Magical story of modern conception
935134
Ms Ritter has written a truly magical book for her daughter about her decision to conceive using a donor. What could be a difficult subject is transformed into a love story that reads like a fairy tale. This book breaks new ground and is a gift to other children and their parents who have made these kinds of choices.  Actually, this tale would inspire anyone. The illustrations are a perfect reflection of the ethereal quality of the story.
949786
I like this story.  "A Particular Silence" is about the magic of love, of hope, of becoming more than oneself.  I like the idea of having a writer's words become his reality and, just as simply, have the reality change as the writer's thoughts rewrite the scene.  I like the idea of love having a constant connection, in this story, a particular note.  I like the suspense of whether Elliot's wife, the sceptic, would also see the magic or if she would explain it away.

I was bothered by Elliot's constant flogging of himself as a coward, when he proved over and over again he wasn't.  I didn't like the Krystina and I didn't like her decision at the end.

Mr. Gillette has written a compelling story.  His characters have enough depth that the reader cares what happens to them and reacts strongly to their decisions.  He interweaves his ideas so intricately that the reader feels pulled in the stream of the story and must continue reading until the end.
947451
The magical-mystical world created by S.K. Wee is woven with silk and gold. There's even a map of her world in the beginning of the book. It's a bit sketchy, but it gets the idea across. Maybe someday someone will draw a better one for her in exchange for an honorable mention (hint hint). The characters are well designed. You can easily love them or hate them. Although not worthy of a pure 5-star rating, it is definately greater than a 4-star. I rarely give a 5-star rating to a series-type book with so many lose ends, but there is some closure at the end of this first book.

It's not perfect (what novel is), however I found myself looking forward to picking up where I left off. It starts off slow with difficult names, but it didn't take long to capture my interest. The conversations are a bit awkward. Maybe that's how they speak in this world - a world of flibbertigibbets that don't stop talking till they cover many topics - and people who wait till all thoughts are expressed before they reply. Although not normal for the world we live in, it sort of works in S.K. Wee's world once you get used to it.

I really enjoyed it. Be warned, this is not a fairy-tale world. Atrocities and death surround the characters. More than I would wish upon anyone. The characters work well together due to some sort of cosmic interweaving of their lives. It seems to be much more than coincidental. It is a magical world, after all.
1992123
To me, Gabriel Garcia Marquez' brilliant One Hundred Years of Solitude is best classified as a fairy tale for adults: after all, what is magical realism (which critics have tagged as Marquez' style) but an attempt to take magical fairy tale elements and make them seem real to adults?
But whatever you want to call it, One Hundred Years of Solitude has earned the prestige that the decades have bestowed upon it. All the elements of a great story are in it: love, passion, hope, tragedy, hope out of tragedy, and finally the affirmation of life's goodwill. The village of Macondo, and the Buendias family that founded, defined, affected, cursed, and charmed it, are in a way a world where all human emotion and meaning coexist or do battle. The power of their passions live on after the deaths of some of their characters in this beautiful dream-logic universe.
One warning: there may be confusion when it comes to the characters' names. There are multiple Jose Aurelianos and Remedios, among others. Fortunately, there's a geneaology chart at the beginning of the book to help you along.
In any event, don't let the first few chapters intimidate you. It does all make sense,  magical sense, in the long run.
Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points
3919657
I am a dreamer of things unknown and unseen. I found this book to be an excellent modern fairy tale. The authors use of "log" then real time had me confused for a bit but I managed to catch up. This is a highly recommended book.
3206912
I loved this story, I know it is a bit young, with a magical genre, however, it is very much in its own far above the current status quo.
4937869
With echoes of Jack Finney's Time and Again, a dash of Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and a bit of Borges, this magical tale is riveting from page 1 right until the final pages. What a brilliant display of NYC turn of the century portraiture mixed with Kabbalistic lore and Middle Eastern mysticism with vivid characters that draw you right into the story. One of my favorite reads of the year so far and kudos to Ms. Wecker for her meticulous research and imagination on what a "modern" golem might look like running around the streets of NY at the turn of the century. A fantastic read.
3239968
My Name Is Mahataa is full of magic, loss, adventure, and self-discovery. A wonderful story for teenagers and adults alike.

Bonus: Within the narrative are steps to about how to begin (or deepen) a meditation practice. The story also describes the fundamental principles of energy medicine, like acupuncture. We learn right along with the central character, Mahataa.

I can't wait to see more from this author.
3410749
"Dorothea's Song" by Ron Vitale mixes a modern (or at least the recent past) coming of age story with a grand fantasy quest.  The author is able to juggle the requirements of both genres very well. The narrator is a high school student who is writing a fantasy story as a translation exercise for his French class. The fantasy story is where the title comes from and it involves elves, witches and large battles. In the modern chapters the author really captures the spirit of youth, his narrator seems real and not a cardboard thin character. Highly recommended.
2357886
I really enjoyed this story. It is a fun creative imagining of a colonial world where magic exists but is more for function than for mysticism. I like how the oppressive quality of the church is presented and is in conflict with the scientific method of study. The nod to the works of James Fenimore Cooper is a nice touch. I know there were to be at least two more novels in the series plus a short novella but sadly that's all been tied up in legal battles.  I hope some day the series continues and we find out how the colonies win their independence
1932858
A magical story, that will bring tears to your eyes at times.
1443690
When the Moon Was Ours, captures a beautiful love story full of colors, scents, musical prose, and magical realism. Miel and Samir are peculiar children; Miel grows roses from her wrists and Sam paints moons and hangs them in trees around town. Anna-Marie McLemores rich narrative walks us through the lives of Miel and Sam, two teenagers with complicated histories. Miels fear of water, ghosts, pumpkins, and tormented memories of her mother, are intensified when the towns rusted water tower falls and water rushes out over the fields and her. It is at this moment that she appears in the town, at the age of five, alone, in a thin nightgown, and bathed in rusted water.  No one knows her or approaches her, except for Moon (Sam), who talks to her and covers her with his jacket. Miel goes home with Sam, but Aracely, the towns curandera, offers to bring her home and look after her.

This town, like the novel, is full of mystery. There are four beautiful sisters, known as the Bonner sisters, who are thought to be witches. They usually get people to do what they want, and get boys to fall in love with them. They seemingly accept and care for Miel, but are manipulative and cruel to her when they think her flowers can help them get their powers back. The Bonner sisters are not free from gossip, envy, unexpected pregnancies, and secret sexual desires. The readers slowly begin to discover that what makes everyone mysteriousaside  from the growing roses from Miels skinis the world of secrets, half-truths, and distorted memories that each character holds. Hanging throughout the novel is the theme of gender fluidity. The story follows the blooming romance between Miel and Sam, who seem to tend to each others pains, desires, and bodily discoveries of unexpected peculiarities. Both Miel and Sam are foreign to the town, but it is Sam who is sometimes the target of discrimination because of the color of his skin and feminine features. Sam tells Miel the story his mother told him about bacha posh, a cultural practice in which families with no sons, dress a daughter as a son, and as an adult, the daughter returns to live as woman. Eventually, we discover how this tradition has impacted Sams life. Similarly, we learn about the connection between Sams life and Aracely, the towns healer.

It is clear that the Bonner sisters are white, Miel is Latina, and Sam is Italian-Pakistani, and, although minimal, we can see how they experience life in this town. Las gringas bonitas, as Miel refers to them, are privileged and powerful, while Sam works the Bonner familys fields. The theme of racial experiences or discrimination is not central to the novel, but it does point us to different lived experiences.

In the end, the novel is about acceptance and love. It is also about the complexity and danger of strict gender roles, and the freedom to live outside of that. For Sam, his assigned name and gender at birth did not match who he had become. The man he had become is the man who Miel loved. It is important to note the authors personal story at the end of the book. Although she tells us at the beginning that this is a work of fiction, in the end, she explains her personal connection to Miel and Sams story. The author grew up listening to La Llorona stories, the weeping woman who, the legend tells, tried to drown her children by the river, and later learned about the story of the bacha posh, a cultural practice in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She also tells us about her marriage to a transgender male.
313604
If you've a yearning for a great story and immersion in a fully-realized world where magic is as real as the nose on your face, you'll want to pick up Nether Isle. A story of a young man's search for his identity, it deftly navigates the boundaries between fantasy and "reality", childhood and adulthood, friends and family. Evans has an ear for dialogue and doesn't condescend to the reader, a welcome development. There's an occasionally off-kilter or oddly-cadenced sentence ("As soon as her last breath was gone, her parents released a heavy sigh and left the room."), which keeps the story from the the greatness it nears, but Evans has an ineffable "it" that makes me want to read more of her work. I look forward to sampling her other wares.
1775987
Set in the modern day Middle East, Alif is a young hacker who provides secure Internet services to those who may not fully conform to the strictures of a repressive government and a conservative Muslim tradition.  When the government comes after him, he goes on the run with his neighbor and childhood friend, Dina, a young woman who has embraced the Muslim traditions.

So far, this could be any on-the-run, coming-of-age story.  But it is not - in this enchantingly written book, we move between the seen and the unseen, a world of djinn, mystical creatures, powerful religious figures and the horrors of a modern repressive regime.

The language and imagery is beautiful, and you quickly fall into a belief in this strange world that exists in parallel to our own. In general, I am not a fan of fantasy/magic books, but here it feels natural and true.

An impressive must read.
3519014
City of God is one of those rare books were the sum of its faults is outweighed by the magnificence of the narration. It is a story unique in that its central conceit is based around religion  often a component left out of most speculative works  even in science-fiction and fantasy. In a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has reverted to tribalism, the Aether is a mystical energy conduit which allows some users to draw on the power to act as healers and defenders. But theres always two sides to the coin. These users are witches to another tribe, one that just lost the ability to control its source of the Aether, and so, on a zealot march through the wilderness, they seek to reclaim the lands and the source of power in the name of their one true god.

The story follows our main character, Nathaniel Grey as he is caught in the wrong place and the wrong time. Now, suddenly on the run with two witches Grey finds himself confronting all he once held true, as he is pursued by those from the city he fled. In essence, it is the story of someone with myopic vision and unquestioning faith suddenly coming to terms with the world at large. Not everything is as black and white as he was taught. As the story closes, our normally passive hero must question his deepest beliefs and decide for himself what god he serves.
The most frustrating part of an otherwise solid novel was how much Nathaniel waffled. Every step he took forward in breaking his dogmatic chains, he took a step back. Stubborn for sure, this obstinacy, combined with Nathaniel essentially drifting along for most of the book with no agency of his own, leaves the reader slightly aggravated with our hero.

While Stadelmann comes at that narration with the same painstaking attention to detail a Renaissance artist may take at painting a church ceiling, it does serve at times to keep the pacing quite slow. For my tastes, I like books that take their time, but even so, if twenty percent of the story were to fall off the page, its doubtful many readers would notice its absence, and it may serve to keep those same readers thumbing through the pages at lightspeed.

A thinner book may also have left more time for a sturdier ending. Im unsure if the book was left unresolved in order to leave room for further stories, or if the ending was meant to be, like the religious text spoken of in the story, left open for interpretation. I was unsure if the Aether was meant to be left vague, but I still questioned how it was used as a power source and how it enabled certain technologies of some tribes, but not of others, even after the last page was turned, or even why the use of it as magic was so verboten in light of what it could do.

Despite the slow pace and drifting MC, the narration is solid. This feels and reads like a book published by a major publisher. The criticisms Ive levied at the book are similar to criticisms Ive left at the door of books that are considered mainstream. This is a solid book and I heartily recommend it to anyone who appreciates religion being brought into science fiction and fantasy. Ill be looking out for future works by this author. 3.75 stars rounded to 4.
4581759
It is a credit to Ms. Howe that, as I came to understand what this book is really about, I didn't put it down and forget about it.  (Spoilers ahead.)  Maybe I should have realized what I was getting into, but I was expecting an historical/literary novel filled with university-types and departmental intrigue.  And, on the surface, that is what we've got.  As the novel develops, however, it's clear that this book is about something else: magic.  And not a modern take on magic, but real supernatural happenings in modern-day Massachusetts.

To be honest, this is not something that appeals to me.  Unlike novels which, using the modern world as a backdrop, create a magical environment within which these types of things are believable (Lev Grossman's The Magicians leaps to mind), Ms. Howe spends a large part her novel creating a very believable, grounded world that is forced to accept the existence of real magic as things are revealed near the end.  In my mind, it doesn't work.

Fortunately, much about this novel does work.  In particular, the historical sections of the novel are wonderful.  The story of Deliverance and her descendants is quite riveting.  Even much about our protagonist, Connie Goodwin--her struggles with her research and colleagues, her relationship with Sam and her mother, her filling us in with historical details--rings true.  If Connie's mentor, Manning Chilton, is more of a caricature than a character, well, I can live with that, too.  But the reveals as the novel comes to an end are a little too much for me.  Had it all come together with a more, dare I say it?, rational conclusion, I would have been quite taken with this story.  As it is, there's still a lot to value here.
3706042
Liminal is a beautiful story about finding yourself through things society tries to say doesn't exist--namely, magic and gender transition. It's a warm tale of a trans woman's journey through her identity and the Otherworldly liminal spaces occupied by fairy creatures.

The story progresses rapidly, however. I feel this could have been a novel two or three times its current length, or even split into several novels. In a single paragraph, several weeks or months might pass, and important conversations and scenes are mentioned only offhand. I would have like to read many portions of this book in far greater detail, which would allow for deeper characterization and more plot.

I am so happy to read about characters like me in a fantasy novel. Featuring a bisexual trans protagonist and asexual, genderfluid, pansexual, and intersex supporting characters, Liminal showcases the diverse range of gender and love as well as a fanciful and dangerous world of trickery and magic.