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.

THE LEGEND OF DRIZZT: HOMELAND, R.A. Salvatore

Wow, a fantasy book that isn’t Young Adult? It’s a little unsettling, actually, that so many entries in the fantasy genre (and this blog) are geared to a younger audience. Perhaps not that surprising, since literary works are considered more “adult” and “serious”, but even sci-fi gets to explore adult themes more widely. Aside from Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings, much of fantasy falls under YA or romance. I’m hoping that novel series like Forgotten Realms will keep cropping up and drawing in older readers in search of stories both insightful and entertaining.

The appeal of these Dungeons and Dragons books, like its tabletop origins, is that people across the age spectrum with a love for fantasy can appreciate and enjoy them. That’s certainly the case with Salvatore’s The Legend of Drizzt series, or at least his first chronological installment, Homeland. There’s good-old action and lore to excite the action junkie and lore nerd, but he also teases out some social commentary about oppressive societies that use fear and propaganda to control its population, and how suffocating it is to live in them, unable to escape. While the world of the drow (dark elves) in Menzoberranzan bears witness to obviously questionable morality, it can make us reflect on those aspects in our own culture an outsider might find objectively horrifying but we accept on a daily basis.

THE SLEEPER AND THE SPINDLE, Neil Gaiman

I almost feel as though this should be considered a Short Review since The Sleeper and the Spindle pretty much qualifies as a short story in length. With its illustrations, it comes out to just under 70 pages. And honestly, it’s a concise, beautifully rendered story that doesn’t need much said, and shouldn’t have too much said to avoid spoilers, so forgive the brevity of this review.

As one should come to expect from Gaiman’s approach to rehashed fairy tales, the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty weave together in both a new and familiar way, and with such seamless ease you’d think other writers would have tried to bring them together sooner. The opening action follows three of the seven dwarves visiting the cusp of Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom to procure fine cloth for Snow White’s upcoming wedding. Right away we glimpse at the devotion the dwarves have for her (if only these three—keeping the number of dwarves low is an understandable alteration for the sake of effective characterization) as well as understand where we are in Snow White’s story. 

THE HOB’S BARGAIN, Patricia Briggs

As a (new) reviewer, I can occasionally—ha, yeah, occasionally—hit a brick wall when it comes to writing on a book I’ve enjoyed. Why? A good question I don’t quite have the answer for. It probably comes down to being reluctant to deconstruct the weaknesses as well as the strengths of a work when you have less tangible reasons for liking it. How does The Hob’s Bargain stand apart from other fantasy books? How is it similar? Is the devil in the details rather than the, let’s face it, tried and true formulas of stories in general? Finding the answers is a large part of why I started reviewing fantasy books.

As a fan of both Rumpelstiltskin- and Beauty and the Beast-inspired stories, the back cover of Hob’s Bargain promised a mix of both. Aren, our hero, is a peasant woman with the power of foresight, though it’s a fickle power she doesn’t have much control over. Only when the raw magic of the world is released, previously bound by human mages, does she begin to understand her gift. But with this self-discovery come the dangers of untamed magic resurrecting supernatural creatures of myth, including the Hob, a powerful being who is known for its deals. To better understand her magic and guarantee the safety of her village, which is filled with people who distrust her now that they know about her magic, Aren strikes a bargain with the Hob.