Tag: Tor

Cerulean Chronicles #2: Somewhere Beyond the Sea – TJ Klune

The best book hug I’ve read in a long time has a sequel and it’s a book hug too!

“I have returned to this place in hopes of making it more than it was.”

When Arthur returned to Marsyas Island after 28 years, he brought memories of an abusive childhood and a dream of creating a home where kids like he once was have a safe, nurturing environment to help them grow into who they are.

He and Linus, the love of Arthur’s life who learned to live in colour in the first book, are raising six eggstraordinary kids. Or six of the worst of the worst who are destined to bring about the end of the world… Depending on who you believe.

Picking off after the events of the first book (please read this first), we’re introduced to David, a yeti who embraces being a monster, much to Arthur’s horror. We don’t use the ‘m’ word at Marsyas.

While it would be lovely to simply watch David learn to trust a bunch of strangers, find safety and belonging in his new home, and enjoy the interactions between him and the other kids, the government just can’t leave a found family that is clearly working, quirks and all, alone.

“I’ll never understand humans”

So we have to deal with yet another investigation, with yet another grey government lackey reporting back to the big wigs that be so this home filled with love and acceptance can be shut down for good. While I want nothing more than for this family to finally get a break, I have to admit I loved watching them rise to this challenge.

“Stab her with kindness!”

We rail against hatred and bigotry and divisiveness, and we band together, proud of who we are, refusing to diminish ourselves when people with loud voices and narrow minds demand it. We feel the fear but we don’t let it control us.

Along the way we learn that socks are feet gloves (they won’t be known by any other name from this day forward) and we make sure everyone is aware that we don’t eat Frank the fish.

We spend time with some of the townsfolk we met in the first book. J-Bone is still “saving the universe through music”, Helen has a larger role in this book (woohoo!) and you might like to warn Merle that I’m going to give him the biggest hug the next time I see him.

“You ever get the feeling you became sentient right in the middle of something?”

I had use for some oh, that’s so beautiful tissues in both books. I get all melty whenever I spend time with the Baker-Parnassus family so may need to ask David if I can hang out in his room for a bit to recover.

These books are hugs, absolutely. They’re also underdogs pulling together against all odds, when those in power want nothing more than to crush their spirit and keep them down. They’re learning to believe in yourself and standing up for what’s right. They’re hope and love and one of the best examples I know of the type of family we all deserved to grow up with, whether that was our reality or not.

If anyone needs me, I’m moving to Marsyas.

I am found because I refuse to be in black and white, or any shade of gray.

I am color. I am fire.

I am the sun, and I will burn away the shadows until only light remains.

And then you will have no choice but to see me.

Thank you so much to Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus has built a good life on the ashes of a bad one. He’s headmaster at an orphanage for magical children, on a peculiar island, assisted by love-of-his-life Linus Baker. And together, they’ll do anything to protect their extraordinary and powerful charges.

However, when Arthur is forced to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself fighting for those under his care. It’s also a fight for the better future that all magical people deserve. Then when a new magical child joins their island home, Arthur knows they’ve reached breaking point. The child finds power in calling himself a monster, a name Arthur has tried so hard to banish to protect his children. Challenged from within and without, their volatile family might grow stronger. Or everything Arthur loves could fall apart.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.

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Cerulean Chronicles #1: The House in the Cerulean Sea – TJ Klune

Change often starts with the smallest of whispers. Like-minded people building it up to a roar.

This is the best book hug I’ve had in a long time. There’s power in found family: home can be a place of refuge, with kindred spirits who accept for who you are in your entirety. Even your weirdness. Especially your weirdness. You have room to grow and become more you. You are wanted and loved and chosen. This is what awaits you at Marsyas Island.

Arthur cares for six orphans, categorised by a government department as the worst of the worst. Linus, a representative of said government department, has been sent to the island with the mandate to report on the goings on.

Linus, who has existed in a world of grey, enters a world of colour. The rules and regulations that govern his life aren’t easily applied here.

I love every single inhabitant of the island. I love Helen and J-Bone. I’ve also got a soft spot for grumpy Merle. I want to live on Marsyas Island.

Books like this scare me, but not for any reason you’re probably imagining. I preordered both a signed copy of this book and the Kindle. They’ve both been sitting there unread for four years. Four years! That was before I read the first The Extraordinaries book. What other books have been waiting for me to fall in love with them and what if I never read them? That, my friends, is what terror is made of.

If you need a breath of fresh air and the following quote feels like it was written with you in mind, this is the book for you.

He couldn’t believe it was only Wednesday. And it was made worse when he realised it was actually Tuesday.

If you need some colour in your life, this is the book for you.

If you need a bookish hug is, this is it.

This is what hope looks like.

Don’t you wish you were here?

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he’s given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn. 

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place — and realising that family is yours.

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Alchemical Journeys #2: Seasonal Fears – Seanan McGuire

Cover image of Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire

Melanie and Harry are the couple I didn’t know I needed and that’s saying something because my usual response to anything even approaching lovey dovey is “Bleurgh!” Because Melanie and Harry love one another in a world Seanan created, their love isn’t bleurgh. At all. It is everything!

She’s his fairy tale. The only one he’s ever wanted.

In this, the second book of the Alchemical Journeys series, Seanan expands the world of Roger and Dodger, Hunger Games style.

Melanie, the “overmedicated cheerleader”, and Harry, the quarterback, are the love of each other’s lives but they’ve always known Melanie’s heart condition came with a deadly countdown. But what if there was a way they could be together beyond high school? At a cost, of course.

Some of my favourite characters from Middlegame make an appearance here and I love them more than ever. You really should read Middlegame first for much needed background and because it’s one of my favourite reads of all time.

This book also gave me some new favourites. There’s Diana, who doesn’t get a lot of page time but she truly leaves her mark. There’s Aven, who … wants. There’s Jack, who hasn’t had enough training for this but is going to do her best to make up for lost time.

“All right, this is where things get weird.”

Seanan always introduces me to characters that stay with me long after the last page. I finished this book six weeks ago and I’ve spent more time than I should probably admit thinking about Melanie and Harry. I’ve also spent a lot of time trying (and failing) to come up with the perfect words to describe my love for their story.

Seanan always gives me so many sentences to highlight. Sometimes they’re about the characters or their circumstances but, more often than not, what I’m highlighting are things that make all the sense in the world but make me pause and wonder why I never thought of it like that before. Seanan just gets people, in all of our beauty, struggles and depravity.

People who think a pretty girl is prettier when she doesn’t know it are people looking to take advantage of a pretty girl who doesn’t understand the danger she’s in

Sentences like that just stop me in my tracks.

I didn’t think I’d ever find a series to rival Wayward Children but here we are. I’m sure that Seanan isn’t capable of writing a bad book.

Favourite no context quote:

“It’s all about the symbolism from here on out, buddy,” she says. “Symbolism and murder.”

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

The king of winter and the queen of summer are dead. The fight for their crowns begins!

Melanie has a destiny, though it isn’t the one everyone assumes it to be. She’s delicate; she’s fragile; she’s dying. Now, truly, is the winter of her soul.

Harry doesn’t want to believe in destiny, because that means accepting the loss of the one person who gives his life meaning, who brings summer to his world.

So, when a new road is laid out in front of them — a road that will lead through untold dangers toward a possible lifetime together — walking down it seems to be the only option.

But others are following behind, with violence in their hearts.

It looks like Destiny has a plan for them, after all…. 

“One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter.” — Thoreau

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Alchemical Journeys #1: Middlegame – Seanan McGuire

The moral of this review? Trust Seanan.

This has been one of my most anticipated reads for five years. I preordered it in hardcover and Kindle. I was practically foaming at the mouth waiting for it to be published. And then I didn’t read it. For five years.

Why? First, I was intimidated by the names. How was I ever going to tell Roger and Dodger apart? Duh, easily.

I almost got over that when the first reviews started coming in and they were all so eloquent and thoughtful. I got tripped up by them, wondering if I was even smart enough to fully grasp the layers of this book.

Then Seasonal Fears arrived and I couldn’t read that without having already read this one. Then the publication date of Tidal Creatures drew near and I couldn’t stand the thought of another Seanan book being out in the wild without me.

So, trust Seanan. It will result in much less angst and much more OMG, this book is amazing!

It starts at the end, and there’s just so much blood.

I wasn’t looking for perfection because that doesn’t exist. Outside of this book. Perfection doesn’t exist outside of this book. If a 5 star read is something I’m going to get to the end of and immediately want to reread while simultaneously bashing you over the head with it until you inevitably fall in love with it too, this was that and more. The stars are so full that there’s blood gushing out of them and they’re still getting filled as they overflow.

I can’t even begin to describe this book to you. It’s just perfect!

I loved Roger and Dodger. Individually. Together. I kept wavering between yearning for a connection with someone who understands me to my very core like they have and the thought of that kind of intimacy making me want to run in the opposite direction.

Erin is one of the best characters I’ve ever met and I need an entire book dedicated to her.

This is one of my all time favourite reads. I’m convinced I could read it ten times and get something new from it each read. I cannot wait to revisit it! This time, without the unnecessary angst.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story. 

Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.

Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.

Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.

Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.

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The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill

Cover image of The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

I should have been worried about the crane.

Our unnamed protagonist is fifteen when the crane arrives but they were parentified long before. Her mother, so entrenched in trauma generations in the making, doesn’t have the capacity to be there in a meaningful way for her children. It’s up to our fifteen year old to parent her younger brother, Michael, as well as herself.

This novella is a retelling of The Crane Wife and I still don’t know what to do with this story a week after I finished reading it.

It’s haunting and horrifying. It tackles domestic violence, which is ugly, no matter what form it takes.

There was no one to tell. So I told no one.

In the hands of Kelly Barnhill, though, even disturbing stories like this one contain beauty and that, my friend, is what cognitive dissonance is made of.

It’s the daughter doing everything in her power to protect her brother. It’s how she resists the violence that has invaded her home. But it’s also the way the author creates with words, so it feels like they’re dancing around me.

It’s fitting that the teller of this story doesn’t have a name. Women in her family are the subject of gossip and rumours but they don’t have identities outside of their roles: mother, artist, daughter, sister.

Her brother has a name. The sheep have names. The women do not.

I knew when I read When Women Were Dragons that I’d found a new favourite author. This book confirmed it while reminding me that I still need to read everything else Kelly Barnhill has ever written. I need those stories in my heart, even if they hurt.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

“Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters.”

A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mum, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them — her mum has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed.

Yet when her mum brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mum letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mum abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands.

In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family — and change the story.

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Wayward Children #9: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known – Seanan McGuire

Illustrations – Rovina Cai

“I’m always sure.”

I read this book weeks ago and I’ve wanted to gush about it ever since, but life postponed me. Distance between reading a book and writing a review tells you if the book’s glow fades with time, though. If anything, I appreciate this book more now than when I finished it and that’s saying a lot.

Before I ramble about the book, I need to say something about me. It’s my review so I get to do that. When I first started writing book reviews, I fantasised about the future and what outrageously impossible things I might find there.

This book fulfilled a dream that I only shared with one person because I was so certain it wouldn’t happen: that I would be given the opportunity to read a Seanan McGuire book before the publication date. That it happened at all still makes me smile at random moments. That it’s a Wayward Children book, the series that introduced me to Seanan, that’s perfection right there.

“And we’re getting off topic, which is a neat trick when we haven’t managed to get on topic yet.”

I need to find someone in my world who I can get all spoilery with because they’ve read it too. Until then, I need to talk about some takeaways.

Dinosaurs. Yes, there’s a dinosaur on the cover. Yes, you will travel to a world with dinosaurs. No, this is not a dinosaur book.

The story. This is the continuation of Antsy’s story. You met her in Lost in the Moment and Found. If you don’t know Antsy, please introduce yourself to her before reading this book.

In fact, if you haven’t already attended Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, now would be a really good time to binge the series. Some of the Wayward Children books can be read as standalones if you really want to, although I’m not sure why you wouldn’t simply read them all. This really isn’t one of them. It refers to characters, worlds and events that you really had to be there for.

Antsy. A part of me is still a little bit broken from knowing why she ran.

No quests.

Of course there’s a quest! Would you have it any other way?

Doors.

“Every door is a little different, and every world they take us to is very different indeed, but they all ask the same thing of us, and they all break our hearts, in the end.”

I thought I was obsessed before. This book fuelled my need to know everything there is to know about them. I have decided I need a companion book, Door Lore. It will explain the history of Doors, how they work and how different cultures and worlds understand them and tell stories about them. There will be an entry for every world, which will include where it sits on the Nonsense, Logic, Virtue, Wickedness spectrum. It will be encyclopaedic and glorious!

Kade. This is not Kade’s story but I learned more about him and the world behind his Door. I still can’t wait for Kade’s book but don’t want to say goodbye to him either, so I’m trusting Seanan to give us his story when the time is right.

Sumi.

“You have to listen to me. I died, and that means I’m clever now.”

I have loved Sumi since the day we met. Her nonsense was strong in this book, as it usually is, and I adore it and her more every page we spend together.

Harvest. I need to go there!

The ending. It hit me like a tonne of bricks. Even though I probably should have, I was not expecting it. I definitely wasn’t expecting the sneaky ugly cry.

Be sure. The worlds can be sugar sweet or they can drown me. The characters can (and will) break my heart, time and time again. I will always be sure. I will not stop looking until I find my Door.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children.

When her fellow students realise that Antsy’s talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she’s forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise. 

Along the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises!

A story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn’t always mean finding what you need.

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Edinburgh Nights #3: The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle – T.L. Huchu

Cover image of The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle by T.L. Huchu

As part of her internship, Ropa finds herself playing host to a bunch of hoity-toity magicians at Dunvegan Castle. She’s not getting paid so she plans on liberating a little bit of something for her efforts. Before she can get her hands on anything shiny, the entire event turns into a locked room mystery: magic edition.

‘Everyone is a suspect.’

I absolutely adore Ropa. She has a distinctive voice, her education is pretty much courtesy of the school of hard knocks and she’s currently sporting orange dreadlocks and black lipstick.

One of the things I love about this series is Ropa’s relationships with her Gran and younger sister, Izwi. While both were mentioned in this book, neither had page time and I really missed their interactions. I also missed River, Ropa’s vulpine companion. Thankfully, Ropa’s friends, Priya and Jomo, are Under the Dome with her, as are the Hamster Squad, who we met in the second book.

They’re the admin gophers where I work.

Ropa is a ghostalker. She puts food on the table by delivering messages from ghosts to their loved ones. There was less ghostalking in this book than the previous ones.

Whenever there’s a list of who’s who in the zoo before you get to the first chapter, a part of my brain shuts down. I assume that if there are so many people I need to know about that I need a list to help me, I’m never going to be able to remember them all. This then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m pretty sure I ignored the lists in the previous books and didn’t have a problem. Here, there were details of the principal magical institutions, places and characters. I read them all carefully. My brain then went into panic mode and never recovered.

There was a lot of discussion about the history of magic, which I found interesting, and I learned of the existence of the biblioparadise, where I’ll be spending my afterlife.

A realm within the astral plane where every book written and unwritten sits on shelves high enough to touch the sky.

This book felt like a bridge between what we already knew about Ropa’s world and something big that’s on the horizon. Ropa seemed to tread water a bit in this book and as a result I wasn’t as invested as I usually am in this series. I am absolutely ready for what’s coming, though, and am really looking forward to the next book.

Favourite no context quote:

Thing about kangaroo courts is, the conclusion’s baked in before the dough’s in the oven.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Ropa Moyo is no stranger to magic or mysteries. But she’s still stuck in an irksomely unpaid internship. So she’s thrilled to attend a magical convention at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye, where she’ll rub elbows with eminent magicians.

For Ropa, it’s the perfect opportunity to finally prove her worth. Then a librarian is murdered and a precious scroll stolen. Suddenly, every magician is a suspect, and Ropa and her allies investigate. Trapped in a castle, with suspicions mounting, Ropa must contend with corruption, skulduggery and power plays. Time to ask for a raise?

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The Dead God’s Heart #1: Spring’s Arcana – Lilith Saintcrow

“This, then, is the way to the Dead God’s Heart”

When her mother’s health began to deteriorate, Nat’s plan to move out and go to college came unstuck. Now, her mother is dying and has given Nat cryptic instructions to save her. Accompanied by a thief on a road trip to retrieve a stolen object, Nat is about to discover that there’s a lot her mother never told her about the world. Or herself.

This is a highly descriptive read, which may appeal to some readers. There are some books where I soak up every detail offered to me. Here, though, it resulted in a read that often felt dragged out. While I loved the concept, I never became invested in the characters or Nat’s quest.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

American Gods vs. Baba Yaga in this Russian-inspired contemporary fantasy Spring’s Arcana, by New York Times bestseller Lilith Saintcrow.

Nat Drozdova is desperate to save a life. Doctors can do little for her cancer-ridden mother, who insists there is only one cure – and that Nat must visit a skyscraper in Manhattan to get it.

Amid a snow-locked city, inside a sleek glass-walled office, Nat makes her plea and is whisked into a terrifying new world. For the skyscraper holds a hungry winter goddess who has the power to cure her mother…if Nat finds a stolen object of great power.

Now Nat must travel with a razor-wielding assassin across an American continent brimming with terror, wonder, and hungry divinities with every reason to consume a young woman. For her ailing mother is indeed suffering no ordinary illness, and Nat Drozdova is no ordinary girl. Blood calls to blood, magic to magic, and a daughter may indeed save what she loves…

…if it doesn’t consume her first.

This is the way to the Dead God’s Heart.

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Wayward Children #8: Lost in the Moment and Found – Seanan McGuire

Illustrations – Rovina Cai

Every Heart a Doorway remains my favourite book of all time and I can’t imagine a day when Wayward Children won’t be my favourite series. I look forward to January every year so I can renew the search for my own door.

But … a little piece of my heart breaks every time I’m introduced to a wayward child. I can never forget that childhood trauma connects every wayward. After all, if everything in their lives was unicorns and rainbows, they wouldn’t need a door.

“Some children need to escape from places that will only hurt them, or grind them away until they’re nothing. And some children need to go somewhere else if they’re ever going to grow into the people they were meant to be. The Doors choose carefully.”

It’s safe to say that I hurt for every wayward but Antsy’s story broke me in a way that no other has.

That was the fourth thing she lost: the belief that if something made her unhappy or uncomfortable, she could tell an adult who loved her and they would make everything better.

I didn’t run soon enough. I don’t have words to explain how relieved I am that Antsy did. Not that there wasn’t a cost.

Doors always comes with a cost. Maybe you age out of the world where you belong or you accidentally break a rule and it kicks you out. Antsy’s experience with doors is unlike any we’ve been granted access to before and the cost is similarly unique.

When you consider the reason Antsy found her door in the first place, you’ll realise how appropriate the cost is. People who have experienced trauma that’s a similar shape to Antsy’s will likely have seen this cost play out in their own lives. Maybe not as visibly as in Antsy’s story but it’s still recognisable on the inside.

I doubt we’ll ever walk through Seanan’s door and I don’t think we should ever ask that of her because doors and the worlds that lie behind them are personal. However, between the dedication and the existence of cat-people, I’m pretty sure we’ve never been closer to it.

I would never expect anything different from Rovina Cai but I need to say that the illustrations in this book were practically perfect in every way.

description

I was absolutely delighted to discover that a couple of my favourite Door-touched people had cameos in this book.

Favourite quote:

“If an adult hurt you, that’s on them, not on you. Being bruised doesn’t make you bad, unless you’re a peach, and even a bruised peach is good for making jam.”

I’m thinking of starting a petition to name every month January so I don’t have to wait so long to go on my next not a quest with a wayward.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.
If you ever wondered about favourite toy from childhood… it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.
And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it…

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.

And stepping through those doors exacts a price.

Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.

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The Two Doctors Górski – Isaac Fellman

When Annae moves to England to complete her PhD, she meets Dr Górski, both of them. Having experienced academic abuse by her former supervisor, Annae is wary, using her ability to read people to feel safe.

Annae was the subject of fascination when she was an undergraduate, using magic to remove fear in rats.

“But with magic like this, it would theoretically be possible to edit our response to trauma, to cure mental illness of all kinds – just a little change in the way we feel and that makes all the difference.”

While the premise fascinated me, the intersection of magic with mental illness and trauma, and the exploration of consent didn’t captivate me like I’d hoped. I somehow managed to hover on the surface of the story, feeling disconnected from the characters.

I wanted Annae’s science themed knitting patterns to endear her to me. I wanted to know more about the two Górski’s and the process of making a homunculus. I’m still not entirely sure why I couldn’t connect with any of them.

It’s become a habit for me to send test emails to any email addresses mentioned in fiction I read. There were two in this story; neither currently exist.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Annae, a brilliant graduate student in psychiatric magic and survivor of academic abuse, can’t stop reading people’s minds. This is how she protects herself, by using her abilities to give her colleagues what they each want out of their relationship with her.

When Annae moves to the UK to rebuild her life and finds herself studying under the infamous, misanthropic magician Marec Górski, she sees inside his head a dangerous path to her redemption. Annae now faces two choices – follow in Dr. Górski’s lead, or break free of a lifetime of conditioning to follow her own path.

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