Review of Thornhedge, by T. Kingfisher

Audiobooks, Fairy Tale Variant, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Thornhedge

by T. Kingfisher
read by Jennifer Blom

Macmillan Audio, 2023. 3 hours, 43 minutes.
Review written April 28, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
2024 Hugo Award Winner
2024 Locus Award Winner

What if the beautiful princess sleeping in the tower absolutely should not be woken?

This delightful and immersive novella is narrated by Toadling. Toadling was born human, a princess even, but when she was only an hour old, fairies stole her from her crib and replaced her with a changeling. She was brought up by loving water sprites. She learned magic from them, took on many of their characteristics, and can turn into a toad at will.

We first meet her watching over a tower for hundreds of years, hoping against hope that humans have stopped telling stories about it and that the thick thorn hedge and the brambles she set about it will keep all humans away.

But then, after years of quiet, a poor rundown Muslim knight comes and camps near the thorn hedge. He has read about a princess in the tower, and his curiosity compels him to find out if it’s true. But then he meets Toadling and becomes the first person to speak to her in hundreds of years – and he won’t be warned away.

As Toadling deals with this unexpected and hard-to-dissuade intruder, we learn more about her story and why she’s guarding the tower. And we, too, come to hope that the princess will not be woken.

Yes, there’s some danger and darkness in the middle of this tale, but we come to love the characters and the way it wraps up in the end is absolutely perfect. This is a tale to treasure.

redwombatstudio.com

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Review of The Otherwhere Post, by Emily J. Taylor

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Otherwhere Post

by Emily J. Taylor
read by Barrie Kreinik

Listening Library, 2025. 11 hours, 22 minutes.
Review written January 23, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

I placed The Otherwhere Post on hold because I wanted to see why so many other people had done the same. (My job is to select books for a large public library system, so I see what’s popular and often get curious.) Sometimes I’m disappointed by that method, but not this time. The Otherwhere Post pulls us right into the action, as Maeve Abenthy has a ticket to another city, to adopt another identity, because she’s been in her current position, working in an ink shop, too long, and people might realize who her father is.

The whole world, including Maeve, believe that seven years ago, her father was responsible for the living death of every person in Inverlea, one of the three known worlds. But then the Otherwhere Post finds a way to deliver a batch of old letters from shortly after the tragedy – and Maeve receives an anonymous letter from an “old friend” of her father who claims he was innocent – and they have proof. Only Maeve has already missed the meeting he proposed for seven years ago.

All magic in the three known worlds is done through scriptomancy – messages written with special ink by talented, trained people. Maeve’s father was a skilled scriptomancer and courier and lived at the Otherwhere Post, with Maeve in the keeping of her aunt after her mother’s death. So Maeve decides that the obvious way to find this “old friend” is to train to be a courier. Good thing her father grounded her in the basics of writing. Now if she can just pass the admissions test.

Of course, once Maeve gets to the academy, she’s going to have trouble finding the old friend, when she doesn’t dare reveal who she is. But someone knows and starts sending her magical threatening letters.

I shouldn’t have liked this book, because the plot is pretty chaotic, with some drastic turns at various points. But I liked Maeve immensely (despite the unethical way she got into the school), and I liked the young man assigned to be her mentor, and the world-building was creative, so I forgot to be nitpicky and enjoyed the ride.

emilyjtaylor.com

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Review of The Neverfear, by Katherine Rundell

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

The Neverfear

by Katherine Rundell
read by Samuel West

Listening Library, 2026. 8 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written September 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is the third book in the series that began with Impossible Creatures, and in my opinion, it continues to be the best currently ongoing fantasy series for kids. Katherine Rundell has a skill that J. K. Rowling also possessed of inserting delightfully imaginative magical details. She’s got a bestiary in the back of each book that has many creatures you will have heard of before, such as dragons and unicorns, but plenty of unique creations of her own.

You will want to read these books in order, though I’m finding I’m not too lost if I’ve forgotten many of the details from the earlier books. Listening to this one reminded me just how much I have enjoyed them all, and I’ll be wanting to reread them from the beginning.

In this volume, Christopher is now living most of the time in the magical world of the Archipelago, studying to be a good guardian, and Anya, the one-time princess from the second book, is living on the same island with her father, the berserker Nighthand, and Irian, the beloved of Nighthand.

On an errand with Christopher and Anya, Irian is kidnapped by a sinister band of outlaws who wear Ouroboros bracelets. The children are told they must perform three progressively more difficult Herculean tasks or she will die. After they perform amazing exploits to complete the tasks, a new threat arises to everything they care about.

In the progress of carrying out these tasks and defeating these challenges, against all odds, both Christopher and Anya uncover new skills within themselves. There’s lots of danger here, along with love, loyalty, humor, and plenty of magic. Samuel West’s voice is perfect for narrating these adventures, matter-of-factly presenting the magical details with his proper British accent.

Reading these books makes me wish my kids were young again, as they would make splendid family read-alouds.

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Review of Princess Academy: The Graphic Novel, by Shannon Hale and Victoria Ying

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

Princess Academy

The Graphic Novel

by Shannon Hale
illustrated by Victoria Ying
color by Elena Dall’aglio

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026. 284 pages.
Review written August 23, 2026, from a copy ordered via Amazon.com and signed by the author.
Starred Review

I ordered two copies of this book for my two 11-year-old nieces (different families) in time to have them signed by Shannon Hale at the National Book Festival. And – I had to wait in line so long, I got the entire book read!

I read and loved the original Newbery Honor-winning book back in 2005, and listened to the audiobook in 2008, so it’s been a long time, but I know the story well. I enjoyed the graphic novel, and I can’t think of anything important that it left out, though of course it’s much quicker to read than the original book.

I like the way they show that people from the village of Mount Eskel like to sing, but having words for songs and musical notes dancing across the pages, especially starting each chapter. That reminded me… and sure enough I checked, and each chapter of the original book also begins with a song. The addition of musical notes and the words flying in the air makes them come across more as songs than poems in the graphic novel.

I also like how the graphic novel portrays quarry speech – when the villagers of Mount Eskel can speak to one another across distances through the special stone of their home. In the graphic novel, these show as golden bubbles, with pictures and words inside them, but you get more of a feeling of what’s going on, and the author doesn’t need as many words of description.

Other than that, I’m not sure how well the book works as a stand-alone graphic novel, since I’m reading into it everything I already know about the story. But as far as I can tell, it gets the same ideas across in fewer words because of the visual impact of the pictures.

And the pictures are well done. I can keep better track of the various characters than when I was only visualizing them in my own head. They show Mount Eskel as a beautiful and brightly colored place.

I’ve forgotten to tell what the book’s about. A small mountain village is disrupted when the kingdom’s priests have performed divination and determined that the future princess will come from their village. So all the girls within a few years of coming of age are taken to a princess academy to learn skills like reading, writing, arithmetic, etiquette, and diplomacy. At the end of the year, there will be a ball and the prince will choose his bride.

Our protagonist Miri enjoys learning at the academy, and hopes to help her village with what she’s learned. She’s not sure she wants to leave her mountain. Besides, she has a handsome friend at home that she’s maybe having feelings for. Does she want to marry a stranger in exchange for power?

I do still hope that people (my nieces) will want to move on to the plain text book. It necessarily has more nuance – but the story did translate well into this new medium.

One other note: I put the original book on my Young Adult page because, after all, it’s about young people getting married. This graphic novel is a little more explicit that the marriage won’t happen until the chosen princess comes of age, and the style of the illustrations is more geared to middle grades than to high school, so I’m going to list this on the Children’s Fiction page.

shannonhale.com
victoriaying.com

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Review of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, by Lex Croucher

Audiobooks, Fantasy 0

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay

by Lex Croucher
read by Kishore Walker and Theodore Taylor

Macmillan Young Listeners, 2026. 12 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written August 26, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.

This book is a sequel to Gwen and Art Are Not in Love, where we’ve got an alternate-reality medieval England featuring descendants of King Arthur. You should read the first book first, and then, like me, you’ll be delighted that there’s a sequel and you can spend more time with these characters.

But the events of the first book have left their mark. Gabe is now king, and he doesn’t feel up to the task, and he keeps having panic attacks that get him hiding in a closet. And Bridget has what amounts to PTSD – except of course there’s no name for that in medieval times. And both of those conditions are messing up the budding romances from the end of the first book. On top of that, there are rumblings in the country about the “Lancelot Laws” – that it’s okay for men to love men and women to love women. Not everyone’s happy about that, and I’m afraid the Catholic church hosts the main opposition.

In this book, they go on a quest. Gabe has an aide who amounts to a publicist, and she convinces him to assemble his own Round Table of knights and go on a quest to verify the reported sightings from Arthurian legend – a Questing Beast, a person purporting to be the Green Knight, another said to be the Lady of the Lake, and of course the Grail. This way, Gabriel’s subjects will get to know him.

So the quest throws them into a company that includes the two couples in question, and they track down each reported Arthurian legend. Most of them indeed have a natural explanation – but there’s a touch of wonder thrown in before the book ends that I did enjoy.

I hate to say it, because I loved the book, but this one felt a bit long. The couples went back and forth on being harmonious or at odds with one another, and the quest didn’t feel very focused, kind of wandering from one thing to another. On the other hand, I enjoyed the characters, and it’s not like mental health issues would have been easily resolved in medieval times – these are handled well.

Bottom line: Read the first book first. If you enjoy it, and want more from those characters, I’m happy to report that you can read on.

lexcroucher.co.uk

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Review of Brigands and Breadknives, by Travis Baldree

Audiobooks, Fantasy, Fiction Review, Starred Review 0

Brigands and Breadknives

by Travis Baldree
read by the Author

Macmillan Audio, 2025. 8 hours, 25 minutes.
Review written July 13, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

Brigands and Breadknives is the third cozy fantasy novel for adults that I’ve read from Travis Baldree, and now I’m sad that I’ve read all three he’s written so far. I’m happy, though, to discover an author whose books I love so much and who seems to be young enough to write lots more.

This is not a romance – it’s a tale of friendship and adventuring and navigating a sort of midlife crisis.

Do read the other two books before this one, because there are hints dropped of what went before. This one features Fern, the Ratkin who sold her bookshop in the seaside town where she first met her friend Viv the Orc lady to move to Thune and start a new bookshop there, right next to Viv’s coffee shop, Legends and Lattes.

But after Fern moves and her new bookshop in Thune is doing fine, she’s still discontented. It still feels like there’s a hole in her life. She doesn’t know what she wants, but it’s not this. She gets drunk and makes a promise to tell Viv how she’s feeling and apologize for all the trouble Viv had to set Fern up here.

But instead of telling Viv that night, Fern falls asleep in a cart – and a day and a half later wakes up to find she’s in a cart driven by a fabled adventurer known as the Elf Maiden. She’s 500 years old, and Fern has sold books about her. She’s got a chaos goblin in the cart and is currently on a mission to deliver the goblin to another town in exchange for a very high bounty.

And one thing leads to another, and Fern ends up going along on the quest, and even helping during life-threatening situations. Because the bounty is so incredibly high, there are many other adventurers who want a piece of the action. Even more threatening is the orc who doesn’t want any bounty but just wants the goblin dead. Along with anyone who will keep them from killing her.

So there’s lots of adventure, including fixes you’re afraid they really can’t get out of. (When I find myself reminding myself it’s a book and there’s no way the author will let that character die – will they? – I know the author has done a great job of raising the stakes.) But it’s also an exploration of friendship and life purpose, and simply a wonderful story.

I’ve decided that the new label of “cozy fantasy” is exactly what I was looking for when I started reading young adult fantasy as an adult – but now YA fantasy has moved away from. It’s not super dark, isn’t bogged down with world-building details, and has the feeling of ordinary people doing ordinary things – with a dash of magic involved. (In this case, there’s no obvious magic, but the fantasy characters make it firmly a fantasy world.)

Oh wait, did I say no magic? The elf maiden has a sword, an Elder Blade that was forged with the spirit of a warrior, and which talks. Well, after meeting this sword, we then discover that the chaos goblin has somewhere picked up an Elder Blade that’s now a breadknife. An Elder Blade in Reduced Circumstances, so to speak. So yes, there’s plenty of humor in this tale as well.

Why is it for adults and not teens? For starters, Fern is over forty years old and has adult concerns. I still find this refreshing in a tale. But there’s no need for content warnings if a teen picks it up. Nice and cozy – and a joy to listen to.

Oh, and the author was already an audiobook narrator before he wrote his own books, so he does a fantastic job reading his own work.

travisbaldree.com

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Review of Beauty, by Robin McKinley

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

coverBeauty

by Robin McKinley
read by Charlotte Parry

Recorded Books, 2013. (Print book originally published in 1978.) 7 hours, 5 minutes.
Review written July 29, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

As part of #Sonderbooks25, celebrating my 25th year of writing Sonderbooks, I’ve been rereading books by one of my very favorite authors, Robin McKinley. When doing so, I was surprised to discover that I’d never written a review of several of her books – turns out I read them before I began writing Sonderbooks in 2001. Now, I do own copies of every one of them – but the easiest ones to fit into my queue were the ones my library has as eaudiobooks. I’m happy to say that, even after all these years, Beauty still has a holds list.

Beauty is a sweet retelling of the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” – and is one of the books that made me realize I love fairy tale retellings. This was Robin McKinley’s debut book, and is a totally positive take on Beauty and her family. Even her sisters – who in the fairy tale are selfish and grasping and lazy – are wonderful and kind. After the family’s financial disaster, one sister’s fiance takes the family away to his home town by a magical forest – and they all build a good life together there. The other sister’s fiance was lost at sea along with their father’s ships, and the family has nothing but love for Beauty, the youngest.

This book was written long before it was acceptable to put sex into young adult novels, so the romance between Beauty and Beast is built on shared activities rather than blistering attraction – and indeed Beauty must overcome repulsion at the idea of him even touching her. This Beast is honorable and says he never would have killed her father – Beast would have sent him home if Beauty had refused to come – but he tells her that she would have been eaten up with guilt over sending him to what she thought was his death.

The book does not even broach the subject of Stockholm syndrome or how maybe Beast isn’t all that honorable if he’d deprive someone of their freedom. It doesn’t broach the vast disparity in their ages.

But what we’re left with is a sweet fairy tale with a heroine we can’t help but love. Yes, like the Disney version, Beauty loves to read. She also has a magnificent horse that only she can handle. And she’s someone who makes the best of things.

Read this book for a feel-good Happily-Ever-After tale. And it’s a great introduction to the grand mistress of fantasy’s work.

Note: It doesn’t look like the audiobook is currently available, but do check your local library.

robinmckinley.com

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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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