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A fitting end to an incredibly underrated series, now one of my favorite fantasy series of all time. What can I say, other than that this is just such a joy to read and that Lisa Cassidy has clearly written this with a lot of heart and passion? This is such a delightfully unpigeonholeable series - it has a lighter, fast-paced, and character-driven feel like fantasy romance, but doesn't really have a huge romantic element, and if you look deeper has the magnificent worldbuilding, politics, and detail you'd associate with blockbuster authors like Sanderson and Martin.

This book didn't necessarily have the cohesiveness of book 3, and I find the arcs that draw Talyn away from the Wolves to be a little narratively weaker - but screw it, it's all good, it's super extra, it's ultimate wish fulfillment, it's everything you came for. I'm not sure there's another series that rubs all the right heartstrings of a fantasy fan.

The best part about this is you start to get a feel for what a Lisa Cassidy novel is - and I think I like it very much. The twist at the end of this one is just perfect.

Not the review I wanted to write!

I absolutely adore Lisa Cassidy's A Tale of Stars and Shadow: absolutely the most underrated, enjoyable, and unexpected series I've ever read. So I was very excited to see what she did with her latest adult epic fantasy series. Unfortunately, it didn't come across as Cassidy's best work.

The differences here are pretty significant: we are more in the world of traditional high epic fantasy, following a fifteen-year-old orphan, Arya Nameless, who fights in a military unit called the Raiders. Eventually, she's adopted into the family of the Warlord Thiara Ravenstrike, where she finds a family with several other kids her age and trains to take up a powerful magical inheritance. A similar story to ATOSAS, but I found the younger characters a little bit less natural here than the mid-twenties characters in her previous series. The found family didn't feel organic to me, and many of the character-building scenes felt rushed and unjustified. It was hard for me to feel attached to the characters in the same way I felt with the Wolves. I don't like to compare, because this is very much its own series, but when you've written something as good as ATOSAS, it's hard not to.

Lisa Cassidy's worldbuilding is always interesting, and this is a much darker world than the one of ATOSAS, with constant threats, gray morality, and lots of fighting. The “five chosen ones” trope is an interesting one to mess with in such a dark world, and my prevailing thought was that this book was a slow setup for a potentially huge epic fantasy story. But it failed to hook me and I wonder if starting the story in medias res at the end of book 1 would have almost been a better idea.

Cassidy showed in ATOSAS that her strengths, unique for an epic fantasy author, are when the cast is very small. She can really be convincing about character dynamics and create great emotional plots, as well as being a master of blurring genres and writing kind of outside-the-box, wacky, over-the-top ideas. I'm not sure she's as strong in epic settings like this, and the parts of ATOSAS where the story abandoned the five or six characters we really cared about. I'm hoping the more isolated setting of book 2 will help the character arcs come a little more cleanly into play so that Cassidy can really exercise her strengths. I'm looking forward to it.

Rating: 5.5/10
Closest comparison: weirdly, Malice by John Gwynne (but better!)

Better than the first one! We continue Arya's story with a very tight, action-packed adventure that concentrates the main focus on Arya and a somewhat rotating group of seven or eight friends. This one has more structure and the snap that ATOSAS provided, although I still am not totally sold on the world here. I also didn't appreciate the plot element that seemed lazily taken out of the last ATOSAS book and just simply recycled and put in here.

I liked many of the character moments in this one, and the ending is really quite exciting and fun and sets the stakes much higher for the next book. This is a fun series that I'm definitely looking forward to reading in full.

Rating: 7/10

[Series review]

The last of Lisa Cassidy's four series for me to read. This was actually the one I was most anticipating, because the premise of it seemed the most interesting - a next-gen where we're neither drinking beers with the protagonists of the previous series nor having them parent the kids. The impression after reading is that this is one of her most inconsistent series, but has some of the most interesting concepts, scenes, and moments in her writing.

In this follow-up to The Mage Chronicles, we skip ahead twenty years and follow the daughter of the OG series's villain, as she takes on both the now-conservative government that was established in the denouement of the previous series and a new threat from revolutionaries. This has extremely mixed success. The protagonist, Lira, is a brutal warlord and never truly picks sides, and I loved the more morally gray, Game of Thrones-like scheming and violence that Cassidy brought into this series. It felt completely different in vibe from her previous two series, and she writes a very compelling antihero in Lira. But we still have a YA feel where the good guys are obviously all going to survive (it is YA, to be fair) and a cartoonization of the villain and monsters in this one which you don't really get in Cassidy's other series.

The characters in this one did not work as well as in the two earlier series Cassidy has put out. Her two later series have a much bigger focus on rigorous elements of epic fantasy, as well as darker elements, and I somehow feel the character development has slightly suffered. I did not care about Fari and Tarion and Garan the same way I cared about Tiercelin and Zamaril, or even Cario and Brynn from the previous series.

Lisa Cassidy always brings great plot twists and a good romance. The twists are especially crazy in this one, although none really as effective as the ones in ATOSAS. This series has possibly the most complicated romance of the four, but it didn't land for me the way the others did.

All of Cassidy's series feature some sort of very long and unexpected time skip in them, and one of her strengths is writing about how friendships strengthen and weaken over time. I've come to see Cassidy as someone who writes characters in their twenties really well, and all her YA series have characters reach their early or mid-twenties. I find both the Mage Chronicles series start really slow and only get truly exceptional once the characters reach that sort of age - but when they hit that point, the character moments really start popping. For whatever reason the moments with younger characters don't work as well for me.

I liked this series. It takes risks, ventures into some uncharted areas, and even though it might have a high strikeout rate, hits a lot of home runs.

A close comparison is, very oddly, a long next-gen Harry Potter fanfiction called the Stygian Trilogy, which is also a sequel series to another fanfiction series set twenty years earlier, also has time skips and crazy plot twists, and has an eerily similar plot to the first book. So if you enjoyed this book and are reading my review, maybe check it out - it's one of the most underrated stories in the fandom, and is free to read online.

Rating: 7/10

One of my most anticipated reads of the year delivered. There's something very familiar and warm about Lisa Cassidy's novels. They are nothing literary or experimental - they are Sanderson-style, plot-driven action fantasy - but with a slightly different take from the norm. Perhaps, reductively, the fresh appeal of Cassidy is reading this very traditionally male style of fantasy written by a woman and with a single-POV female voice, with great male and female characters both. But it's probably just that Cassidy can write a world and central group of friends that makes you never want to leave, and yet create stakes and anxiety on a scale that's not matched by many authors out there.

The Inkweaver Archive doesn't benefit from the more privileged upbringing of Cassidy's first two series. Those introduced a likable (ATOSAS) or easy-to-relate-to (Mage Chronicles) protagonist, and then thrust them into a story that featured instant stakes and consequences for the characters. The first two books of this series took time to develop, featured rougher, less archetypal characters and a much darker world, and had much less of a plot framework to drive them along.

Many fantasy authors struggle with when to employ timeskips because they find themselves afraid to leave out information. When Lisa Cassidy writes a timeskip, as she does at the beginning of this book, it's almost as if we get more information than if she didn't, because she's so good at showing the character development on each side. Much like the timeskip in the Mage Chronicles, which I loved, the timeskip in this one somehow makes the slow pace of the first two books make sense and consolidates a lot of the character work.

Despite my complaining about the premise of the series, the execution is among the best in the business. In The Wyvern's Cry, Lisa Cassidy has written a perfect dragon rider novel; written one of the best-executed time skips of all time; and slowly developed one of the best cadres (caidre? We'll see) of friends on the market. Where did all of this come from? This is a genuinely excellent series at this point, and even more impressive if you consider that it started with very little to offer.

There will one more book in this series, and I'm very excited to see what happens - and possibly even more to see what Cassidy can do in this form with a new idea. What will she write next?

[Series review, minimal spoilers]

I have spent this entire month reading and evangelizing Lisa Cassidy, so I will continue to do so here. And after reading this series - I'd say you'd be hard-pressed to find a better independent author of epic fantasy.

I had read A Tale of Stars and Shadow (incredible) and Inkweaver Archive (promising, but flawed) before this. With the inconsistent experience of Inkweaver, combined with the YA label, this series didn't really excite me at first. It took me five days to really get going on the first book, and then it got good, in typical Lisa Cassidy fashion.

I read the last two in a single day.

This is Cassidy's first series. She began writing it at age twenty, and the inexperience does show in the first book. We have a magic school, and four countries, and some characters that we're supposed to care about, some characters who slowly warm up to the main character, and some parental mysteries and two magic systems and various soldier guards and warrior types and the like. It's all tropes taken to the extreme, which in my opinion is at least better than unsuccessfully trying to subvert them, and if you have read A Tale of Stars and Shadow, you will recognize many of the general ideas, in slightly less polished form.

The second and third books just keep on improving, and really form a trilogy of sorts. Throughout the middle books, the plot quickens and moves all over the place, and we meet more and more characters, many of whom develop extremely strong and impressionable personalities. The characters in this series are exceptional: on a level or even above A Tale of Stars and Shadow, partially because this series takes place over a much longer period of time.

The fourth book is one of the best conclusions to a series I've ever read. If you are an epic fantasy fan, it is worth reading the series for this book. Cassidy's handling of what could have been a disastrous pacing problem is masterful. And if there were any character arcs that seemed a little blunted after the first three books, they come into full bloom here.

Of course, like any Lisa Cassidy series, this has a big romance, and it's not anything you wouldn't expect. It's lovely and unobtrusive, and everyone involved is a gem of a person, which is not to everyone's taste, but to each their own.

In terms of roughness, this is clearly her first series, and doesn't have the crazy worldbuilding of her later books. But it still has that slippery genre feel (it's definitely more “YA” than ATOSAS, but also far, far more epic) and it just has that signature that you don't feel from many epic fantasy authors. Highly recommended to read, but probably after A Tale of Stars and Shadow.

Rating: 8/10

I have now read two of Hal Emerson's series starters, and they're the equivalent of fantasy comfort food. They are kind of the sort of thing you can read and finish when you really don't feel much like reading, they draw you in, they give you some nice characters and an ending with familiar tropes, and they don't do much else.

I thought this one was far better than The Exile, if a little less emotionally charged. We had three stock characters: the farm girl who has magical powers, the fighting rebel with bloodlust, and a young thief who has a secretly noble parentage.

The execution of it is fine, if the exposition is a little long. Perfectly readable, in the top echelon of self published books in terms of writing. There's no reason writing-wise this couldn't be traditionally published, but the content is reminiscent of early Sanderson, about twenty years back in terms of topical trends. I will probably pick up another Emerson book if I can't figure out what to read in the future, but it's still a little too stodgy for my liking.

6.5/10: A solid and entertaining sequel to what was really a middling, but heavily hyped, first book. I'm not in the target audience for this series, but I'm finding myself really enjoying it. This book at least partly convinced me that beyond the TikTok hype, it has some sort of individuality and creativity that makes it stand out from the other YA/NA fantasy romance books out there.

Many criticisms of Fourth Wing revolved around the plot holes and Rebecca Yarros's unfamiliarity with the epic fantasy genre. This book leaned much more heavily into the fantasy side of storytelling than its predecessor, and Yarros's enthusiasm for and novelty with the genre were both readily apparent. The book is much too long, mostly because of the density of the romance-novel conversations that appeared almost every chapter (“we need to talk about what this means for us”) etc. However, she gets credit for tackling some pretty ridiculous-scale battles and generally doing a better job than many epic fantasy authors in narrating them effectively. I think this book puts the nail in the coffin for the idiots who are arguing that the series is not fantasy...

But it is really glorified OC fanfiction. The AO3 style language and writing continues to be a problem to read in print, although the brash side thoughts that enraptured people so much in the first book are thankfully eliminated here. Xaden's character approaches Gary Stu levels of competence and morality, and while Yarros introduces a golden opportunity early in the book to compromise his character, she refused, which for me reduced the impact of his arc. The romance-heavy dialogue cannot support the massive cast of characters that Yarros has clearly put a lot of work into. And the sex scenes are few and largely disappointing.

This book is much darker than Fourth Wing. I was surprised at the sometimes grimdark feel of the plot and characters. Yarros did a good job conveying stakes and urgency, particularly in the last third of the book, which was very strong. I felt like I got to know each of the characters around Violet better, particularly her squad and her family.

I liked this slightly better than Fourth Wing and will continue reading on, but for now I am still limiting my recommendation of the series to romance fans and people with nostalgia for reading fanfiction late at night.

Oh man, I loved this book. The most indulgent, wacky, world with all the magic and fantasy races you could ever want. Lots of cool, fun characters running around all sorts of weird places with just enough horror elements to get your heart racing. Griffins, druids, princesses, and surgically enhanced super-soldiers.

Jen Williams should be an A-list fantasy author. She just writes excellent, excellent fantasy books. The creativity of the worldbuilding is unmatched, the plot twists are all there, the scope is epic, and the writing and characters are pretty damn snappy and good.

But why 4 stars out of 5? Well, it's really a 9/10, rounded down. My issue with this book, and with all the Jen Williams books I've read so far, is just that it's so well put together. Everything is worked out, everything makes sense, it's bulletproof. I want something in a Williams novel to not make sense. Even though the twist at the end was still good, I don't want to see it coming and be able to figure it out in chapter 5. I want to be shocked and awed and horrified and for whatever reason I always just feel like everything is under control and is going to be all right.

That said, it's still a 9/10. Read this! And please, US publishers, sign this to a deal now!

I don't think I could disagree more with the five-star and one-star reviews I've almost exclusively seen for this.

I (male, 20s) actually enjoyed reading this book. It was fun, the romance was better than I was expecting, and it had a nice ending. It was also better fantasy than I would have expected from someone new to the genre, tropes and all notwithstanding. This had less problems than a lot of the more traditional dragon rider books I've blundered through over the years.

That said, the sex scenes were jacked up beyond belief (although hilarious), the prose was written at an elementary level, and the characters were overly simplistic. It's really hard to try to convince the reader that Xaden is a bad boy when everything he does is literally a paragon of morality. I can't really give this a higher rating because of the bluntness and repetitiveness of it all.

Five years ago, I probably would have said this belonged on AO3 and deserved a ton of attention. But fanfic style has now entered the mainstream, and Rebecca Yarros certainly gets a 5/5 on mastering the fanfic style, so it's nice that she gets to get paid for it now. This will be a very nostalgic read for anyone who has stayed up until 2 in the morning binge reading fan fiction. More discerning epic fantasy fans might want to give it a pass.

It's been a while since I read fantasy after a lengthy ‘literary' binge, and a while since I finished a book and felt so strongly against it. I'd passed over this book a couple times with vague interest, eventually happening on it again after finding one of the actors on the TV show in a list of Indian-Americans on Wikipedia (yes, I was bored) and having an “I-should-read-this” moment.

The other initially appealing aspect of this book was its supposed existence as both satire and fantasy, which is usually a good combination if pulled off right (e.g. Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tomcat Murr, Golden Ass). Unfortunately, I've noticed that such hybrid books require a certain amount of detachment from the plot to be effective, and the plot itself must be simple, not complex. Overloading the story with needless characters in these sorts of novels lends too much gravitas to the satirical plot, which fails to be simplistically heartwarming.

Richard, Janet, Penny, Eliot, Anais...the characters run together into one massive amalgam of a generic, mildly competent friend of Quentin's. The characters lacked individuality; usually, I have no trouble forming a mental picture of secondary characters in a novel, but I couldn't picture any of the aforementioned characters, aside from Grossman's unhelpful physical characteristics like “fat” and “busty”. Every character seems to have an untamed level of snark, and the inconsistency in intelligence between one day and another for some of these characters is completely unrealistic. One or two additional characters, aside from Quentin and Alice, could have balanced out the plot nicely and allowed room for more development.

Brakebills, itself, is a perfect example of the too-much-gravitas problem illustrated above. Making the oft-mentioned comparison to Hogwarts, it takes itself much too seriously for a novel loaded with references and supposedly spoofing “magic-school” and portal-fantasy novels. Grossman seems to have too much fun hanging out in his adolescence with these characters, rather than directly showing in supercilious fashion the degree of disrepair of the school (which Rowling managed to do very, very well). The same applies to Fillory, where Grossman himself seems to enjoy and obsess over the place, not just Quentin. There's a conflict in aesthetic here, a bright and pastel-filled place attempting to be portrayed through serious tone. I'd certainly appreciate a bit more author-voice in this book as a whole, and the sequels, I'm told, go straight into Fillory without a mark of regard for Earth.

The redeeming mark saving this book from a one-star review is Grossman's ability to write Quentin as a fairly realistic college student, albeit a few IQ levels lower than he claims. The ups and downs of life are reflected beautifully in Grossman's writing, and while I think diagnosing Quentin with depression (as in the show) is a little far, I don't think I've seen a character better written through so many moods and confidence levels as Grossman writes Quentin. Particularly noteworthy is the startlingly accurate way Quentin cannot recall information about the Fillory books (something he knows better than almost anyone) in times of high stress, while many other authors would assume that Quentin's knowledge base is consistent.

But in all, it was a sagging book that was overburdened with needless characters, had an unbalanced and fragmented plot, and overall, took itself too seriously. When I started, I was expecting a jagged social commentary through the dynamics of an elite magic school. What I got–a fantasy adventure–was fine, but there was much more potential for this book.

This book was unacceptable. I like Brandon Sanderson. But this is straight up the worst thing I have read from Sanderson, and Frugal Wizard and The Lost Metal were already a new low. The dialogue and prose is cringey beyond belief, and half the word count seems to be engineering jargon in which Sanderson delights but contributes absolutely nothing to the reader.

Structurally, the entire novel seemed to be action without any sort of setup whatsoever. The characters seem to be complete cardboard cutouts. The worldbuilding was cool, but that's about all I can say about it - for all the thought and effort that went into the math of it, it never grabbed me or seemed to make any sense.

This book was an embarrassment for someone with the talent of Sanderson. It gets a 2/5 because it is technically a self published book, and for a self-published book, it's not bad. But I am expecting significantly more quality in Defiant and Stormlight 5 if I'm going to continue reading Sanderson's work.

A sweet story, and really one of the tightest books Sanderson has written, but the cringey narration and unnecessary Cosmere tidbits really ruined this one for me.

Sublime, refined, restrained, whimsical, structured, directional.

A cavalcade of scenes of incredible concentration, miniscule detail, and profound blurriness.

It's one of those books that's too perfect to give it five stars, at least on the first read. It's a lesson of all five of Calvino's memos, a final exploration and reflection of his aesthetic and philosophy, an eternal question of how and whether the author should view himself at all.

The contrasts in this book are indescribably distant, yet their allegories perfectly clear and multilayered. There's a clear message, a clear climax, even, in the bare-bones structure, yet it's probably a book you could read five hundred times, each focusing on a different point.

Too diffuse? Too incisive? You could say both. I wish I could just say how I felt, but right now I don't have words to describe it.

4.5 stars out of 5.

This is not just a “Sanderson curiosity”: it's a very good novel that should be read and enjoyed by anyone who likes Brandon Sanderson, and it's fortunately online for free! This is a comprehensive, epic, adventure story that felt in vibe a lot like Anthony Ryan's Blood Song, but with more magic and and a larger cast of characters. Most prominently, an early version of Hoid/Cephandrius appears in this story as a prominent character, and what a wonderful character this early Hoid is.

Dragonsteel Prime is a really nice example of Sanderson's early style, encompassing five available novels: this, White Sand, Aether of Night, Elantris, and Warbreaker. Early Sanderson is emburdened by heavy-handed foreshadowing and a lack of diversity in his conceits, but he shows in all five novels the elements that would later make him famous. In these books, Sanderson usually takes some generic fairy tale or fable and dives deep into the detail and lore. He'll create fantastical environments for this fable to take place, go into the complexities of the religion, and synthesize anything into his characteristic finale. In all these novels, we see adventurous, somewhat complex but unelegant prose, long and steady chapters, many equally distributed points of view, and a fascination for palace scenes and court intrigue. It's easy to see how he stands out from a crowd of less talented writers, and also easy to see how his writing has become more universal over the years.

Our main protagonist is Jerick, a young forester (“lumberman”) in your typical “farm boy sent to palace” storyline. There, he meets Ryalla, a slave girl and attendant to the princess Courteth who sets up the characteristic love triangle. If you've read any of the other early novels, you've seen this setup all before. But we meet the king's jester, Topaz, a wonderful character in his own right who would later evolve into Hoid; Bat'Chor, Hoid's aggressive friend and a member of the obligatory dark-skinned colonized race that usually permeates the early works; and several of the scholars who teach Jerick and, indirectly, Ryalla. These side characters really infuse the book with flavor; it's truly funny in a way that Sanderson has rarely reached since.

Jerick's story eventually includes a subplot that Sanderson would eventually repurpose for The Stormlight Archive, the idea of bridgemen and his company of the Fourth Bridge (several characters of which readers might recognize from Bridge Four). On the Shattered Plains, they fight for Dragonsteel, a valuable element, against the alien Sho Del, who along with the dragons comprise “fain life.” I didn't find that this overlap impacted the reading experience: this arc is far less detailed than the one in Stormlight, and feels like a relatively minor part of Jerick's journey.

The end of this book is possibly the biggest and most out-of-control avalanche that Sanderson has ever written, which is possibly why he considers this book weak and unpublishable. I enjoyed it very much, but it's very different than many other Sanderson endings you might be used to.

I think this book, after Elantris, is the second-best of the early novels, all of which I'm partial to. Of course, if you don't like early Sanderson, you might want to give this one a pass. It is somewhat an acquired taste: if you like the modernity, pace, and large scale of Sanderson's current work, you might be a little alarmed to see him writing very 1990s fantasy with a twist! But it's charming in a way, and really shines a light on what makes Sanderson work as an author when compared to others.

Dragonsteel is probably publishable with some light editing, and honestly better than most of the recent self-published novels I've read. Of course, Brandon will push the narrative that it's not good and it's not canon, but I think it's better than he gives it credit for and a lot of people will probably enjoy this. Read it, it's free!

I rarely write reviews, but this book deserves more advocacy simply because of its sheer brilliance.

Tomcat Murr originates from a fantastically bizarre premise that could only spring from the mind of E.T.A. Hoffmann. At some point in the 1820's, a cat, Murr, is born, and is rescued as a kitten by Abraham Liscov, a man of many trades. The bibliophile Murr becomes convinced that he is God's literary gift to the world and begins reading every book he can in Abraham's study, all while evading the evil Herr Lothario and his poodle, Ponto–who it turns out is also among the intelligentsia. By the middle of the novel, Murr has involved himself with the feline litterati, and I won't spoil the rest of the hilarious high drama that occurs.

Anyway, as Murr tells us at the beginning, as an old and wizened tomcat he starts writing his autobiography (it's a great struggle to learn to write with paws, but Murr of course manages it) but, struggling to find paper, writes his all-important accounts directly on top of Meister Abraham's carefully-written biography of the composer Johannes Kreisler, inserting his self-aggrandizing episodes directly before and after the most dramatic episodes of Kreisler's life. And thus Hoffmann created the cliffhanger.

Kreisler, himself, is a fascinating character–a mad genius who has to balance his fear that he'll turn into a suicidal lunatic with his love for Julia, the daughter of his employer Madame Benzon. The “court” he works for is a sharp satire on the German society of the day: Prince Irinaeus, unhappy at having his lands taken away from him, purchases an estate in the countryside and tries to play royal for the rest of his life, which is the reason Kreisler and Abraham are employed. Kreisler's hapless encounters with the Prince and various princelings are made more enjoyable by the reality-show-type plot twists that engage his attention for the rest of the novel. (Throughout the book, Murr's account slowly yields in proportion to Kreisler's, somewhat of a sly jab at the cat who thought he had everything to say but couldn't find more than a couple chapters.)

The story itself would make for a decent thriller, but the novel's true value comes from its structure and intertextual references. It's an extremely carefully constructed book, making sure to follow conventional form in terms of development of plot, but at the same time interrupting this smooth development with abrupt viewpoint jumps. In many ways, it's like a Beethoven sonata, if plot were sonata form and viewpoint corresponded to key. Adding to the hilarity are the many references to bad authorship made by Murr, which include excessive flowery language, rampant plagiarism, and a love poem inspired by Ovid's treatise on how to get rid of women.

In short, a mad romp through the absurd world of Hoffmann's mind, a psychedelic hypothesis of literate cats and dancing royals, a rebuke of royalism and bad Romanticism, an anticipation of Borges and Calvino. 5/5.

Another one of the Reddit one upvote recommendations. I think this one was recommended alongside a series I like very much, with the promise that it was romantasy, but with some interesting stuff going on in the background.

All of that is true: the fantasy elements of this were inventive, novel, and present. We are in a set of parallel realms, where rangers like the male lead Hart protect society from the spirits of the dead. We have talking animals who deliver mail, souls housed in the appendix, immortal demigods - it's a set of things that's frankly quite interesting. However, these elements seemed somewhat simplistic and controlled, as if Bannen was a little afraid to tackle fantasy on the often rigorous and too-demanding level of the genre. The conflict was very surface-level to the world Bannen lays out, despite the creativity that clearly went into it. Of course, this isn't something only romance authors are guilty of - I sometimes make similar complaints about Jen Williams, one of the most creative authors of fantasy out there, and one of my favorites.

The bigger issue with this book is that the fantasy elements struggle to contribute much to the plot at all, besides creating the romantic issues that drive the You've Got Mail tropes. Very little in this book was surprising other than the actual premise of the world, and I just don't enjoy genre romance enough to call this good. I'd recommend this for romance readers who want a bit of interesting fantasy in their stories, but I don't think people who read a lot of fantasy will find the fantastic elements of this convincing. I did casually enjoy it, but I think I'll pass on the sequel. 6.5/10.

A really strong sophomore effort from Islington. An exciting, page-turning mystery with his typical mad plot twists and intricacies. Highly recommended for all fans of fantasy and dystopian fiction.

I love hidden gems. Little personal secrets, books or other things that are just so good you don't want to share them with anyone else save a couple close friends. Curiosities that maybe aren't the most universal, but connect with you in a deep way.

I stumbled across this book on a reddit thread. It was mentioned in a comment with one upvote. I looked it up, read some reviews, and decided that this was either going to be awful or incredibly good.

And I'm so glad I picked this up, because god damn this is the best fantasy book I've read this year.

The genre of this is still unclear, and I think that's wonderful, because it digs at everything someone who loves modern fantasy could ever want. Competence porn. A ragtag group of misfits banding together. Swashbuckling raids and adventures. A huge assortment of magics and people who can fly. A slow burn romance. And an overwhelming sense of immersion that drags you into the story from the first page.

ATOSAS finished fourth in the 2019 Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, behind three novels that have gone on to become very famous. It scored an 8.5/10 in that competition. This book probably reads much better post-pandemic, with the trend towards cozier, more optimistic fantasy, and slightly tropier, guilty-pleasure elements becoming the norm in some popular books. Make no mistake, this is very modern genre fantasy. Don't go into this expecting some literary masterpiece - this is just setup of a very nice world and plotline, and flawless execution.

And I loved it. You probably won't like it as much as me, but I still think you should read it.

Rating: 9.5/10
Comparisons: somewhere in between Eli Monpress (but more serious), Mistborn (but lighter and faster-paced), and Fourth Wing (with good writing and without the sex).

[Series review]
In the most positive way, this series has absolutely zero business being as good as it is. An overwhelming, entertaining, unabashed guilty pleasure.

I don't read so much progression fantasy - I've read a few series throughout the years, but none I have enjoyed as much as this. There's something about the way this is written that is just such a full-hearted magic school adventure, with great friendships, cool character moments, and fun battles. It is unashamed of being completely anime-inspired and silly at times. Imagine a stripped-down version of what makes something publishable, leaning too much into the raw energy that is what you read a fantasy book for.

This is a love-it or hate-it series that to me very thoroughly outperformed its execution. I doubt people who don't really have strong opinions about books will like this, or even be interested. I could repeat the usual criticisms that everyone has for this book, but that would just dissuade people from reading it. But - do not read this if you're the type to pick apart premises and figure out how and why a fantasy world works. Just immerse yourself in the world and enjoy the ride.

Very good. Not much to say other than this is an absolutely solid series that falls into a really distinct niche. The lack of any sort of goofiness in a YA and/or fantasy novel, especially one with dragon riders, is somewhat remarkable, but it works here and I like it.

I loved the new viewpoint of Griff and the part set on New Pythos. The rebellion arc was a little meh, but still very entertaining. Looking forward to book 3.

A nice continuation to the Stormlight Archive. I think Sanderson's done the best he could do given the situation Oathbringer landed the series in.
Some great imagery and expansion throughout. I really enjoyed the structural changes he made, particularly the fast start and more balanced action throughout the book. Navani's arc was a highlight and the main narrative arc of the book didn't disappoint. The flashbacks were not instantly gratifying, but were very well constructed and fascinating in how he fleshes out his world.
I found the writing, pacing, engagement factor much improved from Oathbringer. It's a more consistent, high-quality book. And it sets up what's surely going to be a super-intense finale in three years.

So this series is still small, and clearly more YA than anything, but you can see the beginnings of what is sure to be rapid escalation.

This was better written than the first book, and I like that the first two books have been different adventures set two years apart, with a different cast of characters.

Nothing is stopping me from reading this, but many things in this series are products of their time, even if the writing feels very modern and readable.
7/10.

Enjoyable enough, but I don't rate Carmody as highly as some of her Aussie colleagues from a slightly later era. This has been described as a “cult Wheel of Time” but this first book is probably closer to a proto teen dystopia along the lines of Suzanne Collins or Nancy Farmer, with a bit more fantasy elements, written twenty years earlier. Despite some reviews I've read, it reads well, has spectacular plot pacing and length, and is quite fun. The plan is to read books 1-4, and maybe 5 of this series, as I've heard 6 and 7 are borderline unreadable due to editing issues. 6.5/10.

A really puzzling and intriguing fantasy novel. This is a story that seems to throw a bunch of tropes and scramble them up, a weird combination of epic fantasy and English boarding school novel. I came in expecting a sunny, light YA romance and instead found a very well-written character who goes through a Robin Hobb-like series of unfortunate events that leave you wondering how she finds any time for happy moments.

It's really hard to pin down the target audience of this book. The frame story is probably a little too simple and plodding to be super convincing to adult readers - there's a lot of “this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens.” There's nothing explicitly wrong with that in literature, but the genre of adult fantasy usually demands a little more attention to the plot structure and pacing. On the other hand, many of the thematic issues of the book, particularly those revolving around power dynamics, are complicated and remain unresolved. It really seems like Knight was trying to write for everyone, and ended up writing a book that doesn't really work perfectly for most people.

I found this a very slow and unsatisfying start, but it sped up towards the end and I'll probably continue with the second book. I still wonder what this series is really aiming to do, but I enjoyed this enough to continue and hopefully book 2 will point the series in a clearer direction.