The nitty-gritty: A luminous and magical Snow White re-telling, with gorgeous imagery and writing beyond compare. Mr. H liked more than anything to see me dressed like a boy, with a cattleman’s hat and a revolver made to my hand. It had a grip pounded out of the first silver bars of Mr. H’s fortune, […]
The nitty-gritty: A magical tale steeped in Chinese folklore and history, with memorable characters, exciting action, humor and one very special eyeball spirit named Mr. Yanqiu. “This wood came from a peach tree that grew at Mount Longhu,” I said, “in the shadow of the Hanging Coffins. My husband cut the wood himself. He was […]
The nitty-gritty: An atmospheric middle grade story, perfect for the Halloween season, but whose deeper meaning somehow escaped this non-middle grade reader. When I saw the cover of this book as one of St. Martin’s Griffin’s offerings for review, I immediately requested a copy. I mean, just look at it! A creepy staircase with a […]
The nitty-gritty: An Alice in Wonderland re-telling that didn’t quite hit the mark, but a wonderful look at the effect of Victorian society on a handful of memorable characters. So Mama waggled her fingers in the air, Go, go, and settled her crown of hair, the color of browning roses, upon the bolster of the […]
The nitty-gritty: A sprawling adventure story filled with airships, magic crystals, military maneuvers and talking cats. Yes, I said talking cats! Despite the fact that it took me two weeks to read The Aeronaut’s Windlass, I had so much fun. This was my first Jim Butcher book, and I can see why he’s so popular. […]
The nitty-gritty: A poignant and magical tale of feuding families and forbidden love, perfectly written. Embers clung to the edges, dense as a band of stars. The fabric burned and thinned. It glowed translucent, and then crumbled to ash. The thin wood of the porcelain vines released the scent of their blue berries, and the […]
The nitty-gritty: And we’re off! The story starts to take shape, we get to know the characters better. You can read my review of Badge, Book, and Candle (Bookburners #1) here. The walls of the room were hair and plaster. No. Splinters and sinew. No. The policeman didn’t know what the walls were. And, within […]
The nitty-gritty: A great start to an exciting new venture in storytelling, all wrapped up in a compact urban fantasy package. She’d met people on this very train who told her with overwhelming conviction that they were the product of genetic experimentation by the United States government using alien DNA, and they’d built a prototype […]
The nitty-gritty: A unique and many-layered world that left me craving more world-building details, but contained some of the coolest fantasy elements I’ve read in a long time. We had so many ways to describe different types of wind. Lifts. Crosses. Constants. Gaps. I might one day hear them all. Something low and large echoed […]
A bit of an unusual review for you today. I was approached by a publicist from 2000 AD, a British serialized comic that’s been going strong for over thirty-five years. He explained that they were publishing a limited edition book of concept art from the 2015 movie, Ex Machina. I was unfamiliar with both the movie […]