Princess Alethea’s Magical Elixir

New reviews!

Title: Swords & Dark Magic: The New Swords & Sorcery
Editors: Lou Anders & Jonathan Strahan
EAN: 9780061723810

Ah, Summertime. The time for cookouts and beach balls and lemonade. For bibliophiles, it’s the time of mass-market paperbacks and anthologies. Why lug Umbert Eco into your hammock when you could have a relaxing love story, a swashbuckling swordfight, a puzzling mystery . . . or — let’s go crazy — all three? (Read more)

Title: The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker
Author: Leanna Renee Hieber
EAN: 9780843962970

As some of you might remember from an earlier review, I was a pretty huge fan of Leanna Renee Hieber’s debut Percy Parker novel. In her sophomore effort, The Darkly Luminous Tale of Percy Parker, similar fans will not be disappointed. Newcomers to the series will not be left in the dark (pun intended), and can look upon the first title as a prequel of sorts. While Darkly Luminous does start out with Percy having been recognized as the reincarnation of the goddess Persephone and taking her place as the seventh member of The Guard, we finally get to see The Guard in action for the first time — working together like a bunch of Victorian Ghostbusters… (Read more)

Title: Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight
Author: Cat Rambo
EAN: 9780979534959

The story of how this book has followed me on my travels for the past six months is almost as diverse and diverting as the collection itself. Lawrence at Paper Golem sent me a gorgeous ARC, which I promptly buried on my dining room table and discovered again while cleaning the house. When I ran away from home shortly after, it was one of three books (the others being a Greek cookbook and Robin McKinley’s Blue Sword) that came with me in my $70 suitcase to Wisconsin. It came with me on my several-week multiple-state road trip over the Christmas holidays, and it was in the first wave of carloads when I moved to DC a couple of months later. At this point, I can honestly say that Cat makes as lovely a copilot as she does a dinner companion. As a short story maven, of course, she blows both of those away… (Read more)