female protagonist

Cover of Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford. A giant hand holds up a woman with a 1940s hairstyle, coat, skirt, and heels above a city skyline. The background is a blend of orange, pink, and yellow.
Blog Posts

Book Review: Nonesuch, by Francis Spufford

/

I really liked Francis Spufford’s last book, Cahokia Jazz, as stated in my 2024 review, so I was very happy when my library app acquired his latest novel, Nonesuch. The protagonist, Iris, is fascinating, and it’s great fun to watch her machinations and verbal fencing; the setting, London during the so-called “Phoney War” and initial stages of World War II, has long held great interest for me; the book is full of lovely, lyrical descriptions, along with dread and occasional action scenes; and not only are there magic and time travel, but also, fights against fascists, and arguments that are sadly more relevant now than I would have believed possible 10 years ago. However, there’s a giant caveat: The comp that instantly leaps into my head after finishing it is Blackout, by Connie Willis. Not just because it’s set in World War II and there’s time travel involved; oh no: Nonesuch ends with the dreaded words, To be continued. If you hated the way that Blackout concluded with a cliffhanger, I need to warn you about this. Nobody warned me that this book was the first part of a duology — or maybe a series, but I really hope not, since the second book needs to go ahead and fix what went wrong at the end of Nonesuch, if that’s even possible. Please!

Covers of Hazardous Spirits by Anbara Salam (left: UK: 12 Oct. 2023, and right: USA: 12 Oct 2023). The UK cover at left features an hourglass at the top with what looks like blood at the top dripping into flames below. The USA cover at right features a woman's hand generating sparks or magical energy, with rays radiating out; a lacy sleeve is visible.
Blog Posts

Book Review: HAZARDOUS SPIRITS by Anbara Salam

/

Either her husband is crazy, or he is lying, or he is telling the truth and can really communicate with spirits of the deceased. Each possibility is more frightening to Evelyn than the prior, for she holds a dark secret that Robert or his Spiritualist medium companions might discover from a ghost and memory that still haunts her.

Cover of The Killing Spell, by Shay Kauwe, featuring colorful strips of Hawaiian-print cloth swirling around a black center, with red lettering for the title and orange-yellow letters for the author's name.
Blog Posts

Book Review: The Killing Spell, by Shay Kauwe

/

I greatly enjoyed The Killing Spell, the debut urban fantasy novel by Shay Kauwe. I’ll admit that the first chapter was a little challenging for me, because the protagonist, Kea Petrova, starts out feeling a bit overwhelmed by her family responsibilities as the young head of a household, with siblings and cousins to support, and a somewhat unreliable magical talent. She continues to be off balance and seemingly gets in over her head when a political activist is assassinated and she becomes responsible for figuring out the killing spell and tracking down the killer, but eventually she hits her stride and finds some allies. She learns that she is most powerful when she stops trying to do everything by herself and leans into her heritage and her people’s connections with nature.

Cover of The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula, featuring trilobites, ammonites, a pterodactyl, a skeleton of an ichthyosaur, and various plants, with a cameo brooch of a woman.
Blog Posts

Book Review: The Geomagician, by Jennifer Mandula

/

Mary Anning was a real-life professional fossil collector and dealer in the first half of the 19th century; given the breadth and depth of her knowledge, she was also a paleontologist, but that wasn’t officially acknowledged until after her death, since she was a woman and therefore ineligible to join the Geological Society of London. In her excellent debut novel The Geomagician (coming March 31), Jennifer Mandula reimagines Mary as a woman living in a world with magic, in which fossils are the best medium for storing magical power. Hunting for freshly exposed fossils after a landslide, she is thrilled to discover a pterodactyl skeleton — and then one of the fossilized eggs comes to life and hatches in her hands! Mary is suddenly faced with new opportunities in her life, and new challenges.

Cover of Nobody's Baby, by Olivia Waite, featuring two men and a woman dressed in Edwardian(?)-style clothing, leaning over a big white crib with a baby in it; the room has plants, but behind them are windows revealing a starfield.
Blog Posts

Book Review: Nobody’s Baby, by Olivia Waite

/

Using medical logs and other ship records, Dorothy quickly finds out the baby’s genetic heritage, but its origins are still swaddled in mystery. There’s a highly suspicious gap in the memory of someone who really ought to know what happened, so Dorothy has to do a bit of digging to find out the motives of several people involved (or not) with this little bundle of joy.

Scroll to Top