Myth, the Universe, and Everything

 Before I started my own platform for book reviews, I was always frustrated at how hard it was to find large sites that would publish coverage of middle grade fantasy. I’m a big proponent of adults enjoying middle grade—and how much grown up readers can get out of reading books intended for kids—so when I saw Wildling Press, a small indie publisher, promoting Laleh and the Language of the Birds, I requested to be part of the review tour! Since I knew there would be plenty of other reviewers offering full reviews, I asked if I could interview Perin instead, and I’m delighted that she took the time to answer!

Laleh and the Language of the Birds is the story of two cousins, one a scientist and one a fantasy reader, who travel through the realm of the birds after Laleh’s ornithologist father disappears. In order to save Laleh’s home—and the habitat for all the birds that live there—the pair have to face off against a mythological evil. The story draws on Sufi legend, features two wise-cracking scientist crows, and embraces middle grade nerdiness with fondness. (It’s cool to be a Bird Nerd!) Keep reading to learn more from the author!

Alana: Badly describe Laleh and the Language of the Birds in one sentence. Then, tell us what the story is really about.

Perin: Laleh and the Language of the Birds is for kids who've read Percy Jackson and thought, "This was great, but it didn't have nearly enough ornithology!"

Okay, my actual description: Laleh and the Language of the Birds is a fun, fast-paced fantasy about a girl who has to work with her unpredictable older cousin and quirky crow friends to try to save her father and their bird sanctuary. That's the plot. But, to me, the story is primarily about reconciling science and imagination, and truth and love, in order to save our beautiful, irreplaceable planet.

Alana: Laleh won the A. Orr Fantasy Grant from SCBWI! What was it like to get that kind of award for your debut novel?

Perin: It was absolutely incredible. I worked so hard on this story, drafting, rewriting, revising, and editing for years with the help of so many people. Along the way, there was so much waiting, doubt, and frustration (kind of like Laleh's strenuous adventures through all those valleys). Getting outside recognition from the largest organization for children's literature in the world made me think, "Wow, maybe there is something here." Maybe people who don't have to tell me they like the story because they are my friends and family can actually get something from this! Maybe the story can make people I've never met laugh, cry, and think. What an incredible honor.

Alana: The author credit for the novel is Perin Gurel with Marjane Searl—you’re a mother-daughter team! Can you talk about the collaborative process of working with your eleven-year-old author partner?

Perin: Marjane was actually eight years old when I discovered some pages she had scribbled on and discarded during summer break. She had conceptualized the story of this girl who gets bullied for being a "bird nerd," and then gets to travel to the land of winged creatures. You can see how that's the seed of the actual story. And it immediately reminded me of this legend I knew from growing up in Türkiye, “The Conference of the Birds,” and the story of the Simorgh. I really wanted Marjane to write the rest of the story, but she had only made a cover, written the first page, and the back blurb, and moved on. But I was transfixed and kept wondering what happened to that girl... It was, as I say in the acknowledgments, kind of like a spell: I was compelled to write the story. She also read every chapter and gave me feedback. We also have her to thank for Gold and Silver's names.

Alana: The novel stars cousins Laleh, whose father is an ornithologist from Iran, and Ivy, whose father is a mysterious real estate developer. The two girls have very different personalities. How did you decide on their dynamic?

Perin: I modeled Laleh's personality partially on Marjane, who is earnest and kind—a child who is very attached to her identity as a good person and rule-follower. Ivy, on the other hand, is a bit like the way I was when I was a teenager—a girl who's really into cultivating a rebellious and sarcastic persona as a bit of a shell to hide a complex and fragile interior. It was very important to me that Ivy not be a stereotypical bully, which we see a lot in middle-grade literature. Of course, you are right, the way the girls are raised—their relationship with their parents—has a lot to do with their personalities and their dynamic as well.

Alana: Laleh is very no-nonsense, while Ivy is a huge fan of fantasy novels. When this first comes up, Laleh is very dismissive of Ivy’s interests. It looks like Marjane is also a huge fantasy reader! What came into the decision to have Laleh, the point of view character in a fantasy novel, not appreciate the joys of fantasy reading?

Perin: Yes, this is one of the places where Laleh is not like Marjane at all. Marjane lives many lives through fantasy novels—and novels in general—due to her voracious reading; Laleh is stuck on a singular plane of scientific, empirical thought. However, the idea that rationality is important, but not enough to feel the deepest truths of the universe, is baked into the legend of the Simorgh and Islamic mysticism in general. So, Laleh needed Ivy to help her unlock some of that, just as Ivy needs Laleh to teach her the importance of science.

Alana: Birds and real-world ornithology are both very important to this novel. Which members of your family are bird watchers, and how did you develop that interest?

Perin: Marjane and I are both amateur bird watchers, and her little brother Isaac loves them too. We got into birds the same summer Marjane conceptualized the story, because we were trying to find new ways to get away from screens and reconnect with nature, and birdwatching can really do that for you. The people who got us into birds were my stepdad, Alan Scott, who is from New Zealand, where birds are super important, our friend Jake Wagman, who is a pretty big bird nerd, and my late mother-in-law Margie Searl, to whom the book is dedicated.

Alana: If you could understand the language of the birds, what do you think your backyard would sound like?

Perin: There is a moment early in the novel where Ivy complains about all the bird conversations she has been eavesdropping on; so, I'm with her—most of the conversations would probably be about food, safety, and finding a partner. Later on, however, Laleh hears deeper layers in bird song, and I want to leave those possibilities open, too. I don't think we should underestimate birds' intelligence, wisdom, and love of beauty, given what we are discovering about bird minds and behavior.

Alana: The fantasy elements in the novel are inspired by Iranian folklore. What is your connection to those cultural stories?

Perin: I was born and raised in Iran's neighbor, Türkiye, and we share a lot of the same legends and folklore, as well as the influence of Sufism—that is, the mystical aspect of Islam, which emphasizes love and the unity of all creation. I've also studied Persian and visited Iran for my scholarly research. Laleh was born just as I was finishing my latest academic book, almost as a companion volume to all the things I didn't get to say about Turco-Persian culture and Sufism. In academia, our standard mode is to be cynical and critical—it's a part of our job to be doubters and fact-checkers—but I love that I got to let my imagination free with a middle-grade fantasy novel.

Alana: While this is clearly a book aimed at a younger audience, there are also in-jokes for adults. (The crows, Silver and Gold, make a very funny joke about dreaded PowerPoint presentations, for example.) Who are you hoping will discover this book?

Perin: Everyone! Seriously, the novel is targeted at 9- to 14-year-olds or something like that because of publishing standards, but I believe middle grade is for everyone. This is the age when most of us fell in love with reading, and some of us probably fell out of love for a while as adult responsibilities pulled us, and our brains calcified into boring seriousness. The best scenario would be for kids to enjoy it and to also let loose the love of imagination in adult minds and hearts as well (yes, I am referring to a key plot point here. Hello, Silver!).

Alana: If you could spend time with some of the characters from the novel in a group activity, who would you invite, and what would you do?

Perin: I really want to hang out with the scientist crows Silver and Gold in Avesia! I would love to spend a whole day and night there, wading in the indoor waterfall, hanging out in the palace gardens, eating those fresh fruits and tree nuts, and just breathing in the clean Avesian air. Eternal spring! Maybe they will make me my own chalcedony device, so I can try flying through the flowering vine labyrinth? What about you?

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You can preorder Laleh and the Language of the Birds from my favorite indie site, Bookshop.org, your local brick and mortar, or any of the bookshops linked at the publisher’s website.

For more on reading middle grade as adults, check out my interviews with crossover authors, “Authors for All Ages,” at Paste!

Within the span of three weeks, fans of portal fantasies get the treat of not one, but two excellent novels that plat with the trope: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (out today, March 31!), and reverse portal fantasy Gods & Comics by Kat Cho (April 21). To celebrate the publication of these fantastic books, walk with me down memory lane a bit to trace some of the reason I’m so excited about this subgenre’s comeback.When I was a young writer, first dipping my toes in the world of submitting a manuscript to publishers that would accept unsolicited manuscripts, it was a different era. In those days, you printed out the part of your manuscript you were submitting and sent it, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE), and waited to receive responses via mail. You used a huge book from the library shelves called The Writer’s Market, combing through it to narrow down your options.
My manuscript had anthropomorphic animals in it, a trope specifically called out by publishers as one they were not interested in. Another trope that had fallen out of popularity at the time? The portal fantasy.
As someone who cut my reading teeth on C.S. Lewis’s the Chronicles of Narnia and grew up on Disney films like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan (and even the animated Dungeons & Dragons), I could not fathom why portal fantasies would not be of interest. Hadn’t humans traveling to fairylands been a staple of fairy tales since forever? Didn’t everyone love the idea of traveling to another world?
I wasn’t alone. The trope cropped up over the years in books that I adored, as well as books that gained popularity in other genres. Sherwood Smith returned to this trope in her Sartorias-deles books, frequently featuring children who made their way into the fantasy world where they found themselves truly belonging. In romance, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander may have been more time travel, but the World War II nurse who finds herself out of her own time has much the same feel of a portal fantasy, and spawned a seven season television series. Lev Grossman’s The Magicians (which I called a cross between the Chronicles of Narnia and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road when I reviewed it for Mythprint) was grim and cynical enough to appeal to a literary crowd—and also spawned a television series. Neverland stories continued to abound in film and television and comics; one of my favorites that touches on not only Neverland but Wonderland, Oz, and other portal fantasies is the webcomic Namesake.
It’s really in comics and webcomics that portal fantasies have had their greatest heyday, especially in the isekai subgenre in Japanese manga. Isekai stories are also found in anime, light novels, and games, but I suspect that the many webcomics that have adopted isekai conventions are more inspired by their comic predecessors. (If you’re a greater isekai expert than I am, I’m happy to be corrected in the comments!) Some of the comics send the protagonists to fantasy worlds; other reverse portal fantasies feature contemporary protagonists dealing with their favorite characters from comics or novels popping into the real world.
Portal fantasies of the western sense are also getting nods from romantasy novels: Feyre’s journey from mere mortal to High Lady of the Night Court borrows plenty from those early tales of humans wandering into faerie. Jessie Mihalik’s Silver and Blood has that similar mortal-to-faerie opening. What’s missing from these portal fantasies is the modern component: Most portal fantasies begin in the world of the reader, in contemporary times.
Which leads us out of memory lane and into This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods and Comics, both of which have protagonists who are very aware of the modern world and the various fantastical tropes in fiction. In the case of Maggie, who wakes up in a fantasy world, her disbelief has to fall to the wayside to ensure her survival in a gritty kingdom of novels she’s reread, year upon year, until she has many of the details memorized. In the case of Grace, the idea of a god from her own webcomic materializing in the real world goes against every bit of logic she’s ever understood—but not, perhaps, against the stories her grandmother taught her.
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me owes plenty to isekei (Maggie makes a “truck-kun” joke and is pretty pissed that when she woke up in her fantasy setting, she didn’t arrive with any new amazing powers or beauty). The nods to fantasies like George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire,” with awful people doing awful things to each other as they rise to power, are also quite clear. But the best part for fans of Ilona Andrews (of which I have long been one) is that the novel owes much to the author team’s previous works. Maggie is very much her own character, but she shares traits with many of Andrews’s previous protagonists. She’s smart. She’s durable (or, at the very least, she can’t be killed permanently; she names herself Maggie the Undying for a reason). And she isn’t about to stand by and let people get hurt when she can do something about it.
Like most readers, upon finding themselves in the world of their favorite novels, Maggie spends some time geeking out about the places she’s truly seeing with her own eyes. Despite how dangerous the world of Kair Toren is, there are also places of beauty, and Maggie’s as excited as any fan to see them. But in order to do that, she has to survive, and waking up in a strange land, naked, with no supplies already puts her at a disadvantage. She’s able to put the pieces together, realize when she is in the series, and form a plan of how to use that knowledge to sell secrets that will buy her safety.
But as soon as she’s even a touch confident in her place, she starts using that knowledge to benefit others. Not because it will do her personally any good. But because for years, she waited for the author to fix the world’s injustices—and when the series stopped at only two books, with unresolved plots abounding, as soon as she’s in a position to start fixing things for the better, she doesn’t let anything stop her. Not serial killers. Not assassination plots. Not the threat of civil war. Not a sexy, brooding, dangerous man (who is equally drawn to her). While Maggie’s love interest may get a little possessive for some readers’ tastes (he certainly gets possessive enough for Maggie to put her foot down!), he, too, puts everything on the line to help others. And watching that relationship grow and shift over the rest of the series—however long it might be—will be one of the joys.
As with other Ilona Andrews novels, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me features a whole cast worth rooting for. Though Maggie leaves a family behind in the real world, she gains another family in Kair Toren—people who believe in her mission, and who believe in her. The mysteries about why Maggie has traveled to Kair Toren (and what happened to the author that he stopped after the second book) underlie the major plot, coming back to remind readers that the question is still there, and the uncertainty hasn’t been resolved. Be warned: This first book ends on a cliffhanger. It also has enough twists and reveals that it’s tempting to begin the reread immediately. Go forth with caution, because This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is about to become your newest obsession, especially if you have to wait to talk about it until your book buddies finish it. (Rating: 10.0)
Gods & Comics is very firmly set in the real world, and Grace Bak is a very normal, anxious, over-achieving teenager, who writes a webcomic about the Korean gods in honor of her grandmother. After Halmeoni’s death, Grace has been working hard to keep busy and pretend everything is fine, even after an anxiety attack made her a laughingstock and cost her the junior class presidency. She has a father who loves her, but who has even less an idea about how to process grief than Grace. The webcomic helps Grace still feel connected; she wrote the story of Haemosu, the sun god, and Yuhwa, daughter of the vengeful water god, Habaek, for herself. Casting them as gods, separated from their powers and trapped as human teenagers, was just a fun conceit. She never expected it to go viral.
And she definitely never expected Haemosu to show up at her high school, looking like a three dimensional version of her drawings, asking for her help. He doesn’t know how to get home, and he’s convinced Grace is the only one who can get him there. Grace knows gods don’t just show up as high school students, and she’s not inclined to believe—until Hae proves himself, and Grace begins to realize that if Hae made it out of her comic and into the real world, then maybe Habaek did, too…
Gods & Comics draws a lot from the reverse portal fantasy subgenre, but it also centers the idea that gods depend on the beliefs of humans to exist, and that it’s Grace’s comic that made people believe in Haemosu and the others again.
Novels like Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, and even Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series have used this concept to excellent effect, putting Gods & Comics in excellent company. But even more, it’s a conceit that gains depth when put into the context of Korean history: When Korea was occupied by Japan in the early 1900s, there was a systemic attempt to wipe out the Korean language, Korean names, Korean religion, and more. People were forced to give up their traditional beliefs until—as represented by Cho—the gods were largely forgotten. That real-world context makes the return of Haemosu, Yuhwa, and Habeak an even more powerful story.
Cho’s novel is a fun YA romantic comedy, with hijinks and a charismatic cast and the usual high school drama (plus some vampire-like monsters). But under that, it’s also a study of grief, of trying too hard to be perfect, and of realizing there are some things more important than the dreams you thought you wanted. It’s also about creativity and how telling stories can breathe new life into things (in this case, literally). This is a solid standalone perfect for teens, but that has a depth of thought, emotion, and care that makes it an excellent read for adults, too. (Rating: 9.8)
Was portal fantasy ever really out? Is the resurgence, stemming from isekei, a mere fad or a lasting trend? I find that it doesn’t really matter, so long as this moment gives us books like This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and Gods & Comics.
Do you read portal fantasy? What are your favorite titles? Come join the conversation at the Virgil & Beatrice patreon!

Like other mothers of my era who raised their children on dinosaur shows, I was introduced to the biography of Victorian paleontologist Mary Anning through a 2017 episode of the science-fantasy children’s series Dino Dana. Anning was a real-world paleontologist, a woman fossilist in a time when only men were allowed to join scientific societies. Anning found an ichthyosaur skeleton—the first to be correctly identified—when she was only twelve years old. She also discovered the first pterosaur skeleton (originally named Pterodactylus macronyx) outside of Germany. She knew more about fossils than most of the people who bought fossils from her, and he work was routinely used in the studies of male scientists, who rarely gave her credit.
 

The children’s show only touched on Anning’s history, and it did acknowledge that Anning grew to be respected within the scientific community. She eventually received an annuity from the British Association for the Advancement of Science (thanks to fellow paleontologist and friend William Buckland—more about him in a moment). When she suffered from breast cancer in her 40s, members of the Geological Society raised money to support her in her expenses. When she died at age 47, the Geological Society also helped to fund a stained-glass window placed, in her honor, in St. Michael’s Church in Anning’s hometown.

Anning was a fascinating historical figure, and she becomes a fascinating protagonist in a magical Britain in Jennifer Mandula’s The Geomagician, which releases on March 31, 2026. Mandula uses a lot of historical fact in creating her version of Anning: Mary is a fossilist who caters to wealthy individuals who know less than she does about her discoveries. She’s frequently down on her luck; though she owns Anning’s Fossil Depot, founded by the historical Anning at age 27, it hardly makes the money she needs to survive. Mandula’s Mary is hard-pressed to support an ailing mother, keep her shop open, and feed herself—all while striving to keep up with the latest geomagical discoveries.

Mandula places her Mary in a world where magic can be imbued in objects called reliqs, and fossils are some of the best items for storage. Mary wears an ammonite to collect her magic, which she uses sparingly to help in her discoveries—and also sells it in a place called the Slicks when money is too tight. The wealthy purchase magic that has been sold this way, living in the luxury of magic-lit lights, banquets with magical decoration and illusion (and climate control), all without thinking about those who had to give up their own resources just to survive. Enter Mary’s friend Lucy, a witch (people who can use magic without reliqs) and an activist, who is determined to upend the economy of magical sales. The issue doesn’t seem that important to Mary—it’s just the way the world works—but Lucy is her closest friend, and so she listens with one ear when Lucy describes protests and pamphlets.

When Lucy and Mary go to a recently washed away cliff where Mary is sure she’ll make a discovery that will be her financial salvation, the discovery is more than Mary could have imagined. Not only does she discover a pterodactyl skeleton, but she also discovers an egg—which remarkably hatches in her hands. From there, she’s launched into the perils of scholarly society by her mentor, William Buckland, and her former friend, Henry Stanton, whom she once expected to marry. The two rival scientists are both vying for presidency of the Geomagical Society, and Mary’s discovery has the potential to make either of them the forerunner. Buckland, also a theologian, has a traditional interpretation of how the pterodactyl hatched; Stanton favors a much more heretical, but more plausible, theory, and it’s up to Mary to determine whose position she will support.

The battle between safety and truth weighs heavily throughout the novel, as does the notion that advancement for some may come at the sacrifice of advancement for all. Mandula adeptly shows a very flawed Mary, who doesn’t see how her own plights might extend beyond her own, personal situation. She’s introduced to other women who crave inclusion in the sciences, but she doesn’t see them as relevant to her own desire to belong to the Geomagical Society. She watches her wealthy friend Lucy fight against the injustices of the Slicks, but doesn’t see it as her own cause. Henry and their other friend, Edgar (also Lucy’s brother and a member of the nobility), have other ideas about how to revolutionize the harvesting of magic to make it more humane—and more powerful—in a way that Lucy abhors, but Mary views with an analytical mind, thinking of the possibilities rather than the consequences.

Because the story is tightly told from Mary’s point of view, she doesn’t analyze her own failings, but as the novel expands, Mary’s choices show a larger picture, until finally she can’t avoid the larger truths she’s hidden from. And while some of the bones of the novel’s structure borrow heavily from second-chance romance novels, the romantic subplot really isn’t at the center of the novel. Instead, the core theme is about the interrelations between people, and how hard it is to upend systems designed to keep certain individuals in power, because they’re disinclined to let it go. The result is a very thoughtful book, with cameos from many lauded paleontologists of the era, plenty of references to the historical Anning’s discoveries, and an adorable baby pterodactyl named Ajax.
 

The historical Mary Anning had a dog, rather than a pterosaur.

The fictionalized Mary certainly lives up to her real-world counterpart’s legacy, and is ultimately, despite her flaws, an easy protagonist to root for. Readers might even be inspired to look more deeply into the real Anning’s life with biographies like Shelley Emling’s The Fossil Hunter (2009). But even without more biographical insight, The Geomagician stands well on its own as both an homage to Anning’s work and a timely fantasy of ethics and justice that ends on a note of hope.

You can preorder The Geomagician at Bookshop.org.

It’s that time of year when people involved with schools—students, teachers, staff, and even parents—are looking ahead to spring break, and the end of the year seems to be approaching with increasing speed. Between the start of the second semester and summer break (for readers in the northern hemisphere), there’s the stress of midterms, but there’s also a sense of potential, that unsatisfactory grades can be fixed before it’s time for that final letter grade. And there’s still time to work on those year-long projects that could make or break a grad student’s future career prospects.

Fantasy fiction, especially for children, has long featured magical schools and camps, and the recent rise in dark academia has added gothic horror flare (and a sharp look at privilege) to the genre. But there’s also plenty of room for fun hijinks in school stories for YA readers—and there’s an even wider potential to tell new stories within SFF that feature grad school students and other academics. If you’re school-affiliated and need a mid-semester boost, if you miss your own days in academia, or if you just like to dabble in the school setting, here’s a syllabus you can use for your own study!

The Entanglement of Rival Wizards by Sara Raasch

Getting a prestigious grant to finish graduate studies might be a dream for any grad student—but not when they have to share the funding with their bitter academic rival! That’s the situation for evocation student Sebastian Walsh, who thought he might be stepping into the career-making moment of his dreams. But to keep both his funding, his future job offer, and earn his degree, Seb has to work with conjuration student Elethior Tourael, a member of an infamously wealthy and powerful family—who are also responsible for trauma in Seb’s past. Raasch uses the grad school set up and the D&D style magical bickering to create a fun romantic m/m romp in a surprisingly convincing setting that blends magic and modern life in surprising and fun ways. Though the characters have much deeper, more painful issues than the candy pink cover implies, the relationships (friendships and romance) are well drawn, and readers will root for Seb to stop tripping himself up on his way to find happiness.

Higher Magic by Courtney Floyd

Some grad students don’t need to be motivated by a prestigious grant—they just want to be eligible to actually finish their degree and become mages like they’ve always dreamed. Dorothe Bartleby failed her exam to be qualified to complete her degree with a dissertation, and for her second attempt, her committee has advised her to apply digimancy, a form of magic that has held a prophecy of doom over her head since childhood. But when she codes a magical skull who seems to be able to narrate her own life, she begins to realize that there may be a connection between the university’s growing population of missing students and her own magic. But solving the mystery isn’t a task for just one person, and Floyd populates the novel with earnest, likeable characters driven by a sense of justice that feels on point for a current read.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

Where Bartleby is plagued by doubts about her own belonging, Alice Law has never doubted her own abilities and skill. Determined to be the best of the best, she decides to go to hell to retrieve her doctoral advisor, because no one else in the world will be able to help her chart her future better. Also, it’s possibly her fault that he’s dead. (Strike possibly; it’s definitely her fault.) But when her rival and one-time friend and colleague Peter Murdoch interrupts her ritual to travel to hell, saying he wants to help rescue their professor, the two of them plunge into the afterlife together. Surprisingly, some of the courts of Hell remind them an awful lot of the Cambridge of the living…

One of the fun things about this trio of novels is that it showcases how different a grad school experience in magic could be, depending on the university. The Entanglement of Rival Wizards takes place a large university in Pennsylvania where following the rawball team (an adventuring party replacement for football) is a huge part of college life. Higher Magic is set at a state university where sports plays little importance, but the bureaucracy and the unions are at the forefront. And Katabasis centers Cambridge, both in the living world and in Hell, focusing on students who know they are some of the most elite (if not the best) in the world. And yet, so many of their struggles connect, it makes for a fun set to read together.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

Of course, graduate students aren’t the only ones who compete for prizes or funding. Owen Mallory, a member of the Cantford College Department of History, is ecstatic to receive a rare tome he’s spent his life searching for—which arrives mysteriously on his desk. And one of his first thoughts is to make sure that fellow lecturer Jeremy Harrison doesn’t spot it. Soon, Owen is sent back in time, through some unknown means, to make sure that national hero Una Everlasting follows the course of history that made her a hero. And still, he thinks like a competitive scholar; Harrison won’t have access to any of this primary source, after all! But soon, Owen realizes that to build the legend, he may have to betray Una herself, and as his love for her deepens, he begins to question everything he’s ever known about the legend he studied so thoroughly.

Arcana Academy by Elise Kova

Not everyone who enters academia is there intentionally, and for Clara Graysword, Arcana Academy is better served as the setting for a heist than a place of learning. But when she gets caught inking tarot cards without a license, the headmaster of the elite school, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape. All she has to do is pose as a first year student, pretend to be his fiance, and help him steal a tarot card belonging to the king in order to create an all powerful card. Kova mixes dark academia, heist novel, and romance in this series starter.

Fallen Gods by Rachel Van Dyken

Rey, on the other hand, has been raised from birth for one task: steal back Mjolnir (yes, that Mjolnir) from Endir University, a college where gods and monsters and mortals roam the halls side by side. As Odin’s daughter, it’s her duty to obey. But when she meets Arik Erikson, her plans start to fall apart, because she can’t help her attraction her icy classmate, even though he’s the son of Odin’s nemesis. If she loses, the fate of the gods is at stake. But if she wins, she might have to sacrifice her heart. This romantasy blends the college scene with Norse mythology and a heist a lifetime in the making.

Bones at the Crossroads by LaDarrion Williams

This sequel to Williams’s Blood at the Root returns readers to magical HBCU Caiman University, where Malik is reeling from discoveries about his powers and his legacy. The family he thought he knew, especially the mother he’d have done anything for, may turn out to be his enemies. And while all he truly wanted was a normal magical college experience, he’s realizing that he may need to use his powers to save that world—even though he’s no longer sure it’s where he truly belongs. This is a fantastic duology to pick up between installments of Tracy Deonn’s “Legendborn” cycle.

An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole

Ellory Morgan knows how to spot freshmen among the library stacks—they’re the students who don’t yet have the look of desperation and fatigue, because they haven’t discovered just how hard university is. She’s already in the thick of it, though, as one of the few BIPOC students at the elite ivy league Warren University. But worse than her courses, she has this eerie sensation of deja vu, which may be warning her that there are greater dangers at Warren than she ever realized. What forbidden magic lies beneath these halls? Ellory is determined to find out, before she loses herself.

My Roommate from Hell by Cale Dietrich

Some colleges aren’t specifically for magic. They’re just your normal college, except that after it’s been determined that the dimension of Hell is real, the world itself feels a little more magical. Owen really just wanted to have a typical college experience, but when he’s given the Prince of Hell, an exchange student named Zarmenus, as a roommate, his life is going to be anything but typical. And then, when the King of Hell demands that his son settle down, Zar comes up with a brilliant plan: pretend he and Owen are boyfriends. Zar hasn’t been the best roommate, and Owen’s not sure he’ll be a better boyfriend, but even he can’t deny their chemistry. And when anti-Hell activists try to hurt Zar, Owen realizes there’s more to their relationship than he wanted to admit. (Add a delightfully fluffy-yet-scary hellcat as a pet, and the scene is complete.) While Deitrich has some confusions about American colleges and their seasons (he’s a writer from Australia), this is a fun bit of brain candy romance that also combats prejudice with panache.

House of Hearts by Skyla Arndt

When Violet Harper enrolls at Hart Academy, it’s not to learn magic or have classes with monsters—she doesn’t know anything about any of that. She’s there for one purpose: revenge for the death of her best friend. Everyone else says it was a freak accident. She knows it was a murder, based on the cryptic messages her friend sent from the elite boarding school. Now, Violet’s at Hart, determined to bring down her suspect and make sure he pays. Unfortunately, her suspect’s brother is Calvin Lockwell, an infuriating boy Violet is helplessly attracted to. And as Violet follows her friend’s path through Hart’s halls, she realizes that there’s more haunting the school than memories—and that a curse may be behind her best friend’s death. This YA horror is full of chills and plot twists, with a slow-burn romance to keep the pages turning.

Love at Second Sight by F. T. Lukens

It’s tough being a nonmagical student at an entirely magical high school—that is, until, Cam discovers he’s got one of the rarest magics of all. He’s a seer, gifted with psychic glimpses of the future that he doesn’t want. That’s especially true when what he sees is the gristly murder of a girl he doesn’t know. He and his friends have to solve the murder before it happens, figuring out the identities of both the murderer and the victim, while also figuring out who they can trust. (Cal also has to manage a crush on his werewolf friend, Al, but that’s fine. He won’t be distracted from the murder mystery by that tension at all…)

The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs

Fantasy schools aren’t always about magic. Fourth Wing has an elite academy for dragon riders, and The Princess Knight has a school for warriors. Many of those who apply never successfully graduate, making those who earn their titles some of the world’s elite. Princess Clia had no intention of ever learning to be a warrior—until she is abandoned by the prince who had been her betrothed. He believes his nation, on the verge of war, needs a warrior queen, and Clia, who comes from a kingdom more concerned with parties than armies, has none of the needed training or reputation. So she does what any scorned woman would do: she enlists in military academy alongside him. (What, like it’s hard?) While this plot clearly draws on Legally Blonde for inspiration, and has many of the same story beats, the characters are wholly themselves in a setting inspired more by other romantasies than rom coms. Clia’s earnestness and self-doubt put her in direct contrast to Elle Woods, and her prince never comes across as the villain here (although he makes some utterly awful decisions). The result is a really fresh take on a familiar story, with much larger stakes than a single legal battle.

Coldwire by Chloe Gong

School settings aren’t just for fantasy! Chloe Gong’s first non-Shakespearan outing, a cyberpunk dystopia, centers on a final exam for Nile Military Academy. One of the POV narrations features Lia and her friends competing for the highest points in their field operation test, behind cold-war lines. The other centers on Eirale, whose final exam in the online world of Kathmandu has made her a valuable hostage for activists determined to bring down the corporate-military that props up the cold war. The action trades back and forth between perspectives in a race for resources that have the potential to bring down the “upcountry”—the virtual world in which most people spend their time when the real world is ravaged by pollution and pandemic. As the first in a trilogy, this may be some of Gong’s finest work yet, with detailed worldbuilding and spy-thriller twists that should keep audiences guessing.

A Forbidden Alchemy by Stacey McEwan

In this first book of the Artisan trilogy, getting into Artisan School means everything. All young people are tested to see if they have the spark of magic that will allow them to join the elite, or whether they will be destined to a life as Craftsmen, doing societies lesser respected, more dangerous jobs. It’s all Nina Harrow has ever dreamed of. It’s everything Patrick Colson hates. When the pair of them discover the truth—that Artisans are chosen, not born to their futures—they part ways and choose very different paths in the Craftsman revolution that follows. While more of this tale is about the rebellion than the school, the idea of schools shaping the future of magical students at the age of twelve has resonance with other tales, giving it a more grown-up angle on a familiar theme.

Whether you’re looking for college, high school, the lofty halls of graduate schools, or the profession of academia, there are plenty of takes on making schools—magical and not—a staple in SFF. Which ones do you think make the grade?

*Note: This article was originally commissioned by amazing editor Lacy Baugher and written for Paste magazine, which now focuses on music coverage. Thanks to Paste for all the articles over the years!

Back in 2023, A Market of Dreams and Destiny welcomed readers into an alternate 19th-century London, where an indentured human in the goblin market manages to turn the world on its head, aiming for a brighter and better world for those who most deserve it. Shortlisted for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, this novel is Trip Galey’s stellar debut—but Trip is also a game designer (Faerie’s Bargain from Choice of Games) and an editor (I Want that Twink Obliterated! from Bona Books).

Now, Trip’s latest project, The Fall of the House of Valenziaga, is about to hit Kickstarter. I got a chance to chat with him about this new project, what he loves about SFF, and why he loves writing queer fiction (with queer creatives at all steps of the process!).

Alana: Badly describe your new novel in one sentence (then tell us what it's really about!).

Trip: A young man learns that if you want to tear down a house, you’re better off wearing a dress while doing it.

So, The Fall of the House of Valenziaga is about a guy called Virtus. He’s the heir to a Legendary House (similar to a noble house—but GAY) and his mother is… toxic, to put it mildly. Of course, the thing is, when you grow up with toxic parents you don’t always realise they’re toxic. You often don’t know any better or have another childhood to compare yours to, really. So the book is Virtus realising how terrible his mother is and then setting out to free himself—and the rest of the city—from her tyrannical dominance. Even if it means tearing down his own Legendary House to do it.

And it’s queer science fantasy, so envision a city beyond the edge of space and time that is made up of fragments of a thousand thousand lost and/or destroyed worlds, riddled with strange science and weird sorcery, and populated by unknowable beings that are all too human and humans that are occasionally unspeakably monstrous.

Plus QUEER. Metaphorically, literally, from a worldbuilding perspective, in terms of references and Easter eggs… in as many senses of the word as I could fit in.

Sometimes, more is more.

Alana: You've written about faeries and edited pulp fiction across all the speculative genres. Your newest title is science fantasy. Which genre is secretly your favorite (and why do you love all of them)?

Trip: Faeries, lol. It will always be faeries. There is something so primal about fairy tales, and I’ve always loved them and found them incredibly appealing. This was possibly helped a great deal by my not really fitting in with my family? My parents literally used to tell me to my face that they thought I might have been switched at birth. They meant hospital error, of course, but you can see why I’d identify so strongly with changelings at that point.

But I do quite honestly love all genres of fantasy and most of science fiction. I grew up in a very rural area. My family didn’t have television until I was sixteen16 and the internet came along even later. Books were my primary entertainment and escape and I was addicted. Also, I lived a three hour drive from the nearest bookstore, and this was before the Evil ’Zon arose. There simply were not enough titles out there to only love urban fantasy or only read epic or heroic fantasy. So I read them all!

I will always have a very soft spot for those books that show me something new, as well. Part of the appeal of genre fiction is seeing outside out everyday, lived experience, so books that depart from the norm, books that mash up genres and go on weird tangents? J’adore.

Alana: You are well-known for having references to other works sprinkled throughout your stories. Without spoilers, can you share a few titles that will grant in-joke access?

Trip: First, this question immediately started a particular scene from the film Evil Under the Sun, starring Peter Ustinov (and Dame Maggie Smith! And Dame Diana Rigg! It’s actually superb, you should all watch it sometime…) playing in my mind. But that’s a digression, so I’ll throw out a list and leave it at that.

Dynasty S03E16; The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny; The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess by Chappell Roan; The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells; Mommie Dearest (1981); Diamonds and Toads by Charles Perrault; POSE (all series); The Complete Kake Comics by Tom of Finland; RuPaul’s Drag Race (any series, really, but All-Stars All-Winners would be my rec); The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey…

…I am going to say I stopped there, and not admit that there were actually several more before I got ahold of myself and hit the delete key to bring it down to something more reasonable in size for a paragraph…

Alana: You've published traditionally and independently--what brought you to Kickstarter for this project?

Trip: I try to never do a thing for only one reason if I can possibly help it. 😅 My reasoning behind bringing this project to Kickstarter stems from a couple of things.

Kickstarter is, relatively, quick. Traditional publishing is amazing, but turnaround on projects in trad pub is measured in years, plural, most of the time. I’m hoping that this book will see the light of day much sooner than it would if it came through the traditional publishing pipeline.

This also applies to authors getting paid, unfortunately. Advances are broken into increasingly smaller pieces, further apart, these days. My partner and I are coming to the end of our UK visas, and this project is one way we’re hoping to raise funds to stay in our British home (particularly given what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic right now). This project, if successful, will pay out months or years before a traditional publishing house would.

Doing things myself also gives me a bit more creative control. Trad pub is not nearly so restrictive as people imagine, but with Valenziaga, particularly, I want to guarantee that I have a queer editor, a queer cover artist, a queer proofreader, and, if at all possible, a queer person involved in production every step of the way. (Yes, this book is that queer.)

And speaking of queer, the reality is that I also had professionals in the publishing industry look at the concept, and the setting, and the story, and advise me to simplify things if I wanted to improve my chances of selling the book on the traditional market. Science fantasy is weird. It doesn’t fit into easy sales scripts as well. But I didn’t want to make it pure fantasy, and I didn’t want to decrease the polyamorous mess(es) tangled up in the plot. So I opted to do this project on a more personal level.

Alana: Which of your characters would you most like to hang out with, and what would you do?

Trip: Oh no! Not a “favourite” type question! That means I have to choose!? Painful. (And it’s different all the time anyway!)

But as of this moment, I’m currently feeling that it would be… Thom of House Lakhsonen (from The Fall of the House of Valenziaga). He’s fun, and sweet, and always smells of leather. Plus, I’m rather stressed with everything going on at the moment, and he’s the kind of person who knows the best way to take care of you, whether that is cuddling on the couch and watching a film or going out dancing.

Given how much I’ve been working on everything, we would definitely just have a night in, with popcorn, a light-and-fun film, and a couple of books, so just read companionably.

Alana: What "one neat trick" do you use in your life, writing or otherwise? What advice do you follow that has made a difference for you?

Trip: I have struggled with toxic levels of perfectionism my whole life, and the thing I’ve found that works best for me to combat that is telling myself (as I write) that I will “fix it in post.” It really helps me get past that paralytic over-analysis of dramatic choices or dislike of how certain lines are reading in my head, or whatever other mind vampire is trying to suck the life out of my creative momentum.

In terms of writing advice, a big one for me is to read widely and deeply in terms of the “how- to” sorts of books, like On Writing, or Wonderbook, or The Fantasy Fiction Formula, but know that not every piece of writing advice, even if it is good advice, is suitable to every writer. We all have different brains and different processes. Writing is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. (And even this piece of advice may not suit everyone!)

Alana: What do you love most about writing queer stories right now?

Trip: I love that it’s not just an option—it’s encouraged! At least by large sections of the SFF readership and reassuring chunks of the publishing industry. And though trad pub (and even platforms that distribute self-published works) might possibly be wavering a bit in terms of support, considering current events, there are still excellent options for reaching an audience and making a living as a writer of queer books.

I love that there are so many queer books to read! I love reading widely and deeply and I love that there is no longer just a single book with a lesbian protagonist in science fiction, or just one trilogy with a (tragic) gay man as the protagonist in fantasy. My TBR is truly life-threatening at this point.

The thing I love most, however, is the connection with queer readers, and the expressions of enthusiasm and joy when someone finds a bit of their experience in a story where they don’t usually expect to see such things. It’s… just the best. 💙

Trip Galey’s The Fall of the House of Valenziaga launches on Kickstarter March 3! Visit the site to sign up for notification on project launch!

(The Vanishing Bookstore was selected by paid subscribers as February’s feature title at the Virgil and Beatrice Patreon. To participate in future polls and decide what gets covered, join at the “Virgil” tier!)

When you live in era after era, time ceases to have much meaning—and yet, it impacts everything. The consequences of history are felt deeply in two recently released novels, and while the magic that powers each is hard to pin down, the sense of the past’s impact on the future is concrete.

The Vanishing Bookstore by Helen Phifer only allows for time travel in one direction, as four witches and two Puritan men live life after life following the Salem witch trials. In 1692, the English women are accused of witchcraft, likely due to the unrequited lust of witch hunter George Corwin. Though Ambrose, George’s cousin, tries to save the youngest of the women, Isadora English, the six of them become locked in repeating lives. In modern day, Dora and Aunt Lenny live in London, an attempt to try something new to break the curse. But Dora’s forgotten her past all together—and Lenny and the others believe that it will be Dora who saves them from George Corwin’s murderous ways once and for all.

Over and over, these characters are reborn into new lives in a way that’s never really detailed. (Are the English sisters always born to the same family? Is Dora always parented by the same mysterious magical man in each lifespan? Or do they appear fully grown each time around, with only Dora having a childhood in each life? The novel never gets into it, simply describing the cursed characters as immortals, who don’t look the same in each life, but not really getting into the mechanics.) Certain canon events occur, as they would in a multiverse story: Dora’s mother, Lucine, always dies first. Dora always dies before she reaches the age of 35. And George Corwin always chases them down, determined to be their downfall and indulge his murderous urges. The one thing that hasn’t happened: Dora has yet to reclaim the magical book that she and Ambrose hid in 1692—and it’s that book and Dora’s power that may finally change their futures.

While the characters in the novel don’t leap through time, the narrative occasionally does. (It might have been served to offer more of these glances, as the flashback scenes do a fantastic job informing the modern storyline. A really lovely chapter in 1764 Salem shows how Ambrose’s love for Isadora is a constant throughout time and lives.) For several of the characters, their original lives and deaths in Salem are as vibrant as anything in the modern era. History constantly threads its way into the conversations and interactions with their world around them, in a way that the setting of modern Salem embraces.

Phifer does a fantastic job of embracing the Salem setting. Readers who have visited Salem will be tickled by all the references to familiar landmarks and the names of historical figures (including the villainous Corwin). The modern English women toe the line of being at once ancient witches and being modern shopkeepers, just as Salem itself hangs onto a troubled history and reframes it by embracing a witchy ambiance that was never present in Puritan times. Capturing this intentional dichotomy of modern Salem is one of the things Phifer does best as a writer.

The tone of the novel can be odd for the content. The detached narration, after the first chapter from Isadora’s point of view, gives the book a cozy feeling, even when George Corwin is threatening to murder people. The atmosphere Phifer creates never allows Corwin to be as ominous as he should be, given how he threatens the lives of Dora’s modern friends in London, and that dissonance doesn’t work as well in tone as it does in the setting.

At its core, The Vanishing Bookstore is a book about familial love, especially between generations of women. (The romance is a little less convincing, especially the timing of a romantic interlude, but it’s a very secondary focus of the story.) The frequent references to Salem’s history make it a good choice for readers already interested in the Salem witch hunts, while the narrative choices in how the story is told may make readers feel as though the narrative undercuts itself. Rating: 6/10.

J.D. Myall’s Heart’s Gambit, on the other hand, travels back and forth across time periods, from a horrific 1860 plantation to an imagined future of glass skyscrapers and skywalks. The opening prelude shows the origins of the curse that afflicts the Baldwins and the Davenports: Sabine, the wife of a plantation owner, has made a bargain with the spirits of Grand Belle Island, giving her power over time—as long as she feeds her powers with blood. She creates a game, the Tethered Gambit, that will afflict two family lines. She grants freedom and magical powers to the Baldwins and Davenports, but with a price. Every so often, she will call on a member of each family to fight to the death in trials of her choosing. They will gain the powers of the person they kill in the trials, and she will gain continued powers in her own lifetime.

In the main storyline, which occurs primarily in 1922 and 2024 simultaneously, Emma Baldwin and Malcolm Davenport are both sick of the violence. While their families see each other as the enemy, Emma and Malcom both view Sabine as the true villain. When both are Tethered, instead of giving into the bloodlust that is part of the curse, they meet up and begin exchanging letters through time. (The magical mailbox, powered by fairies, is one of the most delightful and whimsical inventions of the story.) While the romance through letters trope doesn’t always work, here, it’s brilliant—both romantic leads go into their conversation with open eyes, unsure if they can trust each other, but soon realizing that their connection is deeper than any curse.

The set up feels like a grim mixture of Snow White’s evil witch and Romeo and Juliet, combined with real-world details of what it’s like to be Black in America at any time in history, and it works beautifully. The Baldwin and Davenport families are populated by interesting, conflicted characters who frequently do the wrong things for the right reasons—with the Davenports coming out slightly on top, as they move through history trying to make small changes that will bring about better futures, but not derail the timeline. While the magic doesn’t always feel grounded, the whimsy of it makes it easy enough to handwave, and the different locations and eras the narrative visits are all well drawn. The story is self-contained, except for the epilogue, which launches the surviving characters immediately into their next peril, so be wary of those final pages! Rating: 9/10.

Whether time travel is due to immortal rebirth or unfettered movement through the timeline, the experience of past and present (and future) intersecting is always entertaining—and challenging to pull off. But when it works, it opens up a new world to readers, making them excited to investigate the past and dream of better futures.

When a disinherited princess-turned-spy gets her first assignment, she doesn’t expect it to be playing herself. That’s the hook for Braidee Otto’s new Songbird of the Sorrows, which has just hit bookstore shelves (February 3, 2026). Billed as a romantic fantasy, Songbird of the Sorrows has more in common recent epic fantasy series, like Jennifer Estep’s “Crown of Shards” or Sherwood Smith’s “Inda” novels, than books in the current romantasy wave. Some elements would feel right at home among the works of Feist and Jordan.

Otto, an Australian writer, invites readers to a Greek-inspired fantasy world, where four nations were divided in a great war between the gods of the winds. Each nation stays perpetually in a single season, and summer’s nation, the Sorrows, has a very Mediterranean island vibe—Santorini and Naxos, if they weren’t filled with tourists.

But while summer might conjure vacations for American readers, the Sorrows isn’t a place that revels in its climate. It’s a struggling nation, one that may be on the brink of a new war—a conflict it’s not sure it could survive, especially not after the way the last war fractured its lands into tiny fragments.

Aella doesn’t dwell on all of this, although her first-person narration gives readers bits and pieces, enough so that the world builds itself around her. After she was banished from the palace (because, she believes, she looks too much like her dead mother), she was given to the nation’s spymaster, the Eagle, to train as a future Songbird, an elite group of spies that does the nation’s wishes. To succeed among as a Fledgling, Aella has to hide who she truly is. No one can know what has truly become of the princess. It’s safer for the nation to believe she’s been sent off to train with monks than that she remains in their nation of islands, learning to pick locks and fight from the shadows.

It’s also better if no one knows Aella’s other terrible secret. While it’s common knowledge that Aella never received the magical bloodline of the royal family, Aella and the narrative both hint early on that there are other powers bristling just under her surface. Discerning readers may pick up clues from the very first pages about what makes Aella’s magic different, but the reveal much later in the book has a big payoff, even if it’s not entirely a surprise.

After years of hiding who she is, Aella wants to be shocked that her first assignment is to take back her identity as a competitor in trials to win the hand of the prince of the autumn kingdom, Eretria. Not only would a win there give the Sorrows an insider in the Eretrian court, but her competition is to serve as a distraction so that other Songbirds (and Nightwings—the group’s assassins) can infiltrate the palace and find a dangerous weapon. There are just a few problems with this. One: As much as Aella wants to feel like she belongs, she has always felt like an outsider in the order, and she doesn’t really believe in the cause. She certainly doesn’t trust the Eagle—nor he, her. He motivates her to perform well by threatening to kill her best friend in the order if Aella fails. Two: The leader of Aella’s Flight—her squad of spies—is her ex, Raven. The two had a great romance, until he called it quits, citing the rules of their order against loving anyone more than duty, and left her behind. Now he’s back, and Aella’s traitorous heart wants to pick up the shattered pieces and try again, even as she’s being commanded to marry someone else. Three: The prince of Eretria is more dangerous (and unhinged) than anyone warned the team. (It’s refreshing to have a villain who is truly a villain, and not aimed toward a path for redemption—even as some of the darker scenes in the novel lean into the grim horror that is his villainy.) And four: The weapon is far different from what Aella could ever imagine.

Songbird of the Sorrows was originally self-published in 2024, but it found a new home (and a much revised and expanded edition) that will help it reach the broader audience it deserves as it launches Otto’s series. It has plenty of elements to appeal across subgenres—while it’s not a romantasy, it’s got enough spice to please that audience, and there are grim enough scenes that it borders on dark fantasy as well. At its core, though, Songbird of the Sorrows is the story of a young woman who just wants to belong. Aella suffers many betrayals, but Otto also populates the novel with caring, well-drawn secondary characters who have the potential to be Aella’s safety net, if only she can let herself trust them. And if only she can make it past the cliffhanger ending and into the second series installment, the pubdate of which has not yet been announced.

Readers who enjoy courtly intrigue, spies, found family, and watching characters have to choose between the rules and doing what is right (and who don’t mind a little torture), will sink into Aella’s world.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Buy Songbird of the Sorrows at Bookshop.org.

For more about books that were self-published and found a new audience, check out “New Life for Old(er) Books” at Paste.

For more about Jennifer Estep’s “Crown of Shards” series, read an interview with the author at Den of Geek.

 Join the conversation and support future reviews at Patreon.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A young woman heads into the forest on a mission to save or protect someone. There, she meets a very powerful person with an amazingly cool house—but she’s trapped, unable to return home. So she has to use her wits to undo some sort of terrible magic in order to win her freedom.

The bones are familiar because it’s an old story. The most familiar (and most cited) version is Beauty and the Beast, but even that hearkens back to the myth of Eros and Psyche. The story evolves every time, which means that for all its familiar bones, the new incarnations can become very much their own thing: Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorn and Roses doesn’t read like A Forgery of Fate by Elizabeth Lim. And while Silver and Blood by Jessie Mihalik begins with those same bones, the novel also borrows from other tales of empowerment and enchantment, putting tropes together in a new way to become its own very compelling series starter.

Riela is a mage, but not a very good one. She managed to save her village from a terrible flood, and now, instead of embracing her as their savior, some of them view her as a dangerous outcast. When one of the villagers encounters a monster in the woods, the town decides it’s Reila’s job to save them. Never mind that she doesn’t know how to use her magic—or even really hold a weapon; Riela saved them once, and she’ll do it again, if she knows what’s good for her.

While this might make some protagonists bitter, Riela swallows the ostracism and goes into the woods, because there are enough good people in the village that she doesn’t want to see them suffer. The alternative would be running off and revealing her magic to the king, who conscripts all mages into his service, and even if that were a thing she wanted, she won’t abandon her home and her people (whether they accept her or not).

Riela’s magic allows her to see other magic, so she begins to track what she thinks is a monster. But when she’s set upon by creatures she wasn’t tracking, it’s the magical glow she’d been following that comes to her aid. The forest, it seems, is full of monsters, and a dangerous mage is doing his best to keep them at bay. He must, because he is trapped within the confines of the woods—as is any creature of magic. So Riela is trapped, too.

The story and relationship between Riela and the mage, Garrick, progresses from here with the pacing one would expect from both a fairy tale and a romantasy. There’s a distinct attraction tinged with danger on both their parts. Mihalik savvily gives us snippets of Garrick’s point of view, revealing that he thinks Riela might be a spy out to harm him or steal from him on behalf of his many enemies. The tension between the two points of view blur; Riela is completely honest with Garrick, cowed by his obvious powers when she knows so little about her own. But Garrick views her actions through a lens of suspicion: “Every action she’d taken could be explained away as accidents individually, but together, they painted a damning picture,” he narrates. Yet he can’t help but be drawn to her, to the way she seems to trust him to have her best interests in mind, to her willingness to put herself in danger to save others. And Riela, for all that she fears Garrick and—as she learns more about who he is beyond a grumpy mage in the middle of a forest—knows better than to get involved with his affairs, can’t stop her attraction to her rescuer. (Riela’s not naïve about romance, either, having had relationships with both men and women prior to the beginning of the book.)

Keeping this review spoiler free means not revealing some of the twists of the way Mihalik uses familiar tropes—Riela’s hidden powers lean into a Campbellian hero archetype (or, at least, some of the same true-identity ground that Melissa Blair leans into in her “Halfling Saga”)—to take the story in surprising new directions. While breaking a curse comes at the end of many “Beauty and the Beast” stories, the curse really only begins Riela’s adventures. Mihalik draws on fairy stories of cruel fae sovereigns and the politics of fairy courts to create a world where Riela’s kindness is a type of superpower. And while Mihalik could easily devalue that trait and make it a weakness that gets Riela in trouble, in this book, at least, it’s a virtue that inspires others to do and be better. That feels like the kind of hero the world needs right now.

Silver and Blood leaves off on a cliffhanger (one that directly undermines the self-sacrificing hero trope, and I am here for it), with book 2’s pub date not yet announced. But it’s worth being in the first audience to read this novel, which hit shelves on January 27, 2026, because it’s likely to become a BookTok darling (featuring not a Shadow Daddy but a Moonlight Daddy likely to make Team BookTok swoon!). Mihalik also left so much room for further worldbuilding—we get a lot of the fae courts and politics in this one, but those hints about the king conscripting mages in the human world has got to come back at some point! So get ahead of the spoilers and enjoy seeing old tales become reinvented into something at once familiar and new.

For more about Elizabeth Lim’s A Forgery of Fate, check out this roundup at Paste.

For more about Melissa Blair’s “Halfling Saga,” you can read this interview about A Broken Blade, or a subsequent interview about A Shadow Crown.

I've been developing a skillset lately by learning more about video editing. It seems that TikTok is where all the book chatter is happening these days, and while I'm not there (yet), I've been producing content for Outland Entertainment that we do post over on our company's official TikTok channel. They've also been going live on Outland's Instagram. I'm embedding a couple of my favorites here.

The first was a post to promote our Negocios Inferales Kickstarter. The game, designed by Carlos Hernandez and C.S.E. Cooney, uses the "Deck of Destiny" as the primary way to resolve conflict and create storytelling within the game. I'd done a few "Motivation Monday" posts before this, but as Halloween was around the corner, I wanted to do something a little more exciting…

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This second video, which just went up yesterday, is a stitched together walk through Yale University and Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, intended to promote our latest anthology, Haunted Hallways, which leans into the dark academia and ghost story genres. (It's live on Kickstarter now!)

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I've been experimenting with a few different programs to edit videos, and CapCut was a pretty easy way to use my phone to just stitch together full clips that I made—but anything more complicated than that, I'm still doing from my computer. It's been a learning experience, and I know there's a lot more out there I can do! Of course, my primary priority is still working with words on the page, but it has been fun to learn about creating this type of content, and I hope it brings people to the awesome projects we're working on!

You can also check out my own Instagram page for unboxings of review books and other bookish posts!

Back in the early days of this blog, I used to post about my "editorial assistants," the kittens we brought into our family in August 2009. It is with great sadness that I post here about our loss of one of these two cats, who has been such a companion to me over the past twelve years. Jack, named after C. S. Lewis (whose nickname among the Inklings was Jack), was the kitten I picked from a litter at a local shelter. The person who introduced us to the kittens told us a story about how Jack had been curious about what was inside a watering can, and he'd gotten his head stuck exploring it.

I knew he was meant to be my cat.



Jack loved to steal broccoli from our dinners. When we allowed the cats to sleep with us, he would curl up at my feet and sleep all night. (His brother, Tollers, would bat my face at 3 a.m., or try to sleep on my neck, which is why they stopped sleeping with us.) He liked to knock things off of counters and hide in boxes. He would sleep under Fish's bed, sometimes, which meant I had to go track him down at bedtime so he wouldn't get stuck behind a closed bedroom door. He would sometimes sit in the window and watch the birds outside; he'd make the craziest not-meow noise that sounded like chirping, like he was trying to trick them into coming closer.

Once, when they were still kittens, the cats got ringworm. We had to give them both baths, which is always a challenge. Tollers refused to stay in the tub, understandably. Jack, on the other hand, couldn't seem to figure out how to get OUT of the tub, and stayed there the whole time we bathed him.



Both Jack and Tollers are known for their loud purring. When they were kittens they actually woke two houseguests with the sounds of their purrs. The vet would frequently have trouble hearing Jack's heartbeat because he purred so loudly at his appointments.

When Bug was little, I told her a bedtime princess story (starring her as the princess, by request), in which the Jack-Beast and the Tollers-Monster were plaguing the land where the princess lived. Everyone tried to defeat the monsters, but the princess—who had been taking lessons in monster languages, because second languages are valuable—decided to talk to the monsters instead. It turned out they were lonely and just wanted to be part of a family, so the princess convinced them to come with her. They changed their shapes to housecats and became her loyal knights: Sir Tollers the Brave and Sir Jack the Lazy. While in hindsight that's not the most flattering title, Jack was a homebody who loved spending his time around us instead of exploring independently, and I loved that about him.

We taught both cats to come to the sound of a whistle. I tried to teach them both as kittens to ride on my shoulders, but only Jack ever really took to it, which became a challenge when he grew to thirteen pounds! He still fit. (This worked best when wearing a hoodie, though; his claws were sharp!)



One of my favorite memories of the pandemic is when Fish, a budding kindergarten writer, found Jack in his room and decided to keep a field journal. Because he was napping, Fish's notes are filled with little tidbits like, "He is not moving." But Fish, maker that he is, decided to create a pillow bed underneath his bed so that Jack could have a comfy place to be. (In Jack's last days, when he really just wanted to hide, Fish made him a hidey-hole from cardboard boxes. Jack loved it and spent most of his last two days with us just chilling in his box.)

Jack liked human food: besides broccoli, he'd snag chicken (or chicken nuggets) if we left them on the dinner table. In the last year, when his health started failing, we'd slip him more food instead of making him steal it. He was particularly fond of pork tenderloin and tuna, and the milk from my cereal bowl.

He made my life better. He made me a better person. He helped me learn what it means to raise someone, so that I got experience being a mom before I became mom to little humans. He gave me love, and laughter, and companionship. And I will miss him terribly.

(For their very early adventures, you can click the "editorial staff" tag at the Dreamwidth location of this journal entry.)