Author David Wesley Hill sent me his novel, At Drake’s Command, with a request for review. I love historical fiction, but I’ve never read the works of C.S. Forester (the Horatio Hornblower series) and Patrick O’Brian (Jack Aubrey) because I’ve been told the books are too nautically-detailed for me to enjoy them. Still, I enjoyed…
This book popped up on NetGalley and looked like a good fluffy read. It’s sort of urban fantasy, minus the urban, with a mix of fae, witches, and other supernatural creatures, with a little romance thrown in. The plot of The Water Witch is basically that the town of Fairwick is in the midst of…
I loved The Last Werewolf, so I did something I don’t normally do – picked up its sequel right away. Unfortunately, Tallula Rising disappointed, not just a little but a lot. I took this book with me on vacation, and while it got me through several stressful days of travel headaches, once I got out…
Note: The Book Stop is officially on vacation. So I pulled an older review I never got around to posting. Enjoy! I’ve been wanting to read something by Tamora Pierce for a long time, since I enjoy young adult fantasy and this book is considered one of the best. However, I think as with most…
Earlier this week I wrote about gushy bloggers and whether we’re not critical enough. For myself, I’m trying not to just “love” all over a book but really explain what did that for me. But — I’m just going to say I loved this book. There. That’s it. You’re thinking, one more werewolf book. Haven’t…
I’m leaving town for a few days and won’t have much time to write reviews or post anything. The latest entry in my Fluffy-Summer-Travel-Reading series is Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (I also didn’t think I could do The Moonstone justice in a short review). I found a surprising number of different covers for…
I picked up this book, despite its super-cheesy cover, because Felicia Day loves this author. And as a total Felicia Day wanna-be I figured it was worth the few bucks it cost me. Which is not to say I have entirely the same reading taste as Felicia Day — she reads a whole lot more…
I’ve become a big fan of Paulo Bacigalupi after reading his short stories and his first YA novel, Ship Breakers. Bacigalupi is not only a great writer and world-builder, but like all good science fiction or dystopian fiction, he makes really compelling statements about the world we live in. The Drowned Cities is no exception. …
It’s hard to explain how a book that steals so much from existing children’s fantasy series can feel so original. And yet it does. The Magicians by Lev Grossman is unlike most of the fantasy you’re probably reading. It’s a book within a book, homage to great children’s fantasy worlds like Narnia and Harry Potter. …
I’ve said this before but here it is again. Jasper Fforde is awesome. If you’ve read nothing by Jasper Fforde, go out and find The Eyre Affair. If you’ve read and loved those books (and Shades of Grey and the Nursery Crime series), you may be interested to know he’s started a young adult fantasy…
I received this as a review request from the author, Genevieve Graham. I was going to pass on it, in part because of the cheesy cover, but Graham’s email insisted this is not a romance novel. She also compared it to one of my favorite books, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, so I decided to give…
This is the fifth (and final) book in Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, and since I’ve written about the series here and here, I don’t have a lot to add, except this was one of my favorites. I enjoyed it for two reasons, the first being that Carriger doesn’t go for some really convoluted plot…
The Book Stop 