Fantasy & Fangs

Jun 2021 19

Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven: Slackcraft and Gender Choice

2021 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Sharon Tucker

by Sharon Tucker

I’m not quite sure what I expected when reading Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven (2017). Terms like silkpunk and Asian fantasy/mythology were running through my head, but other than a passing acquaintance with Zen koans, the Tao te Ching, and the Mahabarata, I was in unfamiliar waters. I soon learned that “Silkpunk” is the term writer Ken Liu has coined for the genre of a “very specific technology and literary aesthetic” blending magic and technology in an Asian setting.

May 2021 19

Taking Charge of the Store Fundamentally Changed my Relationship with Books

2021 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Penny Grubb

For the past seven years, once a year, I stop being a crime writer and become a bookstore manager, selling every genre under the sun. From the initial experience which I thought of as ‘helping out,’ things have evolved and the job has required a more fundamental change in me than anything I’d envisaged when I took it on. I shouldn’t be surprised. Running a bookstore is a wholly different role from writing novels. I simply hadn’t thought it through.

May 2021 15

Magic Misled By Keri Arthur: Review/Giveaway

2021 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Lorie Lewis Ham, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Lorie Lewis Ham

Magic Misled is the seventh book in the Lizzie Grace fantasy series by Keri Arthur. Lizzie is a witch and a psychic who has been on the run for a long time from her powerful magical family. Her family blames Lizzie for her sister’s death, and they trapped her in an unwanted marriage. However, she is not alone she has her best friend and familiar Belle. The pair now runs a tea and psychic consulting business on a werewolf reservation in Australia.

May 2021 8

The Queen’s Weapons By Anne Bishop: Review/Giveaway

2021 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Terrance V. Mc Arthur

by Terrance McArthur

Daemon has two wives. One of them, Jaenelle Angelline, is dead, but she is a Queen of Power, a Witch, so she still watches over the Realm, her husband, his brother Lucivar, and the brother’s son Daemonar in Anne Bishop’s The Queen’s Weapons, the eleventh Black Jewels novel.

Jan 2021 30

Bait and Witch: A Witch Way Librarian Mystery By Angela M. Sanders: Review/Giveaway/Interview

2021 Articles, Cynthia Chow, Fantasy & Fangs, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Cynthia Chow

If she hadn’t overheard that one conversation, Josie Way would still be working in her dream job as a librarian in the Library of Congress. But listening to a senator’s aide make an illicit deal with a contractor forced Josie to report it to the authorities, which had her fleeing D.C. after her fellow whistleblower disappeared and she feared that she could be next.

Jan 2021 27

My Inspiration: A Theft Most Fowl

2021 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Nicole Givens Kurtz

Throughout the challenging and often depressing year that is 2020, I found writing anything truly discouraging. Why write when a pandemic ravaged the world, Black Americans are being shot down in the streets, and unemployment surged?

Oct 2020 24

Clockwork Gypsy By Jeri Westerson: Review/Giveaway/Halloween Guest Post

2020 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Sharon Tucker

by Sharon Tucker
& Jeri Westerson

I grew fond of Leopold Kazmer, The Great Enchanter, in his first adventure, The Daemon Device (2019), where he battled the encroaching demonic takeover of steampunk Victorian London and won. Of course, he had help, both natural and supernatural, and I hoped that all his cohorts and a few more would return when I learned the second in Jeri Westerson’s Enchanter Chronicles was coming.

Oct 2020 10

Kitchen Magic Witches Academy Series By Anna Celeste Burke: Review/Giveaway

2020 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Kathleen Costa, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Kathleen Costa

It’s MO fun, MO food, MO murder? Muriel Bright is at her best showcasing pancetta-wrapped peach slices (recipe included) for a studio filled with eager fans of her cooking show and bantering with her friend and co-host Ophelia Cheval, but a burned tongue, minor electric shock, and an almost Jerry Springer-type confrontation forces her to “time stretch” and defuse the situation with a few Kitchen Witches hidden under chairs.

Aug 2020 15

New Owners of the Bookstore Mysterious Galaxy

2020 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Mysteryrat's Maze

by Terry Ambrose

Mysterious Galaxy is an independent bookstore specializing in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, young adult, romance, and horror. Founded in 1992, the store has been an integral part of San Diego’s literary scene for readers ever since.

May 2020 9

The Queen’s Bargain By Anne Bishop: Review/Giveaway

2020 Articles, Fantasy & Fangs, Terrance V. Mc Arthur

by Terrance McArthur

I am a fan of Anne Bishop’s The Others series and The World of The Others. I enjoyed paranormal danger that could be fatal without being graphic, love with shapechangers that wasn’t sexual, and wry commentary on everything from prejudice to government. From the “Also By” lists, I knew that Bishop had other books and other worlds in her writing, but I had never read any of them. Oh, boy.