I’ll be honest that Masquerade was a bit of an impulse purchase. Heterosexual romance focused books aren’t something I read a ton of, but the idea of a Persephone story in precolonial Africa was intriguing.
Read If Looking For: romance with a twist, competent characters, evil characters
Avoid if Looking For: high fantasy
My love for framing narratives will likely become a running theme on this blog. When executed well, I find they make stories come to life, and they inherently channel the oral storytelling traditions that the fantasy genre calls home. A Conspiracy of Truths is one of the best of them. This book was an impulse purchase from Half Priced Books, and it gave me not only one of my favorite books of all time, but an author whose catalog blows me away.
Read If Looking For: unique protagonists, political manipulation, the power of storytelling
Avoid if Looking For: stories where the main character can leave a prison cell to actually take part in what’s traditionally the ‘plot’ of a book
Victoria Goddard has been vaguely on my radar since I read The Hands of the Emperor, which I highly enjoyed but found entirely too long and repetitive. I’ve heard good things about her other books, and The Bone Harp’s premise piqued my interest. I have a soft spot for storyteller characters. And in the end I’m incredibly glad I read it. The book is very much a love letter to fantasy, with a twist on classic stories.
Read If Looking For: the trauma of violence, heroes after the dark lord is dead, poetic language, introspective reads
Avoid if Looking For: a plot where things happen
Foxes have been a thread through my reading for around a year now. Fox characters, humans named Fox, and shapeshifting foxes. All over the place. So, when I saw some intriguing reviews for The Navigating Fox, it felt like fate that I pick it up. What I found inside was an intriguing, but perhaps underdeveloped novella with a fresh feeling that I haven’t seen in fantasy before.
Read If Looking For: Arrogant priests, fable vibes, talking animals
Avoid if Looking For: stories that answer questions they pose, action
Sometimes a book comes along that utterly redefines how you view books, reading, or genres. The Traitor Baru Cormorant was like that for me, a book that shook me to my core, and forced me to realize just how powerful Queer Fantasy could be. It remains one of my all time favorites.
Read If Looking For: a book that will rip your heart out, economist lead character, anti-colonial stories
Avoid if Looking For: queer characters living happy lives, quick and/or breezy reads, twists that are complete surprises
Fairy Tale stories have been all the rage for the past few years. In fact, now that 2025 has hit, I’m starting to grow weary of the deluge of fairy tale and mythology retellings. There are plenty of great ones out there of course, but I’ve just seen so many that they get lost in the shuffle. The Bone Swans of Amandale isn’t a retelling, though it does reference a few fairy tales, but instead is a story that evokes the dark fairy tale style in a way I haven’t seen any other book do.
As a note, you can read Bone Swans from the collection Bone Swans: Stories, or you can read it for free here.
Read If Looking For: charismatic and immoral lead characters, dark aesthetics, unique narrative voice, exquisite prose
Avoid if Looking For: straightforward thematic messages, ‘good’ characters
I came to the Bone Ships as part of r/Fantasy’s bingo project, looking for an interesting book for the ‘Weird Ecology’ square in 2023. This book came with a lot of accolades and, while I didn’t find all of it to my taste, it was good enough for me to read the sequels, which quickly cemented the series as some of my all time favorites.
Read If Looking For: dark and gritty stories, secondary worlds that don’t evoke real world cultures, books on ships
Avoid if Looking For: an upbeat read where everything goes well for the main character
I have long been chasing classic epic fantasy stories featuring gay characters, and have been disappointed over and over again. I love romances (and read many of them) but finding stories focused on gay men where romance plot structures don’t dominate is horribly difficult. I put of reading The Spear Cuts Through Water for a long time, out of fear it would not live up to my hopes for it. When I read it, I discovered the best book I’ve ever read.
Read If Looking For: ambitious books, mythic style writing, heartrending and terrifying characters
Avoid if Looking For: a straightforward story
Marked for Plot 