Source: Owlcrate

“Mirror mirror on the wall, give me a tale, creative from them all.” (please excuse the clunky line, I thought it would make a fun opening). Anywho, pitched as an original Snow White-inspired fantasy story, Hemlock & Silver is a novel that’s fun and light-hearted in tone with a very creative plot. While classified as a retelling book, T. Kingfisher’s standalone novel is a retelling only by the loosest criteria due to the fairytale source material used. Rather than reinventing or putting a new spin on the classic tale, Hemlock & Silver is almost an entirely original work that reads like a fantasy mystery story as opposed to a fairytale one. Featuring ambitious concepts, creative narrative allusions to Snow White, not to mention an entertaining and lovable main character, this novel was an unexpectedly great read for me that was only hindered by its meandering and underwhelming start and occasional lag in pacing. Rather than following the typical retelling premise of reinventing its source material with a genre swap, modernization, or flipping the story from a new point of view, Kingfisher’s approach is a bold one that follows an original character, scholarly poison expert Anja who is requested by the…

Most sci-fi alien invasion stories are told from the frontline defenders, innocent bystanders, or the invader themselves, but not many are told from the perspective of the early vanguards planted in place to test the soil before the interstellar fleet arrives (sorry couldn’t resist the pun). Putting a unique botanical spin on the classic alien invasion story, Mira Grant’s Overgrowth is a unique, intellectual, and ambitiously crafted novel written from the perspective of Anastasia Miller who has believed herself to be an alien for nearly thirty years. Constantly telling others she’s an alien sent ahead of an invading armada for years and being written off as an eccentric oddity, her unassuming life in Seattle is upended when an alien signal is received announcing that said alien armada is finally coming to Earth. While most stories of similar content show off the epic scale and flashy combat of the invasion, Overgrowth instead chooses to focus on the ramifications for individuals like Anastasia, with conflicting loyalties and the often cruel and destructive nature of human behavior on full display. Featuring slow pacing interrupted by frequent political and social commentary, Overgrowth is not for everyone (myself included), but it’s nonetheless an intriguing sci-fi…