

Legends & Lattes: A Review

Viv knows how life as a mercenary always ends and it’s never with a peaceful retirement. So when the orc finds a chance to make a clean break and set aside her sword in the city of Thune she takes it even though it means turning her back on everyone and everything she’s ever known.

With battle-sharpened wits and an espresso machine, Viv is ready to open Thune’s first ever coffee shop. And explain to everyone in Thune what, exactly, coffee is.

Building a shop takes time and building a clinetele can take even longer. As Viv meets neighbors, hires employees, and possibly even makes friends she’ll realize that starting on a new path doesn’t always mean walking alone in Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes (2022) by Travis Baldree.

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Legends & Lattes can be read as a standalone but fans who want more can also check out Bookshops & Bone Dust–a prequel novel about Viv’s early career as a mercenary. with most characters belonging to non-human species, there is a lot of variety among the characters–many of whom also fall across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. When not writing books Baldree is an audiobook narrator and brings appropriately gentle tones to the audio production of this novel.

I’ve been describing Legends & Lattes as a literal coffee shop AU and, as the subtitle suggests, the related low stakes. While there is action and suspense while Viv deals with obstacles to opening (and keeping) her shop, Viv’s story is ultimately a quiet one about building community and meeting people where they are. Themes of friendship and a very light romance between Viv and her employee-turned-business-partner Tandri inform the bulk of this story making it a gentle story perfect for fantasy readers who find themselves wondering what NPCs (nonplayer characters) might be getting up to while larger plots play out.

Legends & Lattes is a cozy diversion and a great introduction to fantasy for readers more comfortable with realistic fiction.

Possible Pairings: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna, The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller, The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry by CM Waggoner

*An advance copy of this title was provided by the publisher for review consideration*

The Lost Dreamer: A Review

“Stories don’t end, they just change shape.”

Indir is a Dreamer. Growing up in Alcanzeh surrounded by her sisters in the Temple of Night, Indir has always been protected. Her gift to Dream truth earns her respect both within the temple and the city beyond.

But change is coming and this cycle will end in chaos before another can begin.

With the king’s death Indir’s gift is a threat to Alcan–the king’s heir intent on dismantling the kingdom’s traditions and rituals–especially those surrounding the Dreamers.

Saya is a seer. She walks the Dreaming but she is not one of the revered Dreamers. Instead she travels from village to village with her calculating mother only staying long enough for Saya’s mother to explore her gift and get everything they can before moving on. Saya knows her mother is hiding things from her, but this unmoored life is also the only one she has ever known.

As Indir and Saya search for answers, both young women creep ever closer to the chaos and danger that threatens from all sides. When everything they know is threatened, both Indir and Saya will have to choose between staying to fight and running to survive in The Lost Dreamer (2022) by Lizz Huerta.

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The Lost Dreamer is Huerta’s debut novel and the start of a duology inspired by ancient Mesoamerican mythology. The story alternates between Indir and Saya’s first person narrations offering different perspectives on both the kingdom and Dreaming.

With readers dropped into the middle of the action, The Lost Dreamer is a fast-paced fantasy filled with surprising twists and high stakes. The less you know about how the pieces fit together, the more satisfying all of Huerta’s reveals will be. Themes of female solidarity and friendship play well against the matrilineal history underpinning this richly developed world. Recommended.

Possible Pairings: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown, A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee, The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco, Ever Cursed by Corey Ann Haydu, The Bone Charmer by Breeana Shields

The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie: A Review

This piece originally appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books:

Marya Salomea Sklodowska is better known to the world as Marie Curie–a double Nobel winning scientist whose discoveries influenced the scientific field forever. “Although much has been written about Marya, this younger period of her life is vaguely known” leaving the contributors to this anthology to take “liberties for the sake of entertainment” in stories and poems that blend fact and speculative fiction.

Editors Schmidt and Herz gather an impressive assortment of contributors including award winners, bestselling authors, and newer voices in The Hitherto Secret Experiments of Marie Curie (2023)–a collection of stories and poems imagining Marya’s youth and adolescence. An introduction and historical overview help to contextualize the stories alongside significant life events that will come up in multiple stories notably including the death of Marya’s mother and her older sister Zosia.

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With stories ranging from horror (like Jonathan Maberry’s “The Night Flyers” where Russian double-headed eagles guarding the obelisk in Saxon Square terrorize those who might act against Russia’s occupation of Poland) to lighter-hearted fantasy like Alethea Kontis’ “Marya’s Monster” where a monster helps Marya acknowledge the grief she still carries after her mother’s death.

It’s no surprise in stories centering one of the greatest scientific minds of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries also include a lot of real science as seen in stories including Seanan McGuire’s “Uncrowned Kings” where a sinister illness gripping Warsaw is grounded in real science with the actual phenomenon of a Rat King and Marya’s own scientific investigation of the outbreak. As Marya tells her sister: “When a thing makes no sense, look to the data people have left behind. If it still makes no sense, the fault is either yours, or the world’s.” Many other stories in the collection are followed by Science Notes that help clarify real science versus speculative elements as in Stacia Deutsch’s “The Beast” where radium is used for time travel.

The stories presented are at their best where Marya is able to use her burgeoning knowledge of science and the scientific method to investigate and face obstacles as seen especially in “The Magic of Science” by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and G. P. Charles where Marya has to prove that there is a logical explanation when a classmate at the current site for the Polish Flying University turns blue and in “Experiments with Fire” by Sarah Beth Durst where Marya faces the mythical and extremely dangerous Wawel dragon with help from scientific experimentation.

With most stories focusing on or narrated by Marya herself, Steve Pantazis’ “The Prize” notably centers one of Marya’s classmates Adela instead with the two girls vying for “The Arcanum Prize, the most coveted prize in metallurgic arts” at their Warsaw high school.

With a shared protagonist and common themes, the element that comes through most in this anthology is the thirst for understanding and an abiding respect of knowledge. As Durst’s Marya says at the close of “Experiments with Fire:” “Some things are unknowable. But all the rest … I will know.”

Note: Readers should be aware that slurs are used when referring to Romani people in “The Cold White Ones” by Susanne L. Lamdin

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything: A Review

It’s been three years since Sia Martinez’s mom disappeared.

Sia wants to move on the way a lot of her tiny town in Arizona has. But she isn’t as willing to gloss over the horrible rift in her family as an “unfortunate incident” to let things go. She knows her mom is probably dead. What else could have happened after her ill-fated attempt to cross the Sonoran and avoid an ICE raid?

Still every new moon finds Sia driving to the desert to light San Anthony and la Guadalupe candles to help her mom find her way home.

It feels like a meaningless ritual. Until one night when Sia’s candles aren’t the only lights in the sky. When the blue lights crash right in front of Sia she finds a spacecraft. Carrying her mom in Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything (2020) by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland.

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Vasquez Gilliland blends speculative fiction into this story about family, growing up, and the specific dangers and challenges of the immigrant experience. Very short chapters and numerous twists make this book a quick read despite the high page count and ideal to draw in reluctant readers. The genre blending can make Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything feel like two stories mashed together but usually in interesting ways rather than discordant ones.

Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything is a fast-paced genre-blender where the enduring power of love–both for family and first love–might be able to change everything.

Possible Pairings: Lobizona by Romina Garber, Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha Lai, Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza, When Light Left Us by Leah Thomas, The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Magic Lessons: A Review

England, 1664. Hannah Owens finds a baby in the woods, wrapped in a blue blanket her name, Maria, embroidered along the side. She brings the girl home and raises her as her own, teaching her the Nameless Arts–the herbs to help ease pain, the best way to use blue thread for protection.

When Hannah is accused of witchcraft and burned to death inside her small cottage, Maria knows there is nothing left for her in England. Traveling to Curaçao as an indentured servant, Maria discovers the world is much bigger and beautiful than she first thought. At fifteen she thinks she’s fallen in love with an American businessman. But she forgets Hannah’s first lesson: love someone who will love you back.

Following Hathorne to Salem, Massachusetts irrecvocably changes Maria’s path forever when heartbreak and fear lead her to invoke a curse that will haunt the Owens family for centuries to come.

Every witch knows that you can make the best of fate or let it make the best of you. But Maria also knows it isn’t always so easy to do as you like without doing harm. When everything you give is returned to you threefold, Maria will have to relearn how to love freely if she wants to protect her family and her heart in Magic Lessons (2020) by Alice Hoffman.

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Magic Lessons is a prequel to Hoffman’s now classic novel Practical Magic. This novel focuses on the first Owens witch, Maria, and the advent of the family’s infamous curse. It can be read on its own without familiarity with Hoffman’s other books in this series. The story is told by an omniscient third person narrator with a close focus on Maria and an audio version that is wonderfully narrated by Sutton Foster.

The Owens family are white. Ending in Salem, Massachusetts, Maria spends a brief part of the novel in Curaçao and also in New York City (a significant location for the latter part of this novel as well as parts of The Rules of Magic.) Along the way Maria also encounters sailor Samuel Dias who is a Sephardic Jew.

Hoffman blends atmospheric settings, historical detail, and her own distinct characters to create a story filled with magic. Readers familiar with this world (or the 1998 film adaptation) might think they know how this story goes, but Magic Lessons still manages to pack in satisfying surprises.

Steeped in the practical knowledge of the Nameless Art and the enduring strength of love–both for good and for ill–Magic Lessons is a thoughtful and evocative story; a wonderful installment and a perfect introduction for new readers.

Possible Pairings: Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin, The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow, The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna, Don’t Date Rosa Santos by Nina Moreno, In the Shadow Garden by Liz Parker, Just Kids by Patti Smith, Among Others by Jo Walton

Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop: A Review

Vanessa Yu never wanted to be a fortune teller. Which explains a lot about why she can barely control her magical ability as an adult. After years of avoiding learning more about her gift and refusing to embrace it, Vanessa is plagued by headaches in the wake of every vision and unable to avoid blurting out the fortunes she sees in any beverage that catches her eye at the most inconvenient times.

When her latest prediction of infidelity comes at her cousin’s luxe wedding, even Vanessa has to admit something needs to change.

Faster than you can say adieu, Vanessa is leaving California to to help her aunt Evelyn open a new tea shop in Paris and, hopefully, to also get a handle on her gift once and for all. Paris is filled with delicious foods, beautiful art, and possibly even romance with Mark, a handsome pastry chef.

Everyone knows that Seers are incapable of forming lasting romantic attachments. So before Vanessa can see if she and Mark have a future, she has a lot more to learn about her magical abilities in Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop (2020) by Roselle Lim.

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Lim’s sophomore novel is set in the same world as her debut Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune (read my review) which also features Evelyn Yu as an important secondary character.

Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop expands the world Lim created in her debut, introducing readers to more magical elements and moving the story into a new setting. Strong world building is once again grounded in intricate descriptions of the fashions, decor, and delectable foods that Vanessa encounters during her stay in Paris alongside magical elements including Vanessa and Evelyn’s predictions as Seers–some of which are better integrated into the otherwise contemporary setting than others.

Vanessa’s efforts to understand and control her magic works well with the side plot of helping Evelyn open her shop and work against xenophobic bigotry that threatens to shutter the tea shop before it ever has a chance. As Vanessa learns more about herself, her magic, and the red strings of fate that tie people together, she also starts to realize that there is more than one kind of magic in the world–and she just might be able to take a different path.

With attempts to matchmake for her aunt and a new Parisian friend, there’s plenty of love to be found in this novel even if Vanessa’s own love interest often feels lackluster in comparison.

Romantic and filled with love, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop is ultimately a story about choosing yourself–and your own fate–no matter the cost.

Possible Pairings: With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo, The Heartbreak Bakery by A. R. Capetta, Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien, Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, A Thread of Sky by Diana Fei, Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron, Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li, A Taste of Sage by Yaffa S. Santos, Lost and Found Sisters by Jill Shalvis, The Recipe Box by Vivian Shipman, Dial A For Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands: A Graphic Novel Review

“It felt like I had a second to decide, and an eternity to live with it.”

Before she ever appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for her comics, Kate Beaton was Katie: A university graduate drowning in debt like a lot of the young people in Canada’s Cape Breton. She knows nowhere else will ever feel like home the way Mabou does. She knows she’ll return.

But Kate also knows that if she ever wants a future without crippling debt, she has to leave because everyone in Cape Breton knows there is no work there.

Which brings Kate, like so many others, to Fort McMurray–a camp in the oil sands. Unlike most of the others who migrate there for work Kate is a woman–one of the only ones among thousands of men. Moving from camp to camp, she chases higher pay and better jobs starting in a machine shed before moving to more and more isolated camps chasing an office job and–once her student loans are paid–a chance to leave.

Life in the oil sands is boring and tedious. It’s lonely and isolating for everyone. More so for the women. It’s dangerous for everyone but in different ways for the women. While the factories track days without lost time and efficiency, the human wreckage accumulates everywhere in Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022) by Kate Beaton.

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Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is a powerful graphic memoir. The story explores Beaton’s own experiences working at different camps and sites in the Canadian oil sands first as a tool crib attendant and later in an office job. In environments where men outnumber women 50 to 1 Beaton navigates sexism, misogyny, and harassment while also confronting the uncomfortable reality that the men behind all of these behaviors could just as easily be her own friends and relatives from back home in Cape Breton where many other Canadians have to negotiate their pride of place with the lack of jobs and career prospects.

Through the stories of colleagues and friends she meets along the way, the toll of working in the camps is clearly broadcast long before Beaton gets there. That said, readers should be aware that much of the story deals with Beaton processing the trauma surrounding her own sexual assault during her time at the oil sands.

Beaton’s black and white illustrations work well here with fine detail used to depict her two year journey to pay off her student loans. Full-page spreads convey the scale of the machinery and scope of the camps while smaller panels lend a claustrophobic feel to much of the story to underscore Kate’s isolation and turmoil.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is a masterful and intentional graphic memoir; often a difficult read but well worth it.

Possible Pairings: Our Little Secret by Emily Carrington, Radium Girls by Cy, Factory Summer by Guy Delisle, 100 Days in the Uranium City by Ariane Denomme, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less by Sarah Glidden, Desperate Pleasures by MS Harkness, The Pervert by Michelle Perez, The High Desert by James Spooner

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride: A Review

Once upon a time, an heiress named Indigo found a scholar who would become her bridegroom. He’d been lost long enough by then to grow comfortable in the dark; long enough he wasn’t sure anyone could lure him out. But Indigo was never the kind of woman to turn away from a challenge.

Coming into Indigo’s world of wealth and decadence is a feast. And he is always hungry. A single moment of either madness or mystery had shaped his life. Ever since, he’d sought proof of the impossible and bent his whole life around the feeding of it.

The heiress and the scholar. It sounds like the start of a fairy tale.

For years, that was enough for the bridegroom.

Until Indigo is summoned back to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, to tend to her dying aunt–the aunt who told Indigo years ago that she was grateful for her blindness. Because she’d never have to look at Indigo ever again.

The decaying house is filled with ghosts of luxury, memories of a grandiose past. It is also filled with secrets that are impossible to ignore. And haunting memories including a girl no one wants to talk about: Azure–Indigo’s oldest and dearest friend. Azure, who no one has seen in years.

Two girls that were closer than sisters, until they weren’t. A marriage built on a foundation of secrets and the bridegroom’s promise to never look too closely at Indigo’s past. A story that, once revealed, changes everything. A fairy tale that will leave its own scars in The Last Tale of the Flower Bride (2023) by Roshani Chokshi.

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The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is Chokshi’s first adult novel. The story alternates between the bridegroom and Azure’s narratives on dual timelines as both the past and present build to a powerful finale.

Themes of privilege and agency loom large throughout the narrative as Azure is pulled into Indigo’s world of impossible wealth and status when they are both still children. The bridegroom offers a different facet of Indigo–the one main character without a narrative point of view–as their secrets and experiences of magic in both the human world and the mystical other world heavily influence their marriage.

Atmospheric descriptions and lush imagery bring Indigo’s opulent and often dangerous world to life with the plot moving inexorably forward. Both the characters and plot of The Last Tale of the Flower Bride are heavily influenced by fairy tales with allusions to classic fairy tale devices, gender flipped elements of Bluebeard and, more generally, a contemplation of what it means to engage with fairy tales as a modern girl and woman–in other words as a person typically othered or dismissed within the fairy tale sphere. This last element in particular is artfully teased out in Azure and Indigo’s changing understanding of Susan Pevensie (the Pevensie child assumed to be rejected by Narnia as she grows older) in CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia as well as in their burgeoning familiarity with the magical other world.

Filled with rich prose and vivid emotion, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a dynamic exploration of magic and affection; a story told through the dual lenses of wonder and the mundanity that makes up both a marriage and a friendship.

Possible Pairings: Book of Night by Holly Black, The Birdcage by Eve Chase, The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab, The Death of Jane Laurence by Caitlin Starling

*An advance listening copy of the title was provided by the publisher through Libro.fm*

Hotel Magnifique: A Review

Janine “Jani” Lafayette always dreamed of a life beyond the small, idyllic village where she was born. But now, after four years of struggling to take care of herself and her younger sister Zosa in the port town of Durc, Jani dreams of quitting her job at the tannery and going back home.

When the Hotel Magnifique arrives in Durc, it feels like the answer to everything. Visiting a new destination every day, the hotel promises once-in-a-lifetime adventure and magic at every turn–with the price tag to match. Surely even working in such a place would have its own enchantments along with the chance, however slim, of one day stopping at the village Jani so foolishly left behind.

It’s a gamble Jani is willing to take. Until Zosa is hired on as a hotel singer. And Jani is not hired at all.

Following her sister is the only option but inside the hotel is nothing like Jani imagined. Instead of dazzling luxury, Jani is thrust into a world where every bit of glamour hides a dark secret. Including the horrifying unbreakable employee contracts.

Jani is determined to uncover the truth behind the hotel to free her sister and the other hotel staff. With nowhere to hide and no one to trust but Bel, a mysterious doorman with secrets–and loyalties–of his own, Jani will have to risk everything to break the hotel’s spells once and for all in Hotel Magnifique (2022) by Emily J. Taylor.

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Hotel Magnifique is Taylor’s debut novel. This standalone fantasy is set in a French-influenced world with characters of varying skin tones, body types, and sexual orientation. Jani and Zosa read as white. Bel is described as having brown skin and is bisexual.

Vibrant and richly described settings lend a sumptuous feel to this story as Jani is drawn in by the wonders of the magical hotel. The dark underside and pervasive menace of the hotel and the strange maître d’hôtel is slowly revealed with perfect pacing that amps up the tension and urgency of the story. Magical wonders contrast sharply with the grim violence of the hotel where magicians on staff are kept in line–and possibly slowly driven insane–with the removal of an eye or finger while continuing to deliver lavish illusions to hotel guests.

In a story where the backdrop and stakes gradually increase, Hotel Magnifique develops an intricate and engrossing magic system. Multifaceted characters and ample suspense further elevate this fantasy adventure.

Possible Pairings: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles, Wings of Ebony by J. Elle, Cruel Illusions by Margie Fuston, Caraval by Stephanie Garber, Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalo, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, A Forgery of Roses by Jessica S. Olson, The Splendor by Breeana Shields