Review of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Paranormal, Romance, Starred Review 0

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Samara MacLaren

Penguin Audio, 2022. 9 hours, 59 minutes.
Review written June 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I’m so glad that after I read A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, I looked for more books by the same author. This cozy paranormal romantasy is like a warm hug. Well, okay, it’s a somewhat sexy hug – but the main point of the book is feel-good warmth.

[As it happens, the love interest in both books was a handsome librarian. I can get behind that!]

As the book opens, Mika Moon is a witch who’s used to being isolated. The witches of Britain only get together every few months for a couple hours, and they change the location every time. Too much power in one place will attract attention, and that can lead to disaster.

But then she gets a job offer for a job she hadn’t been looking for. There’s a hidden house in the country inhabited by an older gay couple, a fifty-something lady caretaker, a handsome librarian – and three little girl witches. The adults are looking for a witch to teach the girls magic. They tend to have magical accidents and need to learn to control their power before a lawyer comes by the day after Christmas. The owner of the house is a witch herself who took these girls in, and she’s been in South America for quite some time. Or so Mika is told.

So there are all the ingredients of Mary Poppins or Maria von Trapp. Two of the girls are easily won over, as Mika shares her love of magic, but the other is more challenging.

And the romance part is difficult. All witches are under a curse, or at least a spell gone wrong, and become orphans soon after their birth. Mika had a witch as her guardian, but she was raised by nannies and tutors whose memories were wiped when they figured out what Mika was. So Mika has spent her life moving from one place to another, never getting close enough so that people will find out what she is and want to use their magic for themselves.

And if the head witch of the local society finds out that four witches are living under one roof, Mika knows they’ll be split up. So it’s better to try not to get too fond of this feeling of family and home.

The characters filling the house help make this book the delight it is. Each of the girls has a personality, and all the adults have built a loving family for them. Mika herself shines with her love of magic and a desire to do good things with it.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of Sabriel, by Garth Nix

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Sabriel

by Garth Nix
read by Tim Curry

Listening Library, 2002. 10 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written October 21, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
Original review posted January 20, 2004.
2004 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #3 Fantasy for Young Adults

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of posting Sonderbooks, I’m rereading many of my Sonderbooks Stand-outs from previous years and writing new reviews for the ones written before my 2006 revision of the website. The project is taking me much, much longer than I thought it would, because I’m reading more of my old reviews than planned and rereading (or listening) to more of the books – but I’m having a whole lot of fun with it, so what’s not to like?

And I don’t think I remembered just how good Sabriel is. I wish I could define why it’s head and shoulders above your run-of-the-mill current romantasy – because then maybe I could write one myself. But I’ll try to put my finger on some of the things that make the book so excellent.

First, Garth Nix does an incredible job with world-building. The world and the magic system is unlike any other fantasy novel I’ve ever read, and is incredibly complex, but he expertly pulls you along without ever a boring exposition drop. Sabriel has been brought up in a school close to the border with the Old Kingdom – full of Charter Magic – but her father has been teaching her the skills of an Abhorsen – a necromancer on the side of good who can send dead things back into Death.

But one day Sabriel gets a messenger from Death bringing her father’s bells and sword. She’s told she is the new Abhorsen. So Sabriel goes on a quest into the Old Kingdom to try to find her father’s body and free him from whatever trapped him in Death. And it turns out along the way, she is trying to save the entire Old Kingdom from the Greater Dead creature that trapped him there.

We get information about what she needs to do and how to do it as she goes – but it’s not done in a haphazard way. Sabriel starts with basic knowledge of how to use the Abhorsen’s bells against dead things – which she has to use in her journey. She finds broken Charter stones and decimated villages in her travels, and there are many terrifying moments when she is chased by powerful dead beings.

Yes, there’s a little bit of romance. The romance is shown to the reader rather than told. Though honestly, they could have said a little more about it – but I happen to like understated romance more than overstated romance.

And the story pulls you in, from Sabriel’s first small venture into death to save a friend’s pet to her frantic stand against a creature of Destruction. This book was even better than I remembered.

garthnix.com

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Review of Sonnets and Serpents, by Elizabeth Lowham

Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

coverSonnets and Serpents

by Elizabeth Lowham

Shadow Mountain Publishing, 2025. 373 pages.
Review written May 20, 2026, from a library book.

Sonnets and Serpents is a sequel to Casters and Crowns. It involves different people in a different place, so you could get away with reading this one without reading the first. But I think you’ll understand the world and its magic better if you read them in order.

Eliza, the sister of Aria, the princess of Loegria who featured in the first novel, has taken a ship to Pravusat to follow Henry, the young man she loves, who’d said he’d court her, but then got exiled. Silas Bennett was also exiled – and was asked by Aria to find her sister, make sure she was safe, and send her home. Silas was happy to be in exile from Loegria, a place where his status as an Animal Affiliate – who can take the shape of a snake and communicate with other snakes – is not appreciated.

But when Eliza arrives in Pravusat, they tell her that Henry’s ship sank, and there were no survivors. She refuses to believe it, and determines to continue to search for him. Since she can’t understand the language, she buys a charm from a Stone Caster to understand it better. But she asked for the charm in a language she didn’t understand – and it turns out that when she snaps one bracelet on herself and the other on Silas’s wrist, they are stuck. Yes, she can now understand the local language as well as Silas can. But they are not able to go far apart from each other. They can be in the next room, but the physical distance can’t be too great.

So they have to make a deal. On alternate days, Eliza searches for Henry and Silas attempts to do magical research to land a professorship at the university in Pravusat where he had previously been a student.

And it so happens, they uncover a plot and get into big trouble. And the banter between them as this happens is a whole lot of fun.

As the book started, I thought Eliza was a bit annoying. She was impulsive and silly and not very good at making plans. She’s in love with the idea of love and hardly even knows Henry, but now insists he’s alive despite evidence. But Eliza grew on me, and her character grew on the page.

There were things about the plot I didn’t like. It walked the line just barely on the side of believable. Little things like she evaded the secret police in the marketplace and they seemingly just stopped searching for her. Or that they’d decide it was a reasonable plan to go into a prison to search. Or even the coincidence about stumbling into a major plot in the first place.

But the slow-burn romance was so much fun to watch, I was less picky about details like that. This is a no sex, plenty of kissing kind of romance and the enemies-to-lovers plot did feel believable as proximity forces the two to get to know each other.

The government in Pravusat is left in not the greatest shape, making me wonder if there are more adventures to come. (No more princesses, though!)

elizabethlowham.com

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Review of The Last Best Quest Ever, by F. T. Lukens

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Last Best Quest Ever

by F. T. Lukens
read by Lindsey Dorcus

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2026. 11 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written June 5, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

F. T. Lukens’ stories are always full of magic and full of fun. This one features 17-year-old Ellinore, who is known in the kingdom as Ellinore the Brave, and has been winning the kingdom’s quest competitions since she was thirteen.

It all started when she was twelve and a reckless knight lured a giant magical bear into their village. After Ellinore picked up the knight’s fallen sword, the bear fell on her – and luckily for her, impaled itself on the sword. At her next quest, when she was thirteen, she was supposed to get rid of the golden dragon that was plaguing a village. Well, Ellinore befriended the dragon, whose name was Dave, and convinced him to hide out in a different place, only fly at night, and take out his penchant for practical jokes on Ellinore.

Dave gave her a golden scale to take back to the king, and since then, he helped her win further quests – finding ways to make deals and talk reasonably instead of hacking and killing.

But the pressure of the lying was wearing Ellinore down, so after she earned enough bags of gold to move her parents to a nice cottage by the sea, she decided she was going to retire from questing.

But then her twin brother Zig foolishly made a bargain with a couple of mages in a tavern. In exchange for a big bag of gold, Ellinore had to bring them the horn of the Elderbeast. The catch: If she doesn’t succeed in sixteen days, the mages will take her brother’s heart.

Zig can be annoying, but Ellinore will do anything to keep him alive. So she sets out on a quest to find the Elderbeast’s horn. She usually works alone, but this time, she ends up gaining some companions: her brother, who insists on coming along; Aven, the attractive second-best quester in the kingdom; a royal young lady who wants to learn from Ellinore the Brave; and a young bard who has a map that shows the whereabouts of the Elderbeast.

But there are multiple rivals and multiple obstacles, and as the clock is ticking (or rather the candle is burning), Zig gets weaker and weaker. But the trouble with going on a quest with other people is that she can’t let them find out she’s a fraud.

This book has all the fun things I’m used to from F. T. Lukens’ books – magic, adventure, friendship, romance, danger, a refreshingly queer-normative society, and characters I love spending time with. I think there’s still a couple of their books I’ve missed, so I will for sure be looking those up. Their books always leave me smiling.

ft-lukens.com

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Review of Spindle’s End, by Robin McKinley

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Old Favorites, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

Spindle’s End

by Robin McKinley
read by Justine Eyre

Tantor Media, 2019. 12 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written May 31, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I was surprised to realize I never reviewed this Old Favorite on Sonderbooks. I was looking for Robin McKinley books the library has as eaudiobooks, thinking I’d be rereading books from the early years of writing Sonderbooks – and found Spindle’s End. It wasn’t until I looked for the old review on Sonderbooks that I discovered there wasn’t one. Amazon now tells me I purchased a hardcover copy of this book on May 5, 2000 – so I read it a year before I started writing Sonderbooks.

And I honestly hadn’t remembered how good it is! This time through was a delight. I loved the narrator – with a delightful English accent – much more than the narrator of my two favorite Robin McKinley books, The Blue Sword, and The Hero and the Crown. Am I so shallow that I require an English accent? I do think it seems appropriate for a fairy tale retelling. Anyway, I loved this narrator.

Spindle’s End is a very loose retelling of “Sleeping Beauty.” Very loose, with many significant details changed. I think the first time I read it, I couldn’t quite forgive those changes. This time, I knew they were coming, and I was simply caught up in the wonderful tale.

One significant change makes the story make a whole lot more sense – The evil fairy who curses the princess explicitly states that while she originally planned her curse for the princess’s 21st birthday, she could make it happen at any time. So this is why the princess must go into hiding.

I like the way the book begins by focusing in on 15-year-old Catriona, a young fairy learning from her aunt. She’s handed the baby princess and gets the responsibility of hiding her and bringing her home. Along the way, Catriona, who can talk to animals, gets help from animals who arrange to feed the baby.

And these are the sort of delightful details Robin McKinley has added to the fairy tale. The kingdom is packed full of magic, so much so that ordinary folks have ways of dealing with it to avoid the inconvenience of things transforming unexpectedly. First we focus on Catriona, bringing up baby Rosie as an ordinary village girl with the help of her aunt. Then as Rosie grows, the focus shifts to her, as her 21st birthday approaches and it appears that the evil fairy has finally found her.

The story is lovely, but you won’t find any princess passively waiting for a prince to save her. I like the way they subverted some of the fairy “gifts” bestowed at birth by, for example, not ever teaching Rosie to embroider, so her being supernaturally good at it wouldn’t be noticed. They didn’t have to worry about the magically perfect ringlets in her hair, because Rosie cut her hair short even as a small child.

So, yes, the frame of the fairy tale is there, but the delightful particularity comes entirely from Robin McKinley, who’s especially good at making characters who are far from perfect, but get you completely on their side. They work for their happily ever after, and you’ll be with them all the way.

robinmckinley.com

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Review of Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, by Sangu Mandanna

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy 0

Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Zenia Starr

Listening Library, 2021. 7 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

I checked out this audiobook because of how much I love the author’s cozy fantasy novels for adults. It turned out to be a sweet fantasy for kids, in the mythology-is-actually-real genre.

In this case, the mythology in question is Indian mythology, and there’s a twist. Kiki Kallira, a girl who’s recently started having symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (Though it’s not named as such, and she hasn’t gotten a diagnosis yet, because she hasn’t told her mother how bad it is yet.), has been obsessively drawing a world in her sketch book where a heroic girl, based on her disreputable great-aunt, battles a major Indian demon, aided by a band of resourceful orphans. One day, this girl shows up in her bedroom battling a lesser demon.

It turns out that the major demon is real, and had been exiled to The Nowhere Place. He schemed to get back to our world by using his magic to make Kiki’s sketchbook world real – and use that to get out of The Nowhere Place. Now he plans to go from Kiki’s world eventually back to our world.

Now, the girl hero has escaped through a small tear between worlds, and takes Kiki back with her. Kiki needs to defeat the demon in her pocket universe in order to keep him from finding his way to our world. But how can a small, weak little girl with a brain that won’t behave defeat a demon?

And once in her world, Kiki befriends the band of orphans, who were already dear to her. Now that they are real, can she really bear to do something that would make that world stop existing, even though it will defeat the evil demon?

So there are nice undercurrents here, and some twists and turns in the quest. The author continues to display her fantasy-writing chops.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of Heir, by Sabaa Tahir

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Heir

by Sabaa Tahir
read by Vidish Athavale, Esme Lonsdale, Joe Pitts, Marco Young, and Rachel Petladwala

Listening Library, 2024. 17 hours, 47 minutes.
Review written April 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

Epic fantasy is how Sabaa Tahir started out as an author. Her only book I’ve read is the incredibly good multiple-award-winning All My Rage, so when she started a new fantasy series that is wildly popular, I decided to check it out.

I have to say this book was great for a little road trip I did – keeping me intent on the story for the whole drive. It starts out with three main characters, narrated by three different voice actors. (The two additional narrators get some time, but they are voicing side characters.) At the start, we don’t know how the three characters will come together, and we’re a good way in before we realize the story of one of the characters is being told on a different timeline.

Aiz is the first character we meet. She grew up in an orphanage and plans to assassinate the ruler – who set the orphanage on fire ten years ago and killed many of her friends. She prays to Mother Div for help for her people, the Kegar, who live on a barren island and have to raid other lands using their magic to even be able to eat.

Next up is Quil, the Crown Prince of the Martial Empire, being trained by his Aunt to replace her as ruler. But when he’s in a foreign city, there’s a horrible attack on children, with their hearts torn out and dried up.

Sirsha is next. She has the magic of tracking, but has been cast out of her tribe and ordered never to use magic again. But when a man offers her enough money to escape the empire and never work again, she can’t refuse. The man asks her to track a monstrous creature who has been killing children horribly.

And yes, the characters’ lives end up intertwining, some sooner than others. There are attacks on the Empire – and the monster killing the children is hard to defeat.

It all adds up to an epic story – which, fair warning, is not finished when the book is done. In fact, something awful happens at the end, and the author just better straighten that out in the next book!

There is much suffering and many horrible deaths in this book, and some sex as well, not always consensual, so this isn’t one of the sweet fantasy tales I prefer. But it is an epic tale with skillfully interwoven storylines, about politics, power, magic, and deciding what you’ll do to help your people.

sabaatahir.com

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Review of Legends and Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Legends and Lattes

by Travis Baldree
read by the Author

Macmillan Audio, 2022. 7 hours, 19 minutes.
Review written April 15, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I discovered Travis Baldree from an interview in Writer’s Digest Magazine. When they described his books as “cozy fantasy,” I decided to try them, and I am completely delighted. When I read this one, I wished I had started with it, instead of the prequel, Bookshops and Bonedust – which in the Epilogue gives away a bit of how things turn out, so I wasn’t in as much suspense. But it was a minor thing and didn’t ruin my complete delight with this book.

Legends & Lattes is about an orc woman named Viv who gives up the sword-for-hire life and settles down to start a coffee shop – in a city that’s never heard of coffee.

In her last adventure with the band of mercenaries, her only payment was an artifact that is supposed to bring good fortune. But she’s got a lot of obstacles – an old shop to renovate, some way to drum up business, and people to work with. The people she does find are what make the book especially delightful. There’s a gnome who does construction, a succubus to help run things, and a ratkin who makes amazing pastries to go with the coffee.

But Viv also has to deal with the syndicate running the city and someone who seems to be after her artifact. Will everything fall apart if she loses that token of good fortune?

I enjoyed the way the gnome called coffee “bean juice” and Viv’s explanation that “Latte” was named after the person who invented it. Viv’s got some insecurities trying to be a business owner after years of using force to do things. And definitely has to deal with other people seeing her as a stereotype. Getting to know all the characters in this book was as delightful as eating a chocolate croissant.

travisbaldree.com

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Review of Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Hemlock & Silver

by T. Kingfisher
read by Jennifer Pickens

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 11 hours, 50 minutes.
Review written April 17, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

So far, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every T. Kingfisher book I’ve read. This one has the added bonus of a self-described “middle-aged” heroine, and that’s always nice for a change. This is cozy fantasy with a dash of creepiness – if mirrors in the dark already spook you, this could make it worse.

Anja is a specialist in poisons and studies them looking for antidotes. She keeps a venomous snake and regularly milks its venom to use to speed up the heart as an antidote for other poisons. Of course she tests it on herself – after roosters, but before trying it on patients.

And then, one day, the king walks into her workshop.

The king believes that his daughter Snow is being poisoned and wants Anja to find a cure. Snow has been unwell since the day the king killed the queen – when she was cutting their other daughter’s heart out.

Anja doesn’t feel skilled in working with people, and especially not 12-year-old girls. But she is good at solving mysteries and figuring out poisons. So she goes with the king to the palace where Snow is staying, along with two bodyguards, in case the poisoner doesn’t want to be found out.

Anja finds Snow eating a strange-looking apple. Naturally, she tests it on herself – and then falls through a mirror into another, reflected world. It stirs her scientific heart, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to figure out why Snow would effectively poison herself. And how does the mirror world work.

I wouldn’t call this a retelling of “Snow White” – but many of the elements are there, and it does have that fairy tale feel. There’s a dash of romance thrown in as well, along with some mystery and danger. I blame this book for me staying up far too late the other night while working on a jigsaw puzzle.

redwombatstudio.com

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Review of The Heart of the World, by Amie Kaufman

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Heart of the World

by Amie Kaufman
read by Nikki Patel, Homer Todiwalla, Suzie Rai, Vidish Athavale, Mela Lee, and Steve West

Listening Library, 2024. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written March 25, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I have to say that I love the new trend of writing duologies instead of trilogies. There’s still some suspense waiting for the next volume, but you don’t have to do it all over again and wait for a third volume.

The Heart of the World finishes the story begun in The Isles of the Gods, about a prince and a sailor girl involved in international politics, doing magic, and meddling with the gods.

There’s no way to really set up this book without giving away what happens at the end of the first book, so let me speak in general terms. You’ve got five main viewpoint characters all voiced with different narrators. In this book, the gods find a way to show up in the human world, channeling some of their power through our protagonists and antagonist. And the gods are spoiling for a fight.

The last time the gods fought, an entire country was turned into a barren wasteland. Can our heroes stop the gods? Do they even want to, or is the gods’ influence too great?

A nice touch in this volume is that Selly is able to help Leander bear the load of the goddess’s power.

The audio production for both books is outstanding, with all the narrators excellent, and my all-time favorite audiobook narrator, Steve West, voicing the prince. The characters I was getting tired of in the first volume got more interesting when empowered by a god and when planning a double cross. Oh, and there’s a scholar who tries to save the world through research – with several great lines about how awesome librarians are.

This is a tale well-told of magic and power and love. May our characters keep the world from getting blown apart.

amiekaufman.com

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