Tag: fantasy

The Color of Gravity: A Novel by Alison Huff

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Book 1 of the Liminal Sigh Series

The Color of Gravity: A Novel by Alison Huff

Fans of Young Adult fantasy who love the genre, with its emphasis on the discovery of self and coming-of-age stories, but who prefer a more mature protagonist will find The Color of Gravity a perfect read!

Seralynn and Bellamy are adult sisters, torn apart by the latter’s sudden and mysterious disappearance. Seralynn tries to come to terms with the loss of her sibling and her grief, but is finding it hard to let go. Then she encounters a rift in the world, one which offers her the possibility of finding Bellamy. Though torn between her grief and yearning for her sibling and fear of the unknown, Seralynn finds herself in a strange and magical world, one that is both wondrous and dark.

At the heart of this novel are the two sisters, connected together and yet, at odds, with one another as each woman seeks her own path, sometimes at the other’s expense…

Huff takes the reader into a fantasy realm; there is significant attention to world-building here — and at times the story is buried — but readers are likely to appreciate the depth Huff creates. And ultimately, the story of Seralynn and Bellamy re-emerges. Woven into their story are others Seralynn encounters on her journey: Fadrial, Asmodeus, and Tobian, among others. The novel creates a sense of community among these strange bedfellows: demons, humans, monsters, and magical creatures.

Huff’s novel is the first book in a series. I am not usually a fan of books series, simply because I do not have the attention span for it. That said, the sisters’ adventures — together or apart — will likely yield a fascinating sequel.

One Night Two Souls Went Walking: A Novel by Ellen Cooney

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One Night Two Souls Went Walking: A Novel by Ellen Cooney

This was such a beautiful, poignant story, the kind of novel that makes you wonder how permeable the line between each of us really is — or if there is even a line.

The story revolves around a nurse and her encounters with patients, coworkers — and possibly a few specters who linger in the halls of this hospital. Time and space aren’t boundaries in this story, not in the typical way narratives run. There are moments when this reader wasn’t entirely sure of what or who was real, but the thing was: it didn’t matter — and I think that was the point.

It’s hard to put this novel into a category, perhaps I shouldn’t, but readers who enjoy literary fiction, pondering life experiences, and paranormal encounters are likely to find it enjoyable.

Cooney’s style and prose was, as with her other novels. impeccably paced, succinctly evocative, perfect. There’s nothing else to say on that point, really. I cannot get enough of Cooney and have several other of her novels on my TBR.

The Lover: A Novel by Rebecca Sacks

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The Lover: A Novel by Rebecca Sacks

I can’t stop thinking about this love affair. It’s been months since I finished reading the book, but Allison and Eyal (and Timor, Aisha, Talia, and so many others) continue to occupy my thoughts, not least because the war in Gaza and the horrors that plague Palestine and Palestinians, Israeli and Israelis, remains on-going.

The Lover is a timely novel, as one which revolves around that very political and cultural conflict. But the novel offers a social perspective on how politics hits the ground, how real lives are shaped by the tragedy. The short of it, as I think most people understand, is that the situation is messy. Israelis and Palestinians, Jewish, Arab, each and every one, is woven into a fabric that cannot be unpicked, their threads too tightly interlaced for any one to be extracted without fraying, snapping, leaving a scar in the cloth. The Lover highlights that messiness, the ethical messiness, the material messiness, the psychological and emotional turmoil of Palestine and Israel.

The Lover is a love story, a romance between Allison, a half-Jewish American graduate student who has come to Israel for a semester abroad, and Eyal, a soldier in the Israeli army. To fulfill his military duty, Eyal must conduct missions in Gaza, while Allison frets and waits for his return. But there is another romance here: Allison’s as she becomes enraptured with Israel and the tensions between Jews and Arabs. This is a novel about the ethics of love, what authentic compatibility means, and the difference between passion and compassion between lovers.

What makes The Lover so compelling is that the intertwined romances here force us to confront our own biases in this or other situations. This is a story we cannot turn away from, because even as outsiders watching the news, looking in on the events in Gaza, its messiness forces us to consider what we each might do, might have to do in a similar situation.

The story, as darkly riveting as it is, is not the novels only attraction. The Lover is superbly written. This is literary fiction at its most devastating. Sacks has also clearly done an incredible amount of research, and what might be understood as ethnographic observation; the novel’s environs are so real as to transport the reader to that place, to Israel, to Gaza. The tension Sacks develops through combining research with literature results in a palpable immersion for the reader.

Moreover, Sacks’ characters are fleshy, flawed, and real. Allison is its main protagonist; it is through her voice, her thoughts, that the story is narrated (though she is not its only narrator). Readers cannot help but feel her anxiety, her excitement; as Allison falls deeper in love with Israel, readers may find they are uncomfortably immersed in Allison’s mind. This is a testament to Sacks skill with words.

The Lover is a novel I will likely return to again, perhaps more than once.

The Tragedy of Medusa: A Novel by H.M. Roberts

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The Tragedy of Medusa: A Novel by H.M. Roberts

At under 200 pages, The Tragedy of Medusa is deceptively thin. H.M. Roberts delivers a powerful and emotional alternate narrative to the myth of this complicated woman through a swiftly moving story and with a succinct use of words.

Readers should know that the novel spans the length of a lifetime, and will immerse them thoroughly in its magical timeline. I emerged from the novel feeling a kind of grief; as if I had lived alongside the woman, Medusa, herself. Having a familiarity with the original myth of Medusa is not required here; Roberts uses the mythology as a guide, but deviates from its rules to develop a compelling, deeply human tale. Through Roberts’ prose and storytelling I lived the tragedy of Medusa myself.

Readers who enjoy historical fiction, fantasy, and mythology will appreciate Roberts’ equal attention to research and reality on one hand, magic and lore on the other. As a historian and as a pleasure-reader, I appreciated how well-researched it was without being pedantic. Small details about dress and life brought a tangibility to the interactions between characters, put the story in historical context. But the novel remained focused on its story and characters, and this is ultimately what made it so compelling: Medusa, her sisters, and family were nuanced, imperfect and human, for all their divine origin, the mortal characters transcended time, feeling all too familiar despite the historical difference. Fans of literary fiction will find the deep reflection and well-crafted characters of this novel as appealing as story. Roberts’ The Tragedy of Medusa cuts across the boundaries of genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed this indie read, and would not hesitate to recommend this to other readers.

Perilous Times: A Novel by Thomas D. Lee

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Perilous Times: A Novel by Thomas D. Lee

This was, by far, the most imaginative novel I have read this year. This is speculative fiction at its very best. Perilous Times will keep you hooked from start to end.

The novel opens with a strange awakening. Kay, an Arthurian knight emerges from the earth, no longer a corpse, but alive and tasked with a mission to save Britain – only he has no clue what this means or what he has to do. Immediately, he becomes entangled with a young woman, Mariam, who is on her own mission: to rid the world of corrupt corporate leaders who are poisoning the world and leading its few remaining inhabitants closer to environmental ruin.

The novel is set in the near future, when our climate has been so altered that most of Britain is now underwater and our environment is a grey wreck. Small bands of people live in squatter-like conditions and even smaller bands of rebels have formed to bring order to the world.

Fracking and profit-greedy corporations run public operations. A magical cadre operates on the highest level of corruption and government, and they have a secret weapon: King Arthur and the immortal knights of his roundtable.

But… this all it seems? This is a world stripped of romance and chivalry, and the knights of this mythic time are no less human than those they are tasked to save.

I will leave my description there. If this has not intrigued you yet, well… Hmph.

The ending will also put you in a spiral.

Lee also delivers the story with tremendous skill, the right dollop of humor, and the perfect dry drip of British snark. This novel is a joy to read on multiple levels.

Jake West: The Keeper of the Stones by MJ Webb

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Book One of the Jake West Trilogy

Jake West: The Keeper of the Stones by MJ Webb

As I delve into self-published and independently published novels, I am also exploring outside my usual genres. I won a giveaway of this trilogy from a FB Group and was thrilled to have a chance to read a fantasy, Young Adult series.

The Keeper of the Stones introduces readers to the world of Rhuaddan, another world that exists in parallel to our own. It is a world torn to shreds by war, and Jake West belongs to a rare clan of humans who have been blessed — or cursed — with the ability to travel between this world and our own. Jake and his friend Ben discover this rare talent while rummaging through Jake’s grandfather’s attic. The results are catastrophic — and adventurous! The novel leads the reader into a world of high fantasy, a quest-driven journey of these two human boys through a non-human world as they seek to protect stones which could lead to the destruction of worlds. I will leave the reader to discover the consequences and ending themselves (hint: there are two more books in the series!)

This Jake West novel would appeal to those who enjoyed the classic, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and the rest of the Narnia novels, as well as those who appreciate the classic fantasy realms in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels. The Jake West trilogy draws from both of these classic series, producing a narrative along similar lines; though, of course, the world of Rhuaddan is unique.

The story aside, Webb’s prose is smooth and error-free. Some parts feel plodding, offering — in this reader’s view — a little too much exposition that does not add to the characters’ development or the development of the story. Its pacing was slower than this reader would have liked; in several chapters I wished for less exposition and world-building, and a more rapid unfolding of Jake and Ben’s story. But, this is likely because world-building is not a particular favorite subject; fantasy is not my cup of tea in general. That said, Webb provides ample world-building and a fully fleshed out landscape for the fantasy reader; as a historian I deeply appreciated the attention to Rhuaddan’s past to understand its present. Overall, Webb’s writing is sound and its language is well-suited to its audience of young adults.

Now, onto Book Two…

Beyond the Trees: A Novel by Christopher Renna

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Beyond the Trees: A Novel
by Christopher Renna

Not my usual cup of tea, but this Young Adult bildungsroman/fantasy/horror did keep me on the edge of my reading chair! Beyond the Trees is novel about a pair of brothers, the younger is our protagonist and narrator, around whom the novel revolves.

The novel opens with Caden and Ansel Murphy, young men surviving high school and all the angst that time and space engenders. Caden struggles to belong; Ansel does not. Living in a small town rife with prejudices of all kinds, but especially against queerness, the younger brother wrestles with identity as a gay man. Renna successfully weaves in social commentary and lessons about inclusion into the story; what is means to be a man, what manhood looks like, “should” or “could” look like, expectations and realities. Ansel embodies the idealized version of manhood, finding it easier to settle into this cultural environment. But the events of the novel reverse the brothers’ roles, and in doing so, challenge the norms of manhood.

One night, Ansel goes missing. The cause is unclear. There are rumors of paranormal phenomena. In the course of recovering Ansel, Caden finds himself in a strange place, one that seems like it could not exist, a fantasy land. As grounded in reality as the novel is, much of it takes place in this fantasy location, the narrative arc of this part of the story mimicking the classic Hero’s Journey. This is the land beyond the trees.

The story is simple, but the undercurrent of social and cultural commentary complicates it in a very appealing way. Additionally, Renna’s smooth prose, swift propulsion of the story, and fleshed-out characters renders a well-crafted novel.