Confessions of the One and Only F.J.R. Titchenell (That I Know of) - Fiona J.R. Titchenell's Official Homepage

The Five Best Novels for Fans of Superhero Comics

11/15/2022

I've been invited to guest on a new book-browsing site called Shepherd.com, sharing my novel recommendations for people who, like me, also devour superhero comics.

Naturally, I get to talk a bit about the Almost Infamous and Pinnacle City universe, and I also share some favorites I haven't written about on this site before.

For example:

While this book/series doesn’t actually call its characters “superheroes,” it’s spot-on for fans of the more fantasy-based, mythological side of comics (think Thor or Wonder Woman). Maggie is an unwilling chosen one and magically gifted monster hunter from Dinétah, a former reservation and now one of the last outposts of humanity in a post-apocalyptic North America. All she wants to do is protect the people she loves, but she and her allies (some with their own magical abilities) keep getting dragged into the plotting and power struggles of Coyote and the other gods who now walk among them. It’s perfect if you like your heroes prickly, haunted, and inescapably loveable.

You can check out my full list here.

Happy reading!

Book Review: The Theft of Sunlight

3/25/2021

I got an early look at Intisar Khanani's new fantasy release with HarperTeen! It officially launched this week, so if you're itching for more of her refreshingly unique take on high fantasy, you can jump right in!

Book Review:

Dauntless Path #1: The Theft of Sunlight

Intisar Khanani

HarperTeen, March 23rd, 2021

Grade: A

(I received an advance copy via Edelweiss)

The Basics:

Amraeya has lived her whole life under the unspoken terror of the Snatchers, knowing that the people she loves could disappear at any moment, and that if they do, no one will even dare look for them. Born with a clubfoot, Rae herself has enjoyed the dubious privilege of being considered an unappealing target, but even that won’t protect her if she starts asking too many questions.

When a child is taken from her village on the same day that she receives an invitation to attend the royal wedding, she decides to take a chance and petition for help from the highest power in the kingdom of Menaiya.

The Downside:

Without spilling any spoilers, The Theft of Sunlight ends on a pretty extreme cliffhanger. It still feels like the end of a complete installment in a bigger saga, not just an arbitrary stop in the middle of a story that hasn’t really gone anywhere yet, so it doesn’t bother me. Still, I know that’s something that a lot of readers prefer to be warned of in advance, so there it is.

The Upside:

Khanani leads us through Menaiya with her usual sharp confidence and vivid descriptions, using high fantasy convention to deepen the atmosphere but never being confined by it. Rae has to navigate courtly drama, street-level criminal syndicates, religious corruption, and culture clashes far more subtle and complicated than those so often explored among the standard Tolkienian fantasy beings, all in the course of a (sadly) timeless and grounded human trafficking investigation. Every detail is purposeful, never recycled unexamined from the genre’s stock motifs.

While the mystery adventure has its thrills, the real heart of the story is the friendship that develops between Rae and Princess Alyrra (the same princess from Thorn, which is advisable but not required pre-reading). At first, through Rae’s eyes, Alyrra is an impossibly distant and powerful figure whose support would solve all her problems, but as those who’ve read Thorn already know, Alyrra is an unwanted princess of a small outlying kingdom, now happily engaged to Menaiya’s prince but still as much of an outsider to its court as Rae herself. The two bond over their uncompromising passion for justice, learn to prop each other up, and challenge each other’s assumptions about their own power or lack thereof.

Recommended for anyone looking for interesting new high fantasy universes to explore.

Cover Reveal and Giveaway: The Theft of Sunlight

6/25/2020

Congratulations to Intisar Khanani, author of Thorn and The Sunbolt Chronicles, on her upcoming book, The Theft of Sunlight!

Today we get to see the newly revealed cover and have a look inside. There's also a giveaway at the bottom of this page for $25 to spend at The Book Depository. I'm a little late posting this, so hurry and get your entries in! But first:

About The Theft of Sunlight:

I did not choose this fate. But I will not walk away if I can make a difference.

Children have been disappearing from Menaiya for longer than Amraeya ni Ansarim can remember. When her best friend’s sister disappears, Rae knows she can’t stay silent any longer. She finds the chance to make a difference in an invitation to the palace.

But Rae struggles to fit in with the lords and ladies of the court. Instead, she finds unexpected help in a rough-around-the-edges thief named Bren who always seems to have her best interests at heart. Soon even Bren can’t help her, and Rae must risk her life and well-being to face an evil that lurks in the shadows of the darkest hearts.

Retail links are not yet available, but right now you can add the book on Goodreads, so you don't lose track of it.

A Peek Beneath the Cover:

I wait, listening for the sound of someone entering the house. Anything to indicate I need to hide what Niya’s doing. I can hear a woman calling to her children somewhere in the distance, and the general sounds of the town: a wagon creaking its way down the road, chickens clucking in someone’s backyard, and, faintly, people calling Seri’s name.

I swallow and glance back at Niya.

She looks up. “It’s not working. I don’t know if it’s me or . . .”

“Here,” I say, catching the end of one of my braids. “Try my hair. See if that works.”

Niya takes the bit of hair I snap off and bends over her bowl again. I grip my skirt with my fists and hope, hope that it’s Niya’s magic that isn’t working, and not . . . not that Seri is truly beyond our reach.

“It’s working,” Niya says, her voice flat. I look down to see the leaf has turned, the silver needle glinting brighter than it should as it points straight toward me.

I raise my eyes to Niya’s. Seri isn’t just missing. She’s somewhere even magic can’t find her.

She’s been snatched.

About Intisar Khanani:

Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. Born in Wisconsin, she has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first remembers seeing snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and vaguely recollects having breakfast with the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo when she was five. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters.

Intisar used to write grants and develop projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. She is the author of The Sunbolt Chronicles and Thorn.

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Book Review: The Deep

6/7/2020

I realize I’ve fallen far behind in my reviews lately. In honor of Pride Month, and for other quite obvious reasons, I’m finally getting around to posting my review of Rivers Solomon’s amazing mermaid story, The Deep.

Book Review:

The Deep

Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes

November 2019, Gallery/Saga Press

A+

The Basics:

When pregnant African women were thrown overboard from slave ships to conserve dwindling supplies for their captors, the restorative magic of the deep allowed their babies to survive and transform into the first merpeople, the Wajinru.

Today, the Wajinru survive and live with the horror of their origins by placing all the memories of every Wajinru who ever lived in the mind of a single Historian. The Historian periodically shares the memories with the rest in a Remembering ceremony, guiding them through the story and satisfying their craving for identity and belonging, before allowing them to return to blissful ignorance.

Yetu is this generation’s Historian, and seeing through the eyes of every dead Wajinru, bearing the weight of tragedies that those around her are willfully unable to understand, has gradually erased her individually identity and ultimately her will to exist. In a desperate attempt to save her own life, she runs away in the middle of a Remembrance, leaving the other Wajinru floundering under knowledge they don’t remember how to bear, and strikes out to discover who she is beyond the suffocating role she’s been assigned.

The Downside:

At only 166 pages, The Deep is a quick read, but both the characters and the world have plenty of room for deeper exploration. Maybe a sequel will show us more. The story also arguably treads water (pun intended) toward the middle, but that’s certainly preferable to rushing Yetu’s overdue retreat of self-reflection, or the development of her first romance.

The Upside:

The entire premise of The Deep forces a bitter conflict between the duty to self and duty to community. That’s an important, universal theme that Yetu’s predicament captures well, but it’s not a rare one for fiction to tackle. What sets The Deep apart is the simultaneous, connected, equally bitter conflict between the need for truth, and the need to avoid drowning in the ugliness of that truth. To save herself, and the people and planet she loves, Yetu must confront head on a set of catch-22s that many people will spend a lifetime trying to reconcile or ignore.

Meanwhile, Yetu’s also discovering the joy and terror of first love with a human woman, who’s wrestling with identity and belonging issues of her own. Wajinru are hermaphroditic and choose their own gender identities if they wish, but refreshingly, this is not among the things that Yetu finds confusing about her world or herself. There’s a beautifully frank scene in which Yetu and her prospective love interest ask each other honest questions about how sexuality works for them, and give honest answers as best they can. It’s an unfortunately special moment to see fictional love interests communicate so openly and functionally about anything, let alone something so personal and sensitive.

The Deep is insightful, beautiful, and intensely human on multiple levels, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an extremely different take on a classic fantasy character type.

Book Review: The Wolf Queen

4/2/2020

Book Review:

The Wolf Queen (The Hope of Aferi #1)

Cerece Rennie Murphy

LionSky Publishing, 2018

A-

The Basics:

A powerful group of sorcerer women called the Amasiti once lived in the Land of Yet, helping the people around them with their healing, life-giving magic. That was long ago, but just as the Land of Yet is on the brink of civil war between a power-mad Hir and the people he has long abused and neglected, a reclusive young woman named Ameenah discovers that the legacy her mother left her may be older and more important than she ever imagined.

The Downside:

The plot of The Wolf Queen is slow to start, which is okay, given the richness of the opening worldbuilding, but it’s also fairly slight when it arrives. Even when Ameenah is given what seems to be an impossible task, she completes it almost immediately with luck rather than any steps of problem-solving. There are also the standard fantasy themes of the past being an ideal to return to, and of a person’s blood and gender and foretold destiny determining their potential, rather than their choices and efforts.

The Upside:

In spite of how little actually happens in it, The Wolf Queen is an engaging read from start to finish. Ameenah is coolly steadfast in her innate knowledge of her possession of herself, in the face of an entire country’s gaslighting insistence that she owes herself to the Hir, to the resistance, or to the false fairytale that both have spun around her. The setting stands out from the usual medieval-Europe fantasy backdrop, featuring magical creatures based on gazelles and secondary characters who’ve escaped from the nightmare of diamond mines. While traditional in some places, the themes also touch on the range of different kinds of power, and how those that are less violent, more constructive, and easier for the unscrupulous to co-opt and take advantage of aren’t necessarily weaker or less admirable.

Altogether a unique escape into a magical world that comes alive almost from the first page.

Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Subscribe here for personalized updates on new books, discounts, giveaways, and more. You can also join me on Facebook and Twitter, or (best of all) become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras!

Quarantine Reads — Freebies and Markdowns

3/24/2020

Hey, everyone,

I dearly hope, as you read this, you're in good health and hunkering down somewhere safe and warm if you can.

If you or someone you know is sick, I wish you a speedy, uncomplicated recovery.

If you're on the front lines providing healthcare, food, utilities, household essentials, shipping, sanitation, and other life-saving services, I thank you, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that you'll finally, miraculously receive the living wages and all-around consideration you've always deserved for the work you do.

As a writer, editor, and voracious reader, I'm one of the lucky ones in all this. I'm used to working from home alongside my husband, and apart from worrying about other people, fending off existential dread about the world, and nursing some disappointment over a few specific events I was looking forward to, I actually enjoy the day-to-day of quarantine living.

Like many purveyors of digital media, Matt and I are cutting prices and offering new freebies, in the hopes that everyone will have access to something fun to pass the time in isolation — preferably something that doesn't require going to a store or waiting on our overstretched physical shipping infrastructure.

If this isn't the time to read an ebook, I don't know what is.

If you've already read all of our indie books that you're interested in, or if Horror and dark Sci-Fi just aren't what you turn to in times like these (they are for me, but it's a totally personal thing), I recommend checking out the Smashwords Authors Give Back sale for tons of different indie options across genres.

As for our catalogue, here are the details on discounts and freebies:

Obsessed monster hunter, Mina Todd, and easy-going skeptic, Ben Pastor, wage a secret resistance against the shape-shifting aliens infesting their small town of Prospero.

The whole 4-book Prospero Chronicles series is marked down from $9.96 to $3.96 through the end of March. (Amazon doesn't allow individual non-KU books to be marked down any further than $0.99 on short notice).

Amazon
Smashwords
Barnes & Noble: book 1, 2, 3, 4
Apple: book 1, 2, 3, 4
Kobo: book 1, 2, 3, 4

This YA Horror/Sci-Fi series is about neurotic, mismatched teens struggling to trust each other so they can deal with an alien invasion of shapeshifters. The fourth book involves their entire town being quarantined while they fight for the fate of the world, and it might be my favorite thing I've done so far.

Once upon a time, on a glamorous space station called Eris, there was a young woman who could spin base metals into gold…
At least, that’s what she tells people to separate them from their money.

The Acid Test of Naia Mills is going to be free on Kindle from March 30th through April 3rd (using my KU allowance of free days). Also, if you're a KU member, you can read it for free whenever you want.

Amazon

This one's a Sci-Fi retelling of "Rumpelstiltskin" set in the distant future, after humanity has survived the death of Earth and joined a wider bi-galactic community. Not without growing pains, of course. It's part of the Escape Velocity series of Sci-Fi folktales, but they can be read in any order. No cliffhangers, no reliance on previous installment info.

Once upon a time, on the second planet from Apocrytus, there was a monster whose face men trembled to behold…
Or they would, if they knew who she was. Perhaps she should leave more survivors

The Kryssitid Gaze will be free on Kindle from April 6th through April 10th (again, my limited allowance of free days from KU). It's also included with your KU subscription if you have one.

Amazon

It's another Sci-Fi folktale retelling in the Escape Velocity universe, this one based on the legend of Medusa. It's more R-rated and darkly comedic than Acid Test, revolving around an alien woman's efforts to survive when her planet is overtaken by a violent, dogmatic cult. Tonally, I'd describe it as Deadpool meets Ginger Snaps.

When an aspiring teenage actress is given the chance to participate in human trials for a revolutionary new beauty supplement, she sees her one chance for a camera-ready body and a real career. But what the treatment turns her into may be even more monstrous and cutthroat than her professional world.

Some Side Effects May Occur will be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20, both as part of the Smashwords sale and on Amazon, from now through April 20th.

Amazon
Smashwords

It's YA Horror/Sci-Fi set in the not-too-distant future, during a beauty arms race.

When the ghost of a handsome young man named Joshua Thorne appears to a lonely bookworm named Angela, begging her to help him solve his own murder, she follows him eagerly into the hidden world of jumbled memory and fantasy he calls the Pocket. The truth of his story is hidden there somewhere, but it might not be the story either of them is hoping for.

Out of the Pocket is also going to be marked down from $2.99 to $1.20 from now through April 20th, both in the Smashwords sale and on Amazon.

Amazon
Smashwords

This is the YA Fantasy that won me my Feminist Book of the Month author cred :) It's a satirical, trope-subverting take on Paranormal Romance, and it's intensely claustrophobic.

Fifteen-year-old Cassie Fremont and her tiny band of teenage survivors take a road trip across the zombie-infested U.S. to rescue their stranded friend, and no amount of blood and guts along the way will quell their sense of snark. Now, if only they knew how to drive.

My first-ever published novel, Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know Of), will be free on Smashwords only, from now until April 20th.

Smashwords

It's a YA Horror-Comedy that I don't usually do promotions on, because I'm quite frankly a little embarrassed. It's easily my roughest, most juvenile published work, but it's also been one of my more popular, and I figure, maybe some silly zombie-smashing action is exactly what's needed. So, I'm tossing it out there for all who could use it right now.

That's all for now, although there's a chance I'll be announcing a new indie release as well before all this is even close to over.

Stay safe, and happy reading.

Book Review: I Am Magical (magnifiqueNOIR #1)

12/23/2019

Book Review

I Am Magical (magnifiqueNOIR #1)

Briana Lawrence

Sewn Together Reflections, 2017

Grade: A

The Basics:

In a city besieged by mysterious giant monsters, a group of magical girls begins to rise, one by one, to meet the challenge. But between fending off attacks using their exploding cupcakes and sparkling pixels, they have to figure out how to live together, make it to their classes on time, and talk to their families about what they do and who they are.

The Downside:

The action can be a bit repetitive and low-stakes, with each monster inevitably succumbing to having enough magic thrown at it. That's okay; a bit of lighthearted monster-smashing is rarely a bad thing, but the informed nature of the danger makes it all the more grating to see the girls constantly scolded for just about everything they do. (How dare they not build their whole lives around never worrying anyone?) Lawrence is obviously on the girls' side, and this undermining that they face is a real-world problem thoroughly worthy of depiction and criticism, but its pervasiveness throughout each girl’s storyline does become tiresome. Between the different dynamics of three different magical girls’ home lives, it would have been nice to see at least one example of someone wholeheartedly supporting one of them, without a perpetually underlying tone of, “Well, I understand that this is what you need to do, and you have a right to do it, but I still really wish you wouldn’t, so you totally owe me for not trying to stop you.”

The Upside:

While the fights themselves can be a noisy blur of powers and punching, the monsters are nicely memorable in that they hide in plain sight, always as that person in the crowd. The creep stalking younger girls at bus stops. The crude provocateur harassing women at the gym. Even the diva who expects the whole store to wait while she demands the manager’s attention. Each one represents a piece of toxicity or hostility that most women — and sometimes most people — can relate to coming up against in public spaces, which makes them quite satisfying to see obliterated in magical girl fashion.

Indeed, it’s the social, human, non-magical aspects of I Am Magical where most of the storytelling magic actually happens. For starters, the audacity of the team makeup is a thing of beauty unto itself. Every single member of magnifiqueNOIR is female, black, and somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

All of them.

They’re all in their own phases of asserting their identities and dealing with their own related challenges, and most importantly, they’re all distinct, complex people who cannot be summed up simply by checking boxes on a questionnaire.

Without ever forcing a pedantic, on-the-nose discussion of the matter, magnifiqueNOIR flatly rejects the old tendency to introduce more representation into existing structures in timid, measured, token doses, celebrating the tiniest victories and carefully never asking for too much. Instead, it seems to ask, so what if it’s statistically improbable for there to be this many LGBTQ+ black women all in one place, coincidentally brought together by something other than having those things in common? It’s still far more probable than anyone being able to generate exploding cupcakes out of thin air, so why not? Why not go all in and make up some ground in a media stream that so often offers far less than statistically accurate representation of all of these things?

The girls also all have different relationships with traditional femininity, both aesthetically and in the activities they pursue, and with how that meshes with their staggering cosmic powers and the nontraditional aspects of their private lives. Bree is a gamer girl and all-around geek who’s conventionally attractive and loves it, especially when she’s cosplaying for her YouTube channel. Marianna is a fashionable plus-sized baker who can conquer the day in heels. Lonnie is a muscular kickboxer who lives in unisex comfortwear. None of them are wrong, and no authentic expression of gender is ever at odds with the state of being a capable, complete human being.

For anyone who loves reading about magical girls kicking butt, this is a new series not to be missed, brimming with positivity and geekery in equal measures.

Want more Fiona J.R. Titchenell? Subscribe here for personalized updates on new books, discounts, giveaways, and more. You can also join me on Facebook and Twitter, or (best of all) become a patron to gain access to exclusive extras!

Book Review: Dark Fairy Tale Queens

10/8/2019

Book Review:

Dark Fairy Tale Queens 1-3

Anita Valle

2015-2017

Grade: A

I’m going to mess with the format a little for this one. Usually I break my reviews up into a summary, what I liked, and what I didn’t like, but because this is a novella collection, I’m just going to go one installment at a time.

The Dark Fairy Tale Queens series starts out with a pretty simple concept. What if Cinderella were the villain of her own story? That’s not to say that this story has a hero; the wicked stepmother and stepsisters are just about as wicked as ever, and the idea seems to be that abuse is cyclical and breeds more of itself.

That’s a fascinating yet intuitive take on the Cinderella story that I’m amazed I’ve never seen done before — even as a kid, Cinderella’s goodness always struck me as improbable under the circumstances — but dwelling on the themes makes this version sound quite a bit more serious than it actually is. The actual experience of reading it is, in a word, wicked. There’s simply no better way to describe it.

It takes a very special story to make me follow a truly unlikeable protagonist, let alone a whole unlikeable cast, and I’m not normally a fangirl for evil queens who are actually evil. In a world where women are so casually vilified for things like wielding power, having informed opinions, and challenging the status quo, I tend to prefer reimaginings that treat traditionally evil female characters as misunderstood or at least morally gray. In Valle’s hands, however, Cinderella’s shallow, vindictive, manipulative self-indulgence is more readably fun than I ever would have thought possible.

This book is like what would happen if Cinderella were a Telltale Game, and after playing through it a few times with the intuitive good decisions, you decided to pick all the options that make everyone behave as badly as possible just to see what would happen. The story turns out substantively pretty much the same, of course, but the tone and the details are night and day. That’s where Sinful Cinderella is at its most deliciously clever, the way it tours through every essential cosmetic beat of the fairy tale, from pumpkin to ball to slipper, but with a completely different set of motivations that actually make more sense than the original.

Possible downsides: some of the dialogue outlining the themes of love and hate and evil feels a bit on-the-nose, and there’s an assault that can be read as retribution for Cinderella simply daring to go to a party looking killer (hardly one of her actual “sins”), but if you squint just right it kind of blends into the gloriously chaotic train wreck of how much everyone in this universe sucks.

In this continuation of Dark Fairy Tale Queens, Snow White is making plans to run away with her boyfriend, Hunter, to escape her stepmother, the wicked queen Cinderella. But she won’t be satisfied with just making good her escape; first she wants revenge on Cinderella for killing her father (never mind that he was a monster, it’s the principle of the thing), and she wants a love apple to share with Hunter, a spell that will keep their love strong and fresh for the rest of their lives, no matter what.

She’s going to need it, because unlike everyone else in the Dark Fairy Tale Queens universe, Hunter is decent, right through to the core. As much fun as this series’ heroines’ twisted minds can be, Hunter is a breath of fresh air, not to mention an ever-tightening reel of tension, as his childhood sweetheart love for Snow grapples with his dawning understanding of just how venomous she is.

When Snow makes Hunter promise to kill the pregnant Cinderella for her, she finally drives just enough of a wedge between them to set in motion a phenomenally awkward love triangle between stepmother, stepdaughter, and the sweetest man in the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Cinderella’s magic mirror has shifted its seductive attentions to the new fairest woman in the land, calling Snow’s worst nature even closer to the surface, and Cinderella’s fairy godmother ties the series closer together with a reappearance as a peddler of magic apples.

Possible downsides: Because Sneaky Snow White deviates more from the structure of its source fairytale, the pacing is a bit unconventional and treads water in a few places. Snow White also rather uncomfortably describes one member of the Dwarves (a rape gang that had previously chased her through the forest) as “a bad apple, but loveable.” Then again, she’s comparing him to herself while planning to cut open her stepmother and steal her unborn baby, so her judgement on what makes a person lovable can be assumed to be as fractured as the fairy tale she inhabits. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize this may be a deliberate comment on how only male characters usually get to fill the “loveable asshole” archetype, often while being assholes far beyond the point where they should qualify as loveable. Complaint retracted.

This is a story about what Rapunzel would be like if her narrow education at the hands of an evil witch and total lack of social awareness had taken her in a rather less princess-like direction. Raised in a tower by the previous book’s Snow White, this Rapunzel is an especially bratty teenager who’s determined not only to see the world but to claim her birthright and crown herself queen. At the same time, she’s compellingly pitiable, desperate to have a “friend” with no concept of what that means, and unlikely ever to find out given the universe she was born into.

This installment is also so much more than a Rapunzel revisiting. While Sneaky Snow White’s deviation from its main fairy tale inspiration and incorporation of multiple tales caused some growing pains for the series, it pays off big time in Rotten Rapunzel. The story mash-ups accelerate around an original plotline with a will of its own, switching up roles and taking advantage of repeating fairy tale tropes to distill a non-repetitive dose of the most iconic bits. This novella alone contains threads of Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella, The Snow Queen, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and possibly some foreshadowing for Jack and the Beanstalk. I might even have missed some, and they’re all working together as if they were meant to all along.

If you love Into the Woods but wish it had a bit more Game of Thrones mixed in (the meanness and scheming, not the R rating), you’re going to adore Dark Fairy Tale Queens.

Possible downsides: There’s what seems to be a classic Fake Nice Guy character here whose arc feels underserved and unresolved. He spends the story doing bad and ill-advised things to impress a girl, who’s made it abundantly clear she’s not interested, and whining about how she won’t give him a chance. Rapunzel even falls into the trap of telling this girl how horrible she is for “tormenting” him (the girl is incidentally horrible, like everyone in this series, but not for saying no when she means it). Of course, Rapunzel is also a socially stunted megalomaniac who’s planning to magically roofie said Fake Nice Guy for her own use, so her opinions on this don’t count for much. Still, I wish the plot had dealt with him in a more conclusive way, even if only by letting him win and unmasking him in the process. On the other hand, letting him flounder pathetically in the background without ever being all that important arguably has its own sort of justice to it, and there might be more resolution coming down the road. I guess we’ll just have to wait for Bad Beauty to find out!

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Cover Reveal and Giveaway: Thorn, by Intisar Khanani

7/1/2019

Congratulations to Intisar Khanani on the cover reveal of her new Harper Teen edition of Thorn!

In honor of the occasion, she's giving away two $25 gift cards and a Thorn-inspired prize pack. She's also sharing a sneak peak inside the book itself.

The giveaway is at the bottom of this page, but first, let's take a look at the book! You can also read my review of Thorn here, but keep in mind, it's based on the original indie version. Harper Teen has added some lovely embellishments to the cover, and I'm curious how the inside will have changed too!

About Thorn

A princess with two futures. A destiny all her own.

Between her cruel family and the contempt she faces at court, Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life. But when she’s betrothed to the powerful prince Kestrin, Alyrra embarks on a journey to his land with little hope for a better future.

When a mysterious and terrifying sorceress robs Alyrra of both her identity and her role as princess, Alyrra seizes the opportunity to start a new life for herself as a goose girl.

But Alyrra soon finds that Kestrin is not what she expected. The more Alyrra learns of this new kingdom, the pain and suffering its people endure, as well as the danger facing Kestrin from the sorceress herself, the more she knows she can’t remain the goose girl forever.

With the fate of the kingdom at stake, Alyrra is caught between two worlds and ultimately must decide who she is, and what she stands for.

“Thorn is a lovely atmospheric fairytale fantasy about a girl and her found family. I loved it!” — Gail Carriger, New York Times-bestselling author of the Parasol Protectorate series

“Intisar Khanani is in my top five favorite authors writing today. A stunningly talented storyteller whose lyrical writing just blows my socks off every time I read her.” — Grace Draven, USA Today bestselling author Eidolon

Excerpt from Thorn

“Princess Alyrra,” the king says. I rise and lift my eyes to his. He studies me as if I were a prize goat, his gaze sliding over me before returning to my face, as cold and calculating as a butcher.

“We have heard tell of you before.”

“My lord?” My voice is steady and calm, as I’ve learned to make it when I’m only half frightened. For all my prayers, there’s no sign of softer traits in the man before me.

“It is said you are honest. An unusual trait, it would seem.”

Dread curls tight in my belly. I force some semblance of a smile to my lips. There is no other answer I can give that my family will not despise me for. My brother has gone rigid, his hands pressed flat against his thighs.

“You are most kind,” my mother says, stepping forward.

The king watches me a moment longer, leaving my mother waiting. Just when I thought I might finally escape my history, how my family sees me, I find I am mistaken. There is no better future to hope for now. The king has come for me, knowing full well I am nothing to my family.

Thorn is coming March 24th, 2020! You can pre-order your copy here, or add it to your Goodreads reading list here.

About Intisar Khanani

Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. She has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. She is the author of The Sunbolt Chronicles and Thorn (HarperTeen 2020).

You can find her on her website, Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Giveaway Time!

Ready for swag? Of course you are.

Here's how it goes. One U.S resident will win a Thorn-inspired prize pack, including a great snowy owl enamel pin, a gorgeous "quill" style calligraphy pen set, a hand-painted watercolor feather on a page from Thorn, and a "fairy dust" candle. That lucky winner will also receive a $25 gift card.

Non-U.S residents are not eligible for the prize pack but can still enter to win a second $25 gift card.

The drawing will be on July 18th, and you can enter below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Book Review: Catalyst Moon #2: Breach

6/2/2019

Book Review:

Catalyst Moon #2: Breach

Lauren L. Garcia

2017

Grade: A-

(You can read my review of Catalyst Moon #1: Incursion here)

The Basics:

With the completion of Stonewall’s mission to escort Kali to her new home-slash-prison in Whitewater City, the sentinel and mage have little excuse to have anything more to do with each other, but the feelings that bloomed between them on the road refuse to fade, pulling the two of them into a treacherous double life.

Meanwhile, the Thralls, victims of a spreading epidemic of demonic possession, are not only threatening the physical safety of the kingdom but turning its people against the mages, whom many suspect of being the cause. As for the mages, an escape plot is stirring within the bastion among Kali’s more rebellious friends, giving her only a few short weeks to decide where to place her loyalty, and her hopes for her future.

The Downside:

I may be the only person in the world who actually prefers the first Catalyst Moon book to the second. This is probably because I'm exceptionally picky about my love stories, and the romance is even more of a focal point in this one, in spite of Stonewall and Kali spending more time apart in it.

I’m still rooting for these two; they’re so genuinely sweet and serious about each other that it’s hard not to, but given how thoughtfully subversive the series is in so many ways, I was disappointed by the forced drama of them failing to communicate vital information for inadequately motivated reasons. It’s far from the most toxic of standard romance tropes, and not a disqualifying one on my shelf when I like enough other elements, but still one of my literary pet peeves just for being lazy and tired.

The Upside:

Breach’s deeper exploration of the world and people of Catalyst Moon, on the other hand, takes some of the most fascinating details of the first book and brings them to the next level.

The status quo of the kingdom, from its commodification of magic users, to its caste system, to its assumption that the monsters of its children’s stories are nothing more than stories, is clearly fraying at the seams, waiting for someone to apply the right pressure in just the right place. Well, not just someone. Therein lies the difficulty. It’s going to take a lot of someones to break the old system and build a new one, and much of Breach is about the difficulty of getting enough someones pulling in the same direction. There are plenty of people with every reason to be dissatisfied, certainly, separated to all corners and entrenched in their own coping mechanisms. Many have convinced themselves that the way things are is the right way or the only way. Others fight ardently for their own interests while clinging to their irrational prejudices against each other.

The political side of the story makes for a frustrating read, but in a much better way than this installment’s romantic misunderstandings. The state of the world of Catalyst Moon is integrated much more smoothly into the story than is the case in many comparable fantasy epics, presented through the subplots of a sensibly sized cast of characters, all of them organically introduced and then cinched together in new ways. Breach comes together like a cat’s cradle, weaving together threads from Incursion so efficiently that the process can almost go unnoticed until the interlocking pattern surprises with its elegant intricacy.

Once the forestory at the bastion takes off, it happens quickly, culminating in a tense finale that pulls insistently into book three — a pull I have not resisted.

More on that soon.

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