Fantasy Reviews
22 reviews found
Of Blood and Fire
by Ryan Cahill
Of Blood and Fire made me work for it, and I'm still not convinced I should have had to. The first three quarters move like a guy assembling IKEA furniture with no instructions and forty extra screws ...
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The Demon Star
by Jesse Aragon
Jesse Aragon wrote the kind of debut novel that should be illegal, the kind where you finish it and immediately go check the author bio for a typo, because surely someone doesn't just walk in off the ...
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Time of Contempt
*Time of Contempt* is the best Witcher book yet, and it's the first one that fully admits what this series actually is. This isn't five standalone novels, it's one long story getting doled out a fifth...
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Blood of Elves
*Blood of Elves* is the first time this series asks you to trust it instead of just enjoying it, and the trust mostly gets rewarded. This is the first true novel, and the pace shift is real. Where th...
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Sword of Destiny
*Sword of Destiny* is a rougher, more scattered read than *The Last Wish*, and also a more honest one. It spends less time proving Sapkowski can build a world and more time showing you who's actually ...
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The Last Wish
A short story collection translated from Polish has no business reading like a single unified novel, and *The Last Wish* pulls it off anyway. I finished the last page more attached to this world than ...
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A Parade of Horribles (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #8)
This is the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book I've had to actually wait for. Every other entry was already sitting there fully available the day I discovered the series. Now I get why the rest of this f...
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This Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #7)
For several books now, Faction Wars has been the thing on the horizon: the event everyone mentions, prepares for, and quietly dreads. This Inevitable Ruin is finally where Dinniman stops teasing it an...
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The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #6)
This is the book where Dungeon Crawler Carl stops feeling like a story about one guy and his cat grinding through floors. It reveals itself as the sprawling, intergalactic saga it was building toward ...
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The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)
The Strength of the Few is a more ambitious and more demanding sequel than its predecessor, and that ambition is both its greatest strength and its biggest hurdle. Where the first book allowed readers...
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The Butchers Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)
An absolutely wild, emotional, brutally brilliant ride The Butcher’s Masquerade somehow manages to raise the bar on a series that already lives on pure chaos, heart, and sweat-soaked hilarity. Book 5...
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The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #4)
The Gate of the Feral Gods takes the Dungeon Crawler Carl series to new heights. It is intense, emotional, and wildly creative, packed with jaw-dropping twists and unforgettable moments. As Carl and D...
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Carls Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #2)
Carl's Doomsday Scenario, the second book in Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series, builds perfectly on everything that made the first entry so addictive. The story ramps up the danger, the chao...
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Dungeon Crawler Carl
Dungeon Crawler Carl was a wild ride, my first audiobook that actually clicked, and that alone made the experience memorable. The narration (by Jeff Hays) really brought the characters to life, especi...
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The Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #3)
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, the third entry in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, absolutely delivers on the chaotic promise of its title. It is packed with high-stakes strategy, brutal comedy, an...
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Onyx Storm (The Empyrean #3)
Onyx Storm is yet another exhilarating, poignant installment in the Empyrean series. Violet has never been more on a realistic trajectory as she faces losses and new discoveries kept from her, essenti...
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The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2)
The Well of Ascension is the rare sequel that doesn’t just continue a story, but deepens it, complicates it, and retroactively makes the first book better. After the explosive ending of The Final Empi...
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Iron Flame (The Empyrean #2)
Iron Flame picks up immediately where Fourth Wing left off, and Rebecca Yarros wastes no time throwing the reader back into Basgiath’s brutal rhythms. The stakes are higher, the secrets heavier, and t...
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Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire is a masterclass in worldbuilding, magic systems, and character development, delivering an epic fantasy experience that lingers long after the final page...
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The Will of The Many
I stumbled across The Will of the Many around Christmas 2023, while lining up my TBR for 2024. It made the list, but when the new year started, I dove headfirst into the Red Rising saga, becoming inst...
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Fourth Wing (The Empyrean #1)
Fourth Wing surprised me. As someone who doesn’t usually gravitate toward romance-heavy stories, I went in expecting solid worldbuilding and dragons, with the romantic elements as background noise. Wh...
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The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)
by R.F. Kuang
I support women’s rights, but more importantly… I support women’s wrongs....
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