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An incredibly meta and satirical novel, Lincoln Michel’s Metallic Realms is an ambitiously written story that defies conventional genre classifications. Featuring a collection of scifi-based short stories within a larger memoir-esque story, Metallic Realms recaps the highs and lows of the Orb4 writing collective group on their real and grounded struggles in creating cosmic literary art. Full of real-world metaphors, social commentary, and sharp jabs at the publishing and online communities, this book is an incredible experience written for hardcore SFF geeks and struggling millennials.   Note: For greater clarity for those who have not read this book, I will be referring to the author by his first name “Lincoln” instead of my usual review format where I would use his last name instead. When I drafted this review, I felt it might be confusing and too easy to misread the character Michael and Michel back-to-back.  Before I get into why I found this book so incredible, I feel the need to address some of the confusion about this book and offer some respectful advice for those potentially interested in it. First and foremost, Metallic Realms is a book full of satire, far-reaching scifi and fantasy references (and by that, I mean affectionately dragging fantasy), and general…

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…

A sweeping love story across time, Alix Harrow’s the Everlasting is a wildly ambitious fantasy story about freedom of choice, the making of legends, and ever-changing nature and distortion of history by written records. Utilizing time-travel concepts applied to the high fantasy genre, the resulting book is a masterfully crafted reworking of how a knight’s origin story literally affects a nation’s future. Featuring a complex plot, nuanced themes, outstanding character work presented through an elegant prose, the Everlasting is an impressive story that is unlike any other fantasy romance book out there. While Lady knights are having a bit of a moment this year, this book is much more complex than its scholar x knight premise would suggest. Set thousands of years apart, the Everlasting tells the story of an anxious and dispirited historian Owen Mallory who is sent to chronicle the legend of the famed historical icon Sir Una Everlasting. The loyal beast of a knight to the first Queen, with her famed adventures and conquests in the name of the cross, it is her ultimate demise that cements her figure as the martyr and inspiration for all of Dominion. Or so how history has told it. Enraptured and…

Part 1 of June C.L Tan’s planned urban fantasy paranormal duology, Darker by Four is pure YA anime/manghwa/donghua inspired goodness. An elite exorcist training academy, flashy magical spells and talismans, dangerous revenant spirits, plus visits with the local reapers and the Ten Gods of the underworld, this book is pure, unadulterated fantasy goodness. High on action, mysterious intrigue, and teenage/young adult angst, where this book may be a little lacking in emotional depth or nuance it more than makes up with consistent entertainment value. As a long-time anime fan, Darker by Four was right up my alley! Apart from its strong anime feel and presentation which I’ll get into shortly, Darker by Four’s most notable element is its incorporation of traditional Chinese folklore. In Tan’s world, qi serves as the base for one’s magical core, providing the ability to cast spells and wield spiritual weapons in addition to being able to see paranormal entities. Besides general Asian cultural references such as food and family traditions, the book’s story also heavily revolves around the Taoist mythology of the Ten Kings of Hell along with grim reapers who strongly resemble and follow the roles of the Heibai Wuchang. That said, this book…

A heist set for a mysterious magical book, a power struggle between state and church, a tense reunion between ex-partners, and legendary beings trapped and abandoned by the God of Thieves, Ruth Frances Long’s The Book of Gold has a lot of interesting concepts to say the least. The start of the Feral Gods trilogy, this book has a lot of narrative content fitted into a sub three-hundred-and-fifty-page book that is part fantasy, part 16th century historical fiction adventure. Though the story has a variety of plotlines that lay the groundwork for the series to expand on, at its core it’s a tense and strained second-chance romance between individuals standing on different sides of the law and state, all in pursuit of otherworldly power. Action and relationship oriented, the Book of Gold is a competently crafted book that despite a sense of mismanaged focus, is still a fun and light entertaining fantasy read. At first glance, the Book of Gold appears to be a simplistic rogue x knight trope applied to a fantasy heist storyline. The book has all the elements one would expect such as an unorthodox assembled ragtag heist team, economic disparity between the nobility and the common…