Tansy Rayner Robert’s Curse of Bronze
Super cute supernatural mystery involving a woman who inherits the family home after her curse breaker aunt is turned into a bronze statue, and she has to figure out who did it, with the help of all sorts of people (a lion librarian, a sort of vampire, a talking teapot, some werewolves, etc). I do think this would have been stronger if it was longer, but I liked it a lot and will be reading volume two when it comes out next month. B+.
Fonda Lee’s The Last Contract of Isako
Lee’s latest is a sci-fi story where a middle-aged woman, a high level operative, has to take One Last Job. The book really harps on her age, like she thinks about her knees, menopause, and/or aging multiple times a chapter. It’s so weird that I actually assumed Lee was in her 20s or something but I looked her up and she’s my age!! Girl! Anyway this was fine, some good twists and lots of great action scenes, but a lot of it draaaaaaaagggggged, like this could have been twenty percent shorter. I was super impatient by the end. B.
Tamora Pierce’s The Realms of the Gods
This was fine. I love Daine as a character but, as expected, was not on board with the romance (he’s twice her age and has been her teacher since she was thirteen and she’s only sixteen now). I also don’t know if it was necessary to the plot—they could have just been together in the later series and it would have been fine!!! I also wasn’t super into the plot of this one, which didn’t help. Lots of cool gods and goddesses and creatures though. B/B+.
Tamora Pierce’s Emperor Mage
The third book in the Immortals series finds Daine et al in another country, trying to negotiate peace with the titular emperor mage who’s been causing problems the last couple books. Lots more awesome animal friends, and we get to see more of the gods in this one too—I am always partial to a pantheon meddling just a bit in human affairs. The ending set piece is a CORKER of an action scene, I want to a scream about it but spoilers. Not sure there has ever been a better fantasy action scene tbh. A/A-.
Tamora Pierce’s Wolf-Speaker
Ok, I’m officially into this series, I think! Events unfold here after a pack of wolves that Daine is friends with ask for help dealing with some local miners who are ruining their environment! But it ends up being much bigger than just miners. Sooo many good animal friends in this one, obviously I was partial to the squirrel and the cats but A+ animals and magical people (and regular people—I hope we see Maura again) all around. Very satisfying. A/A-.
Tamora Pierce’s Wild Magic
I’ve never read this Tamora Pierce series before, bc I accidentally read the next series (Protector of the Small) before it, and knew the little girl main character grows up to marry her teacher (gross). But I wanted to read a book with ANIMAL FRIENDS so tried to put that out of my mind. And it’s a good read! Lots of action and fun and friends of all kinds. It made me want to read all the Tortall books in chronological order, but also I want to keep going with this series so that’ll be a future project. A-.
Amy Coombe’s Stay for a Spell
Very funny, cute, sweet fantasy romance about a younger princess who’s the one who has to travel all over, visiting towns and going to events and kissing babies—until she’s cursed to be unable to leave a local bookshop. She is legit psyched about this, as I think many of us would be. With the help of a surly teen and a hot pirate, she’s gonna make this shop awesome! If only her parents would stop sending princes to kiss her in an effort to break the curse. Lol. This was extremely delightful!!!! I hope this author writes a million more books! A/A-.
KJ Charles’ All of Us Murderers
Rereading this for book club (finished with 15 minutes to spare lol), it remains a delightful confection of mysterious gothic tropes and a sweet queer romance. Here is my original review!
Tamora Pierce’s Lady Knight
Very satisfying conclusion to the Protector of the Small series—battles and rescue missions and friends and hope galore! Just what I needed right now.
Tamora Pierce’s Squire
More of the delightful same in book three of the Protector of the Small series. So many good animal friends! So many good people friends! So many cool ladies! And some good dudes too. Really satisfying.
Tamora Pierce's Page
The second book in the Protector of the Small series follows Kel through the next few years of her training, lots of learning and leading and beating up jerks. Just a really enjoyable and well-paced story, this series is totally suiting my current mood.
Tamora Pierce’s First Test
Sometimes you just want to reread a series about a little girl who wants to train to be a knight and will try super hard and fight against bullies and befriend birds. Fight the power, Kel!
Meg Elison’s Foundling Fathers
Elison’s satirical novella is the perfect read for the year 2026. It involves a group of wealthy right-wingers who have cloned four of the founding fathers (Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams) and raised them in isolation, pretending it’s the 1700s. And then Teen Franklin finds an iPhone in the privy. Very quick and entertaining read. I really liked how it wrapped up, too. A/A-.
__
A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.
Ursula LeGuin’s Gifts
I remembered really liking this the first time I read it, but found it a little stressful this time! I was planning on rereading the whole trilogy but think I’m not actually in the mood for YA right now. Click the link to read my original review!
Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch
I do like books involving WWII, magic, time travel, and a solid romance (Connie Willis 4-eva) so this was definitely up my alley, involving a secretary in the finance sector in London (she’s super smart and wants to be a stockbroker but SEXISM) getting entangled in a mystical mystery after seducing a BBC nerd. But like, literary and serious (there are some funny parts though). I was into this! Like I love this heroine!!! And then it broke my heart and said TO BE CONTINUED, like are you KIDDING me?! I guess my desperation for a sequel makes it an A?
Naomi Kritzer’s Obstetrix
Y’all, I just read this all in one sitting and it was so tense and good and TENSE. It involves an obstetrician, infamous after being put on trial for performing an abortion in North Dakota (this is apparently a “near future” sci-fi novel, but it feels just like real life tbh), who is kidnapped by an evangelical Christian cult to take care of all their pregnant women. I mean this was basically a horror novel for me, except that Kritzer tends toward the optimistic, so I tried not to get too freaked out. The end is a bit anticlimactic, but I liked it anyway. I’ll read everything Kritzer writes. A/A-.
__
A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in June.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Darksight Dare
Yay for a new Penric and Desdemona novella! Though really the main characters are a blind young army officer hoping for Penric’s help, and a dying hedge witch with a demon. Just another really enjoyable and kind outing in this series, and I especially enjoyed the demon’s POV. A/A-.
KJ Charles’ An Unsuitable Heir
Pretty solid wrap up to this trilogy—once again I have a slightly hard time suspending my disbelief on the romance bc although I love the characters and love them together, I just can’t deal with people professing their love after literally two weeks. One of the characters is nonbinary (not expressed in those terms, of course) which was cool. I can’t decide how I feel about the resolution of the mystery, but I liked all the other bits of the wrap-up. Fun series! A-.
KJ Charles’ An Unnatural Vice
The second book in the Sins of the Cities books involves one of the friends from the first book, a journalist, and the spiritualist who he basically thinks is a hot fraud with legs for days (actually he’s more interested in his eyes but I do like to throw in the occasional pop culture reference). Anyway, they have to team up to deal with stuff from the first book (I do appreciate that this seems to be a legit trilogy) and angrily hook up. I was a little less into the romance in this one, but the overarching mystery is pretty intriguing. A-.
KJ Charles' An Unseen Attraction
KJ Charles has a huge backlist I haven't read yet, and I was in the mood for a queer romance and/or a mystery, so here we are! One of the dudes is a taxidermist and I could have done with WAY FEWER in-depth descriptions of his art (I've been a vegetarian for 35 years lol, these images felt like a horror movie). The other dude runs a boarding house where the taxidermist lives and is adorable and awkward. Then another boarder is murdered, someone sets fire to the taxidermist's shop, like WHAT is going on, can we figure it out and also make out a bunch, adorably. I loved everything about this that didn’t involve dead animals! A/A-.
Mary Soon Lee's The Sign of the Dragon
I've heard so many good things about this book, and it lived up to the hype! I'd put off reading it because it's a fantasy novel told in poetry, which isn't a form I read much, but it works really well here (I also think it took me a little longer to read because I wasn't as able to race through it--I had to pay closer attention than I normally might). Anyway, it's the story of a young king in an Asian-inspired land, a kind young man determined to be a good king. Lots of POV sections from the people around him as well, particularly his guards. Really moving, the final confrontation didn’t totally work for me but I really loved how this all came together. A/A-.
