Tag: book-reviews

A final nominee for the World Fantasy Awards

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy1 Comment

The decision of the judges for the 2025 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. Coming up fast!

Here’s the list once again, and my final review of the books short-listed for the award in the novels category:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in a previous post, reviewed in my posts about the 2025 Hugo nominees.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in a previous post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read. Reviewed in a previous post.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline. Reviewed in my preceding post.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?–reviewed in this post.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills

book cover of The Wings Upon Her Back, fantasy novel by Samantha Mills
Find it HERE.

This interesting fantasy novel won the 2025 Compton Crook Award. With its tinkering engineers and machines, it has a bit of a gaslamp vibe. Zenya, the heroine of the novel, is a member of a highly stratified society. Some are scholars, some engineers, some live a life of service–and some are the warriors and protectors who keep the community safe, especially from its bitter rival. As she comes of age in this war-torn world, teen-aged Zenya has to make a choice. Stay in the family tradition and be a scholar, or follow her dream of becoming one of her society’s elite warriors. The best of the warriors have been engineered and trained to carry mechanical wings on their backs. Zenya is dazzled, and when she does join the warrior elite, she is further dazzled by the attentions of a powerful mentor who promises she will earn her wings and take her place among the elite of the elite.

As you can see, Mills’s book shares characteristics with novels like Veronica Roth’s Divergence, in the stratification of society; with Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, in the glamor of fascinating fantasy ways to fly around; with those and many other popular fantasy reads that feature tough militaristic training in a teen-ager academy setting. With its focus on Zenya’s inculcation into an essentially fascist cult and then on her disillusion with the cult, it reminds me most powerfully of Emily Tesh’s 2024 Hugo Award winner, Some Desperate Glory. Mills’s novel, like Tesh’s, is very timely–one big reason to read it.

What sets The Wings Upon Her Back apart from all those other novels is the way Mills tells her story. We readers flip back and forth from teen-aged gung-ho Zenya to adult disillusioned Zenya, and in this way, the novel distinguishes itself from all its YA cousins. Through Mills’s deft writing and ability to draw compelling characters, we readers see for ourselves the huge price Zenya has paid to get those wings of hers, the reasons she might be willing to risk them, and the mysterious secrets her society is desperate to keep from prying eyes.

I really did like this novel. One thing gave me pause, though. Here’s a society technologically advanced enough for airships, explosives, all manner of ingenious machinery–and very sophisticated surgical techniques–but the only thing they can think to do with their elite warriors (and with those sophisticated surgical techniques) is to implant difficult-to-use, very uncomfortable wings into their spines? (Ow.) That seems like a big stretch to me. I had a hard time, as Coleridge put it, “willingly suspending my disbelief.” It was as if the author said to herself, Well, here are books with cool dragons to ride, and there are books with this other cool hook, and these others with this other cool hook–what’s mine? I’m being far too cynical here, I know. Maybe completely unfair. The wings really are cool. But somehow, I didn’t quite believe in them.

NEXT: I tell you which of the short-listed novels are my favorites. And the judges don’t care! And you have your own ideas! So I could just keep my final opinions to myself. But where’s the fun in that?

Here’s another World Fantasy Award Nominee

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy1 Comment

The 2025 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. I’m heading toward the end of my quest to read and review all the novels short-listed for the award. The decision of the judges is coming up soon!

The list and my next review:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in a previous post, reviewed in my posts about the 2025 Hugo nominees.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in a previous post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read. Reviewed in my preceding post.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline.–reviewed in this post.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman,The Bright Sword, fantasy novel about King Arthur's court.
Find it HERE.

Grossman’s novel is huge, a real door-stopper in the grand fantasy tradition. The subtitle tells us it’s “A Novel of King Arthur,” but I wouldn’t call him a major character. And that’s fine. In a way, Arthur is everywhere in this novel, the controlling force beyond it all. That’s the classic Arthurian shtick, after all.

Grossman’s book explores the haunting premise, “What if you’re a bold young man looking to make your bones as a hero at Camelot, but when you get there, the show’s already over?” The young and impoverished wanna-be hero setting out to prove himself is the stuff of countless folk tales and chivalric romances, both in the Arthurian tradition and out of it. The Hero’s Journey in the flesh. But then–noooo!–the worst nightmares of your knightly FOMO are realized.

A book like this should be catnip for a reader the likes of me. I pondered why that didn’t turn out to be the case. It may be because the tone is uneven. That could work. It really could–but it somehow didn’t for me. The problem (if it is one–and it may not be for you, at all) shows up right away. The epigraph that begins part one is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Fun! I love Monty Python! I love that movie! I can quote you verbatim from that movie! And then the chapter divisions are extremely reminiscent of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, the 15th century text that governs how just about everyone in the English-speaking world sees the Arthurian legend. The Matter of Britain itself. I like the quick and useful summary about that in Wikipedia, by the way–take it further if you’re interested.

You don’t have to have actually read Malory. Almost every depiction of King Arthur and his court since Malory, including Monty Python, is indebted to that take on the Arthurian, especially ones that include Lancelot (an import from the French romances), even those that deliberately set out to counter Malory’s version.

The epigraph at the very beginning of Grossman’s novel comes from a much earlier hint about the Arthur story from The Black Book of Carmarthen. This is a mid-13th century Welsh compilation of manuscripts drawn from even earlier material, including some of the earliest accounts of Myrddin (Merlin) especially dear to my own heart, since I have written about that version of Merlin in my own fiction and also used the “Pa gur” verses as an inspiration. One part of The Black Book of Carmarthen can be translated as “The Verses of the Graves,” poetry describing the resting places of legendary great heroes, one of them being one of the earliest mentions of King Arthur we know of. But the structure of Grossman’s novel is all Malory.

That said, however. . .you should understand this is just my own take on the novel. Grossman himself appended a really interesting historical note at the end, some of it congruent with my thinking, some of it different, and he’s the author, after all.

For me, though, Grossman’s novel lives in the gap between the Pythonesque and the Malorian, and then also mixes in very contemporary concerns and insights. His version of the tale gives us completely matter-of-fact realistic characters inhabiting the iconic Arthurian fantasy landscape, with humor thrown in. The way the tale unfolds is particularly indebted to Malory. As in Malory (and other Arthurian material before him), a frame story encloses episodic tales of the various knights of Camelot and their adventures. The frame story for Grossman’s novel is the story of the main character, young bumbling Collum from the provinces, heading for Camelot and hoped-for glory. He finds more than he bargains for, including the mystery of his own identity.

His tale is continually interrupted by tales of the other Camelot knights–“The Tale of Sir Bedivere,” “The Tale of Sir Palomides,” etc. If you’re a Monty Python fan, you might recognize these mock-heroic titles of episodes from there, but they hark back to Malory (“The Noble Tale of Syr Launcelot du Lake,” “The Fyrste Boke of Syr Trystram de Lyones,” and so on.) Grossman’s version of these knights’ tales are interesting in themselves, not least because he puts a very contemporary spin on the identities of some of the knights. I liked them, and I liked the over-arching tale of Collum’s coming of age. I loved the poignant ending. But somehow, at least for me, the parts were more interesting than the whole.

And the whole is long. Long and rambling. The characters keep thinking profound thoughts seemingly drawing the narrative to a close, but nope–there’s more. And more. And more.

This may be exactly what you need, so don’t go by me.

Full disclosure: My doctoral dissertation was on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, ANOTHER endlessly long tome (blessedly cut short by the death of the poet, and I’m glad that’s not the case here) supposedly about King Arthur but in which Arthur himself makes only a few appearances–Arthur before he is king, in Spenser’s case, not after. So maybe that is skewing my response to this book. Poor authors can never predict what crazy readers they may end up with. They just send their books out into the world and wave bye-bye.

As a side-note: my ten-year-old grandson ADORES Grossman’s middle-grade fantasy novels. So maybe go by Will the huge Grossman fan-boy instead of me.

Lev Grossman, middle-grade fantasy novel The Silver Arrow
Lev Grossman, middle-grade fantasy novel The Golden Swift

Next up, last but not least, because I’m just doing these reviews alphabetically, my review of The Wings Upon Her Back, by Samantha Mills.

Another short-listed novel for the World Fantasy Awards [Corrected post]

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy2 Comments

The 2025 World Fantasy Awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Brighton UK on Oct. 30-Nov. 2, 2025. Here I am, deep in my quest to read and review all the novels short-listed for the award.

The list and my next review–and. . an editing mistake corrected:

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–This novel won the 2025 Hugo Award and was short-listed for the Locus Award. Mentioned in my preceding post, reviewed in my posts about the 2025 Hugo nominees.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt; Quercus UK)–a wonderful overlay of Chinese folklore on the early 20th century historical conflict between China and Japan. Reviewed in my preceding post.

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister (Counterpoint; Titan UK)–what IS this thing? Southern/Appalachian Gothic? Magical Realism? Fascinating read–reviewed in this post.

The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking; Del Rey UK)–combined Monty Pythonesque and Malory Morte-D’Arthur-esque massive novel about the Arthurian world in decline.

The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)–What if profound disillusionment causes you to lose your wings? What would you do to get them back?

The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister

Find out more HERE.

How to categorize The Bog Wife is a bit of a puzzle. It is set in the U.S. Appalachian region, but it’s not a realistic novel akin to Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperfield [oh no! Big editing oversight. The title of this marvelous book is Demon Copperhead. I could say I was swept away by the David Copperfield allusions in Kingsolver’s novel–or just admit I blew it. I blew it! Big apologies!] or Ann Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has Been. By contrast, and almost right away, you realize Chronister’s novel has a gothic feel. But it’s not “Southern Gothic” (Appalachian Gothic, I should say–its close relative). So what is it? It’s absolutely not a regulation epic fantasy with swords and sorcery. From the cover art on in, no one could possibly mistake it for Tolkien-inspired high fantasy. Can we call Chronister’s book by that mysterious label, magical realism?

Chronister’s novel starts out like a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie but then moves into realism. Here’s a family dominated by its crazed patriarch and cut off from regular civilization–a scenario that could and has happened in real life. Yet from the beginning, a sense of foreboding lets you know a sociological explanation for this family’s woes is not going to give you the whole story. Various family members take turns telling you the story, and each one has a different take on the events as they unfold.

As I read on, I wondered–will the plot amount to smoke and mirrors like those Shyamalan movies or filmed stories with more atmosphere than sense, like The Witch or the HBO series Carnivale? Thankfully no. By the end, though, Chronister’s novel does take a definite and defining lurch into fantasy and magic. Coming so late in the book as it does, I’m amazed that this strange turn actually works. But it does. It so does. As I finished it, I was reminded of books like Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. I really admired Chronister’s novel. (And in spite of the similar title–and some folkloric elements of its own–it’s nothing at all like The Fox Wife!)

What is “Magical Realism”? A type of fiction that’s not fantasy but can maybe be called “fantasy-adjacent.” Usually, magical realism is characteristic of novels that we might call “literary.” Then again, the distinction between “literary” and “genre” fiction is often arbitrary and unhelpful. HERE is a good quick introduction to magical realism. The features I especially connected to Chronister’s novels are:

  • a realistic story infused with events that don’t seem logical. The predicament of the family in The Bog Wife certainly meets this criterion.
  • a mixture of straightforward storytelling with elements from folklore or legend. In The Bog Wife, this aspect of magical realism unfolds before our eyes, as the story develops.
  • a tone that makes the whole thing seem perfectly ordinary–when it isn’t. In Chronister’s novel, some family members take a more matter-of-fact approach to events than others, leaving the reader to decide which perspectives are more credible.

If this makes the novel seem stranger and more experimental than your usual read, don’t be put off. It is enthralling.

NEXT UP: Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword.