Tag Archives: Fantasy

The third book in The Wheel of Time series, The Dragon Reborn, is a bit reluctant to move the story forward, recycling old themes, personal struggles, and even climactic fights. Its narrative strength, then, comes in the decision to – ironically, considering the title – abandon Rand to focus on his friends, finally giving them a real chance to shine. …

The Time of Contempt, the fourth volume of The Witcher saga, shows the best and worst the series so far: on the one hand, here is another story full of intriguing characters and complex social relations; on the other, our… contempt for the constant repetition of ideas and severe structure problems has just increased. The story begins shortly after the …

Written by N. K. Jemisin, The Killing Moon is a compelling page-turner: a fantasy novel with big ideas, strong narrative arcs, and good character development. It introduces us to a fantastical world, based on dreams and religion, where war and corruption are supposed to be extinct. Its main characters, however, start to discover that those are elements intrinsic to human …

There is a note at the start of Night of Knives, written by Gardens of the Moon author Steven Erikson, stating categorically that the work of Ian C. Esslemont is not to be considered simple fanfiction for taking place in the same rich universe introduced by his series of novels: Esslemont’s “the Malazan Empire” series is a canonical, integral part …

The Fifth Season talks about revolt with remarkable fury and finesse, building a bold and challenging narrative that uses the second-person in a meaningful way while presenting us a trio of main characters who are as fascinating as they are tragic. The book starts with the world ending twice. On a microscale, there is the world of the woman Essun, …

Written by Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines builds a preposterous but intriguing world, telling a story with lots of ups and downs, but that ultimately delivers with its great set of characters and surprising worldbuilding. In the world of Mortal Engines, cities exist on wheels. They’re moving entities that are always looking for prey: here, one city can eat another with …

The Lies of Locke Lamora, the first book of the Gentleman Bastard series written by Scott Lynch, is a novel that successfully mixes heist stories with the fantasy genre, only failing when it starts to treat us with the same condescension with which the protagonist tries to deceive his victims. Locke Lamora is an orphan boy who, after being recruited by …

Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, Elantris, fares much better when it comes to handling the twists and turns of the story than when it’s time to develop its characters and social discussions. The book’s main setting is the city of Elantris, a place wrapped in an aura of mysticism. Its inhabitants, once powerful, shining, and immortal, now find themselves cursed, …

The Last Wish marks the first major appearance of Andrzej Sapkowski’s most famous character: the witcher Geralt of Rivia. But Geralt’s adventures only found international fame when they became multimedia, being translated into a video game series and a Netflix show that, with their epic scope and intricate web of political intrigue, little resemble Geralt’s first major adventures, which are …

Unlike its predecessor, Magician: Master, doesn’t suffer too much from the split of the original novel into two books. Its problems are mostly its own, with a narrative that is unable to justify the strange focus on some of the supporting characters while failing to conclude any plotlines in a way that is not anticlimactic or arbitrary. The story of …