portal fantasy
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
The Hollow Places is a thoroughly entertaining novel that plays around with parallel worlds, portal fantasy and cosmic horror. When our narrator, Kara, moves back to her hometown (Hog Chapel, North Carolina) she is still reeling from her divorce. To avoid sharing a house with her mother she volunteers to work in her uncle’s peculiar […]
MoreCome Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire — book review
Although occasionally entertaining, Come Tumbling Down struck me as a rather unnecessary and insubstantial addition to the Wayward Children series. “Once a wayward child, always a wayward child.” Don’t get me wrong: Seanan McGuire’s writing style is as lush as ever. Her prose, with its use rhythm and repetition, echoes that of fairy-tale, lending a […]
MoreHowl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones — book review
“I’m dying of boredom,” Howl said pathetically. “Or maybe just dying.” Like many, I fell in love with Studio Ghibli’s adaptation of this novel. I consider it a personal favourite and have watched it many times. So once I learnt that it was ‘loosely’ based on a book, I was eager to get my hands […]
MoreThe Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern — book review
secret libraries + magical doors + stories within stories within stories = my kind of book “A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.” This is the type of book that readers will either love or hater. Its playful style and recursive storytelling are definitely […]
MoreThe Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow — book review
“Reason and rationality reigned supreme, and there was no room for magic or mystery. There was no room, it turned out, for little girls who wandered off the edge of the map and told the truth about the mad, impossible things they found there.” Readers who have yet to dip their toes in the vast […]
MoreIN AN ABSENT DREAM: BOOK REVIEW
In an Absent Dream (Wayward Children, #4) by Seanan McGuire ★★★✰✰ 3.5 stars Katherine–never Kate, never Kitty, never anything but Katherine, sensible Katherine, up-and-down Katherine, as dependable as a sundial whittling away the summer afternoons–was ordinary enough to have become remarkable entirely without noticing it. Compared to the previous volumes in this series [book:In an […]
MoreBeneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
McGuire’s style resonates completely with the fairytales she draws from. Her lyric narration thrums with the magic which she portrays. Her prose is alluring, it carries a melodic repetition that is incredibly compelling. And while she might be paying homage to old tales, McGuire is also creating her own – equally spellbinding – tales. Her […]
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