Twins Natasha and Clara have always been two sides of the same coin, cursed and blessed in equal measure by their godfather, the sorcerer Drosselmeyer. Clara is beauty and light incarnate, but has little interest in understanding the world around her; Natasha may be dark and homely, but she has a penetrating mind. On the night of their family’s Christmas Eve soiree, Natasha seeks revenge for another of her sister’s thoughtless betrayals. Using one of her godfather’s magical gifts to travel to the deceptively beautiful Kingdom of Sweets, Natasha meets the Sugar Plum Fairy, a demonic being whose power and vindictiveness are neither sweet nor fanciful. Natasha’s deal with the fairy sunders the sisters and changes her life forever, pulling her into a web of power far greater than her godfather’s paltry tricks.
Set in the wintry, decadent atmosphere of late-19th century Russia, Erika Johansen’s The Kingdom of Sweets puts a disturbing twist on the classic Nutcracker, transporting readers into a world where dark bargains lurk beneath ornate facades. Johansen explores the casualties of the era’s gender and beauty politics, and every display of the excesses of the Russian Empire comes with the knowledge that revolution is only a few years away.
In this retelling, even the traditional wonders of the holiday tale, from its delicate dancing fairies to its sugared delights, are but illusions hiding the Sugar Plum Fairy’s true identity and motives. Hers are not the only obfuscated intentions, however. Johansen delves into the dissonance between how her characters present to the world and the truth of their hearts. From Conrad, Natasha’s former lover whose straightforward nature Natasha mistakes for true kindness, to Drosselmeyer, whose cruelty is just a byproduct of his greater aims, The Kingdom of Sweets is rife with characters who use their status or polite misdirection to hide their true faces.
Just like its characters, The Kingdom of Sweets has hidden depths: Lyrical and terrifying, itis just as likely to disturb as it is to enchant.
Erika Johansen’s lyrical and terrifying retelling of The Nutcracker is just as likely to disturb as it is to enchant.
Ally Wilkes takes readers on a journey beyond their wildest nightmares in Where the Dead Wait, which follows two 19th-century Arctic expeditions gone extremely wrong.
William Day is a young sailor who reluctantly steps up to take command of the crew of Reckoning when the men are marooned in frigid waters in 1896. Day depends on the guidance of his ruthless, mysterious right-hand man, Jesse Stevens—and grapples with clandestine romantic feelings for him. Chaos and cannibalism ensue before their rescue, after which Day is castigated as the heartless butcher of the North, while the lauded Stevens evades ostracization. An ominous 13 years later, Stevens goes missing in the Arctic and Day is called upon to lead the crew sent to uncover whatever might remain of him—and, horrifically, the trail of mutilated and dead bodies he’s left behind.
Where the Dead Wait is an exemplary (and gruesome) character study. Day begins his seafaring career as a hopeful 24-year-old, only to find himself making increasingly heinous judgment calls when matters get out of hand. Nightmarish flashbacks to that traumatic time plague Day as he helms the rescue expedition for Stevens, memories that Wilkes makes increasingly chilling. To make things even more difficult, Day is also saddled with Stevens’ spirit-medium wife, an American reporter who is too nosy for his own good and a crew that is all too familiar with his reputation and ready to mutiny at any moment. As the waters grow more perilous and his post-traumatic stress symptoms swell with every wave, Day must contend with the ghosts of all his worst sins, which may be on the verge of taking corporeal form.
With its slow-burn pacing and array of creative body horror surprises, Where the Dead Wait is perfect for fans of “Yellowjackets” and The Thing. Embarking with Day on his ghostly voyage is not an easy task but the rewarding end of this haunting adventure makes the harrowing journey worth it.
Where the Dead Wait is an exemplary (and gruesome) character study of a Victorian sailor who must confront the terrible things he did to survive a harrowing shipwreck.
Ever since I was a kid, I have loved reading books featuring a haunted house with a creepy resident; a feisty, determined heroine; and strange goings-on that gradually turn scary. But rarely, if ever, have I read a haunted house book that features such gorgeous prose as Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel, Starling House. Early on, Harrow describes how 26-year-old narrator Opal McCoy has been dreaming of the titular house since she was a child: “I often wake up with the taste of river water and blood in my mouth, broken glass in my hair, a scream drowning in my chest. But that morning, the first one after I set foot on Starling land, there’s nothing but a deep quiet inside me, like the dead air between radio stations.”
Opal works hard at Tractor Supply Company to try to save enough money to send her younger brother, Jasper, to a fancy boarding school. Their mother died a mysterious death, their father has never been in the picture and they live in a dingy motel room in the dying town of Eden, Kentucky. Opal is desperate to escape Eden, which offers nothing much besides two Dollar Generals and a strip-mined stretch of riverbank, thanks to the operations of nearby Gravely Power.
The big, churning wheels of this lusciously plotted book begin to quickly turn when Opal takes a job cleaning for Starling House’s current owner, a reclusive young man named Arthur Starling. Opal finds herself increasingly intrigued by Arthur despite his odd ways and off-putting looks. But Gravely Power representative Elizabeth Baine, in hopes of obtaining the mineral rights to Arthur’s land, demands that Opal spy on Arthur and his residence, threatening Jasper’s future if she declines.
Harrow invents a rich backstory for Starling House, making clever use of footnotes and even a fake Wikipedia page for 19th-century author Eleanor Starling, who married into the family and wrote and illustrated an unsettling children’s book, which may have been the source of Opal’s Starling House nightmares. Opal uncovers many different versions of the same stories about the house and its inhabitants, past and present, and the truth is hard to sort out. “The Gravelys are either victims or villains; Eleanor Starling is either a wicked woman or a desperate girl. Eden is either cursed, or merely getting its comeuppance,” she concludes.
Excellent social commentary unfolds in the matchup between feisty, sarcastic Opal and the greedy power company. Harrow has tons of fun along the way, noting in Eleanor Starling’s Wikipedia page, for instance, that “director Guillermo del Toro has praised E. Starling’s work, and thanked her for teaching him that ‘the purpose of fantasy is not to make the world prettier, but to lay it bare.’ ” Alix Harrow does just that in Starling House, a riveting fantasy overflowing with ideas and energy that clears away the cobwebs of corporate power and neglect.
Alix E. Harrow’s Starling House is a riveting Southern gothic fantasy with gorgeous prose and excellent social commentary.
Empty nester Margaret Hartman is thrilled when she and her husband, Hal, buy a gorgeous old Victorian home. But the house soon begins testing them with annual September “shenanigans”: blood oozing down the walls, creepy spirits of 19th-century children and a demonic boogeyman that even an experienced priest can’t exorcize. Margaret and Hal weather three cursed Septembers, but Margaret in particular is in it for the long haul. When Hal disappears on the eve of the fourth September and his and Margaret’s daughter, Katherine, arrives to search for him, family secrets are brought to light.
From the ghost of a murdered maid to swarms of giant flies, the house’s antics become routine for Margaret, and her wry, witty narration will also accustom readers to these supernatural events. Despite the house’s horrors, it still provides Margaret with a haven, a purpose and an emotional connection to an eerie spirit community. But when author Carissa Orlando reveals why Margaret is so good at putting out proverbial fires and quelling very real ghosts, The September House takes an unexpected emotional turn. Margaret knows that ugly secrets can be carried well beyond the grave, and it’s better to heal, forgive and protect when you can. Her interactions with Katherine are particularly tense and anxiety-inducing as Orlando explores an estranged parent-child relationship impacted by intergenerational trauma.
The September House pulls inspiration from classic settings such as the Bates Motel, Rose Red, the Overlook Hotel and Hill House, but Orlando’s characterization of the old Victorian is fresh and fascinating. The house serves as an analogy for the deterioration of family and mental health, with the collapse of a person’s mind being more terrifying than any specter lurking in the shadows. Some of the body horror moments may feel familiar, but Margaret’s delightfully matter-of-fact voice puts a new spin on even the oldest of tropes, and the novel’s horrifying events unfold at a furious pace. The September House is a riveting adventure that will grab you by the ankles and drag you down into the pitch-black basement you’ve been warned to avoid.
Carissa Orlando’s darkly funny and unexpectedly emotional The September House follows an empty nester who refuses to leave her extremely haunted Victorian home.
Do you ever get a little creeped out when you visit your grandparents’ house? There’s something about the stillness of unused rooms and the sweet, dusty smell that can give you a slight sense of dread. But if you were to visit the Montgomery house in T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones, you’d leave with more than an uneasy feeling. In fact, you might not leave at all! (Cue thunder and lightning.)
Sam Montgomery has to move back in with her mom. The archaeoentomologist’s latest dig (she studies insects in archeological sites) has been put on an indefinite hold, but the good news is that Sam loves her mom, Edie, who lives in Sam’s grandmother’s old house in rural North Carolina. But Edie seems tired and nervous, very unlike her normal self. Sam has strange dreams about her dead grandmother, vultures circle outside all day, ladybugs spill out of the faucets and Sam swears that bony fingers touch her hair in the middle of the night. But Sam’s a scientist. Shouldn’t there be a reasonable explanation for all of this? Determined to find out the truth, Sam starts unearthing secrets about her family that were better left undisturbed.
Kingfisher is in her element when the tension is at its highest. She keeps a narrow focus on Sam and the handful of other major characters, amplifying the sensation that threats are imminent. Danger in horror can sometimes feel arbitrary and nonspecific, but in this house, you know what’s haunting you. As things get stranger and stranger, the writing gets choppier, like Sam’s panting breath and racing heart. And Kingfisher isn’t afraid to embrace the weird: A House With Good Bones’ climax is strange, scary and unforgettable.
That being said, don’t write off this book if you’re not a horror enthusiast—A House With Good Bones is also laugh-out-loud funny. Sam’s inner monologue is full of hilarious observations about living with her mom, not having reliable internet and simply being 32. The aforementioned vultures? They have names and belong to a neighbor. The book is balanced with knife’s-edge precision between fright and humor in a way that brings Jordan Peele’s sensational Get Out to mind. You’ll be craving the next tense moment, because it means the next joke is right around the corner too.
A House With Good Bones shares another key trait with Get Out: Both works derive their frightening power from placing reasonable people in unreasonable circumstances and forcing them to respond. It’s nerve-wracking for a character to ask “Is this real?” when faced with something strange; it’s downright terrifying when the answer is “Yes.”
Impressively weird, nerve-wracking but still laugh-out-loud funny, A House With Good Bones is another horror hit from T. Kingfisher.
Louise Joyner left home as soon as she could, fleeing the humidity of Charleston, South Carolina, for a career in industrial design in Silicon Valley. Her brother, Mark, stayed put, his meandering and dysfunctional lifestyle patronized to his face and savaged in his absence by his family, as is so often the case with mildly disappointing scions of good Southern families. But now, Louise and Mark must figure out what to do with the relics of their recently departed parents’ lives: their father’s idiosyncratic economics research, their mother’s vast collection of Christian puppets and their house. However, some revenants will not go quietly into that good night. There are burdens this family has politely buried for far too long, and the Joyners are about to discover that some hauntings are neither stagecraft nor hellspawn. Some hauntings are homemade.
Author Grady Hendrix is a Charleston native, and How to Sell a Haunted House completely nails its Lowcountry setting. This reviewer is also a South Carolinian and can confirm that neither the idea of a Christian puppet ministry nor the actual Fellowship of Christian Puppeteers are made up. The depiction of Carolina culture is also accurate, especially Hendrix’s portrayal of how someone who grew up in it, left and then came back would perceive it: familiar and peculiar, unsettling and comforting, prompting a reckoning with how deeply strange its version of normal truly is. Hendrix only departs from this reality in one way: In no gauzy South Carolina summer that I can recall did the knickknacks acquire a vengeful sentience and wreak havoc on the strained psyches of a family’s prodigal offspring.
How to Sell a Haunted House effectively marries tropes ripped straight from the pages of a midcentury pulp magazine to a Pat Conroy-esque chronicle of Lowcountry generational trauma. Families are warm and lovely but also stifling, just like the summers; rituals are banal but also sacred, their violation the gravest of transgressions; and there are always skeletons (or puppets) in the sewing closets. How to Sell a Haunted House may be a heightened tale of horror, but it is built on something true. And it’s a lot of fun, as well.
How to Sell a Haunted House blends pulp horror with a Pat Conroy-esque chronicle of Lowcountry generational trauma—plus haunted puppets.
A woman in search of a husband finds one with more than his fair share of deadly secrets in the latest atmospheric, well-plotted horror novel from author Caitlin Starling.
The Death of Jane Lawrence takes place in an alternate version of Victorian-era Britain, known as Great Bretlain. The eponymous heroine is headstrong, wonderfully smart and knows that to live independently, she must wed. It seems illogical, but finding the right man would allow Jane to continue her own hobbies and pursuits, as a married woman is afforded far more freedom than an unmarried maiden.
Bachelor Augustine Lawrence, the only doctor in town, seems like a fine option for Jane. He agrees without too much fuss, under one simple condition: Jane must never visit his ancestral home. She’s to spend her nights above his medical practice, while he retires to Lindridge Hall for the evening. Eventually, of course, Jane finds herself spending the night at Lindridge Hall following a carriage accident, and where she slowly and methodically uncovers the skeletons lurking in Augustine’s closet.
Anyone who has ever read a gothic novel knows exactly where this is going, but Starling does a magnificent, twisted job steering clear of the obvious plot beats. There are surprises galore in the secrets these characters keep and the lengths they’ll go to conceal them. Key to many a successful horror novel is having a main character to root for, one whom readers will want to see come out of everything not only alive but also stronger. Jane is absolutely that kind of character, a beacon of light in a dark world through her sheer tenacity alone, making her exploration of Lindridge Hall a white-knuckle reading experience.
Fans of Starling’s debut, the sci-fi horror novel The Luminous Dead, will find the same steadily growing sense of eeriness here, despite the markedly different setting. Jane isn’t exploring caves on an alien planet, but her journey still feels claustrophobic, almost asphyxiated by the estate’s mysterious walls. Are the horrors she senses of a supernatural nature? Or are they merely born of a man with too many internal demons? “Both” is also an option, and Starling keeps readers guessing until the very end.
For those who crave intense and detailed gothic horror, or those who just want more Guillermo del Toro a la Crimson Peak vibes in their life, The Death of Jane Lawrence is a must-read.
A woman in search of a husband finds one with more than his fair share of deadly secrets in the latest atmospheric, well-plotted horror novel from author Caitlin Starling.
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Veteran narrators Michael Kramer and Kate Reading return to this fantastical world, along with a new POV portrayed by Marisa Calin.
V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic.
Prepare for tangled schemes and perilous adventures with friends old and new in The Fragile Threads of Power.
Once, there were four worlds, nestled like pages in a book, each pulsing with fantastical power and connected by a single city: London. Until the magic grew too fast and forced the worlds to seal the doors between them in a desperate gamble to protect their own. The few magicians who could still open the doors grew more rare as time passed and now, only three Antari are known in recent memory—Kell Maresh of Red London, Delilah Bard of Grey London, and Holland Vosijk, of White London.
But barely a glimpse of them have been seen in the last seven years—and a new Antari named Kosika has appeared in White London, taking the throne in Holland’s absence. The young queen is willing to feed her city with blood, including her own—but her growing religious fervor has the potential to drown it instead.
And back in Red London, King Rhy Maresh is threatened by a rising rebellion, one determined to correct the balance of power by razing the throne entirely.
These two royals from very different empires now face very similar struggles: how to keep their crowns—and their own heads.
Amidst this tapestry of old friends and new enemies, a girl with an unusual magical ability comes into possession of a device that could change the fate of all four worlds.
Her name is Tes, and she’s the only one who can bring them together—or unravel it all.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books.
V. E. Schwab, bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic, narrated by Kate Reading, Marisa Calin and Michael Kramer.
Long before the events of Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s bestselling novel about an orc who opens a coffee shop, Viv was a young warrior who acted first and asked questions later—and it got her into trouble. While on the hunt with her mercenary companions for the necromancer Varine, Viv takes a sword to the leg, temporarily hobbling her and leaving her stranded in the town of Murk, far from the front and feeling absolutely useless. With her expenses temporarily paid for by her boss, Viv is left with nothing to do but concentrate on healing. Boredom and curiosity draw her to Fern, the rattkin (a toddler-sized talking rat) purveyor of a failing bookstore on Murk’s outskirts. In Viv, Fern sees a book lover who just doesn’t know it yet. In Fern, Viv sees a new friend in need of a helping hand. As their friendship grows, Viv looks for ways to help Fern turn her failing bookshop into a place where people actually want to be. Together, they build a community of found family and literary enthusiasm that sustains them both. But the darkness that Viv once chased lurks on the horizon. In order to protect her temporary home, Viv will need to trust in the new friends she has grown to love, even as she knows that none of it can last.
Bookshops & Bonedust is the perfect prequel to Legends & Lattes. Seeing Viv before she leaves the mercenary life for good gives fans of Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy novel a new perspective on a beloved character. The Viv of this book is a little more rough around the edges: She hasn’t learned to love books (yet) and the sword is the only life she’s ever known. Her transformation via the powers of friendship and a good story is the soul of Bookshops & Bonedust. Baldree’s sophomore novel is comfortable in its pacing and generous with its characterization. It thrives in the “medium stakes”: danger is present in the background, but nothing ever feels so pressing that readers are legitimately worried for the characters. And since readers already know that Viv survives to retirement, Bookshops’ dark action subplot is still relatively lighthearted. The lack of real danger gives the characters freedom to explore and grow outside the context of a standard fantasy adventure story, keeping Viv and her new friends the focal point of the story.
Baldree’s novel revels in those budding (but time-limited) friendships. As in Legends & Lattes, what romance exists between Viv and her compatriots is fairly chaste and builds relatively slowly. This isn’t a book for grand gestures or dramatic declarations of love. After all, we know going into this book that Viv isn’t with any of her friends from Murk in Legends & Lattes. Instead, Bookshops & Bonedust is a gentle, relatively quiet story perfectly designed for people who love books. It’s also a great entry point for anyone who wants to start the series—just wait to read the epilogue if you don’t want spoilers for Legends & Lattes!
Bookshops & Bonedust is the perfect prequel to Legends & Lattes: a gentle, relatively quiet story perfectly designed for people who love books.
The leader of a family of thieves, Balthazar Valdaren is about to attempt the most challenging heist of his career: pilfering a jade idol right out from under the nose of its owner, on the day of its consecration. From that description, a reader might expect this story to be about a crew of con men in the early 21st century. Instead, Greta Kelly’s TheQueen of Days takes readers to the island of Cothis, in a fantasy realm resembling the 17th century. The swagger and the cons are still here, but instead of casinos and 21st-century technology, Balthazar and his crew are tangling with gods and demigods.
Kelly begins by introducing the book’s other primary protagonist: the Queen of Days, Tassiel. Tassiel, who will be joining Bal on the job, is one of the Septiniri: half-human, half-Ankaari, a god that can manipulate time. Bal and his crew—his bastard brother, Kai; his cousin Zee and her husband, Edik; and Bal’s young sister, Mira—quickly discover just how powerful a Septinri can be. Tass, as the Queen of Days prefers to be called, charges each crew member a month of their life to help them with the heist.
After that less-than-happy revelation, the action begins and does not let up. Balthazar, Tass and their scrappy crew run from planning to fighting to hiding to heisting with a ferocity that makes the book difficult to put down. Kelly efficiently relays the crew’s history and relationships through their interactions: Kai makes an off-color comment, Edik admonishes him, Zee rolls her eyes, then Bal keeps the plan moving. These quick moments of characterization allow Kelly to focus on the beat-to-beat action without pausing for exposition. As the outcast in more ways than one, Tass is the only exception. The chapters from her point of view are far more introspective as she learns new things about herself and the humans she is helping.
By the end of the book, some amount of heisting has completed, Tass has grown and evolved as a result of her time with the crew, and the stage is set for this motley team’s next adventure. TheQueen of Days is a fantastic piece of escapist fantasy for readers looking to leave planet Earth for a few hundred pages.
A fantasy following a crew of thieves and con men on an increasingly dangerous heist, The Queen of Days is a fantastic piece of escapism.
Her Majesty's Royal Coven uses the setting of an alternate Britain where witchcraft is real to mount a delightful and thoughtful exploration of modern feminism.
Somewhere beneath the surface of the world, an ancient evil sleeps. The Nameless One, a wyrm so powerful that it once threatened the very fabric of life, is bound beneath the Earth’s crust, in its molten interior. Some think that its defeat came at the hands of a knight named Galian. Those who follow Galian’s teachings believe that his heirs, a line of uncannily identical queens, are all that stand between the world and destruction. Others attest that Cleolind, the queen whom Galian sought to marry, defeated the beast.
While the old danger sleeps, the Earth has become restless, with volcanoes spewing new terrors in the form of beasts and wyrms. If the world is to survive, its people must learn how to subdue these powerful beasts. For Dumai, the crown princess of Seiiki who has been raised in a remote temple, that will mean learning how to call down the gods to save her people. For Glorian, princess and heir to Sir Galian’s legacy, that will mean sacrificing her childhood for the greater good. And for Tunuva and the rest of the women of the Priory of the Orange Tree, a religious order that Cleolind founded, that will mean fighting in a battle they’ve trained for but hoped would never come. And for all involved, it will require uncommon courage and a will to triumph.
A Day of Fallen Night is Samantha Shannon’s return to the world of The Priory of the Orange Tree and a prequel to that novel. It is a massive undertaking, clocking in at nearly 900 pages, but with its careful plotting and brilliantly developed cast of characters, it is worth every paragraph. Shannon covers both grand high fantasy themes and more down-to-earth ones, touching on everything from court intrigue and the terrifying frenzy of battle to tender domestic moments.
The novel overflows with characters whose wins you’ll cheer for and whose failures you’ll mourn. Shannon examines the relationship between mother and child, including the grief that comes with the loss of a child, the hope that a new generation brings and the frustration of trying to live up to your forerunners’ expectations. Her female characters are fierce, but they’re also vulnerable, clever and lonely. At times, her poetic prose overwhelms the senses with sumptuous detail and explosive energy. In other moments, she paints complex emotions with goosebump-inducing empathy.
You don’t need to have read The Priory of the Orange Tree to enjoy A Day of Fallen Night. But know that the pull of the priory is strong: Whichever book you start with, you’ll likely want to have the next one close at hand.
Samantha Shannon’s prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree is just as sumptuous and explosive, immersing readers in a world on the brink of destruction.
After 15 glorious years exploring the 12th-century Indian Ocean with her tightknit crew—acquiring precious jewels and artifacts, prevailing in all manner of violent encounters and reveling in the wildness of life on the sea—pirate captain Amina al-Sirafi grounded herself. Why, after all her legendary adventures, would she leave behind her beloved Marawati and abandon the great wide ocean? Because she gave birth to her daughter, Marjana, whom she wants to protect from the sorts of people she used to live among—the sort of person she used to be herself.
But as Shannon Chakraborty’s historical fantasy The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi begins, the past calls to Amina in the form of an irresistible job offer from the wealthy and imperious mother of Amina’s former crewmate Asif. Asif’s daughter has been kidnapped, and if Amina can rescue the girl, she will receive a million dinars, a life-changing sum that could buy the security and privacy she craves. “It was tempting,” Amina thinks. “It was tantalizing. It was me. For I have always had a gambler’s soul . . .”
Desire and ambition prevail over misgivings, and Amina returns to the sea after 10 years in hiding, convincing her former crew to join her once again. They encounter people, creatures and secrets that inspire fascination right along with terror and doubt. After all, everyone is older, wiser and burdened by regrets about roads (well, sea routes) not taken. But they’re also thrilled to be together again, and Chakraborty creates a rousing and inspiring portrait of the beautiful alchemy that results when a group of people fit perfectly together, challenging and supporting one another in invaluable and often hilarious ways.
As in Chakraborty’s internationally bestselling Daevabad trilogy, magic and dark forces and bizarre beings pop up in the pages of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, the first volume in a new trilogy. Impressively researched history underpins it all, offering fascinating context and realism that elevate this swashbuckling, adventurous tale of a fantastical heist as it explores parenthood, faith, ambition, friendship and the enduring allure of forging a legacy.
Shannon Chakraborty’s follow-up to her bestselling Daevabad trilogy is a swashbuckling high seas quest that’s rousing, profound and irresistible.
When you get home from a stressful day at work, do you kick back with a nice cold beer? Or do you prefer hemlock tea? In Hannah Whitten’s The Foxglove King, poisons are drugs that produce a potent magical high. Full of courtly intrigue, smart characters and will-they-won’t-they romance, The Foxglove King is a heady concoction that will satiate anyone looking for an absorbing new fantasy world.
Lore is a poison dealer in the city of Dellaire, and she has a huge secret: She was born into a cult of death-worshipping witches. After she escaped as an adolescent, she swore she’d never let the witches find her again. It’s easy to hide in Dellaire’s underground, but it’s a lot harder to hide when you’re arrested by the soldier-monks of the Presque Mort for dealing poison and forced to serve the Sainted King in his court. Trapped, Lore must use her street smarts to investigate a series of terrible attacks on border towns across the kingdom. To top it off, she’s right in the middle of a tense feud between the king’s son, Bastian, and her Presque Mort guardian, Gabriel. It’s going to take all of Lore’s cunning and skill to survive the court and uncover the mystery behind the attacks.
The Foxglove King is built on opposites: death magic versus life magic, wealth versus poverty, pain versus pleasure and truth versus fiction. But what makes this book so fascinating is Whitten’s willingness to subvert expectations. Sometimes, diametrically opposed forces work better together than against each other. Such is the case with Bastian and Gabriel. Former friends, these very different men become more complex characters over the course of the narrative, each one enriched and challenged by Lore. The love triangle among them adds texture but never distracts from the central storyline.
Medieval-adjacent fantasy societies can feel stuffy and ancient, but Whitten cannily avoids this trap. Her characters speak with a modern sensibility, which makes the story accessible and often heightens the tension. Lore is a fun guide throughout, snarky and confident one moment, vulnerable and thoughtful the next. Her depth and complexity as a protagonist bode well for future entries in the Nightshade Crown series, with Whitten skillfully tying Lore’s background into the reveals about the broader universe and its unique, dangerous and more than a little creepy magic system. (A dead god buried deep under the city is leaking death magic that infects everything in Dellaire? Rad.)
Whitten’s already gained a following with her Wilderwood duology, and the perfectly balanced Foxglove Kingproves that her success was not a fluke.
Hannah Whitten gained a following with her Wilderwood duology, and the perfectly balanced Foxglove King proves that her success was not a fluke.
Biddy lives on the secret island of Hy-Brasil at the beginning of the 20th century, her only human contact being the kind but mercurial Irish magician Rowan (when he isn’t a raven) and his companion, Hutchincroft (when he isn’t a rabbit). Hy-Brasil has been particularly blessed by magic, which seeps into existence from some unspecified ether, suffusing the world with good fortune and happy circumstances. However, magic has been growing scarce, and mages have become misers. Rowan has been doing what he can, leaving the island to raid his fellow magicians’ storehouses and let a little luck back into the world. Until, one day, he doesn’t come back, and Biddy must leave the island for the first time and go to England in order to find him.
A pandemic project for author H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter was clearly influenced by the enforced isolation of lockdown and the inescapable fear that the world might actually be a dismally unjust place. There are subtle allusions to the Victorian novels that are Biddy’s collective almanac to the world beyond Hy-Brasil, from workhouses and tubercular young women to subversions of traditional gender roles that somehow still end in marriage. But Parry has not crafted a dystopia. Rather, she infuses the book’s industrial-era grime with a literal manifestation of optimism: magic.
The Magician’s Daughter is beautifully crafted, balancing a lushly detailed 1912 London with a narrative leanness. It’s reminiscent of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell—if Susanna Clarke were an optimist. It’s a story about an imperfect world that desperately wants to be better, where true evil is an aberration and even monsters may be redeemed. Biddy meets various mages on her journey to find Rowan, and most of their grievances are petty things, twisted beyond recognition by too many decades of coiled resentments and having to fight off one anothers’ magic. Even the villains are more greedy and corrupt than anything, motivated by human failings rather than inhuman desires. In these pages, idealism is a virtue and the world can be saved by the magic in an ordinary girl’s heart.
This is not the kind of fantasy that exposes society’s ills or probes some deep philosophical conundrum. Rather, it is representative of the escapist optimism that COVID-19 seemed to engender. In the face of an unrelentingly depressing reality, where every headline portends some creative new doom humankind must overcome, Parry writes of climbing out from the impending abyss. And she does it well enough that even devotees of fantasy’s darker halls will take solace in this little corner of storybook endings and happily ever afters.
Even devotees of fantasy’s darker corners will take solace in The Magician’s Daughter, a little paean to storybook endings and happily ever afters.
Anyone embarking on a boat-based vacation should not expect to encounter Shannon Chakraborty on the lido deck. It’s not that she has anything against shuffleboard, per se; it’s more of a self-preservational instinct. “The idea of open ocean terrifies me,” the bestselling fantasy author explained in a call from her home in New Jersey. “I joke with my family that I will never go on a cruise. I love the water, but I have enough fear and respect for it that I never want to be out of sight of land.”
Fortunately for her fans—all around the world, as her work has been published in more than a dozen languages—Chakraborty’s imagination is not so landlocked. In The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, her inventive and exhilarating start to a new historical fantasy trilogy, the author enters full pirate mode. Her titular protagonist is a seasoned 12th-century sea captain who’s lured out of self-imposed retirement by an offer she can neither resist nor refuse.
Amina left home at age 16 and was at sea for 15 years, becoming one of the most notorious pirates in the Indian Ocean. But after her daughter, Marjana, was born, Amina left her criminal activities behind, choosing instead to hunker down in her family’s mountainous home in southern Arabia, surrounded by jungle that protects them from prying eyes but close enough to the coast to hear the sea.
” . . . you can love your children, they are the center of your world . . . but you can still want more.”
Staying in one place for 10 years has stirred up a discomfiting swirl of emotions in Amina. The time with her daughter is precious, as is the knowledge that staying away from the ocean has kept them safe. But Amina also misses the freedom of doing whatever she desired, surrounded by her crew, a loyal and talented found family that understood and reveled in the thrill of never knowing where they’d end up next.
Thus, Amina is particularly primed to accept an unexpected offer from Salima, the uber-wealthy mother of Amina’s former crewman Asif. Asif’s daughter has been kidnapped, and if Amina can figure out who captured her and bring her home, the reward money means Amina will never again have to worry about providing for her family. And, most enticingly, it’s a chance for Amina to achieve one last impossible victory, which could boost her legacy from well known and slightly infamous to unquestionably legendary.
Amina’s powerful combination of fierce maternal instinct and undeniable ambition was top of mind for Chakraborty as she embarked on her new literary adventure, which began mere months after she concluded her beloved Daevabad trilogy with 2020’s TheEmpire of Gold.
When Chakraborty began writing TheCity of Brass, the first book in the trilogy, “I never actually imagined I would be a published author,” she says. “I had slight hopes, but I was [writing] mostly to keep my sanity.” She was caring for her newborn daughter and working full time while her husband contended with a demanding medical residency. “I wrote as enjoyment so I could play in the historical worlds I loved,” she says, having always wanted to pursue a graduate degree in medieval history. And then, she says with a laugh, “when the books went to auction, I was like, okay, I guess I do this now!”
Although she was an established and acclaimed author by the time the COVID-19 pandemic began, Chakraborty was consumed by uncertainty when virtual schooling took over her home life. “I think we can kind of forget the doom of that first six months of the pandemic,” she says. “I just assumed I was never going to have time to write again. And it almost felt selfish; my husband was treating COVID patients and my daughter was having an incredibly difficult time.”
But then, she says, “I pushed into that, because I wanted to write about parenthood and motherhood and talk about the points where you can love your children, they are the center of your world . . . but you can still want more. And it’s not selfish to want that.”
The thought of other mothers experiencing the same feelings led to the creation of Amina, a woman who deeply loves her daughter but is also proud of her decades of experience as a ship’s captain and the accompanying wide range of skills she’s developed, from prevailing in hand-to-hand combat to diffusing crew quarrels to navigating stormy seas. “I wanted to write a story for us,” Chakraborty says of her fellow mothers, “and talk about how that [struggle] is something that has always happened.”
“Adventure doesn’t stop when you’re 22 years old . . .”
Chakraborty also drew on her abiding affinity for the ancient past. “My love of history has always come before my love of fantasy,” she says. “I was one of those strange kids reading up on the Titanic at 9 years old.” That zeal for research has helped Chakraborty immerse herself and her readers in fabulous and fantastical new worlds. The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi’s Indian Ocean setting is rife with danger and intrigue, peopled with memorable characters, crackling magic and supernatural creatures. “I always found the idea of these littoral oceanic societies fascinating,” Chakraborty says. “We look for land-based empires and trade routes, and we don’t really look at the ways that oceans and seas connect people. . . . You see a lot of shared cultures and storytelling, and you find very similar stories in India that you then find in Yemen and in East Africa.”
One of those common elements, per her extensive research, was a pervasive belief in the supernatural. “Magic was just considered real,” she says. “It was accepted by a majority of the population.” Chakraborty knows that this concept “could be difficult for modern readers to understand, but if you’re going to write about the past you’ve got to write about where people were coming from.”
Chakraborty is constantly thinking about the disparity between historical reality and the false impressions people draw from what is taught in school or gleaned from popular culture. “Not everybody is privileged to go to college and take undergraduate and graduate courses on history, so a lot of what we understand of the past is very much determined by fictional presentations of it,” she says. “And when we have discussions of the medieval world in particular, especially in the West, we often have this very grim, dark idea that Europe was [completely] white, we talk about the Dark Ages when everything was miserable for women . . . but you have to peel back and say, well, where did those ideas come from? What work are we highlighting?”
The author provides suggestions for further reading on her website, hoping to stimulate such questions in pursuit of a more critical discourse. “By being able to show my receipts and my historical work,” Chakraborty says, “I’m [encouraging] my readers to look at the past a little differently.”
Another shift in perspective that Chakraborty is passionate about is her certainty that fantasy has room for exciting, inspiring stories about women who are no longer in their 20s. She says, “Adventure doesn’t stop when you’re 22 years old, and so much fantasy is focused on this extremely narrow age range. . . . But you still don’t know what you’re doing at 40 or 50, you still make mistakes, you’re still trying to have fun and take care of your family.”
“I also feel like life experiences do matter and time does matter,” Chakraborty adds. “It would be completely unfathomable to me that Amina’s crew would be able to work on this mystery if they hadn’t been at sea and sailing and learning and thieving and poisoning and researching for the past 20 or 30 years. You need those talents, and they take time.”
Having a middle-aged woman as a protagonist also allowed Chakraborty to explore complex themes of faith and growth. “I wanted to write a story about a character who deals with struggle and hardship in a way that comes back to her faith,” she says. “Amina is a devout Muslim, but she’s also someone who is very open about the ways she has failed, particularly in her early life. She’s a pirate, she’s a criminal, she was a thief and murderer, and she’s still coming back to religion and to God in ways that I felt we don’t have a lot of stories about—people who fail and then find their faith later in life.”
“As someone who is religious myself,” she adds, “it speaks to an idea of mercy and compassion about God and about faith that I don’t think we see enough or talk about enough.”
Readers curious about how this new series will diverge from Chakraborty’s previous books will be interested to know that “whereas the Daevabad trilogy was told from the point of view of magical creatures, this book is very much from the point of view of the humans who have to deal with them.” She also says that “there are lots of Easter eggs, and a character from Daevabad does show up.”
After all, Chakraborty says with the sort of enthusiasm that any bibliophile will recognize, “All of history is a story. It’s how we understand the world, how we understand the past, how we put facts together, how we describe anything. Everything is story. . . . I think it’s probably one of the most profoundly human things we engage in.”
Picture of Shannon Chakraborty by Melissa C. Beckman.
The author of the bestselling Daevabad trilogy returns with a rip-roaring fantasy adventure starring a 12th-century pirate captain.
A tale of dragons and queens that sprawls across an entire world (and over several hundred pages), The Priory of the Orange Tree has become a modern fantasy classic in the eight years since its release. It was originally billed as a standalone novel, so fans were surprised and thrilled when Samantha Shannon announced not only that she was writing a prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, but also that even more books were to follow. In this essay, Shannon explains how the next installment in the Roots of Chaos series came to be.
When I started The Priory of the Orange Tree in 2015, I intended for it to be a standalone novel. Ever since I was young, I had dreamed of dragons—and from the start of my life as an author, I knew I wanted to write about them. It was just a question of when, and how. In 2015, I had my chance.
That year, I submitted the first draft of The Song Rising, the third installment in my ongoing Bone Season septology. My editor was taking an unusually long time to get back to me, which left me without a project to work on. I would later discover that this was because I hadn’t quite hit the mark with the draft: The Song Rising would require a comprehensive overhaul (and remains the most troublesome book of my career to date). Unable to move on to the fourth installment until I knew the rough shape of the third, I had a window of opportunity to work on a book about dragons.
I had never meant to write anything but the Bone Season series until all seven books were finished. I wanted to get each installment to my readers as swiftly as possible. Yet as I considered my situation, I realized that if I spent too long using just one voice and living in just one world, my craft could begin to stagnate. As a writer, I consider it crucial to push myself out of my comfort zone every once in a while, to ensure I can adapt and grow. For the sake of both the series and my own ability, I needed to branch out.
“Ever since I was young, I had dreamed of dragons . . .”
I decided to return to third person—the perspective I had always used in my teens, before the protagonist of The Bone Season took me by surprise with her voice—and to take my first steps into a new subgenre: high fantasy. By doing this, I hoped to strengthen my creative muscles and cultivate a more lyrical and mature writing style, which I could then use to develop my protagonist’s voice in the Bone Season books.
Between tough rounds of edits on The Song Rising, I worked on the manuscript of The Priory of the Orange. It soon ballooned in scope. Fitting an epic journey into the space of a single novel was a challenge, but I was resolved to do it. By the time it was done, I had built multiple countries, an enormous cast of characters and a backstory that stretched back for centuries. And I knew this world had more stories to tell.
I was still determined not to commit to another long series. Ten years into writing the Bone books, I’m still in love with the story and characters, and I have to weigh my schedule carefully each time I consider working on something else. Despite my best efforts, writing Priory and its prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, has caused significant delays in the Bone Season series. I feel a great deal of guilt because of this, and it has, understandably, frustrated some of my long-term readers. At the same time, I can’t regret the dragon books. The Mask Falling, the fourth and most recent Bone Season installment, is by far the strongest—my favorite book of my career. I firmly believe this was because Priory improved my writing, as I suspected it would. Working on Priory was an alchemical process, allowing me to unlock another stage in the lifelong process of being a writer.
When I decided to write another book in the world of Priory, I did it with a clear vision. My aim with the Roots of Chaos cycle is to write a series primarily made up of standalone novels. They will work together to tell an intergenerational story that spans thousands of years, but each may also be read as a self-contained story, hopefully in any order. This means readers aren’t left waiting for the story to continue—each book is its own adventure.
A Day of Fallen Night begins five centuries before Priory and covers the period known as the Grief of Ages, or Great Sorrow—a devastating war between wyrms and humankind. When I wrote the first book, I mentioned this period frequently and thought that exploring it further would be useful for demonstrating the magical imbalance that forms the bedrock of the series. During this era, siden (one of the two branches of magic, associated with flame and earth) spun out of control, birthing the fire-breathing wyrms. Showing this era would also allow me to explore parts of the world I had never managed to reach in the first book, such as the beautiful Queendom of Sepul and the snowbound North.
I knew it was a gamble to start afresh with a new cast. Many readers have told me they connected with the characters in the first book. I initially worried that they might only want to see this world through those characters’ eyes—that even I might not be able to imagine it without them. By the end, however, I loved the new cast even more than the first. I can only hope they grow on readers, too.
Photo of Samantha Shannon by Louise Haywood Schiefer.
A Day of Fallen Night reveals the origins of the conflict between humans and wyrms—and blazes a trail for what’s to come.
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