The first time I read The Historian was way back in 2005 when it was first published. I liked it enough back then to read Kostova’s next novel, The Swan Thieves (which I have read more than once), and I decided to reread it now to see if I would still like it all these years later. If you like historical fiction, The Historian is a fascinating novel, but at the same time it can feel like a bit of a slog to read.
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I liked Mexican Gothic, but I did not love it. It is a deliciously gothic novel set in a creepy old mansion that may or may not be haunted, but the true horror in the novel is rooted in Mexico’s colonial history and eugenics. The novel takes a bizarre turn towards the end, but I just went with it because it does fit in with the themes of the novel.
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Return of the Trickster is the last novel of the Trickster Trilogy, so do not read this review if you have not read Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift yet.
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I spent the past week reading both Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift, books one and two of Eden Robinson’s Trickster trilogy (book three is already out, I just have not bought a copy yet). Last year, I read Robinson’s Monkey Beach, which is serious and melancholy compared to the Trickster books. The Trickster books are surreal and somewhat bizarre (not in a derogatory way), and they are also humorous despite the tragic circumstances of the protagonist’s life. I really enjoyed reading both Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift, and now Robinson is on my list of writers whose novels I will look out for.
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I really enjoy Brunonia Barry’s novels, The Lace Reader, The Map of True Places and The Fifth Petal. All three novels are set in and around Salem, Massachusetts, and are loosely interconnected by the characters that appear in each novel. Salem’s history of witches features prominently in the novels, but the novels do not lean too much into the occult or the mystic. As much as I do appreciate supernatural stories, I like that Barry’s novels are grounded in reality, so that when uncanny things do happen, they can be written off as coincidence. Barry’s novels focus on complicated relationships, and each one involves a protagonist who must confront the painful and traumatic events from their past. The Map of True Places is Barry’s second novel, but it is the third one that I have read. These novels do not have to be read in order to be appreciated, and they can each be appreciated on their own (meaning, this is not a series where you have to read each and every novel to understand what is going on).
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Plain Bad Heroines by emily m. danforth is a mishmash of different genres: we’ve got supernatural horror, historical fiction, queer romance and a modern riff on fame and the movie industry. Plain Bad Heroines is also meta-fiction as it is about a book that sets off a chain of events in the past that are written about in a book in the present that is being turned into a movie. I can see why people would be drawn to this novel, because it does sound interesting on the face of it, but I would have liked it better if I had not been so annoyed by the narrative voice employed by the author and if it did not have such an abrupt ending.
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Victoria Schwab (or V.E. Schwab) is a popular writer of supernatural and fantastical YA fiction. I read her Shades of Magic trilogy a few years ago because it was well received, but I was not particularly impressed by it and thought it was just okay. And then I read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which leans more into adult fiction, and I absolutely loved it. This made me decide to give Schwab’s other books another try, and so I read This Savage Song. Like the Shades of Magic trilogy, I thought This Savage Song was just okay. I think I need to move on from reading YA supernatural fiction.
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I will always be drawn to Maggie Stiefvater’s novels. Her stories are richly imaginative and set in the real world, with just enough of the supernatural to make them seem plausible. Mister Impossible is the second book of The Dreamer Trilogy; the first book is Call Down the Hawk. The Dreamer Trilogy is a spin-off of The Raven Cycle, a quartet of books that I do not even know how to summarize even though I have read them all twice. Essentially, The Raven Cycle is about a teenage girl and four private school boys who are in search of a Welsh king named Glendower who is supposedly sleeping underneath a forest called Cabeswater. There are psychics, ley lines, ghosts and other supernatural things in these books. Nothing I say will make these books make sense, all I know is that I enjoy reading The Raven Cycle; I enjoy the characters and their relationships with each other; I enjoy the lyricality of Stiefvater’s writing.
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The God of Lost Words is the third and final book of the Hell’s Library trilogy. If you have not read The Library of the Unwritten (book one) and The Archive of the Forgotten (book two) yet and plan on reading them, then do not read any further as this review will contain some spoilers for the first two books.
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I really enjoyed Stuart Turton’s first novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. If you like murder mysteries, I highly recommend it. It is set in the 1920s at a country manor and is about a man who has eight days to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle, the heiress of the family that owns the manor, the twist being that he wakes up each day in a different body of the guests and servants at manor. It is a highly original novel, which does take a strange turn towards the end, but it is still good. The Devil and the Dark Water is Turton’s second novel, and I had been looking forward to reading it. It is not as original as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, but it is a worthy follow up.
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