Tales from the Circle

    Miss Percy's Guide to the Restoration of Dragons is a wonderful conclusion to this trilogy. The ever-growing cast of excellent characters that feel so real continues to grow, bringing more great characters and also giving more depth to some of the characters that were already introduced in the previous two volumes. This book is full of adventure and difficult situations for Mildred and the others, so much so that I felt intense anger and stress for her future at times, but it's also full of that same cozy vibe that permeated the other two.  With this series the coziness stems from the character interactions and the fact that even though it's a book about dragons you can see similarities and connections to very real behaviours that a pet or child might display. The way Mildred cares for the dragons - and for everyone else around her, really - is so reminiscent of a mother or other caregiver worrying about and caring for their kids, which makes it all so believable in t...

Firebrand Book 2: The Fire-Touched is an excellent follow-up to the first book. It continues the story of Martel as he completes his first year at the Lyceum, hoping that by the end of it, he'll finally pass the novice stage and become an acolyte like the others his age. As this is the second book Martel has become more comfortable at the school and with the surrounding city and I also enjoyed sinking comfortably back into this well-built world with Martel. I enjoyed this second installment almost more than I did the first.  Martel's characterization is consistent with the first one, and he continues to get himself into tough situations and put himself into danger to help others, but by now he has his feet under him a bit more and is better able to handle the situations he gets into - and pick out friends from foes from people who are trying to use him. There's lots of great character work not only for Martel, but also some of the side-characters.  In terms of his magical e...

  Any Minor World by Craig Schaefer follows Roy - a sort of private detective/"hired muscle" who is approached by a bit of a suspicious client. Despite his misgivings, he takes the job and goes after a dead writer's unfinished manuscript and begins to unravel a mystery surrounding this author's books. The mystery brings him up against a legendary criminal network and introduces him to Lucy Langenkamp, an art restorer who once wrote a cancelled comic. As they struggle to survive the crazy adventure that springs up around them, Roy and Lucy slowly grapple with their own pasts as well. It's a well-written book with a very distinctive noir/pulp vibe to it.  Before I go on, I have to comment on the descriptions. I'm usually someone who doesn't enjoy/gets bored by descriptions, but I found the ones in this book to be well-written. They're interesting and paint some very vivid pictures that enabled me to imagine exactly what some of these characters and place...

Pallas Lost by Jake Morrison is a space-heist sci-fi story with excellent world-building. The first few chapters introduce several characters that eventually come together around the mystery of a mythical lost spaceship - Pallas. The way their stories came together was excellent and made for some great, entertaining reading. The author also did a wonderful job at slowly revealing the history, myths, and current politics of the human colonies on the various planets. Everything was revealed smoothly at the right time and it made the world (galaxy, I guess!) seem very real while maintaining the fast pace of the storytelling.  I want to know more about Pallas and the AI that started it all and the politics of the corporations that rule these planets so the book definitely did the job of the first in series quite well, while still telling a complete enough story of this part of the adventure.  I only had a couple of very minor issues with the book. First of all, Eliot's intro scene...

I loved K. S. Villoso's Agartes Epilogues (aka Legacy of the Lost Mage series) and I enjoyed Legacy of the Wolf Queen as well, so I've wanted to read this book for a while. I finally had the chance and I found myself flying through it. Compared to both the other series I've read it was much more on the character-driven side so it reminded me more of the Wolf Queen series. At the same time, there were a lot of call-backs to the Agartes Epilogues in terms of the settings and characters. Overall, I loved the main character Luc, but hated the other main character Roena so it wasn't my absolute favourite of Kay's works, but let's be honest, I still flew through it and found myself eager to get back into it and find out what happens next. Blackwood Marauders follows the (mis)adventures of Luc - a boy who was born on a slave ship and rescued by a man who came to be an amazingly loving father. He grew up on a farm with his father, his father's wife, and their son Al...

I've never been one to get physical copies of books. From a very young age only the local libraries could support my extensive reading addiction. When I discovered how convenient ebooks are I switched almost completely away from physical books to ebooks, whether it's from the library or books I buy on kobo and amazon. So my physical collection is very tiny. It consists of a couple of copies of the Lord of the Rings, one of them very beat-up from the number of times I've read and re-read it, and the Harry Potter books from 3-7 because there was no way I was waiting until that came to the library and had to have them as soon as they came out. I've also got a handful of other books I somehow collected over the years.  Lately, though, I've found myself mentally shelving certain books into a future physical library. These are all books I loved so much that I know I definitely need to have a copy of them if I ever decide to get a bookshelf and start a physical collection....

  The Lord of Stariel is a slow paced, almost slice of life, fantasy story with a period drama feel to it. I flew through this short, cozy tale of a young woman going back home after six years away to attend her father's funeral. She slowly gets accustomed to her old home and deals with her feelings towards her family and the lands of her estate.  I absolutely loved how slow paced it was. If you're looking for action or a fast-paced plot you might find yourself bored, but I personally loved how easy and comfortable it was for me to slowly sink into the Stariel Estate along with Hetta. Eventually dangers do intrude on this quiet world and the plot picks up the pace, but this doesn't happen until closer to the end so don't read this book expecting world-ending dangers or anything.  There is magic and it's almost steampunk-ish in the way it's embedded into this world, but there is also a kind of magic present within the land of Stariel itself and there's also a...

  I had the pleasure of doing a world-building guest post over at RockStarlit Book Asylum. It's all about presenting world-building smoothly and naturally in the story, which is something I always strive to do in my writing. Check it out: https://starlitbook.com/2020/11/16/guest-post-tips-for-presenting-worldbuilding-naturally-in-your-stories-by-noor-al-shanti/

I usually think of planning as a matter of personal preference. And I often see others asking “what kind of planner are you?” Or “Are you a plotter or a pantser?” But I’ve recently started to realize that the amount and type of planning I do for a novel is not dependent on me, it’s more dependent on the story itself. Planning a fantasy novel is significantly different from planning a sci-fi novel, for example. That much is obvious to me. But even within these different genres each individual story needs a different type of planning. I’ve written a few novels now, only one of which has been published so far, but I’d like to look at the type of planning I did for each one. Children of the Dead City - Epic Fantasy ( Published ) This novel takes place in the fantasy world I’d been building for about 15 years before I wrote it. It’s actually the second version of the same story. I wrote an entire novel that focused on the character Hawk (but his name wasn’t Hawk back then) and...