Genre: Fantasy

Part Grimm fairytale retelling, part historical fiction, and finally part original fantasy story revolving around witchcraft, Kell Woods’s debut novel After the Forest is an expansive dark fantasy book with an ambitious narrative to tell. Rather than directly retelling its source material, After the Forest instead follows the difficult life of Greta following her and her brother’s experiences trapped by a witch and her gingerbread house. A tense story filled with distrust and suspicions in a rural village, contrary to its classification as a retelling, Woods’s story is largely an original one that merely uses Hansel and Gretel’s fairytale for contextual framework. Creatively constructed with fitting prose, this book was a case of expecting one thing and getting something entirely different that wasn’t for me but was nonetheless an intriguing read outside of its frequent issues of pacing and unfocused plot. Books classified as retellings tend to follow one of two different scenarios that largely determine how the story will be read. The traditional form of retelling is one that mostly retells the original story with a unique spin, modernization, genre-swap, or similar. The other form uses the base story as a launching point for framework purposes only and uses…

The paranormal episodes of Scooby Doo crossed with Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Susan Dennard’s The Executioners Three is a really fun and entertaining mystery thriller read that has the perfect tone. Campy in all the right places, yet surprisingly compelling and mysterious when it chooses to be, this YA novel skillfully blends its murder mystery, light paranormal spooks, and high school hijinks, all while serving as a nostalgic love letter to the late 90’s (particularly the X Files). While narratively and tonally slotting in as a YA novel, the Executioners Three is a peculiar case of mismatched references and storylines that ironically give it a lot of crossover appeal. Following the adventures of Freddie Gellar in her senior year of high school (plus occasional short chapters that cut to rival high school student Theo Porter’s perspective), the story is very much a YA book with school prank wars, classmate crushes, ditching class, elements that are very teenage-centered. However, this book has a clever asset that surprisingly isn’t really highlighted in its book blurb synopsis, that being its complete commitment to 90’s camp. From quoting the X-Files repeatedly, to featuring cutting edge Nokia cell phones, Backstreet Boys…

Devoid of mortals, the world of Lightfall is filled with vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers boxed in by dangerous and mysterious beings called the Grays. Despite the familiar setup that would typically be used for an action-packed fantasy warfare story, Ed Crocker’s debut novel is instead a sprawling and imaginative epic fantasy story focused on the political power struggle and socio-economic dynamics within the city of First Light’s walls. Full of extensive world-building, Lightfall is an ambitiously imagined novel that has all the right ideas to be a slow burn fantasy mystery thriller. Unfortunately, the presentation and execution of its ideas didn’t work for me, and I struggled with the book’s pacing and narrative. Easily the most impressive aspect of Lightfall is Crocker’s detailed and complex world-building and lore that for better or for worse, makes up the bulk of the novel’s content. Apart from the initial discovery of the First Lord’s younger son is dead, the book’s story falls into a period of relative lull. Preceding the last hundred years, Lightfall’s world and history is full of conflict that is written in great detail. Covering various topics including the origin of the three main groups of immortals, the mystery and…

Is there such a genre as romcomantasy? Despite being a mouthful fitting for this book’s very long title, Brigitte Knightley’s traditionally published debut novel is a light-hearted, nonserious romantasy that’s a lot of fun. Marketed as enemies to lovers, slow-burn romance, the Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is exactly that in addition to incorporating the recent romcom trend of women in STEM within a romantasy wrapping. True to its synopsis and blurb, this book is full of amusing banter by lovable idiots, though much of its advertised romance is purposely left off for its planned sequel novel. While the pacing occasionally drags and its narrative material outside of the banter is inconsistent in quality, the Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is a pleasantly comedic read for those looking for something less serious, passionate, or steamy than the romantasy genre norm. Before I get into my review for this book, there’s an important note to highlight about this book and author. While Brigitte Knightley is well-known for her fanfiction writing, specifically the Harry Potter fanfiction Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love, I’ve seen a lot of confusion and booktok readers criticizing that this…

An ambitiously creative and well-rounded sapphic retelling of Swan Lake, A Treachery of Swans by A.B. Poranek is a wonderful low fantasy story featuring a great mix of storylines and elements. While many retellings either struggle with adhering to their source material or end up predictable given their well-known general plots, A Treachery of Swans makes the concept look easy. Gracefully following Swan Lake’s premise faithfully, this book adds a considerable amount of new context, details, and unexpectedly solid new storylines to the iconic tale, all within a PG-rated scope for YA readership. I didn’t have much of an expectation going into this one, but I was pleasantly surprised and consistently thrilled reading this book! As I walk by them, their faces blur together, artificial as theatre masks, lifeless eyes and painted lips and too-sharp teeth glinting as they seethe their congratulations. They think I will be an easy meal, I realize, the Swan Princess of Auvigny, pearlescent and pure-hearted and ripe for their devouring. But they’re wrong… I’m the darkness of cold gutters and merciless nights, the bruised shadows beneath a thief’s desperate eyes. I’m nothing but a lie, a twisted reflection, a black swan. As evident from the…