Genre: Epic Fantasy

The following review is based on a complimentary ARC provided by Forever, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. A powerful female knight and partner mage, swordplay crossed with magic, and a slow burn childhood friends to lovers arc, V. L. Bovalino’s The Second Death of Locke is a fantasy/romantasy novel that makes the most of all of its appealing narrative elements and ideas. While the fantasy romance/romantasy genre has increasing moved towards romance and smut dressed in fantasy clothing (or lack of, ba dum tss), this novel instead is a true balance of its genres, a very rare epic fantasy romance novel that has the plot and world-building that earns its fantasy classification. Featuring a healthy blend of action, character drama, romance, and magical intrigue, The Second Death of Locke is a great all-arounder that despite serving as the start to Bovalino’s the Hand and the Heart series, has an adequately satisfying ending that can be read on its own. While the romantasy genre originally was a combination of romance storylines set within a fantasy world, the genre has increasingly become associated with steamy romance, smut, and incorporating popular expected tropes. That said, many viral romantasy novels often feel romance…

Entry #2 in Rebecca Yarros’s the Empyrean series similar to my review of Fourth Wing, I’ll be jumping right into my general impressions and skip the usual editorial-style intro and recap since most people are quite familiar with the series one way or another. Dividing into two parts that are roughly equal in page counts, Iron Flame is like a tale of two different reading experiences vastly different from each other. The entire novel covers about half of Violet Sorrengail’s 2nd year at the Basgiath War College, with part 1 following a similar formula to Fourth Wing’s rider academy training arc and part 2 diverging and focusing on the larger political factions and war strategizing across the continent, most similar to Fourth Wing’s late War Games arc and the subsequent events. Interestingly, Iron Flame’s overall direction with its plot, characters and hybrid romantasy genre largely addressed and improved on nearly every point of criticism I mentioned in my past review of Fourth Wing. And while I found Iron Flame’s Part 2 half to range from great to stellar, its opening Part 1 half felt like an endless slog to get through. Although the plot and world-building were substantially more ambitious…

Necromancers, cavaliers, copious amounts of magic and challenges, oh my! Tamsyn Muir’s debut novel and the start of her Locked Tomb series, on paper Gideon has everything going for it. While featuring many hallmark elements of fantasy epics such as an emperor with numerical houses/factions, pseudo magician + knight pairings, and an unknown challenge for representatives to ascend to the “Lyctor” status, Gideon the Ninth separates itself from the rest of its genre firstly by setting the series not in the traditional fantasy-realm past, but instead in an interstellar futuristic expanse. Secondly, this novel’s reputation featuring “lesbian necromancers” proceeds itself and has that instant hook for booktok and social media recognition (though important to note, while having a wandering queer eye, this is not a romantasy novel). While technically being classified as fantasy and sci-fi, Gideon’s second half functions more as a whodunnit survival thriller meshed with dark academia elements and is very compelling when Muir gets it just right. Unfortunately, despite the ambitious plotting and creative ideas found throughout the story, Gideon the Ninth is held back by a few but very notable flaws with its approach to storytelling as well as its confusingly vague and messy world-building. Additionally,…