THE SPARROW SISTERS, Ellen Herrick

Fair warning: The Sparrow Sisters isn’t really a fantasy story in the expected sense. In fact, you could argue it’s not fantasy at all because we’re never sure if magic is present. Just about all the characters dismiss the notion that there’s magic at work. I wouldn’t even feel comfortable putting this novel in the magical realism category. And yet there’s enough uncertainty and peculiarity to be outside the usual bounds of the “real world” that I decided this book deserved to be discussed on my blog. Plus, it’s my blog and I can break my own rules, so there.

An argument can be made that there are moments of “hyper” reality—that is, there are incidents involving our heroines that don’t quite fit into what most people would consider typical or ordinary. All this ambiguity is steeped in the historical component of the story’s world. The titular Sparrow sisters, three grown single women who live in Granite Point, a tight-knit New England town, are descended from a Puritan-era healer who ended up on trial as a witch. The sisters themselves claim that such an ability derives from both natural (non-magical) talent and a thorough knowledge of herbal remedies. But one sister stands out as especially endowed, and as expected she ends up in the center of the inevitable storm.

MAGNUS CHASE AND THE GODS OF ASGARD: THE SWORD OF SUMMER, Rick Riordan

Is it just me, or does it seem like Norse mythology got really popular all of a sudden? Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is getting a miniseries (which in all fairness has only a couple Norse deities, no spoilers), Marvel is making its third Thor-centric film, and now Rick Riordan is throwing angsty teens at the mercy of Norns, Valkyries, dwarves and giants, not to mention the gods themselves. Now, this isn’t Riordan’s first mythology rodeo, as anyone who loves the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series can tell you. In fact, the Greek and Norse pantheons aren’t the only divine playgrounds he’s visited in his books. But what of the stories themselves? Is each new hero basically Percy Jackson with a different coat of paint? It may seem so with newcomer Magnus Chase, but the clever reimagining of the worlds of Yggdrasil and the characters joining Magnus in this adventure offer much to enjoy.

UPROOTED, Naomi Novik

If you’re looking for a book that brings together the best elements of Sarah J. Maas and Patricia Briggs in style and story, and the intensity of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Harry Potter heptalogy, you need look no further than Uprooted. Does that sound overblown? Hey, if it gets you to read this book, my work here is done.

Okay, okay, not exactly done, calm down.

Anyone planning to pick up Uprooted should have a fair idea of what to expect. When you read its summary, you might get a Beauty-and-the-Beast vibe, what with the arrangement between a humble village and a powerful figure called The Dragon, who ensures the villagers’ survival in exchange for one local girl every ten years. You wouldn’t be wrong to notice the similarity, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

TOO MANY CURSES, A. Lee Martinez

What do you do when you throw together a kobold, a sadistic wizard and packrat, and a castle full of enchanted creatures and objects who just want to get back to their normal lives, and not get mauled, petrified, or consumed by a door that must never be opened? When you put it like that, it sounds like a Harry Potter spinoff, but even Hogwarts was never this unruly. Instead of a boy wizard, our intrepid hero is a foxy-looking kobold named Nessy who just wants to get through her chores without the castle falling into utter madness, especially after her master, Margle the Horrendous, is accidentally murdered. Such is the romp Too Many Curses.

This fantasy screwball comedy brings out all the wildness of its premise. But Curses isn’t exactly a laugh-out-loud riot. Much of the humor relies on dry wit and quirky characters, not clear-cut punch lines. It will get a chuckle out of you, but don’t be too disappointed if you’re not rofl-ing. Now and then you can feel the humor push a bit beyond its reach and trip over itself. Thankfully those moments pass quickly and are easily forgiven. Maybe it’s the type of humor that hits its mark best when someone is actually delivering it. In other words, I really would like to see a film adaptation of this book and how comic minds would perform these scenes. But there’s more than humor working in this book’s favor.