It has been over a year since I’ve posted book reviews! But I’ve been reading, so brace yourselves… book recommendations are coming! The Last Motley by DJ Edwardson I discovered this book when it was selected by an online book club. Isn’t the cover magnificent? I was excited to read it, but didn’t know what to expect. There is plenty of adventure and heroism in the book, but in many ways it’s not about the adventure and heroism – it’s about love and family, about choosing to be kind when we don’t feel we have much to offer (and the […]
Books I’m Reading
17 posts
These are some of the standout books that I’ve enjoyed lately.  The Magician’s Elephant – Kate DiCamillo – I went on a DiCamillo binge a month or two ago, and have enjoyed every single book. Definitely recommended for adults as well as children. In a highly awaited new novel, Kate DiCamillo conjures a haunting fable about trusting the unexpected — and making the extraordinary come true. What if? Why not? Could it be? When a fortuneteller’s tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister […]
How is your summer going? Is it summer where you are? I live in northern Virginia just outside of Washington, DC, and it is sweltering this week. My plants are happy, though! Here are some that are either blooming or just finishing up. If you’d like to see more, I post pictures on Instagram.   Thank you for your prayers! While I’m working on A Long-Forgotten Song 4, I’m also hard at work on other writing projects! I finally released the boxed set of Erdemen Honor, which includes ebooks of The King’s Sword, A Cold Wind, and Honor’s Heir. The cover image below is linked to […]
These are some of the books I have been enjoying lately.  Memories of Ash by Intisar Khanani – This is the novel-length sequel to the novella Sunbolt that I enjoyed so much a few months ago. Sunbolt is on the longer end for a novella, so if you’re not normally a fan of shorter works, please don’t skip it! I believe this was planned to be novella-length as well, but grew into a novel. Not a bit of the extra length is extraneous fluff, either – this is rich and glorious and exceptionally fun noblebright fantasy. I was a bit worried […]
These are some of the books I’ve been enjoying lately:  Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani – This was recommended to me by W.R. Gingell, one of my favorite authors, and of course the cover was done by the ever-so-talented Jenny at Seedlings Design Studio, who did our cover for Light in the Darkness and also the cover for The Lord of Dreams. I loved it – loved the characters, loved the setting, loved the prose, loved everything. It is the first book in a trilogy, so do not expect complete closure at the end. However, the book does end in a logical place; it’s an obvious […]
These are some of the books I’ve been reading lately. What have you been reading? The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman – As magnificent and creative and marvelous as one would expect from Neil Gaiman. I loved it… it was dark but also filled with beauty and a thread of noblebrightness. I read an ebook borrowed from my library, but I would like to get this one in print for my library. I love the cover, and I love the title. A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and […]
As promised, here is my second set of mini reviews of the books in Light in the Darkness: A Noblebright Fantasy Boxed Set. You can find the first set of mini reviews here. If this is the first you’ve seen of noblebright fantasy, you can find an overview here on my site and on Noblebright.org. In that overview post, I promised reviews of the books in this first noblebright fantasy boxed set, along with content notes and caveats as appropriate. The books are in alphabetical order by author’s last name in the set, but that’s not the order in which I’m reading them, so […]
Some of these I actually read a while ago, but I’m only just now getting around to blogging them. As you might be able to guess, I’ve been a bit busy. Auckland Allies by Mike Reeves-McMillan – I’ve been a fan of Mike’s writing for a while, and we’re friends on social media (isn’t the internet great? Mike is a Kiwi and I live outside Washington, D.C.; without the internet, we would probably never have even known each other existed. But I consider him a friend now, even though I’ve never met him.). He writes the kind of characters I enjoy […]
A few days ago I wrote an overview of noblebright fantasy, which you can find here on my site and on Noblebright.org. I want to make noblebright fantasy a recognized subgenre of fantasy the way grimdark is now. In a discussion elsewhere on the internet, one author mentioned to me that, while the term is great, much of classic fantasy literature fits the noblebright definition. He questioned whether there is any utility in inventing a term for something that already exists and continues to be written. I agree… many of the best-loved works of fantasy are noblebright, or at least […]
Raven by Pauline Creeden – I didn’t realize when I picked up this book that it was Christian fantasy (it’s clear on Amazon, I had just forgotten when it came up in my Kindle); I think it will appeal to non-Christians too. I also didn’t realize it was steampunk when I picked it up, but if steampunk isn’t your thing, don’t be turned off – the steampunk aspects of the story were fairly restrained. I really enjoyed watching Raven Steele develop through the story; she was both a “strong female character” in that she was awesome at kicking tail when […]