Publisher: Titan Books

Set on the eve of a large-scale rebellion against the Citadel in power, Adrienne Young’s Fallen City is a story of political power, control, and a slow burn in every form and meaning. Part one of a planned historical fiction x fantasy duology set in the Greco-Roman stylized walled city of Isara, Fallen City is a series about rebellion, choices, and their consequences in a land blessed or cursed by the gods. Although its slow pacing and dual POV plus dual timeline presentation is not for everyone, Young’s ambition, plotting, and writing rewards patient and intellectual readers with a story that constantly builds up on itself before reaching a dramatic to-be-continued ending. (On Goodreads, a 4.5-star rating rounded up) Not sure if it’s just me, but when I think of Greco-Roman stories, the famous Roman tragedies are the first to come to mind. While Fallen City is not a tragedy per se, it features many narrative elements of the genre crossed with light fantasy elements. The book is shown from the dual perspectives of Maris and Luca, two young adults who cannot live without the other yet are cast into roles and positions of power as adversaries. The daughter and…

What if it was just you and me, in an eerie library, with a demon haunting our hopes and dreams, not two but three? More successful than my poor excuse for poetry, the Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino is a YA fantasy book that mixes and matches a variety of inspirations from across various genres. Part dark academia fantasy, part psychological suspense thriller, part paranormal horror, this book blends together its different elements to tell a story about two private academy lone wolves who accidentally unleash a demonic presence while navigating the challenges of their family life. Set at a prestigious private academy, the overall story revolves around the unexpected release of a demon-like entity from the depths of an academy library that Tess and Eliot work and study at respectively. When taken at face value, the Devil Makes Three sounds like it’s going to be about occultic research and evading said devil. While the book certainly follows this expected storyline to a certain extent, the rest of the book revolves around Tess and Eliot’s personal struggles, conflicted home environment, and familial difficulties that had led to their attendance at the school. For Tess, her story is about her…

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…