Category: Fantasy

A Remedy for Fate by MA Kuzniar

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I wasn’t sure whether to read this as I didn’t care for MA Kuzniar’s previous book, Midnight in Everwood, but I loved the idea of a story set in 18th century Prague so I decided to give her a second chance. I’m glad I did as I thought this book was much better.

A Remedy for Fate is very loosely based on the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin and is written from the perspective of Thea, a ‘fate weaver’ who runs Stiltskin’s Apothecary, brewing special potions that can change her customers’ futures – for a terrible price. Thea herself paid that price seven years earlier when she agreed to lose her memories and her heart for reasons she can no longer remember and in return has been given the ability to weave fates. Although she’s still human, Thea’s body is held together by a spell controlled by her employer, Jasper Stiltskin. The only way to free herself from the spell is to correctly guess her birth name, which she has forgotten as it’s yet another memory taken from her by Jasper.

The Apothecary is located in Prague’s Magic Quarter, a secret world hidden beneath the city which can only be accessed by people in need of help. However, the protections that keep the Magic Quarter safe from those who wish it harm are starting to break down, allowing entry to the sinister Magic Hunters who are determined to find the evidence they need to close the whole area down.

Although the historical Prague setting was the thing that attracted me to this book, I found that we didn’t actually see as much of Prague as I’d expected. Although Thea does occasionally venture up into the city, most of the action takes place in the Magic Quarter, which is described very vividly – a maze of narrow streets, wreathed in mist and lined with enchanted pastel-painted shops. It’s also populated with colourful characters including Pani Dagmar, an elderly witch who claims to be five hundred years old; Wojslav the vampire, who leads a solitary life running an antique shop; and Thea’s friend Zofka, the kitchen-witch, who bakes magical cakes and pies. The world-building is wonderful and I loved the way Kuzniar creates a feeling of community where the residents of the Magic Quarter, despite not always seeing eye to eye, all come together to fight the forces threatening their lives and livelihoods.

Because the story is set mainly in the Magic Quarter, a fantasy land which is very separate from Prague itself, there’s very little sense of the time period. Apart from some references to Empress Maria Theresa’s recent banning of witch burning and torture in 1768, I felt that the book could really have been set in any period, past, present or future. I also thought Thea, although she’s supposed to be a woman in her thirties, felt much less mature and the book in general, like Midnight in Everwood, seemed to be aimed more at younger readers, despite them both being marketed as adult novels. Not necessarily a problem, but something to be aware of if you’re planning to read them.

Thea’s actions frustrated me at times, but I thought Jasper was a great character and I enjoyed watching his relationship with Thea unfold and change throughout the book. The answer to the question of Thea’s real name seemed quite obvious to me, though, and I’m surprised she was having so much trouble guessing it! Overall, then, I found this an entertaining read, with just a few negative points, and the writing style didn’t irritate me the way it did in Midnight in Everwood. I would be happy to try Kuzniar’s other adult novel, Upon a Frosted Star, which is based on Swan Lake.

Thanks to Hodderscape for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley

Circle of Shadows by Marisa Linton

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Mystery, fantasy, historical fiction, dark academia…this is a difficult book to classify as it’s all of those things and more. Most importantly, it’s also a fascinating, entertaining read and after finishing it I was pleased to learn that it’s the first in a series, with the second book, Domain of Darkness, coming later this year.

The novel is set in 1904 and follows Evie Winstanley, the daughter of a scholar who collects occult books. When her father is found dead in his study, with his clothes dripping with water and a circular symbol chalked on the floor beside him, Evie is determined to find out what has happened to him. Convinced that he was working on some kind of occult ritual before his death, she manages to identify the symbol as the Kuroskato, or circle of shadows.

Evie’s investigations take her first to a country house on the Yorkshire moors and then to Oxford, where she learns more about the Kuroskato and how it could be dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. She also meets two very different men: Marcus Ellingham, a reporter for The Ghost Hunter, who has written a series of articles on fraudulent mediums, and Aubrey Penhallow, a country gentleman who is an expert on horse racing. One of them is a friend from the beginning, whereas the other is much more difficult to interpret. As Evie’s path crosses with both men again and again throughout the book, she must decide which, if either, can be trusted.

I enjoyed this book and liked the way the supernatural elements were always there in the background but never really dominated the story too much. Yes, this is a world where the dark arts really exist, where people can be possessed and spirits can be summoned, but Linton manages to weave these things into the plot in a way that feels convincing and believable. The mixture of a scholarly historical setting with a real, practical system of magic kept reminding me of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, although the plots of the two books are very different.

I also found Evie a very engaging character. She shares her father’s love of history, books and archaeology, but as a woman in Edwardian England her opportunities to pursue an academic career of her own are very limited. When she finds her way to Oxford University in search of answers to the mystery, she has to navigate the halls of all-male colleges, gain access to the Bodleian Library and infiltrate a secret society, the Sons of Dionysus, made up of rich and privileged young men. The sections of the book set in Oxford are wonderfully atmospheric, whether Linton is describing the world of academia, the bustling streets of the tourist areas or the banks of the River Cherwell at night. The earlier parts of the book, where Evie and her sister visit Yorkshire are just as vividly described and the country estate with its dark and sinister lake provides a contrast to the urban setting we see later on.

Although I guessed who the villain was in advance, I was still satisfied with the ending, particularly as it sets things up perfectly for the second book. I can’t wait to see what Evie does next and wish we didn’t have to wait until December to find out!

Thanks to Hodderscape for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

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What an unusual book this is! I’ve been interested in reading something by Naomi Mitchison for a long time (I did have The Corn King and the Spring Queen on my Classics Club list at one point, before replacing it), so when I spotted this novella on NetGalley, it seemed like a good opportunity to try one of her books.

Travel Light was published in 1952, two years before The Lord of the Rings, which Mitchison proofread for her friend Tolkien, and as you can probably guess from the cover, it’s one of Mitchison’s own contributions to the fantasy genre. It tells the story of Halla, a king’s daughter, who is cast out as a baby because the new queen resents her. She is rescued by her nurse, Matulli, who transforms herself into a black bear, picks up the baby in her mouth and carries her into the woods, where she is raised with a group of bear cubs. When Matulli and the other bears prepare for their winter hibernation, Halla is entrusted to the care of Uggi the dragon, who becomes her friend and mentor.

The book is divided into three sections and the first is devoted to Halla’s childhood with the bears and the dragons, as I’ve described above. I really liked this first section; it has the feel of a children’s fairy tale and I particularly enjoyed reading about Halla’s time with the dragons on Dragon Mountain, where she learns about their love of collecting gold and is told stories of heroes rescuing princesses from dragons. These stories lead Halla to question whether the damsels in distress really wanted to be rescued and whether the heroes are really so heroic after all!

Despite growing up feeling that she’s half bear/half dragon, Halla eventually has to accept that she is, in fact, a human, and in the second part of the book she ends up joining a group of men from the fictional land of Marob who are on their way to Micklegard (or Byzantium, later known as Constantinople) to ask the emperor for protection against their cruel governor. The book loses some of its charm after this; it becomes more grounded in reality, the politics and religion of men play a bigger part, and things happen that showed me that it’s not really the children’s fantasy I thought it was at first – or at least not one I would recommend for young children. There are still plenty of enjoyable moments, though – I loved the idea of racehorses deciding amongst themselves who should win the race – and I found the ending of the book quite satisfying.

Norse myth features heavily in the story, with references to the Norns and the weaving of fate, a Valkyrie who keeps popping up at various times throughout the book, and an encounter between Halla and the All-Father (Odin). It’s the All-Father who, just before Halla joins the world of humans, gives her a part of his night-blue cloak for protection and tells her to set aside the treasure-hoarding habits of the dragons and ‘travel light’, without material possessions or mental burdens, as she moves forward into her new life.

At 192 pages in the new Virago edition, this is a quick read. Although I found it uneven, as an example of an older fantasy novel written by a woman and featuring a female protagonist I think it’s well worth reading.

Thanks to Virago for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

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Life has never been easy for Alix Watson. Passed around from one foster home to another, her childhood lacked love and security, and now that she’s an adult she’s living in poverty, juggling three part-time jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. But today has been the worst day of all: she’s lost one of her jobs – the highest paying one; her roommate has thrown her out of their shared apartment because his girlfriend is jealous; and she only has a few dollars left in the world, which she can’t even access because her card has been declined. Homeless and alone, Alix takes refuge in the reading room of Boston Public Library, the only place that has ever felt like home. Stumbling through an open door, she finds herself emerging into the Astral Library – a place where time stands still and where the desperate, the lonely and the abused can find sanctuary, literally, inside a book.

Many of us have probably wondered what it would be like to live in one of the fictional worlds described in our favourite books, but in the Astral Library people get the chance to really do exactly that. Alix just needs to decide which literary world to choose – Austen’s Regency? Dickens’ London? The possibilities are endless (as long as the book is in the public domain). Eventually Alix makes her decision, but before she can step inside her book and begin her new life, an urgent message arrives. Someone already within another book is in danger and it seems the future of the Astral Library itself could be under threat.

The Astral Library is a change of direction for Kate Quinn as she has previously only written historical novels, some of which I’ve read and enjoyed. I don’t read a lot of modern fantasy, but was curious to see how Quinn would handle such a completely different genre. First of all, I loved the concept of people being able to enter a book and make it their new home, interacting with the characters and watching the well known storylines play out. I was looking forward to seeing which book Alix would choose and what would happen to her once she’d entered it. However, the novel goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting and instead of Alix becoming immersed in one fictional setting, she jumps constantly from one to another as she and the Librarian are called on to rescue other library users. We only get brief glimpses of most of these books, which is a shame as a lot of them are books I’ve read and enjoyed – such as Jane Eyre, Dracula and The Three Musketeers – and it would have been nice to have spent longer exploring them!

There’s some interesting worldbuilding in terms of the Astral Library itself and the many rules that govern it – rules on who can and can’t enter, which books you can live inside and what you’re allowed to do once there, what to do about suitable clothing, the different privileges granted to the Librarian and her assistants, and much more. The Librarian is a great character; Alix finds her a bit unwelcoming at first, but gradually gains respect for her when she discovers what lengths the Librarian will go to in protecting those who have sought sanctuary in the library and how valiantly she’s been battling the bureaucracy of the Library Board who disagree with the way the library is being run. I was intrigued by the addition of two more characters, the Gallerist and the Programmer, but I won’t say any more about those!

I found The Astral Library mostly entertaining, although not quite what I’d wanted and expected it to be. Later in the book, though, it becomes clear that it’s a novel with a message – a message about the many threats facing libraries today. Libraries all over the world are at risk of closure, in need of more funding and increasingly focusing on offering other things rather than just books. Quinn also explores the topics of book banning and censorship. Towards the end of the book, it did seem that these messages were starting to dominate and become more important than the plot and the characters, but still, I enjoyed the book overall. I would prefer Kate Quinn to go back to writing historical fiction, which I think she does better, but it’s always interesting to see authors trying something different.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Ghosts of Grayhaven by Amy Newbold and Lark Wright

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Some of you probably know Lark, who blogs at Lark Writes. She’s a blogger I’ve been following for many years so when she announced recently that she and her sister, Amy Newbold, had written and published a novella together I was interested in reading it.

The story begins with Mariah Moore arriving in the small town of Grayhaven in the Pacific Northwest with instructions from a client to complete a very unusual task. She has been asked to locate the burial place of Bartholomew Kane and perform a special ritual at his grave. Mariah has no idea why she needs to do this – it’s just a job to her and as long as she gets paid she doesn’t ask too many questions.

Zeb Raven has inherited the position of Keeper from his father. He’s responsible for protecting the graves in the cemetery – including the one that Mariah has been sent to find. When Mariah unknowingly releases a vengeful spirit from Bartholomew Kane’s grave, she and Zeb must work together to set the spirit to rest and rescue the people of Grayhaven from its evil.

Ghosts of Grayhaven is a supernatural story with a touch of romance. It could probably have been expanded into a longer book, but it’s also fine the way it is and I found it a quick, entertaining read. Mariah and Zeb are both engaging characters – I was particularly intrigued by Mariah’s job, doing unpleasant or dangerous tasks that her clients don’t want to do themselves, but Zeb’s work as the Keeper of the graves is also interesting. Cemeteries are always great settings, both for the spooky, ghostly atmosphere they can evoke and for what they can tell us about the history of a town and its families.

There’s also a third main character who joins Zeb and Mariah in their mission to save Grayhaven – Zeb’s dog, Moose, who plays a big part in the story. Lark has shared a picture on her blog of the Bavarian Mountain Scent Hound who inspired Moose. He was definitely my favourite character in the book! I think Amy and Lark can feel proud of what they’ve achieved with this novella and I hope they’ll be writing more.

Katabasis by RF Kuang

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Alice Law is an American PhD student who is studying Analytic Magick under the guidance of Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge University. Along with her equally brilliant rival, Peter Murdoch, Alice is considered the most gifted student in the department, but sometimes spells can still go wrong and she is horrified when Professor Grimes steps inside one of her pentagrams and is whisked away to hell. How will she finish her degree without Grimes to advise her? The only thing to do is to enter hell herself and bring him back.

A decision to go to hell is not something that should be taken lightly, particularly as the price of going and coming back again is half of a person’s remaining lifespan, but Alice feels she has no choice, especially as she was responsible for the disaster. However, she’s not at all pleased when Peter Murdoch insists on coming with her. She and Peter were once friends but their academic rivalry has driven them apart. Will they be able to work together to navigate their way through hell and rescue Professor Grimes?

RF Kuang is an author I keep seeing on other blogs I follow, but I’ve never tried one of her books myself until now. Whether this was the best one I could have started with I don’t know – the premise certainly sounded fascinating and there were plenty of things I enjoyed about the book, but overall it didn’t quite deliver for me. I think a big part of the problem is that I found Alice difficult to like; Peter was a more engaging character, but apart from some flashbacks to his early life, we don’t see much of the story through his eyes. Professor Grimes was even less sympathetic – the more I learned about him, the less I cared whether he was rescued or not and the weaker Alice’s motive for following him into hell became.

Hell is an unusual setting, although there have obviously been several classics set there, including Dante’s Inferno, which are referred to repeatedly throughout the book as Alice and Peter discuss the experiences of those who have visited the underworld before them. Kuang’s portrayal of hell draws on many different sources, including Dante with his circles based on various sins, and elements of Greek, Chinese and other mythologies. I particularly enjoyed reading about the Weaver Girl who presents Peter and Alice with a challenge to determine whether one, both or neither will cross the River Lethe, as well as their first encounters with Shades and creepy ‘bone-things’. I was a bit confused, though, because the entire underworld seems to be populated by students and magicians and as our protagonists wander through the ‘Eight Courts of Hell’, they find that one resembles a library and another a campus. Where did all the people from other walks of life go? Was there a separate hell for everyone else?

Katabasis (the title is from the Ancient Greek term for a descent into the underworld) falls firmly into the ‘dark academia’ subgenre as well as fantasy. As well as all the characters being academics and hell resembling a university, Alice and Peter also have lots of long, detailed discussions about algorithms, paradoxes and the science of magic. None of this interested me very much and I felt it slowed the story down, but I’m sure other readers will get more out of these sections than I did. One thing that did intrigue me was the time period in which the book is set. I assumed at first that it was a contemporary setting, but then came across lots of references to music, culture and scientific developments that seem to place the book in the late 1980s. It didn’t seem to have any actual relevance to the plot, so I’m curious to know why Kuang chose this particular period.

I’m pleased to have had the opportunity to try a book by Kuang at last, but based on this one I don’t think she’s an author for me.

Thanks to HarperVoyager for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida – #ReadingtheMeow2025

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Translated by E. Madison Shimoda

Until now I seem to have avoided the current trend for Japanese novels with cute cat pictures on the cover. It wasn’t a deliberate decision to avoid them – that sort of book just doesn’t usually appeal to me. When I was looking for ideas for cat-related books to read for this year’s Reading the Meow, though, I thought this one sounded intriguing.

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat begins with Shuta Kagawa visiting the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul in Kyoto. Shuta’s unhappiness at work is causing him to suffer from stress and insomnia and he has decided to consult a psychiatrist. However, he quickly discovers that this is no ordinary clinic – first, it proves extremely difficult to find, hidden away down a narrow alleyway; then, instead of prescribing medication, Dr Nikké says something completely unexpected: “We’ll prescribe you a cat”. And with that, Shuta becomes the temporary owner of Bee, an eight-year-old female mixed breed – but will he manage to complete the course of ‘medication’ without any side effects and what will happen when it’s time to give the cat back?

Shuta’s story is the first of five that make up this novel, each one following a similar format with a character entering the Kokoro Clinic and, regardless of their symptoms, being prescribed a cat. The cat is a different one each time, each with his or her own personality and characteristics. Sometimes the cat is compatible with the client; sometimes it seems to cause more trouble and disruption, but in each case, when the prescription comes to an end, the person finds that their life will never be the same again.

Animal-assisted therapy is a legitimate form of therapy used by charities and mental health groups to treat a range of issues, allowing people to spend time with animals in a controlled environment. That’s what I had assumed this book would be about, so I was surprised to see Dr Nikké and his nurse, Chitose, simply handing the clients a cat in a carrier with some food and written instructions – no checks done to make sure the person had a suitable home for the cat, no questions asked about allergies or the needs of other family members. Then, at the end of the week or two week period, the cat is going to be handed back to the clinic and passed on to the next person. It seemed cruel and irresponsible. However, I quickly discovered that the book has a fantasy element – which grows stronger and more bizarre as it progresses – and I was probably taking things too seriously!

You may be wondering what the fantasy element is. Well, to begin with, the clinic itself is very unusual – sometimes it can be found and sometimes it can’t, depending on the person looking for it and how desperately they need to find it. There’s also something strange about Dr Nikké and Chitose, but I’m not going to say any more about that except that each of the five stories adds a little bit to our understanding of what is going on. Still, when I finished the book I felt that a lot of things were left unexplained or only partly answered. There’s a sequel, We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat, which will be available in English in September, but I’m not sure whether it will provide any more clarity or if it’s just another collection of similar stories. I don’t think I liked this one enough to want to read the sequel, but I did find it interesting and I enjoyed taking part in this year’s Reading the Meow with this book and Paul Gallico’s Jennie!