Girls of Paper and Fire is one of the most anticipated YA fantasy releases of the year. Featuring a diverse cast of characters and an LGBTQ+ heroine, it is a story of magic, mayhem, rebellion and young love. Two hundred years ago, in the kingdom of Ikhara, the demon Bull King of Han took control…
I absolutely adore historical novels that center around the Second World War, but I will admit to being the tiniest bit tired of all the books set in either Europe or America. So when I saw that A Girl Divided took place in China, I was eager to read it, thinking it would give me…
Severance is the hotly anticipated end of days tale by newbie author Ling Ma. It’s a provocative look at the future which shows the dangers of getting caught in a meaningless present and being obsessed with a sentimental view of the past. This story shifts back and forth in time between chapters but for the…
What We Were Promised is both a look at life in modern day China and an observation on the unchanging nature of humanity. “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main” John Donne told us. This book shows that as a universal…
Our immigration system is a hot topic in the news lately and it seems like personal accounts of success and failure by people who come to this great land are broadcast by our media on a regular basis. Bury What We Cannot Take is a story of immigration which moves the issue to a historical…
There are a lot of historical mysteries on the market these days, but not so many set in ancient China. And of those, how many, in English, were originally written by a Chinese author for a Chinese audience? The Golden Hairpin by Qinghan CeCe, originally written in 2015 and translated into English just this year,…
Contingency Plan is the second book in Robyn Bachar’s Galactic Cold War series. Set in an alternate future in which the Cold War never ended, the series follows the crew of the privateer spaceship Mombasa as they follow the trail of a super weapon developed by the Soviets that may paint the entire intergalactic map…
My experience with books set in China has not been stellar – I’ve read too many authors who seem only interested in transplanting characters with western attitudes to a more exotic setting. Janie Chang’s Dragon Springs Road, I am happy to say, does not fall in this category. If anything, by adhering so strictly to…
So, here’s where I make my confession that this is my first book by Ms. Thomas. It’s a literary crime that it took me this long to pick up one of her spellbinding stories, but I’m paying my penance by devouring her back catalogue, I promise. Regarding this work, while I really liked a lot…
I don’t think The Liar’s Dice enhances Gambled Away. The slow pace, the setting, and ambiguous ending struck a discordant note with me and for me, it is the least successful novella in the anthology. A murder and the ensuing search for the killer drives the plot and unfortunately, Ms. Lin sacrifices the romance in…
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