borderline fantasy

I recently read two first fantasy novels, Lawrences’s Prince of Thorns and Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God, with the same (rotten) core idea, namely a teenager or even pre-teen exposed to violence, sadism, and mistreatment and becoming a perfect killer. The plausibility of the thing is not what bothers me, as the past years sadly […]

where the wild ladies are [book review]

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda is a winner of  the 2021 World Fantasy Awards (which I bought for that reason!) and a collection of Japanese short stories that bring a new view on some traditional Japanese tales, representing a form of empowerment to the women involved in these. (Not that I knew […]

les sentiers des astres [book review]

It is quite rare that I read heroic fantasy or science fiction in French, presumably because I do not spend enough time in Parisian bookstores… Thanks to a visit to Librairie Compagnie, rue des Écoles, last July, storing enough travel books for Japan, (incidentally) all of which made it back home by post today!, I […]

Best Served Cold

“Science is a system of rational thought devised to investigate the world and establish the laws by which it operates.” Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold I have just finished Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold I brought back from Texas. It is even darker and more sinister than the First Law trilogy. But, despite some flaws […]

The Way of Shadows

“The mathematical formulae were no help; they were full of infinities and zeroes with no way of knowing on which side of the equation they landed.” This is the first volume of The Night Angel Trilogy, written by Brent Weeks. It falls within the “assassin” branch of heroic fantasy, where the lower levels of a […]