Slow Burn – Page 4 – Marked for Plot

The Bone Harp

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.

The Premise:
Tamsin is a bard. He sung in the first dawn, went to war with The Old Enemy, and became the Voice of Death itself. He was thrice cursed, his voice stolen, his hands ruined for harp-work. And then he died, and returned tho his homeland a millennia later. He faces the scars of his past life, a strange new world that moved on without him, and the lingering fears of what happened to his siblings and to Klara: his rival, his lover, his love

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

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

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. It isn’t for everyone though, and has a pretty clear style that is different from how most fantasy nowadays is written.

The Premise:
Baru is a genius. A savant at math and numbers, she’s been trained since a young age by the Empire to be of use. She’s also grown up seeing her beloved island home colonized by the soldiers of the Empire: trade, coin, and plumbing. She also happens to be Lesbian, a crime that forces her to repress her desires and live a life of shame. And she wants to rip the Empire to pieces. But to do that, she must first gain power in the Empire. And so she accepts a job to run the Economy of one of the Empire’s many colonies – not her own of course – and suppress their own rebellion so she may grow her own.

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

The Fox Wife

Historical Fantasy isn’t my go-to subgenre, but The Fox Wife grabbed my attention from the cover art and a plot summary that had me intrigued. Foxes have been a running theme of my reading for around a year, with them popping up in expected and unexpected places, so it felt apt from a motif standpoint as well.

Elevator Pitch:
The Fox Wife shifts between two lead characters in 1908 East-Asia (mostly various parts China). Snow is a Fox, one of the shapeshifting tricksters who has lived centuries and goes by many names. Bao is an investigator with a supernatural gift for discerning truth from lies. Snow seeks revenge for her dead child and finds herself attached as a servant to a family living under a curse. Bao has been hired to investigate a the identity of a dead courtesan. Their journeys bring them into contact with their pasts and with other foxes who have agendas of their own.

Read If Looking For: atmospheric books, Chinese and Japanese historical settings, few fantastic elements, charismatic characters, feminist themes

Avoid if Looking For: tightly-written mysteries, political intrigue, or action scenes

The Mask of Mirrors

Tarot Readings and Psychics have never really been my thing. I like the idea of them, the layers of meaning in the cards over time and how they represent core aspects of the human experience. However, I don’t particularly subscribe to the more supernatural aspects of them in real life. In Fantasy however, I find them a delight. And my favorite thing about The Mask of Mirrors (and its sequels) is that the in-universe Tarot analogue, aside from being wonderfully designed, was used by the authors as part of the writing process. Every card reading in the story – with one notable exception – was done in real time in our physical world, and the results were the ones used in-universe, helping to drive narrative beats and character arcs. It shouldn’t work, but M.A. Carrick show their writing chops by turning what could be a disaster, into a really excellently crafted trilogy.

The Premise:
Ren has returned to her home city of Nadežra years after fleeing the criminal gang that raised her. With the help of her sister, she hopes to get herself adopted into a noble household by masquerading as a long-lost niece and make off with their fortunes. Unfortunately, the family turns out to be nearly destitute after a perhaps supernatural string of bad luck, the city’s cultural tensions are about to boil over, and Ren’s past debts to the underworld come knocking.

Read If Looking For: deeply realized cultures and characters, con artists, lavish descriptions of clothing, queernorm worlds

Avoid if Looking For: a fast paced story, or one that prioritizes action scenes

The Bone Ships

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.

The Premise:
Joron used to be the captain of a prison ship. A bad captain to be sure, but a captain nevertheless. That changes when Lucky Meas, a legend of the navy, takes his position without a word about why she’s on a prison ship in the first place. She starts whipping the crew into shape for a mission of epic proportions, with Joron trailing resentfully behind. Things are about to change, as the first dragon for many years has been spotted, and its bones will surely promise a naval advantage to whichever country can kill it.

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

The Goblin Emperor

I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person. I was an English major in college. I read lots of fantasy books with invented words in them. I enjoy puzzles. And yet, never have I loved being so utterly lost in the beautiful red tape of titles and ranks in the Elven royal court in The Goblin Emperor.

Elevator Pitch:
The child of a marriage of alliance between an Elven Emperor and a Goblin Princess, Maia has lived his entire life in exile simply for who he is. When his father and siblings all die in a mysterious airship accident, he finds himself thrust into the role of the emperor, and finds himself in a world he is utterly unprepared for. Lost and confused and just trying to be happy, Maia must learn to accept being Emperor, because it is all he will ever know for the rest of his life.

Read if Looking For: the daily life of an unassuming Emperor, hopeful books, baroque invented fantasy language use

Avoid if Looking For: political intrigue as a developed plotline

The Sapling Cage

I’ve been on the lookout for epic fantasy debuts, especially since I wasn’t terribly impressed with the early few I read during 2024. The Sapling Cage captured my attention with it’s cover, and earned a purchase with the promise of witchy epic fantasy. I found it a refreshing reset, blending the best parts of classic fantasy with modern sensibilities.

The Premise:
Lorel wants desperately to be a witch, and trades places with her best friend to do so. The only problem: Lorel was born in the body of a boy, and witches only let women in. It doesn’t matter that Lorel thinks of herself as a woman, so she must hide that part of herself. She joins the witches at a turbulent time. Duchess Helte is on the move to grab power, demonizing the witches as a scapegoat. The Knights are more violent than normal, and someone has developed a magic that Blights the land. Nobody knows the culprit, but the witches are suspect number one. Lorel just wants to learn magic, but its a long and winding road to get there.

Read if Looking For: grounded stories, Tamora Pierce for adults, books that wind instead of twist, travel scese

Avoid if Looking For: characters powering up, fast pacing, punchy fight scenes

Mana Mirror

I’ve been a big fan and advocate of Tobias Begley’s previous series (Journals of Evander Tailor) in the progression fantasy space. I appreciated how they balanced small scale magic-school stuff with overarching plots, included quality queer rep, and had a clear grasp on characterization within a breezy writing style. So after binging book 3 in that series and seeing he had a new one coming out, I was overjoyed to see he had a new book coming out! Mana Mirror is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was definitely mine.

The Premise:
When Malachi got tested for magic and had the opportunity to pick opposing mana types for his spellcasting, he went with life and death mana. This caught the attention of a morally-questionable magi looking for a successor/experiment subject, and Malachi quickly ended up becoming apprenticed to one of the most powerful spellcasters on the planet. He’ll visit the local quest board often, learn about down payments on buying brooms, and meet a variety of cute folks along the way as he pursues a path towards magic that (among other things) will let him fully transition.

Read if Looking For: side quests, magic systems, wholesome family dynamics

Avoid if Looking For: action heavy, plot driven, or deeply thematic books