Book review: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman is a deeply affecting young adult novel that is part coming-of-age and part episodic road trip. It focuses on the eponymous Tess, a young woman who runs away from home to escape the restrictive life that is slowly smothering her. Rachel Hartman is best known for her Seraphina duology. Tess […]
Retro Childhood Review: Justice and Her Brothers
Justice flicked her eyes this way and that. All else around the parlor appeared ordinary. The light of sun set the room aglow in corners and on walls. It was an eerie effect, but not something she hadn’t seen before. The house was stifling, as it had been for weeks. But there was nothing odd […]
Book Review: The Binti Trilogy by Nnedi Okorafor
Binti is a prodigy among her people, the Himba, in a mid-future world constructed by author Nnedi Okorafor. Binti’s desire to go the finest University in the galaxy breaks all sorts of norms. Binti’s like that, though, breaking norms and boundaries as she finds her way to the University, back home, and what happens thereafter. […]
Book Review: Markswoman by Rati Mehrotra
Orders of female warriors, psychic weapons and quests for revenge are at the centre of Rati Mehrotra’s debut novel Markswoman. Nearly a thousand years after an apocalypse, humanity lives on in clans, and executions are carried out by orders of elite warriors. Kyra belongs to the oldest of these orders: the Order of Kali. Their leader, […]
Horror review: Penny Reeve on A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge
Although she’s been a name within the young adult horror/fantasy scene for a while now, Frances Hardinge was recently projected into the mainstream public gaze when her novel The Lie Tree won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year Prize. After such a bar was set with her last novel, Hardinge’s fans waited with bated […]
Book Review: The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman
If you ever thought Jane Austen needed more demon hunting, The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman is the book for you. In Regency London, Lady Helen Wrexhall is preparing for her presentation to the queen. Her parents died under mysterious circumstances no one talks about except to mention the shame Lady Helen’s mother brought […]
