Hilda and the Bird Parade by Luke Pearson The third book in the HILDA series by Luke Pearson sees our blue-haired adventurer in quite different surroundings. After the events of Hilda and the Midnight Giant, Hilda and her mother have moved to the city, far away from the open spaces of the countryside and the […]
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The Siren Depths by Martha Wells Book three in Martha Wells’ BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA is The Siren Depths (2012). (By the way, the novels’ titles are only vaguely related to the plot, I’ve noticed.) If you’ve loved this series so far, I feel certain that you will love The Siren Depths. In my opinion, […]
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Tool of War by Paolo Bacigalupi Paolo Bacigalupi’s Tool of War (2017) is the third entry in a series of futuristic novels in which catastrophic climate change projections have come to pass. The American seaboard is flooded, and the United States government has been overtaken by transnational organizations. The most stunning technological breakthroughs are in […]
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Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson I’ve always been a sucker for an enfant terrible. The Peter Pans and Pippi Longstockings of the literary world would be hugely annoying if they actually showed up in the real world, of course, but in fiction it’s a fun archetype. Brandon Sanderson‘s Edgedancer (2017) is all about such a character, and […]
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Head Rush by Carolyn Crane Head Rush (2012) is a perfect finale for THE DISILLUSIONISTS TRILOGY. The thing about Head Rush is that readers won’t read it to be surprised. You know how it’s going to end; you just don’t know the details. Carolyn Crane makes those details fun, and keeps Head Rush rather short and sweet, which is perfect for […]
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Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson So I’ve decided there’s so much to cover in Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer (1200+ pages), and there so much I can’t say so as to avoid spoilers, that I’m going to eschew the usual seamless essay structure for this review and just go with relating some brief and, at times, necessarily vague […]
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Blackout by Mira Grant This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the NEWSFLESH trilogy, Feed and Deadline. Mira Grant’s Blackout (2012) ends almost exactly where Deadline (2011) ended. Georgia — George — Mason has awakened to find that she has made a miraculous recovery from being shot in the brainstem, and without retinal Kellis-Amberlee […]
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Spellbreaker by Blake Charlton If someone is offering to sell you a spell that predicts one hour into the future, one excellent way to test whether the spell really works is to try to murder the man selling it to you. If you succeed in killing him, clearly it wasn’t a valid prophetic spell. In […]
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Daughter of Blood by Helen Lowe Daughter of Blood (2016), is the third book in Helen Lowe‘s four-book WALL OF NIGHT series, preceded by The Heir of Night and The Gathering of the Lost. It’s been a while since I read the last book, so it took a few chapters to untangle the far-reaching web of […]
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The City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin The lengthy journey from Justin Cronin’s vampire apocalypse The Passage comes to a full conclusion (and maybe a bit more) in the third and final book, The City of Mirrors. If The Passage was absolutely great (and it really, really was), and the sequel The Twelve was good […]
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Jeweled Fire by Sharon Shinn Jeweled Fire is the third book in Sharon Shinn’s ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS fantasy series, each one of which focuses on a different young woman. Corene, a secondary character in the previous books, is a strong-willed and fiery young woman (purely sweela, or fire, for those readers who recall the elemental influences […]
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Heroes of Olympus: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan This is the third book in the five-part HEROES OF OLYMPUS series by Rick Riordan, and as the title would imply, it focuses on Annabeth Chase: daughter of Athena. Though it suffers a little from middle book syndrome, with nothing started and nothing finished, Riordan […]
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Murder on the House by Juliet Blackwell In Murder on the House, the third book in Juliet Blackwell’s HAUNTED HOME RENOVATION MYSTERIES, Melanie “Mel” Turner is starting to acquire a reputation as a successful general contractor and ghostbuster. Homeowners around San Francisco are asking for her special services and she’s got some new projects going […]
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Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal Without a Summer is the third book in Mary Robinette Kowal’s GLAMOURIST fantasy series set in an alternative Regency-era England where magic, or “glamour,” is used as an art form to create intricate visual illusions. Jane and Vincent, both accomplished glamour artists, are visiting with Jane’s parents and […]
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Venom by Jennifer Estep Venom is the third book in Jennifer Estep’s ELEMENTAL ASSASSIN series about Gin Blanco, an assassin who runs The Pork Pit, a barbecue restaurant in Ashland, Tennessee. My review will contain spoilers for the previous books, so you might not want to read it if you haven’t yet read Spider’s Bite […]
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The Pirate’s Coin by Marianne Malone The Pirate’s Coin, the third book in Marianne Malone’s SIXTY-EIGHT ROOMS fantasy adventure series for children, is a slight improvement over the first two novels, The Sixty-Eight Rooms and Stealing Magic, which three of us here at FanLit agreed did not meet the potential of Malone’s excellent premise. Readers […]
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The Daemon Prism by Carol Berg The Daemon Prism brings to a close the first three books in Carol Berg’s COLLEGIA MAGICA series. I say “the first three” because there are enough dangling threads — a new form of magic, a royal baby about to be born — to support more stories in this world if Berg […]
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Cold Steel by Kate Elliott The third and final book of Kate Elliott’s SPIRITWALKER trilogy finishes with a bang, wrapping up most of its storylines and myriad of subplots, but also leaving enough room for Elliott to revisit this world and its inhabitants if she so chooses. Preceded by Cold Magic and Cold Fire, this […]
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The Hot Gate by John Ringo The Hot Gate is the third novel in John Ringo’s TROY RISING series. This series started off well with the first half of the first book, Live Free or Die. Then Ringo’s protagonist, Tyler Vernon, turned out to be an outspoken Nazi-sympathizer and TROY RISING plummeted. The second book, […]
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Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare Clockwork Princess, by Cassandra Clare, felt like an overloaded cargo plane lumbering down a runway, trying to get airborne. This is the third book in Clare’s INFERNAL DEVICES series, the Victorian prequel to her MORTAL INSTRUMENTS books, and in this one the soap opera overwhelms the story. The INFERNAL DEVICES series follows […]
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The Kingmakers by Clay and Susan Griffith The VAMPIRE EMPIRE series is an interesting combination of almost-steampunk, alternative history and fantasy all wrapped together. Clay and Susan Griffith have used a solid mixture of adventure, intrigue and world building to create a vibrant tapestry as the background for the story. In The Kingmakers all of […]
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Fathomless by Jackson Pearce Seaside resorts are fascinating places. Whether it’s Santa Cruz, CA; Point Pleasant, New Jersey; or even Waikiki beach in Hawaii, they have an air of tawdriness and mystery simultaneously. Jackson Pearce uses this numinous setting to powerful effect in her dark YA fantasy Fathomless. Pearce uses the fairy tale “The Little […]
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The Kingdom of the Gods by N.K. Jemisin The Kingdom of the Gods concludes N.K. Jemisin’s debut series roughly a century after book two, The Broken Kingdoms, by focusing on Sieh, who seems to be dying despite being a god. And, once again, the end of the world as we know it becomes a major plot […]
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Master of the House of Darts by Aliette de Bodard Master of the House of Darts is the third novel in Aliette de Bodard‘s OBSIDIAN AND BLOOD series. The first novel, Servant of the Underworld, was one of my favourite reads of 2010 and its sequel Harbinger of the Storm was, if possible, even better. In between writing these novels, de Bodard […]
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Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon by Mark Hodder Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon is the third and possibly final book in Mark Hodder’s steampunk/alternate history series starring Sir Richard Burton as the main protagonist, along with his good friend, the poet Algernon Swinburne. I was a fan of the first, The […]
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