Nanoreviews: Into Shadow, a Collection of Amazon Short Stories

A collection of short fiction stories examining hidden and forgotten things, in which seven authors give us stories of characters wandering into places and spaces that others cannot, or will not, and risk the darkness as the price of their hidden knowledge.

The Garden by Tomi Champion-Adeyemi

The only thing I have previously read by Tomi Champion-Adeyemi is Children of Blood and Bone, of which I was not enormously fond - for all its great setting, I often found the characters a little weakly drawn and the plot tending to the obvious. The Garden could have been written by an entirely different author. It’s magical realism in tone, following a woman on a trip to Brazil inspired by the contents of a journal belonging to her mother, and the conversations she has with her guide along the way, digging into his and her own beliefs about the world and the supernatural, and what she’ll find when she reaches the mysterious garden she’s searching for. It’s told in a mixture of prose and poem, and really puts you into Lęina’s strange perspective, showing you a world fracturing into greater strangeness as she follows her journey onwards. Almost all of the story is in the conversations she has with Angelo, her guide, or just with herself, and so it feels incredibly intimate, and was well suited to the audio version I listened to.

It's a lyrical, strange little story, that's doing a lot of interesting things. It doesn't always quite pull them off, and is suffering a little from the short form, but well worth the time and interest regardless.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Persephone by Lev Grossman

Following on from The Garden, Lev Grossman’s contribution to Into Shadow is a little disappointing. Where Champion-Adeyemi was playing with prose and poetry and an interesting character study, Grossman’s Persephone is far more a typical urban fantasy sort of vibe. It’s a perfectly fine example of one, but I feel like it was let down a lot by the form, simply because, for me, much of the appeal of an urban fantasy type narrative comes from exploring a world that lies within or alongside or under our own, and the juxtapositions and contrasts or ideas you get thrown out of the two together. When you have so little space as this, you cut the reader off from a lot of the time spent in that world and discovering it, and so you just don’t give them the opportunity to love it in the way a full-length novel might.

Aside from that – and in some ways that’s a good aside as I was genuinely left wanting to know more about the world – it’s well done. There’s a mystery at the core of the story, and how it develops is very well paced. It also has that spareness and economy that allows a short form story to really do a lot in its little space, and a lot of implication that relies on the reader making jumps of intuition or logic to try to figure things out. I finished it thinking “oh I wonder” and “does that mean…” and “so did she just…”, and those questions lingered with me after, which for me is a sign of a story well told... if it then goes on to give you the answers to those questions, or leave you in a position to ponder them more thoughtfully. Ultimately, I think it would have been much better told in a full length novel, so it ended up being relatively middling for me over all, despite feeling like a decent story start.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

By contrast, The Six Deaths of the Saint was a phenomenal story, and one that took its size and form and used them to make itself better, not less. It is exactly what it needs to be and no more, and manages to pack a huge emotional punch for its very short size.

It follows a poor girl, young and ill, who sees a vision of a saint and is led to follow her prince, to fight and to kill. And then it becomes something… else. Something wider. A story about stories, and patterns, and change, and the things we don't notice that are right in front of us all along. It's dreamy and drifty and has that slightly indefinable quality of the fairytale or legend - very much deliberately in this case evoking Arthuriana - that speaks to something at the level of the mythic. It's sad, hopeful and bittersweet in equal parts as well as glorious, and really manages to give you that full arc of a satisfying story in just a few pages.

It’s also one where sharing almost anything about the actual details of the story would ruin the sheer delight of it, so I’m going to leave it there, and end with an exhortation that you should read it because it is simply beautiful. 

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo

Unsurprisingly given the title, this is an intensely creepy story of mediums and murder. We follow a couple of fraudulent mediums wanting to pull yet another scam... and yet the story isn't quite what it seems. In this world... there is magic? Maybe? And yet the mediums are still fake? It's a story that tugs at the edges, throwing you off with details that don't conform to your expectations, even as much of it does. Between this and the great and immediate way Vo has conjured the atmosphere, it really packs a punch in terms of the creepiness.

It's also a story happy to leave much unsaid, in the traditions of the best magic and mystery. We don't really need to understand the world, or why what happens happens. We just need to inhabit it for a little while, and enjoy passing through it, experiencing this little window into a bit of strangeness. This works particularly well because there are threads cast outwards, rooting it in contexts before and after the moment of the story, hints of background and backstories to the characters and places, we just never need them to be fully explained, fully spelled out. It's a story completely content to be as it is and do what it needs to do with a deft, light touch and I enjoyed it enormously.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Undercover by Tamsyn Muir

Somehow, we get even creepier, in a world of moving gangster dens and decomposing ghoul dancers and undercover cops. Muir has made sure all the nastiness of organised crime is definitely kept in her story, and then added an extra layer of zombie nastiness as delightful icing on the cake. Definitely this isn't one to read alone, late at night.

Amy Starr is an undercover police officer, trying to worm her way into the good graces of a mob boss. She gets taken on as a bodyguard and keeper for the boss' big secret - a ghoul who can dance, and think, and respond to conversation. Which makes her dangerous. The ones that can think are the worst. We follow Amy wrestling with her curiosity about the ghoul, her need to know more, while balancing her superior's need to destroy something - someone - so very dangerous.

But even in such an un-right world, something else is off. And it takes the whole story to get us there, in a twist that is genuinely twisty and well managed, but leaves the story ending hanging on possibilities and wondering. It's brilliant, solid work and entirely worth being creeped out by.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

The Candles Are Burning by Veronica G. Henry

With a sharp twist, for all that The Candles Are Burning is still about death and mystery as the rest of the collection is, the focus here is far more on the living human experience than the darkness itself, and that makes the experience of reading it, while not exactly a light one, a contrast in tone to the previous two stories. It is far more about a woman grappling with the loss of her husband, the precarity of her life, and the strangeness of the things happening to her, than those strange happenings themselves.

It helps also that our main character, Maggie, is an intensely pragmatic, practical woman, even in the face of shuddering, portentous candles and spectral visions, and it grounds the tone of the story far closer to the real and the living. She's a pleasant person to follow and live in the thoughts of, and it is easy to feel for her instantly, even before the drama of the story truly begins. She's a woman who doesn't want to leave her home for the dubious promises of a better life elsewhere, at least not without proof. She's a woman trying to do right by her daughter, persuade her husband to be sensible. She's a woman trying to live even while haunted by spectres of death, and so she burns bright through the story.

That being said, I think this is one that could have done with being a little longer. The mystery is great, and well played out for the most of it, but the wrap up feels sudden when we get there. Everything is neat and tidy, but could have done with that bit more space to breathe, and get us there a little more naturally and gently. And that would have just given us more time with Maggie.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Out of the Mirror, Darkness by Garth Nix

Alas, a weaker story than many of the others to close.

We follow Harper, the general fixer, scary man and solver of extremely odd problems at a mid-tier film studio in old Hollywood. Two of the stars of their current film have fallen mysteriously ill, and particularly seem to be unable to tolerate bright light. He suspects something paranormal at work, but the mysterious secretary to the big boss, knower of many things, isn't around to answer his questions, and so he must investigate, and perhaps figure out how to keep things together on his own.

The premise is fine, and interesting enough, but the problem comes with both the character dynamics, and the ending. Garth Nix loves a weak man/strong woman pairing (whether romantic or otherwise) and this is no exception... but because we spend most of the story with just the weaker half, it feels incomplete. We just get to watch him flounder somewhat, though more competently than many of Nix's men manage. But then, when the strong woman does turn up? She's the deus (or I suppose dea) ex machina, and so the tension that's been building for the whole of the story just dissipates instantly. There simply wasn't the space to manage both the worry and foreboding in her absence and give any level of drama and mystery when she shows up. It makes this feel very much like something that exists in a larger universe - if she were a familiar character making a cameo, she'd make far more sense - or something shorter than it was intended to be. There are simply too many threads surrounding her.

And then there's her character in general - she knows all the answers, but we never know why, and not in the enjoyable sense of a story well done that leaves you wanting more. We feel short-changed by her, and her swift resolution of events. The ending of the final story of the set is an abrupt cut-off, and it unfortunately undercuts so much of the good work the rest of the stories have put in to build such a lovely, coherent and creepy collection.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Microreview [Book]: The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman

A truly magical trilogy

This review may contain general plot spoilers for the previous two books: The Magicians and The Magician King.

The Magician’s Land is the most mature installment in Grossman’s series. Quentin has grown up a lot in the 12 or so years that this trilogy spans and he is no longer whiney or shitty. Quentin has been kicked out of Fillory, but instead of brooding on the unfairness of it all like he would have in the past, Q picks up the pieces and heads to the one place that feels remotely like home…Brakebills. And here we finally get what the first book was lacking, and that is Brakebills as a character. Previously, Brakebills was always just a setting, the building the crew attended classes in. But now it has a different feel with its magical passages, danger zones, and to the pride of all, first ghost.

Though Quentin has matured a lot, he hasn’t lost his sense of adventure. His quest in this book starts out academic, but life loves to through Q curve balls and he finds himself out on the street once again. Luckily he, along with an acquaintance, was recruited into a proper adventure, which includes one of my top 5 favorite passages ever. It involves a rag-tag group of magicians flying out of a window on hastily animated found objects:

They swarmed out through the empty windows like angry bees out of a hive. Plum and Stoppard rode leather club chairs; Betsy had a small prayer rug that had been in front of the fireplace, which she handled standing up, surfboard style; Quentin got the penny-farthing bicycle.

This scene continues on and is absolutely hilarious and wonderfully self aware, and through the absurdity of it all, Grossman is somehow able to capture the tension and anxiety required of a proper chase scene. If you have been following along, you probably won’t recognize any of the characters in the excerpt above, except of course Quentin, and that’s because here in the final installment, we get a whole new cast of characters. This always makes me nervous since getting to know someone new is never easy, but again Grossman does not fail to deliver. Plum, a Brakebills senior with a secret of her own, become a fairly predominant character in this book and her POV is entertaining. One of my favorite things about Plum is that she thinks the idea of having sex with Quentin is ‘gross’ because he’s so ‘old’ and one of my favorite things about Quentin is that the idea of having sex with Plum never even crosses his mind. This is incredibly refreshing in an era where women in media are constantly and disproportionately romantically paired with older men.

So we get some new characters here, but we also get to learn a lot more about our old friends. Grossman gives us both Janet’s and Eliot’s POV and despite my reservations, both hold up well. At first I wasn’t quite sure whether either of them could hold their own as POV characters for very long, but Grossman keeps it short and doesn’t try to scrape anything out when nothing is there. It was actually kind of nice to get to know Janet a little better and the story of how she got her badass axes was terrific.

There’s still more I could go on and on about but I don’t want to give anything away. Overall, I was extremely impressed with this series. In fact, It’s the only one I’ve read where there isn’t a book I like more than another. Each installment was as good as the last, none overshadowing or failing to live up to its predecessor. My only real complaint with the entire trilogy is the distasteful rape scene. I know why it’s in there but I don’t agree with it. I think it is partially because rape is used a plot device so frequently that I can no longer forgive it. As a media culture, we need a break from that trope. But, I loved this trilogy so much that I won’t let that one scene bring it down for me. I will reread it, but when I do I’ll just have to red wedding that chapter, because some things, like the red wedding, need only be read once and never be read again.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for Quentin not sleeping with Plum; +1 for Quentin's character development throughout the series

Penalties: I really haven’t got any.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 'very high quality/standout in its category'

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POSTED BY: Tia 

Reference: Grossman, Lev. The Magician's Land [Viking Press, 2014]

Microreview [book]: The Magician King by Lev Grossman

Can a sequel really surpass its predecessor?

Yes. And no.

Quentin and the crew have grown up a bit since the last book. Sure, they still lounge around and eat good food and drink their fill, but they’re far less whiney about it now. Everyone still has their quirks, but they seem to have come into their own. Everyone except Julia that is. And that is where The Magician King excels, but also where it fails. I am going to try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, but some inferences about the plot can be made from what I say, so tread lightly.

This second installment really shines in Julia’s story. Where in the first book we had melodrama, now we have neuroticism, as Julia comes to terms with her rejection from Brakebills and her inability to let magic go. She goes down the rabbit hole (figuratively, not literally which is possible in this book) and is caught in a whirlwind of depression and obsession. She’s constantly teetering on the edge but refuses to give up. This story of Julia's recent past is juxtaposed with Julia of the present, who is mysterious and distant but still tortured. She travels with Quentin on a quest to fulfill Q’s existential crisis du jour, which turns into a quest to save the world, which is all very interesting, and the juxtaposition of worlds keeps the story fresh.

Reading this, I kept trying to think of what my negatives would be. What could I take off points for? I mean, there was a little bit too much of Julia using her sexuality to get what she wanted from people, considering bathroom hand jobs her secret weapon so to speak. That didn’t really sit right with me but I wanted to forgive it because I was really enjoying the book otherwise, and it really didn’t come up that much. And she was neurotic and desperate and obsessed in a way that border-lined on addiction so maybe it was ok.

And then, in the penultimate chapter, it happened. One of our female characters is raped. [insert eye roll]. Not metaphorically, literally. And also literally, this rape brings her power in the form of, ahem, what he leaves inside her. And when’s he done, he pulls her humanity out stuck to his, ya know. Here's the worst of it:

The only other noises were made by [name removed for spoiler] grunting softly and hoarsely behind her. At one point a couple of rebel nerve endings attempted to send pleasure signals to her brain…. 

….[blank] barked loudly when he [removed for crudeness]. She felt it. The terrible, unspeakable thing, which she would never tell anybody, not even herself, was that it felt wonderful. Not in a sexual way…. But it filled her up with power.

I'll let you chew on that for a minute.


...


I think this scene in here to draw a parallel with mythology since ancient gods often raped women. What I can't figure out is if it's in here to mock the trope of women gaining power from rape, since much of what Grossman has done in these books is mock tropes (mostly YA tropes, though), or if Grossman has fallen into the trope himself. Also, at the very end, Quentin takes the blame for the rape and everything else that this female character went through, literally suffering the consequences in her place. By doing this it removes all of her agency, suggesting that her journey and transformation were all just the result of Quentin's and the rapist's actions. Sigh.

I keep writing and deleting paragraphs on all of this, and on using rape as a plot device in general, and I've gone from disgusted to angry to exhausted to numb. These are things we all know, yet it continues to happen. In fact, one quarter of every review-type post I wrote in 2015 was about a story that involved rape, and half involved the misrepresentation of women in general. But rather than go on about it at length which I've done ad nauseam, from now on when I review a story that does these things, I'm going to put it in the corner to think about what it's done, where it will hopefully find some remorse (or shame):

But, just when I think I'm out...

So, can one scene in one chapter ruin a whole book? Sure, but not this one. The final chapter of The Magician King is beautifully gut wrenching. Grossman really knows how to write a series, never overstaying his welcome anywhere and constantly leaving you wanting more of where you were but excited for what is to come. His writing is (almost) always fresh, never stale, and I look forward to reading the final installment in this wonderful, albeit slightly flawed, series.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for the brilliant juxtaposition between the Brakebillians Fillory story and Julia's story

Penalties: -1 for well, you know, and -1 for Quentin taking the blame for it an everything else in her arc

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10 “an enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws”


PS. I sincerely hope SyFy does not air the rape scene.

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POSTED BY: Tia ... female defender since forever, and Nerds of a Feather Contributor since 2014


REFERENCE: Grossman, Lev. The Magician King [Viking/Penguin Books, 2011]

Microreview [book]: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Let me start by telling you what The Magicians is not. It is not ‘Harry Potter meets Narnia’ despite what nearly every description of the book states. In fact, if you could image the exact polar opposite of this, it would be a good place to start. The Magicians is the story of Quentin Coldwater, a privileged teenaged boy from Brooklyn who is incredibly smart (measured in mathematics) and who hates his life and everyone in it, except for Julia who he loves but hates because the love is unrequited. He loses himself in the seemingly childish fantasy series Fillory and Further where a family of British kids adventures in a magical land accessible from our world via ordinary furniture. Quentin’s plan to attend an Ivy League school is soon relinquished when he learns that yes, he’s a wizard Harry, and gains admittance Brakebills College for Medical Pedagogy in upstate New York. I hope he doesn’t wander into Camp Halfblood while he's there.

I’m sure you can see where the antonymous analogy originates. Quentin finds out he can do magic, goes to a school to learn magic, and is obsessed with pretty much Narnia (no denying that Fillory is a stand in for Narnia). But in reality, very little magical learning goes on at Brakebills - at least from the reader's perspective. All five (well, technically four) of Quentin’s years there are over by the midpoint of the book. We get to see a little bit of magical learning in the beginning, which consists mostly of finger contortions, but the majority of the time we readers spend at Brakebills involves Quentin’s relationships with others, namely Eliot, Janet, and Alice (and Josh and Penny too) and them all getting smashed and philosophizing in ways that only teenagers and twenty-somethings can.

And then there’s Fillory, which is real by the way. I think this statement is spoilery, but since it’s on the back of the book I’ll leave it here. And just like our time at Brakebills is pretty much the polar opposite of a reader’s time spent at Hogwarts (which was a detailed and lengthy magical education devoted to good hearted young souls overcoming adversity and evil), Fillory proper may be Narnia incarnate, but the story itself is the polar opposite of Narnia. Sure, the children get there via everyday objects, but they don’t just save the world and then reign happily every after. It's way more complicated than that.

First, lets get some technical things out of the way. I don't always comment on this type of stuff because I review a lot of advanced copies, but this book I purchased new and it was printed recently enough to have an awful SyFy pitch on the cover. I was surprised to find a fair amount of typographical errors (runonwordswithnospaces and capital letters Randomly in the middle of sentences) which were (was?) distracting. Also, the grammar is very awkward at times and I often found myself having to reread sentences. The problem is either inappropriately placed words with double meaning, or inappropriately placed comas, or both.

I think that the selective references to pop culture which include Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, and D&D are misplaced. And notice what is missing from the list? Narnia. You can’t create a metaphorical rebuttal of modern popular fantasy tropes and directly reference some but exclude others. Plus, this dates the work in a way that in twenty, thirty, or fifty years these references may no longer be meaningful and will distance the reader from the story.

Finally, the passage of time is rushed. Like I said earlier, the characters’ five-ish years of magical education zip by in the first half of the book. It doesn’t give them much chance to grow and I have a hard time imaging them as anything other than 17 year olds, when in reality they are in their early twenties by the end of the book.

Now, for the good stuff…It took me a while to commit to reading The Magicians because it has so many mixed reviews, as any foray through its Goodreads page will reveal. I'm glad I read it though, because personally, I loved this book. I was hooked within the first 20 pages when Quentin reveals his reason for loving Fillory. We know Fillory is not innovative or original, but that is its purpose here, to serve as a stand-in for the Narnias of our lives. Even as an (almost) adult, Q escapes to Fillory when he can’t deal with the real world, which is something I think we all can relate to. I don’t know about you, but I have spent many a day a Hogwarts for that very same reason.

Mostly, people don’t like The Magicians because the characters are miserable, ungrateful, unlikeable shitheads. This is true, but honestly, I find them to be some of the most relatable characters I’ve ever read about. I think some of those who have such an adverse reaction to Q and the other characters in this book may forget what its like to be a young adult (a real young adult, not a Katniss Everdeen young adult) or maybe had a positive teenage-hood (bah, as if). Really though, I think perhaps we all relate to these characters a little too well and some people don’t want to read about a character that represents the worst in them.

You see, Quentin really is a shit bag, and miserable and ungrateful and all that. But aren’t we all sometimes? It’s actually kind of scary how relatable I find him and I guess that means on some level I’m shit bag too. But, let they who have never questioned the futility of their efforts or existence and never engaged in unvirtuous behavior with complete disregard to the feelings of others cast the first stone. I think everyone has a little bit of hatred for Quentin because he represents that little piece of us we all wish didn’t exist. Yes, I know what it's like to be Quentin. But I also know what it's like to be Alice. And although we don’t necessarily gravitate toward SF/F for its realism, Quentin and his crew may be some of the most human characters I’ve read about in a long, long time.

Often we read SF/F and envy those with extraordinary powers and hero quests and we long for that sense of purpose within our selves, because in comparison our lives are piddly and meaningless. Some readers may not like that our heroes feel the same way. Its funny because I was recently chatting with The G about how The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz was the only book I ever read that altered my emotions for the duration of the time spent reading it, even when I wasn’t actively reading. I was depressed that whole week and angry and bitter and I didn’t realize why until after I finished the book. To me, that is a sign of a truly good book. One that can evoke emotion that stays with you long after reading it. This is what The Magicians did to me. Maybe I just relate to Quentin on a level some others don’t, or maybe it’s his relationship with Alice that really gets me, I’m not sure.

This book is definitely for the existential fantasy reader. If you are looking for a hero’s romp, don’t look here. But if you are looking for a book that does a little something more with the genre and lives outside of the comfort zone, give The Magicians a try. I think it's quite fantastic.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +2 for how uncomfortably relatable Quentin is, +1 for everything about Eliot

Penalties: -1 for dating itself with select cultural references

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 “well worth your time and attention”

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POSTED BY: Tia  Nerds of a Feather Contributor since 2014

REFERENCE: Grossman, Lev. The Magicians [Viking Press, 2009]

Summer Reading List: Tia

Below is my (overambitious) summer reading (wish) list. I must admit, it makes me look like a really bad fantasy reader, but thats because my fantasy reading mission in life is to absorb as many of the must-reads as possible, but not ignore the lesser known but equally as amazing stand-alones and series. So this list is composed of books I want to read this summer that I haven't gotten to yet, while still leaving room for those wonderful stories I don’t know about that will eventually find their way to my bookshelf.

1. The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton [Tor, 2015]

This is officially the first thing on my list, since I recently reviewed and really liked The Just City, the first in the proposed trilogy. I love stories that incorporate Greek Mythology, especially ones that throw gods into the modern (or at least not Ancient Greek) world. If that’s your thing too, make sure you check out The Just City by Jo Walton, and if you haven’t already, go read Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips. I hear that’s a movie as well. Add one to my summer watching list…

2. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson [Tor, 1999]

From the second I picked this book up, I couldn’t wait to finish the series so that I could start it over. I am a big fan of rereads in general and believe that the first time you read a book you find out what happens, and the second time you read it you find out why. I knew right away the Malazan Book of the Fallen would be in my top three rereads ever (up there with ASoIaf and Harry Potter), not because the world is so complex (which it is of course), but because Erikson so brilliantly drops you right into the thick of things and lets you figure it out on your own. I’m excited because this time around I’ll know what’s going on and what things like warrens are, and most importantly, if I’m not sure about something it will be relatively safe to wiki it.

3. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke [Bloomsburry, 2004]

With so many books and so little time, it’s hard to decide which books on your TBR list to actually read. Sometimes the hype of publicity can be the catalyst for choice. Such is the case with Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. With the TV adaption bringing it back into the spotlight and causing so many folks to (re)sing its praises, I cannot allow myself to go another summer without reading this one.

4. The Magicians by Lev Grossman [Viking Press, 2009]

This is another series I’ve been itching to give a try, something I’m repeatedly reminded of whenever a TV rumor surfaces. I’m a total sucker for magical schooling (Potter, Kingkiller) but haven’t read this one yet because (a) time and (b) mixed reviews. But the premise is too much up my alley for me to ignore it any longer, and The Magicians is officially on my reading list this summer.

5. Mistborn, The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson [Tor, 2006]

I actually started reading a sample of this book and really liked it, but it got lost somewhere in life and I never downloaded the full copy. Every now and then something pops up on Twitter about Mistborn to remind me I need to read it, and especially so now that Rebel Leader, Steve Kamb has been singing its praises. I don’t even really know what the overall plot of this series is (which makes me a bad fantasy reader but is good for reading fantasy) but I do remember that I liked the sample and I do know that this is one I have to read.

6. Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milan [Tor, 2015]

The premise of this book is just too intriguing to ignore. Basically it’s your typical medieval-type war and kingdom fantasy world but with dinosaurs. It would be higher on my summer reading list but honestly, I’m sort of suffering from gritty medieval war-type fantasy fatigue right now, and I don’t know if the inclusion of dinosaurs can sway that. Besides, I have a feeling it might be scary and I’m not really into the whole horror adrenaline rush thing. But I keep coming back to Dinosaur Lords again and again because deep down inside, I really, really, want to read it. I mean, just look at that cover!



So lets recap. This summer I intend to read a 10 book series, 2 trilogies, and 3 others; while still reading all the review copies that come my way, only one of which is included in this list. Needless to say, my Summer Reading List is really an Overambitious Summer Reading Wish List. But, just in case I have some time left before the leaves start to change and the baseball season ends, I think it's best to name an honorable mention:

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Posted by Tia  -- bad fantasy reader and even worse sci-fi reader, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2014