Review of The Summer War, by Naomi Novik

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Summer War

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2025. 127 pages.
Review written March 11, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

This is a novella by fantasy master Naomi Novik – so it’s about the same length as the children’s books I often read. Naomi Novik doesn’t need much time pulling you into her fantasy worlds. The book begins:

Celia was twelve years old on the day she cursed her brother.

The book reminded me of Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown [and this is a high compliment!], because it begins with a long section about the past, how Celia grew up alienated from others and didn’t have magic. But the day she cursed her brother – for suddenly leaving her, and not caring – was the day she discovered her magic. She hadn’t known her curse would be effective, but the emotion and passion behind the curse awakened the strong magic within her.

After the explanation of this incident, we hear about the Summer War between humans and the summerlings, who live in the Summer Kingdom. The war went on for a hundred years, but Celia’s father, a general, supposedly stopped it with his tactics. Now the king is wary of him, but Celia’s father is also mourning the departure of his oldest son, and Celia and her remaining brother must keep things going.

But the main action of the book happens when Celia is fifteen. [This book could very well have been published for young adults. The only reason I can think that it wasn’t was to attract Naomi Novik’s existing fans.] She gets drawn into the Summer Kingdom and there is danger of the Summer War starting up again, and many are in peril, and the mess requires great skill and cleverness to solve. And Celia would like to break her brother’s curse as well.

This is a quick read, but it’s full of magic and the otherworldly, and it showcases Naomi Novik’s magical weaving of worlds.

naominovik.com

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Review of A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping

by Sangu Mandanna
read by Samara MacLaren

Books on Tape, 2025. 9 hours, 53 minutes.
Review written February 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I think this audiobook was suggested to me after I finished Sarah Beth Durst’s latest. If so, the recommendation was spot-on. This is also a cozy fantasy story with all kinds of feel-good vibes.

At 15 years old, Sera Swan was one of the two most powerful witches in Britain. But she was an outsider because she wasn’t from a long-standing British magical family. So when she uses up her magic to bring her great-aunt back from death, instead of other witches helping her get it back, she’s put in exile from all magic society.

Fifteen years later, Sera is making do with only a tiny bit of magic. She’s running the inn with her great-aunt, protected by the spell she performed as a child – only allowing those who truly need the inn to find it. They’ve assembled a hodge-podge family of sorts – an overeager elderly lady, a young man who works at the Renaissance Fair and calls himself her knight, and Sera’s young cousin Theo who is learning the fundamentals of magic – and letting Sera read the more advanced texts he checks out. And then there’s Clemmie, the witch who turned herself into a fox when a curse backfired. She wants Sera to regain her power and restore her as well.

And now it looks like Sera may be able to restore her power. With the help of the powerful Restoration spell – and the handsome librarian who has shown up at the inn, needing a place for his young sister, who is a witch but is also autistic and doesn’t always follow the rules. But then there’s the matter of figuring out the ingredients of the spell.

This is a delightfully cozy story with a clear progression of tasks for Sera, but some setbacks and plot twists along the way. I found myself loving the assortment of characters at the inn – while hating the villain who is indeed despicable but powerful. I wish I could find my way to this magical inn, but enjoying through the book was perfect.

sangumandanna.com

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Review of The Magician of Tiger Castle, by Louis Sachar

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Magician of Tiger Castle

by Louis Sachar
read by Edoardo Ballerini

Books on Tape, 2025. 7 hours, 17 minutes.
Review written February 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Louis Sachar has written a book for adults!

Louis Sachar is the Newbery-winning author of Holes and the Wayside School books, both of which I read before I started writing Sonderbooks. (I do have a review up of his 2010 book, The Cardturner.) From those books, I already knew he’s especially good at intricate, clever plots – and yes, that’s a way this book shines as well.

By the time my hold came in on this audiobook, I’d forgotten it was for adults, and just saw it was a Louis Sachar book. So I was a bit surprised when the main character was a man in his forties. After said main character was surprisingly frank about some bodily functions (nothing crude, just surprising if you thought it was a children’s book) – I remembered it was his first novel for adults.

The book begins with Anatole sipping tea at a cafe in front of a castle that keeps a tiger in the moat. As he talks about what the tour guide is saying to a group, we begin to realize he knows a lot more about the castle than he should. And then he launches into the story of how the first tiger came to the castle in the 16th Century as a betrothal gift to the princess of Esquaveta (which was the small country the castle ruled then) in preparation for the wedding of the century.

Anatole was then the royal magician. He didn’t cast spells, but he was exceptionally skilled at mixing potions. As the wedding approached, Princess Tullia declared that she was not going to marry the prince of a neighboring country because she’d fallen in love with her tutor. The tutor was now in the dungeon, and the king tasked Anatole with making the princess go through with the marriage and saving Esquavita from the neighboring kingdom’s powerful army.

And that’s the story that follows. At first, Anatole simply plans to fulfill the king’s command. He’ll make a potion to make the two lovebirds forget all about each other. But he needs to get close to the prisoner in order to get a heartfelt tear for the potion – and that involves getting to know him. And things get much more complicated than they seem at first.

So this is a fantasy story – Anatole is very good at making potions, and we appreciate all the work and experimentation he puts into making it just right. This is no romantasy – but we do come to care about the princess and the prisoner, and there is definitely a romantic subplot – even if their love must first be thwarted. As I mentioned, this author is particularly good at plotting, and he had me intent on the story every step of the way.

Yes, adults who read and loved Holes as kids are going to love this, too. It’s a completely different story, but it does appeal to the same part of my brain that loves a tightly constructed plot with characters you can’t help but care about.

louissachar.com

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Review of The Enchanted Greenhouse, by Sarah Beth Durst, by Caitlin Davies

Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

The Enchanted Greenhouse

by Sarah Beth Durst
read by Caitlin Davies

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 13 hours, 33 minutes.
Review written February 7, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

The Enchanted Greenhouse is another cozy fantasy romance from Sarah Beth Durst, set in the same world as The Spellshop. Though this book was written after The Spellshop, I think you’d be able to read the books in any order. And if you enjoy one, you’ll enjoy the other. I was delighted to learn the origin of the sentient spider plant who was the friend of the main character in the first book.

However, enchanting that spider plant into life got our main character, Terlu, into deep trouble. She was a librarian in the Great Library of Alyssium, the Empire’s capital city, and she got lonely in the stacks with no one to talk to. So she enchanted a spider plant to keep her company. But the law declared that only sorcerers were allowed to do magic. Terlu was discovered and found guilty – and condemned to be a statue in the Great Library as a warning to others.

But then Terlu wakes up in a snowy forest. She’s not a statue any more. She goes searching for others and finds a giant enchanted greenhouse, with many smaller greenhouses inside of it, full of wonders. There is one gardener on the island in charge of it all. He’d expected that the statue he’d been sent and awoken was a sorcerer to help him solve the problem of the greenhouses failing after the death of the sorcerer who’d created them. Instead he got a librarian who’s afraid to do magic because she doesn’t want to be turned into a statue again.

But it turns out the gardener, Yarrow, is a kind man (and handsome!) and he gives her food and shelter for as long as she wants to stay. And then Terlu waters and awakens a small sentient rose plant who had been dormant. And this rose convinces her to seek a spell to awaken her fellow sentient plants who are all in an enchanted sleep. Between that and the failing greenhouses, Terlu realizes that she needs to figure out the old sorcerer’s spells to help these other beings. Fortunately, she’s skilled in multiple languages, though she might need a little help with code-breaking.

That’s the world of this book, and it adds up to another sweet and satisfying cozy magical story.

sarahbethdurst.com

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Review of The Queen’s Secret, by Jessica Day George

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Queen’s Secret

Rose Legacy, Book Two

by Jessica Day George

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2019. 250 pages.
Starred Review

This is the second book in a planned trilogy about a land of exiles where people can communicate with horses. And our heroine, Anthea, has an especially strong bond, able to communicate with all the horses, not only Florian, the stallion who’s bonded to her.

I enjoyed this book more than the first one. In that one, the set-up of magical telepathic communication with horses seemed a little bit too much like generic wish-fulfillment.

In this book, the set-up is done, and I enjoyed seeing the people and horses trying to work together. The horse communication seems horsey, not just the thoughts of people attributed to horses.

The Horse Brigade has the favor of the queen – but the king is not so easily won over. As the book opens, they are trying to prove themselves by carrying messages and trying to be useful in the king’s service. However, as things develop, it appears that someone is working against them.

Then an outbreak of illness starts – in the exact places where the horses had been. For a country that already thought horses bring disease, trying to win support for the Horse Brigade just became much more difficult.

The book does end on a disastrous note. We will have to wait for the next book to see how Anthea and the horses of Last Farm can overcome a major setback.

These books are perfect for fantasy-lovers who also love horses. It takes the idea of becoming one with your horse to the next level.

jessicadaygeorge.com
Bloomsbury.com

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Review of Hekate: The Witch, by Nikita Gill

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Teen Fiction Review 0

Hekate

The Witch

by Nikita Gill
read by the author

Hachette Audio, 2025. 6 hours, 12 minutes.
Review written January 10, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This audiobook was simply beautiful. The reader’s lovely accent helped. The whole audiobook, I wondered why they used a reader with an Indian accent to read a story from Greek mythology – and then when I went to write this review, I learned it had been the author’s voice all along. Her voice and accent are beautiful, and it turns out she’s British-Indian, which is also what I was hearing. Lovely!

The story is about a Greek goddess I hadn’t known anything about, though many of the elements of her life were familiar – but now made deeply personal. Hekate was a child of war – when the Titans, including her father Perses, were fighting the Olympians. When the Titans lost the war, Hekate and her mother Asteria had to flee. Asteria found Hekate a safe home in the Underworld, under the care of her sister, the goddess Styx. But Asteria herself had to continue to flee and turned herself into an island to escape from Zeus.

Because of those circumstances, Hekate grew up in the underworld, not knowing her purpose – which should have been given to her by her father at her birth. Meanwhile, she chafes under the “protection” of Styx – and devises her own quest to learn her parents’ fate and to discover her own powers and purpose. So it’s a coming-of-age tale for a goddess and a powerful witch.

And the writing is lyrical and beautiful. This is one of those audiobooks that you can actually tell is a novel in verse – often I can’t tell from the audio, but that wasn’t a problem here. I liked the way many of the individual poems ended with a reversal that would lead you into the next poem.

This is Greek mythology from the inside (or from the underside), seen through the eyes of a child growing into a goddess.

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Review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

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

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

by Susanna Clarke
read by Simon Prebble

Macmillan Audio, 2006. 32 hours, 30 minutes.
Review written November 24, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Originally reviewed October 26, 2004.
Starred Review
2004 Sonderbooks Stand-out: #1 Science Fiction and Fantasy

I reread (via listening) this book as part of my celebration of #Sonderbooks25 – my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was my favorite new book for adults that I read in 2004.

I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t as enamored with the book as when I read it the first time – it’s definitely not my favorite book of the year this year, or even close. But I still thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the story and getting caught up in Susanna Clarke’s highly detailed alternate world. Let me talk about the good things, but also why I’m not raving about it this time around.

The book is long. The first time I read it, the only way I could bring myself to tackle it was one chapter per day while I read other books – until I got about halfway through and was more obsessed. This time around, it required two separate checkouts of the eaudiobook, with a wait in between. 32 hours! But the length is also a strength. The incredible detail – with footnotes! – of the alternate-reality England during the Napoleonic Wars is an incredible feat of world-building. Simon Prebble feels like the perfect reader for the book, reading it with the voice of a scholarly old gentleman that just suits the story perfectly.

The story takes you through first Mr. Norrell and then Jonathan Strange being the first practical magicians that England has seen in hundreds of years. We’ve got hints about the Raven King, who used to control magic in England. We’re warned about the Faery realms and see the drastic consequences when Mr. Norrell messes with fairies – but consequences that he keeps secret from everyone else. We watch those consequences play out, and we watch Jonathan Strange do magic to win the war with Napoleon – and then diverge from his teacher. And eventually, we watch the prophecy happen about the two of them bringing magic back to England. And always a nefarious fairy causing trouble behind the scenes.

The book is immersive, and listening was a great way for me to tolerate the great length. So why was I not as enraptured this time around?

First, I already knew about the amazing world-building, so I took it more for granted this time. I did notice this time the blatant racism and anti-Semitism. It probably accurately reflects attitudes in England at that time, but was still unpleasant to read about. And there was a “historical” story told about the magic of Native Americans – including footnotes – that felt like a demeaning caricature. So I do feel like I should warn about that.

But I also realized that I didn’t remember how it ended – and was kind of let down when it did. Yes, many threads come together, but I didn’t think the ending was terribly satisfying. And then I realized that I didn’t really like any of the characters much. So the world-building and the delightful scholarly tone is the best part of the book. And they do carry the book the entire 32 hours, but it wasn’t quite as wonderful as I had remembered.

All the same, if you’re ever in the mood for a great big doorstopper of a fantasy novel that is not a romantasy but does present an amazing alternate world of magic – Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is worth reading. And, yes, rereading.

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Review of Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow

Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Wundersmith

The Calling of Morrigan Crow

by Jessica Townsend
read by Gemma Whelan

Hachette Audio (Little, Brown), 2018. 12 hours on 10 CDs.
Starred Review
Review written November 6, 2019, from a library audiobook

First, how did this review get buried so long in my unposted drafts? I’m not sure, but here, at last, it is.

Wundersmith is the sequel to Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, or I should say the second book in the series, because the story isn’t finished yet.

All her life, Morrigan Crow has been told she was cursed, and any misfortune that happened to anyone around her was blamed on her. In the first book, she learned that she’s actually a Wundersmith – an amazing gift with the ability to manipulate Wunder, and she’s brought to Nevermoor, a magical place that folks on the outside don’t even know about, and she competes to become part of the Wundrous Society.

In the second book, she’s officially part of the Wundrous Society and ready to begin her classes with the eight other members of her unit. They’re supposed to be like her new brothers and sisters.

But things don’t go like the reader expects. Suppose in the Harry Potter books that Voldemort had a particular powerful gift and was still in power outside Hogwarts. And then suppose Harry was the first wizard to have that exact same gift in one hundred years. Would people be willing to actually train him in his gift?

That’s the situation for Morrigan Crow. The “most evil man who ever lived” was a Wundersmith, and he has been banished from Nevermoor and his name is mentioned to frighten children. Morrigan is the first person to have this gift in a hundred years, and no one in the Wundrous Society wants to teach her “the wretched arts” that a Wundersmith uses.

The only class she’s assigned is a history of Wundersmiths, taught by an instructor who goes over and over how evil or stupid every single Wundersmith has been.

Meanwhile, her unit is told that if they tell anyone that Morrigan is a Wundersmith, they will all be expelled from the Wundrous Society. But someone starts blackmailing them, one by one, or the secret will be revealed. Do they care enough about Morrigan to keep her secret?

At the same time, various people and creatures start going missing. Is Morrigan to blame? Her patron, Jupiter North, is spending all his time working on the problem – so he’s not around for Morrigan to confide in.

The situations all work to a dramatic finish, but with hints of more problems to come.

This book is delightful, and I especially enjoyed listening to it, the narrator’s accent adding to my enjoyment. Jessica Townsend has a vivid imagination, throwing fun tidbits into the story – tricksy lanes that do strange things to you as you walk into them, a smoking room that generates different flavors of smoke, a building made of water, and so much more. I didn’t want to think too hard about how some of the things would actually work, but they were great fun to read about.

Now, there were many places in this book where, like the Harry Potter books, I firmly wished they would just tell a teacher! As with those, various motivations were given for why they didn’t, and it did all work out in the end. There was also a huge coincidence that Morrigan ended up stumbling on something that ended up being a major plot point, but all things taken together, it didn’t ruin the book.

So if you want to read another saga set in an imaginative, magical world, where a young magic user must learn how to use her power to fight evil, in the company of loyal friends – look no further! This series would also make great family listening. I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

HachetteAudio.com

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Review of The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich, by Deya Muniz

Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Romance, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich

by Deya Muniz

Little, Brown and Company, 2023. 250 pages.
Review written June 20, 2023, from a library book
Starred Review

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich is a delightfully fun and light-hearted graphic novel about a young noblewoman named Cam who must pose as a man in order to inherit her father’s estate. She moves to the capital city to be far away from the people who knew her before her father’s death – and catches the princess’s eye.

The two of them do many things together, including enjoying grilled cheese sandwiches. (Everyone in the capital city has a name that’s a type of cheese.) As they fall in love, Cam realizes she can’t take things any further because she needs to keep her secrets. And nobody likes to find out the one they love has been hiding who they really are.

I was rather amazed this is a debut. The drawings are wonderful – I especially loved all the outfits. Cam keeps her hair long but wears fake sideburns and nice suits when posing as a man, and it wasn’t too hard to believe that she could have fooled people. (Maybe a little hard. But not too bad, because she did look like a well-dressed young man.) There’s variety in the panel sizes, and the story keeps moving at a nice pace. It only took me about an hour to read, and left me smiling.

I’m writing this before discussing anything with the Morris committee, so my opinions are entirely my own, and I’ll have to wait to publish this review until after we’ve made our decision. But I am looking forward to more from this author, and I think teens are going to love her work.

lbyr.com
theNOVL.com

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Review of Not for the Faint of Heart, by Lex Croucher

Alternate History, Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

Not for the Faint of Heart

by Lex Croucher
read by Kit Griffiths and Olivia Dowd

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2024. 11 hours, 36 minutes.
Review written June 26, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Not for the Faint of Heart had the look of the author’s other book, Gwen and Art Are Not in Love, so I was pretty sure I’d enjoy it. And sure enough, I was right about all of that.

Both books are set in alternate universes, dealing with descendants of legends. In Gwen and Art it was descendants of King Arthur, and in Not for the Faint of Heart, we’ve got grandchildren of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. In both books, the world has been altered to be LGBTQ-friendly in the medieval context, with plenty of LGBTQ characters and relationships. And both books are light-hearted and a whole lot of fun – with some serious thought thrown in, of course.

The book begins when Clem, a teenage girl who’s an apprentice healer, gets herself kidnapped by the Merry Men in place of her older mentor, who would have trouble with camping in the forest.

But the band of Merry Men isn’t like the heroes Clem has heard legends about. For one thing, they’re not all men, and they’re more militaristic than the folks from the tales. The band that took her away is led by Mariel Hood-Hartley, the granddaughter of Robin Hood, and daughter of Robin Hood’s son-in-law, Jack Hartley, the current commander of the Merry Men, and the one who insists on militaristic order. They’ve kidnapped Clem because she and her mentor have worked as healers on the Sheriff’s men, and they want to set an example. Clem is firm that if someone needs a healer, she will step up.

Mariel is our other viewpoint character. She is trying to please her father and earn her captaincy, but she can never seem to do so. When the larger group is ambushed on their secret forest paths and leaders are captured by the Sheriff, they’re sure that someone has betrayed them. But Mariel disagrees with the other captains about who’s responsible, and sees this as a chance to prove herself to her father.

Of course, we’re not surprised when the two viewpoint characters are attracted to each other. There’s romance and misunderstandings – all in the context of thinking about what is the true mission of the Merry Men and are they really fighting for the people of the wood? And plenty of fighting and plotting along the way.

Yes, there are some casualties of the fighting, but the book is mainly a light-hearted romp through a world that might have been, with romance and thoughts about how to do good in the world – and it leaves you feeling good.

lexcroucher.co.uk

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