Fantasy Poll and Meeting Updates

Hi, readers!
Below, you will find your choices for our fantasy genre. You can vote for two books, and I’ll announce the winners on Sunday evening or Monday morning, depending on turnout. 🙂
In other news, our structure is going to be changing, hopefully with more flexibility and schedule-accommodation as a result! I’d like to meet with you over Zoom to chat about it, but based on the WhatsApp poll results, this is what I Have in mind so far:
We will vote on and discuss one book a month, with the meeting for it falling on the last weekend (ish). The week following the discussion will be when I take submissions/construct the poll for the next genre, so you should theoretically end up with around three weeks or so to read whatever wins. We’ll decide on the next theme during the book discussion.
For social/activity nights, I’m thinking of starting off by having them scheduled as twice a month, with room for anyone to request more as interested. Maybe the first Friday and third Saturday? This would hopefully give people with busy weekends a chance to still come.
In practice, this would then look like the following (note that we’re a little bit off schedule with the poll coming out right now as opposed to in early August):
Social 1: Friday, August 2
Social 2: Saturday, August 17
Fantasy book discussion and decision about September’s theme: Saturday, August 31
Social1/poll results announced: Friday, September 6
Social2: Saturday, September 21
Book discussion: Saturday, September 28
Etc.
Sorry if that’s a lot to contemplate at once. I’ll be sure to have regular announcements and a calendar put up that you can reference, but as mentioned above, I would also love to hang out with anyone interested to talk this through and make sure it suits what the group is hoping for! We can change the days of book discussions if that makes sense, as well. I’m completely open to making this work to benefit as many members as I can.
If you’d like to meet and chat, I plan on being on Zoom this Sunday around 08:00 eastern.
Go forth and vote!

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Notable review by Emily May

Trickery is not my native tongue, but I may learn to speak it yet.

I was scared to start Six of Crows. The hype surrounding it has been HUGE, the blurb sounded intriguing, I’ve been eagerly anticipating it, and I liked but didn’t love Shadow and Bone. Honestly, though? I needn’t have worried. This book is fantastic.

Shadow and Bone has been called fantasy-lite, but there is absolutely nothing about Six of Crows that warrants such a label. It’s a sweeping epic tale with six main characters, five perspectives, complex and detailed world-building that is seamlessly integrated into the story, flashbacks to the characters’ histories, and a wonderful blend of darkness, magic, action, humour and romance.

In the hands of a less skilled author, this could have been a mess. But Bardugo crafts each of her characters with love and sensitivity, allowing them to be extremely badass, wicked sometimes, and unlikable in that multi-layered way that actually makes them completely likable.
“When she looked up at him, the expression on her face was a bleak map of loathing and fatigue. In it, he saw the shame that came with gratitude, and he knew that in this brief moment, she was his mirror. She didn’t want to owe him anything either.”

It’s set in the same Grisha universe as her other books (this time in an alternate Netherlands instead of Russia), but it’s much darker and more adult. These characters are thieves, convicts and runaways. Street gangs compete for territory and power. The author takes all these dark “real world” factors and infuses them with the supernatural.

The comparisons to Oceans 11 are spot on. The plot is essentially about an action-packed, fast-paced heist. They must first break into a heavily-guarded prison and smuggle a convict out and then, with his help, they will attempt to break into the Ice Court – a place that has never been breached – all to get their hands on a LOT of money. But all these characters have their own personal agendas too (and because of the third person narrative we don’t always know what they are).

As I mentioned, the characters are so so good. We have the leader – Kaz – who is an intimidating criminal prodigy with a secret past. We have the mixture of drama and humour offered by Jesper and Wylan. And there’s the totally badass Inej:
“You may still die in the dregs.”
Inez’s dark eyes had glinted. “I may. But I’ll die on my feet with a knife in my hand.”

I think the use of third person was extremely effective in Six of Crows. It allows us to view all these characters equally and also allows us to be constantly surprised.

I want to be clear that the romance never takes over the story; it feels natural and welcome when it surfaces, which isn’t too often. In fact, I’d say Bardugo is a bit of a tease for most of the novel and I found myself shipping Matthias and Nina so hard. Gah:
“And what did you do Matthias? What did you do to me in your dreams?”
The ship listed gently. The lanterns swayed. His eyes were blue fire. “Everything,” he said, as he turned to go. “Everything.”

Dark, action-packed, beautifully-written, and yes, even sexy. When can I get the next book?

A Darker Shade of Magic by Victoria Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive.

Notable review by Emily May

Every night of the year, the market lived and breathed and thrived. The stalls were always changing, but the energy remained, as much a part of the city as the river it fed on. Kell traced the edge of the bank, weaving through the evening fair, savoring the taste and smell of the air, the sound of laughter and music, the thrum of magic.

I’m already a Victoria Schwab fan after reading her good vs evil superhero urban fantasy novel – Vicious – so I couldn’t wait to get reacquainted with her addictive writing style, complex characters and wonderfully-conceived fantasy worlds. As it turns out, A Darker Shade of Magic was even more than I’d expected.

This book feels more like traditional fantasy than Vicious with the style, the invention of a new language, the large cast of characters, the magic, and the focus on royal/political dynamics. And yet, to use the word “traditional” anywhere near this novel is an injustice because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before.

The characters are weird and colorful. We have a protagonist – Kell – who is strong and badass enough to root for, but also complex and layered enough for us to truly care about and relate to. Plus, he has a coat that has many sides, which he turns around depending on how he wants to look – insane, unique, wonderful. Schwab’s imagination clearly knows no bounds.

We also have a cross-dressing pirate who happens to be a tough, infuriating and lovable female character – Lila. And a promiscuous prince, villains who are blood slaves, evil twin rulers and much more.

And then there’s this bizarre world that just played on every one of my senses. The author asks us to believe in a setting that is incredibly farfetched and yet she breathes life into this world with evocative language and makes the unbelievable something we can picture in our heads. She shares little stories from this world’s history to flesh out the picture:
The infamous Krös Mejkt, the “Stone Forest,” was made up not of trees but of statues, all of them people. It was rumored the figures hadn’t always been stone, that the forest was actually a graveyard, kept by the Danes to commemorate those they killed, and remind any who passed through the outer wall of what happened to traitors in the twins’ London.

What’s all this about the “twins’ London”? Well, in this world there are four different versions of London that only the Antari like Kell can move between. Technically, there are only three these days because Black London fell, consumed by its own misuse of magic. The others are Grey London (the one we know), Red London (the one Kell is from) and White London (ruled over by the sadistic Danes twins).

Everyone, it seems, is out to use magic for their own selfish goals in this book. And when a mysterious relic from Black London – a relic that should have been destroyed – reappears, Kell and Lila must do what they can to protect it from all those who wish to claim it as their own.

Nothing short of a wild, fast-paced adventure.

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

A scrappy maid must outsmart both palace nobles and Low Gods in a new YA fantasy by Margaret Owen, author of the Merciful Crow series.
The little thief steals gold, but the great one steals kingdoms; And only one goes to the gallows…
Vanja Schmidt knows no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love. Abandoned to Death and Fortune as a child, she has scraped by as a lowly maidservant with her quick wits and the ability to see her god-mothers’ hands at work in the world. But when they demand her lifelong servitude in exchange, Vanja decides that gifts not given freely… can always be stolen.
When an opportunity rises to steal a string of enchanted pearls, Vanja seizes it, transforming herself into Gisele, the princess she’s served for years. As the glamorous princess, Vanja leads a double life, charming the nobility while ransacking their coffers as a jewel thief. Then, one heist away from funding an escape from her god-mothers, Vanja crosses the wrong god, and is cursed to turn into jewels herself. The only way to save herself is to make up for what she’s taken—starting with her first victim, Princess Gisele.
A wicked retelling of “The Goose Girl,” Little Thieves is a delightfully witty YA fantasy about the fickle hands of fate, and changing the cards we’re dealt.

Notable review by Elle

This is exactly what a fairytale retelling should be. Little Thieves takes a lesser known fable, The Goose Girl, and picks it apart at the seams, only to refashion it into something far grander than you may have thought you could get from the original material. All the initial elements are present, the same characters follow familiar beats at first, only to eventually diverge. The story’s themes are turned on their heads, and the end result is just as much a reaffirmation of the source material as it is a challenge to it.

“Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl…”

I mean, come on, who wouldn’t want to read a book with that introduction?

This retelling, like many popular ones now, focuses on the antagonist of the original story. Vanja is the disloyal maid who abandons her princess and steals her life for her own. In the year since that faithful day on the road, Vanja has more than settled into her life as ‘Prinzessin Gisele’, now not only living a luxurious life but boldly robbing the nobility she’s met through her newly acquired status. It’s after one of these robberies where things begin to go wrong for her, though, as she finds herself cursed by a Low God offended by her thievery. Vanja will have to break the curse by ‘making amends’ or slowly succumb to her greed by becoming the very stones she’s stolen.

Or…….she could just ask her godmothers for help. After being forfeited by her birth mother, Vanja was taken in by Death and Fortune, who have made her an offer: their assistance for her servitude. But after years as a servant for the lost princess and her family, Vanja would rather fall to the curse than fall in debt to her overbearing godmothers, which is not as unreasonable as it sounds to those of us with mother figures like this in our lives.

Despite Vanja’s general demeanor and attitude, she actually manages to make some friends that will try to help her break this curse. The characters in Little Thieves will delight anyone who loves a good ensemble cast. And while probably not technically a heist, there’s definitely a heist-type feel to a lot of the scheming Vanja and her gang partake in.

I know this probably sounds like a lot so far, and that’s because it is. There’s also a ton more than I’m not going to get into so readers can experience it for themselves, but it’s really impressive the way Owens is able to juggle so many different plot lines at once, especially in a standalone fantasy like this. And it’s not all action and plot, there’s some really immense personal struggles that the characters experience along the way. Within the 500+ pages of this novel are seven ‘Tales’ recounting important backstory to the current timeline. Several are intense gut-punches and give so much context as to why the characters make the choices they do.

I think what I liked best, though, is how well-structured this book was. It would have been so easy for something like this to go off the rails, but Owens felt fully in control of the narrative at every twist and turn. The way she confronts traditional lessons in morality, what we as an audience equate with goodness and evil, is so smart. I don’t think it’s possible to rave too much about Little Thieves, but in the interest of not overhyping too much I will stop here. Still, please don’t sleep on this gorgeous, germanic fantasy retelling. ✨

**For more book talk & reviews, follow me on Instagram at @elle_mentbooks!

Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney

To be born into a family of royal assassins pretty much guarantees that your life is going to be… rather unusual. Especially if, like Miscellaneous “Lanie” Stones, you also have a vicious allergy to all forms of violence and bloodshed, and an uncanny affinity for bringing the dead back to life.

To make matters worse, family debt looms – a debt that will have to be paid sooner rather than later if Lanie and her sister are to retain ownership of the ancestral seat, Stones Manor. Lanie finds herself courted and threatened by powerful parties who would love to use her worryingly intimate relationship with the goddess of death for their own nefarious ends. But the goddess has other plans…

Notable review by Siavahda

A very few times in my life, I’ve encountered books that make the universe entire shift into alignment, books that are the culmination of every moment from the Big Bang to now. Books that feel like the reason the Big Bang happened, like everything that has ever existed did so just so that these books could be written and published and put in my hands. Like every moment that ever was has been leading up to this one.

Books that feel like the point; of the world, of humanity, of me.

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey. The God Eaters by Jesse Hajicek. Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente. A few priceless others.

And, now, Saint Death’s Daughter.

How are you supposed to talk about a book it feels like you were born to read?

*

Take a generous handful of edible candy jewels and mix them into a casket of perfectly-cut gemstones. Stir in the most beautiful sugar skulls you can find. Add red velvet and pink tulle, spangles and razor blades, sequins and silver spearheads. Choose the most perfect, moonstone-gleaming bones and entomb them lovingly with your treasures. Breathe life into little mice skeletons to watch over your hoard. Give them tutus and tiaras and burning blue fire where their eyes would be. Give them cuddles and kisses and names.

Cast royal blood in a circle around it all, and set that blood alight.

Et voilà: Saint Death’s Daughter.

*

In all her twenty-two years, Lanie had mainly kept company with forty thousand skeletons (mostly furniture), a ghost (megalomaniacal), and a revenant housekeeper (seldom garrulous).

The thing is, I don’t want to tell you much about this book. I want you to experience it the way I did; a cake whose every layer is more delicious than the last; a gemstone that always has another glittering facet when you turn it over in your hands; a gift that never stops giving. And part of that was the surprise, of going in not knowing what to expect. For once, I have no argument with the blurb being coy with information. This is a book you should go into unprepared.

And unarmed.

Lay down your armour. Your cynicism, your scepticism, your grown-up-ism – set them all aside. The part of you that frets about what other people think, the part that would be too embarrassed to dye your hair rainbow colours or deck yourself in glitter, the part that’s too shy to get up on stage and sing karaoke even though you’d love to – let all of that go.

You don’t need them here. Saint Death’s Daughter is an escape, and it’s an escape because it’s true, because it taps into something real and rare that too many of us struggle to remember: life is fucking wonderful, actually.

*

Saint Death’s Daughter is joy. (Not a joy – although that too! – but joy.) It’s a feast, a banquet, a ball, rich and glittering and strange and perfect. This is a book about a necromancer but it is fundamentally a book about life, about the love of life, about how beautiful and wonderful it is to be alive in the world.

Love was the Dreamcalling, love the Great Wakening, love the foundation of the Maranathasseth Anthem. It was the finest of all reasons to live–and after death, to live again.

You would not believe how long it’s taken me to write this review, or how many drafts I’ve started and scrapped. I simply don’t know how to talk about it. But something clicked recently, and I realised what it was I was struggling to put into words about this book:

Saint Death’s Daughter is the opposite of depression. The exact opposite. It is the opposite of depression, distilled.

She wanted to eat everything and everyone right down to the bone and suck the marrow clean.

This book is giggles and glory, richness and rawness, sweet and seraphic and swish. It is ornate and orphic, jubilant and jocose, luxurious and luminous and lit. It is flamboyant and fierce, dashing and devious, iridescent and intoxicating, extravagant and effervescent and epic. It is candyfloss and glitter and toe-bones as love-gifts; a literal, physical allergy to violence in a babe raised by a revenant; jewelled nail-talons pricking fingers so you can wield blood-fire. It is rich in everything, and overflows with love and life and gorgeous prose, an ivory cornucopia of unstinting, unending magic. Literal magic: necromancy and shapeshifting and blood-fire-wielding, deities and revenants and ghosts, even one character who can slow down time. But also the kill-for-you die-for-you live-for-you magic of family and friendship, and I don’t care if that sounds like a Hallmark card, it’s genuine and moving and caught my heart in my throat.

It is everything at once, and I don’t know how that’s possible – I don’t know how you can have Epic Fantasy vibes and a school set up inside a brothel to trick would-be patrons into getting an education, how you can have green moustaches alongside terrifying Blackbird Brides, how you can have divine benedictions alongside mispronounced lemonade. I don’t know how you can have Fire Knights next to froofing, how footnotes full of glorious silliness can go so well with scenes that will have you sobbing, or how any one story can juggle so many different kinds of love and make them all balance perfectly, none outweighing the others. I don’t know how a single book can make me gasp and beam and cackle and quake and pother and hiss and whoop and goosebump and cheer and crow and curse and cry, but I can only assume each of the 12 gods of Athe blessed this book like fairy godmothers and these are all the gifts they gave wrapped up in paper and ink.

Saint Death’s Daughter is absolutely a gift.

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

#1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson brings us deeper into the Cosmere universe with a rollicking, riveting tale that will appeal to fans of The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

Notable review by Anna [Bran. San. Stan]

This was just as wonderful, delightful, and enchanting as I’d hoped; especially the humourous, whimsical tone and Hoid’s narrative voice were a joy. And the worldbuilding is just as amazing as ever: Picture a world with twelve moons, each releasing sand-like spores unto the land, creating twelve vast seas not of water but of alien dust – each a different color (the eponymous emerald being one of them). Each type of these spores explosively grows aethers (e.g. vines or crystals) when touched with water – the results of which range from “uncomfortable” to “deadly” considering “the number of wet things that leak from human bodies even if they’re healthy.” Only salt and silver render the spores inert. And they are not just a cool visual; they naturally serve to further the story.

As for the plot, the novel starts as a love story but then quickly becomes an adventure – farm boy (or rather window washing girl) leaving home to go on a hero’s journey. With our heroine, Sanderson again creates a magical character you can only love; she is proactive, competent, both brave and pragmatic, and above all relatable.

”The girl had been given the unfortunate name of Glorf upon her birth (don’t judge; it was a family name), but her wild hair earned her the name everyone knew her by: Tress.”

Tress is very much in love with the Duke’s son, Charlie, who is not very dukely at all. Charlie actually sounds a bit like Sanderson himself with his passion for story telling and words.

”[The Iriali] supposedly had golden hair. Like yours, the color of sunlight.”
“My hair is not the color of sunlight, Charlie.”
“Your hair is the color of sunlight, if sunlight were brown,” Charlie said. It might be said he had a way with words. In that his words often got away.

Charlie, however, is absent from the narrative, and Tress’s adventure lies in trying to save him from an evil sorceress. (She is, in a way, Buttercup who had gone searching for Westley.) Her journey is interwoven with a variety of characters, among them a cursed Hoid, a talking rat, a Cosmere creature, a horrible cook and also several insignificant people all referred to as Doug for simplicity’s sake.

With this “grown-up fairy tale”, Sanderson has once again created something extraordinary, something magical and enchanting and something very much unlike anything he has ever written before. And yes, Hoid’s story did feel like a “full-length version of something like ‘Wandersail’ or ‘The Dog and the Dragon’” – just as he intended. And even if I saw a twist at the end coming, I loved every bit of it, from the very first page.

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