The Product by Marina Fontaine Conservatarian Press, 2022 [ #23 After the fall: A post-apocalyptic or dystopic book. ] This book kept popping up in my Kindle feed, so I chose it for the “Dystopia” category of this year’s challenge. It occurred to me when writing this review that “Russian Dystopia” is perhaps a subset, …
It’s time for another group review of Narnia fanfics! Featured artwork: Jill and the Lion. This is the scene from the first chapter of The Silver Chair where Jill, abandoned by Eustace on Aslan’s Mountain, has to decide whether or not to drink from a stream guarded by a dangerous lion who talks to her. …
All Aboard! Images from the Golden Age of Rail Travel by Lynn Johnson & Michael O’Leary Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999 If you were a graphic artist in the 1980s and 1990s Chronicle Books of San Francisco was your crack, publishing tons of art, art history, design and architecture books every. All were beautifully designed …
If you were an elementary school student in the 1970s, your school library probably contained a copy of The Little Prince. Written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a French nobleman, pilot, and adventurer, and published in 1943, it has since become an oddball but revered children’s classic, standing beside The Phantom Tollbooth, Willie Wonka and the …
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl HarperCollins, 2021 [ # 19 Like a novel, only real: Creative nonfiction.] Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller is not the usual kind of rock and roll autobiography whose arc most often goes from rags to riches with a side tour into addiction. Instead it’s a series of short vignettes that illustrate …
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher Tor Books, 2022 [ #24 Top of the Heap: A book on any Top Whatever list. ] This is another of those books I got from the Little Free Library down the street. I was surprised to find it there, because it’s so recent, so niche, and was so …
Of Mist and Shadow by Jenna Wolfhart Self-published, 2022 This was the second of the Romantasy books I read. The book starts off similar to a YA novel: “I’d been born to fulfill a promise to the fae king. It was an ancient promise, bound in powerful magic. I was sworn to serve his every …
An Heir Comes to Rise by C. C. Penaranda Lumarias Press, 2021 This book was one of a bundle I got for free – five romantic fantasies, all of them self-published, clearly some sort of cooperative deal between the authors — it was advertised on the r/fantasyromace subreddit.They all seemed typical of what’s available these …
Crown of Starlight (Chapter One) by Cait Corrain Everybody’s been talking lately about the publishing scandal involving debut author Cait Corrain and her fantasy novel Crown of Starlight, so I thought I’d put in my opinion. The whole story is here and tells it more eloquently and completely than I can, but the gist is …
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang First Second Books, 2006 American Born Chinese is a graphic novel about the experience of Asian Americans trying to come to terms with their heritage in mainstream American society. It was published in 2006, so it’s a few years short of its much-deserved twentieth anniversary –- it’s still …