The Blazing Star by Imani Josey is the Egyptian portal fantasy that you probably didn’t even know you should be reading. It’s light, fairly uplifting, and really a pretty fun read.

Portal Fantasies. They take modern regular people and put them in crazy fantasy lands. You know, kinda like Doctor Who, where some regular person gets to go fly around with a space wizard. Or Labyrinth where some kids go into a magic place to see David Bowie in fantastically tight pants.

In this case a girl from Chicago lands in ancient Egypt. Cool, right? We spend a significant percentage of the first half of this book just experiencing the world, which is preeeeeety much how this subgenre works.

No David Bowie, though.

Hey, wait, come back.

Things pick up a little in the second half of the book, which is officially known as the OH MAN SHIT’S GOIN’ DOWN half of any portal fantasy. Stakes go up and suddenly our protagonist is interested in more than just going home.

What we get here is a nice YA story that isn’t too angsty, has a great twin relationship (Portia and her sister Alex), and lets us do a little light tourism through ancient Egypt. I call that a worthwhile read.

The Blazing Star is out December 6th, and is probably the book you want to buy someone for Christmas.

I got a free copy of this from NetGalley.

Ok, look. I haven’t done book reviews on this blog for a while. The reason is that as I move around in the publishing community, I’m meeting a lot of authors. It gets awkward talking about books written by people I have met or MIGHT meet.

So, don’t think of this as a review. Think of it as a recommendation. I read A LOT of books. Many of them are quite good. I plan on using this space to say nice things about books. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if any given book is right for you.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Yeah, yeah, The Fifth Season has exceptional worldbuilding and a fantastic magic system. I don’t care. I DON’T! (I kinda do) What I love about this novel is the depth of its characterization. Not only is it full of powerful, interesting characters, but these characters change during the events of the novel without becoming less compelling. Continue reading “The Fifth Season”

I don’t believe my geek cred has ever been questioned. If it were, I believe the following ought to clear things up.

Recently, I visited my sister. She informed me that she had a box of books that she got from my parents. They were mostly hers, but she was fairly certain that a few of them did not belong in her collection alongside Nancy Drew and Little Women.

I’m fairly certain she was correct.
Continue reading “All Five Doctors”