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Review: She Who Became the Sun – Shelley Parker-Chan
She Who Became the Sun is an alternate history/historical fantasy novel set in Mongol-conquered China, following the exploits of characters on different sides of the struggle for power: peasant girl trying to take up her brother’s fate and an enslaved general struggling to reconcile the love for his master with his history of oppression.
Review: He Who Drowned the World – Shelley Parker Chan
Part 2 in the Radiant Emperor – Zhu Chongba having become Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, and shown her desire to the world, she must now find a way to take Dadu, the Yuan capital, and take the title of Great Khan for herself. She is not the only one fighting for this position, however. General Ouyang, the eunuch general who betrayed the Great Yuan, is still out for the ultimate revenge. Madame Zhang is looking for a means to put her husband – whoever he might at that time be – on the throne. And Wang Baoxiang, the new Prince of Henan, has dark plans of his own. As the power struggle in court and on the battlefield reaches a fever pitch, the question becomes: will it be worth all the sacrifices made along the way?
Review: The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
Patroclos, exiled as a boy to the court of King Peleus, meets Peleus’ son Achilles. Half god and half man, Achilles is so far above his peers that a gulf seems to exist between him and the other boys his age. When Patroclos crosses that gulf, his fate becomes intertwined with that of the god’s son, and the tragedy all readers will know becomes inevitable.
Review: The Brides of High Hill – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When they arrive at a great lord’s estate to attend a wedding, they are surprised at the little tensions they find. And what to think of the lord’s son being kept away from the guests? When Chih starts exploring, things quickly take a dark and mysterious turn.
Review: Mammoths at the Gates – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When at long last they return home to Singing Hills to enter their stories into the archives, they find the monastery in a curious crisis: mammoths have come down from the north, the empty halls echo as the divine and most of the clerics are off on a mission, and the neixin aviary is in uproar over the grief of one of their number.
Review: Into the Riverlands – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When they cross the Riverlands, their travelling companions tell them stories of legendary bandits and martial arts masters, while philosophising on the origin of those stories and what the stories say about the people that tell them. But as they tell tales of bandits, they better look over their shoulders on the road…
Review: When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When a pack of tigers threatens to eat them while they are on their way to a mammoth waystation, Chih offers to tell the tigers the tale of the scholar Dieu and her tiger wife Ho Thi Thao instead. Whether the tigers like Chih’s version of the tale remains to be seen.
Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune – Nghi Vo
Chih is a cleric from the Singing Hills monastery, travelling the world gathering stories. When they arrive at the abandoned palace of Thriving Fortune, they meet the old woman Rabbit, a former handmaiden of the empress In-yo, the Northern princess that became the Empress of Salt and Fortune. Rabbit narrates to Chih the story of In-yo’s rise to power at court.
Yearly Wrap-up: 2022 in Review
At the start of 2022, our curators chose some resolutions for themselves? Which media on their to be read/watch/listen/play piles did get their attention? And what else did the year bring?
Review: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution – R.F. Kuang
Robin Swift is taken from his native Kanton to Oxford to study translation: the art of producing magic from the difference in meaning between translated words in different languages. He is torn by the contradiction between his love for Oxford’s translation institute Babel and the study of languages on the one hand, and his growing unease at Britain’s role in the world and Babel’s role in Britain.
Curator Question: 2024 Resolutions
Our Curators discuss their 2024 New Year’s Resolutions – what is on their to be read/watch/listen/play list for the coming year?
Yearly Wrap-up: 2023 in Review
Our curators look back at their 2023 resolutions, and their favourite fantasy and science fiction media of the past year. Which media on their to be read/watch/listen/play piles got their attention? And what else did the year bring?
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