Legends & Lattes, by Travis Baldree

Viv is tired of her life on the road as a sword for hire and after one last quest to retrieve a significant magical object, the orc is retiring to open a coffee shop in a new town. She has done loads of research since discovering the wonderful brew but how do you run a successful café in a place where the beverage is unknown? Luckily there is a local succubus with mad marketing skills ready to assist, a handy builder able to fit out the old stables Viv acquires and a budding pastry chef willing to boost the menu. But Viv’s new life is not all caffeine and sweet treats; there is the local protection mob to navigate and old comrades with their own agendas. This is a fun read; an undemanding tale of friendship and finding your niche. There are a few too many adjectives and the romance is superfluous, but fine. The moral of the story is make your own magic.

The Summer War, by Naomi Novik

Celia’s adored older brother Argent comes out and leaves the family when she is on the verge of puberty. Feeling abandoned, her hurt and fury triggers her incipient sorcery and she inadvertently curses him to live without love. As she grows up and bitterly regrets her action Celia forges a friendship with her overlooked middle brother, Roric, and they search for a way to reverse it. This involves unravelling the complex politics of their country of Prosper and its uneasy peace with the neighbouring Summer Lands, whose immortal fey inhabitants bring benefits and dangers in equal measure. Novik returns to the realm of legends and fairy tales for this coming-of-age novella that celebrates female ingenuity, caring relationships and forgiveness. Celia is a worthy companion to the heroines of Spinning Silver and Uprooted and it would be good to have another tale that potentially explores her progression as Sorcerer Queen.

Powerless, by Lauren Roberts

Paedyn Gray is a homeless orphan, surviving the slums of Ilya by thieving and hiding her great secret – a lack of an elite ability that is essential to be allowed to live in this country. Ordinaries have been declared diseased and are banished or killed, so Paedyn’s late father trained her powers of observation to pose as a psychic. When she saves the life of the King’s enforcer, Prince Kai, Paedyn is forced to compete in the five-yearly Elite trials, pitting her ‘psychic’ skills against those with super strength, super speed, and powers of illusion, kinesis and transformation. The secret sauce to great SF and fantasy is building a believable world, which then allows the reader to suspend disbelief about events that happen within it. The low quality ketchup underlying Powerless, combined with pedestrian writing, makes this poor man’s Hunger Games an increasingly tedious read. It’s full of explicit and gratuitous violence, with a ludicrously chaste love triangle. Powerless indeed.

How to Survive 1985, by Tegan Bennett Daylight

In this sequel to Royals, teen Shannon and her friends once again face a time dilemma as they find themselves in Sydney forty years in the past. It poses the question – were things really better when your parents were your age …or ten times worse? The answer is, of course, both – in different ways for different people. In echoes of Back to the Future, Shannon gets to meet her mother as a teen and has to decide how much to tell her about the future and how much she can influence it. Her previous time loop experience in the shopping centre proves helpful in navigating the past as she looks for her friends so they can work out how to get back to their own time. It’s cleverly done, with warmth and wit, but that’s probably enough now.

The Book of Love, by Kelly Link

Teens Laura, Daniel and Mo have been missing, presumed dead for almost a year, leaving their families desolate. They have been held in some sort of limbo by a menacing presence until their music teacher somehow reanimates them, along with another shadowy being they have named Bowie. But their time back in the world will be limited, with only two of them able to stay while two will have to return, with mysterious magical tasks to complete to determine the ‘winners’. Dark supernatural forces are at the root of their dilemma. Susannah is Laura’s sister, Daniel’s lover and Mo’s friend – does she hold the key to how to handle it? This is quite literally a life or death matter for some, if not all, of them and their actions will have a profound effect on their small town and its inhabitants. It takes a very long time to get into this story, which is bogged down in detail for much of its 600+ pages. The characters are just about interesting enough to make sticking with it pay off and a dark, wry humour adds a touch of spice.

The Masquerades of Spring, by Ben Aaronovitch

The latest Rivers of London novella goes back in time to see chief London wizard Thomas Nightingale visiting New York in the 1920s to track down magically malign instruments. Seen from the point of view of expat colleague Augustus Berrycloth-Young, this entertaining tale sheds light on the earlier days of Nightingale, although Gussy’s voice gets a bit twee. While the back story short stories and novellas are fun, it must surely be time for a proper novel that takes the saga forward.

The Queen’s Price, by Anne Bishop

In the world of the black jewels, Daemon Sadi, Warlord Prince and the High Lord of Hell has established a school to train and protect a new generation. Many of the young queens and witches are vulnerable since the foiled attempt to re-establish a vicious culture previously thought to have been banished. Meanwhile Sadi’s disgraced daughter Saetien embarks on a heart quest to find her place in the world, needing distance from her family to find her way after her part in the devastating events. Her journey revisits the past, forcing her to confront unpalatable truths and come to terms with her father’s nature and role in the world. The story she uncovers fills in some gaps from previous books in the series and sounds a warning to the new generation not to repeat history. All must ponder what is the Queen’s price and whether they are prepared to pay it. Anne Bishop’s worlds are immersive and addictive, exploring a breadth and depth of lands, creatures and powers that are also based on very real human behaviours and relationships. The Queen's Price presages a changing of the guard, which also offers exciting possibilities for new storylines in this world.

Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho

After her family falls on hard times, Harvard educated Jess finds herself back in Malaysia living with her parents in the Penang home of her uncle and aunt. There she encounters the ghost of her recently deceased grandmother, who cannot pass to her next life until she sorts out a few things. Unfortunately she wants to use Jess’s body to do the sorting, which brings her into conflict with the fifth richest man in Malaysia and a particularly violent goddess. Jess has her own issues to deal with, such as finding a job and concealing her sexuality from her family, so she really doesn’t need the hassle of vengeful gangsters and clashing religions. Can she appease the gods, lay her grandmother’s ghost to rest and stay alive without upsetting her parents? Well no. This is a wild ride of a novel, combining the supernatural and genuine suspense with a cultural and generational divide to give a fascinating insight into modern and historic Malaysia. The vivid language and sometimes brutal action animate an unusual coming-of-age story with an appealing heroine.

The Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell

Teenage runaway Holly Sykes has some strange and violent encounters with otherworldly beings in rural Kent in the 1980s. She returns home to her parents’ pub when her strange little brother, Jacko, disappears. Seven years later, sociopath Cambridge student Hugo Lang finds his double life as perfect son and student versus fraudulent card sharp is about to unravel. On a ski trip to Switzerland, his encounter with hard working bar manager Holly takes his life in a very different direction, or perhaps to a different plane. Another decade on, war correspondent Ed Brubeck is struggling with PTSD and an addiction to his work and the impact it has on his partner, Holly, and their child. When their daughter goes missing old forces from Holly’s past are reactivated to find her. All this takes to half way through the book and so far, so intriguing. Then we hit 2015 and Crispin Hershey, an ageing, fading writer who encounters Holly on the writers’ festival circuit. He is a tedious character who dominates the next chunk of the novel, to its detriment. His section is actually no longer than the others but is so dull to read that it seems triple the length. Eventually we hit 2025, and the ultimate showdown between those mysterious otherworldly beings – the Horologists and the Anchorites, who have been at war for centuries. But not before we digress into the past lives of Marinus, one of the Horologists, just to spin the tale out even longer. Finally Holly retakes the central narrative in post-apocalypse 2043, where she is barely surviving in rural Ireland with her grandchildren. Mitchell’s books are difficult to describe because they contain such a dense concentration of worlds within worlds. This one is an epic self-indulgent ramble over more than 600 pages. Holly is a compelling protagonist; elements of the tale are entertaining; but it’s all too much and it’s a relief to finally get to the unlikely ending.

Fire and Blood, By George RR Martin

Written as a historical record of the rise and fall of the Targaryen dynasty in Westeros, this mammoth tome served as the blueprint for the recent HBO Game of Thrones prequel series. Starting 300 years before the events of the original books, it covers the takeover of the disparate kingdoms by Aegon the Conqueror and how following generations first built on his legacy, then destroyed it. This sweeping epic covers more than 700 pages and the scale is such that less than 100 of them in the middle of the book encompass the events of series one of House of the Dragon. So there is ample material for further seasons. The beauty of writing it as a historical record is that Martin doesn’t need to worry about character development and has a built-in excuse for inconsistency and repetition, which he makes the most of. The book drags in places, the names are confusing and many chapters are ludicrously long, leaving the reader desperate for a break. The text is broken up by illustrations from Doug Wheatley, but the extreme violence and bloodthirsty politics just get tiresome. Where The Song of Ice and Fire saga contained heroes to barrack for, as well as villains to hate and those in between to keep the Game of Thrones interesting, in this pseudo-history good people are few and far between and don’t last long. Most of the main characters are evil, stupid, brutal, or all of the above and the narrative format creates a distance that makes it harder to invest in them.

The Golden Enclaves

The last student to escape the Scholomance graduation bloodbath, El is back in Wales with her mum, desperately trying to extract Orion from the consequences of his foolish heroics. Wallowing in failure and heartbreak, El then discovers that her parents were responsible for summoning the Golden Stone sutras that can help to build clean Enclaves of safety for wizards. In doing this, they unwittingly cursed their unborn child – her. But despite El and her friends having lured most of the world’s mals to their doom, something is attacking Enclaves. El is also determined to return to the Scholomance to put Orion out of his misery and along the way discovers that his parents are responsible for his fate. Can she overcome the powers ranged against her and find a way to heal and redeem something from the debacle wrought by maleficent magic? She has to travel far and wide for the answer to that and to solve the mystery of the black heart of the Enclaves and the reality of her destiny. This final lesson of the Scholomance goes to some surprising places and poses some interesting moral dilemmas for El and her allies. Turns out that good versus evil is rarely a black and white issue. This is complex dark fantasy, with satisfyingly imperfect characters and motivations.

Bravely, by Maggie Stiefvater

Princess Merida has returned to the kingdom of Dun Broch after a year of travel to find everything is just the same. She loves her home and her family but they also make her restless and unsatisfied. In a case of be careful what you wish for, Merida finds herself caught between two gods and a warlord, with a year to enact change or face ruin from one direction or another. Can she forge alliances with other kingdoms and at the same time prod her parents and her triplet brothers out of their comfort zones? And how will the quest change her? A follow-up to the story of the Pixar film Brave, Stiefvater cleverly picks up the threads of the original story and its humour to create a mix of history, folk tale and fairy story. It makes for a different kind of coming-of-age story, as Merida learns a lot about her family, her country and finally herself. As in the original film, Merida is an appealing and relatable heroine and it will be interesting to see if Disney takes this story up as a sequel.

Crowbones, by Anne Bishop

Back in the world of the Others, in the small lakeside tourist town of Sproing, Vicki DeVine – the Reader - continues to act as a bridge between the Terra Indigene and human populations. The delicate balance of relations between the species is threatened by a malicious prankster on this world’s equivalent of Halloween. But there are much darker forces at work here, with both humans and Others manipulated to cause maximum trouble as some kind of experiment proceeds and a truly terrifying hunter is sent to clean out the rot. Vicki DeVine and her alliance of humans, shapeshifters, vampires and elementals must work together to protect the town and the future of interspecies cooperation. They risk being caught between the evil that threatens and the wild retribution that could ensue. Anne Bishop’s fantastic worlds are completely immersive and this one, a recognisable alternate of our own, contains striking parallels and warnings about the dangers of messing with the natural world. Hopefully she is not yet finished with its colourful characters.

The Last Graduate, by Naomi Novik

Lesson Two of the Scholomance takes up where Lesson One ended in A Deadly Education, with El and her allies starting their final year at the magical and deadly boarding school. They have no idea how successful their repair of the cleansing machinery was and therefore whether or not last year’s Senior graduating class made it out. El receives a warning message from her mother that poses a dilemma, but she is soon more preoccupied with the uniquely challenging curriculum the school has imposed on her. Stretched to her limits, El finds new reserves and new allies in the fight against the maleficent creatures who are out to devour all wizards and especially the vulnerable young ones. But can she expand her abilities to help all those who need her protection and what will be the cost? Novik’s wryly funny dark fantasy holds such interesting parallels to political and cultural divides in the real world, with equally interesting solutions. A sense of foreboding underpins the story, which pays off as expected in a slightly unexpected way. The ending makes it difficult to imagine how Lesson Three will go, but it will be great fun to find out.

The Queen’s Weapons, by Anne Bishop

The latest in the Black Jewels series sees an ugly threat from the past rear its head in the land of Kaeleer. Early warning signs enable Warlord Princes Daemon Sadi and his brother Lucivar prepare to deal with the growing danger. But how will they combat the manipulation of their own family and train their children to come into their own? The answer is with the help and guidance of their Queen, whose presence still lingers beyond death to meet the needs of those she loves. As ever in Bishop’s books, power comes with a price. The rich and deep worlds she creates have their own idiosyncrasies, but also mirror familiar themes and issues. She deals with complex family relationships; containing the storms and risks of adolescence; and setting and maintaining boundaries. All within a realm of dark fantasy, where sensuality and violence are balanced on a knife’s edge. At the same time she makes you care deeply about her characters and fear for their fates. The Queen’s weapons takes old favourites and new into a different era, with room left for further chapters in the Black Jewels saga as the next generation of the Sa Diablo and Yaslana families matures and faces fresh challenges.

Lanny, by Max Porter

An unusual child who lives in his own sppecial world, Lanny is for the most part loved or tolerated in his English village, rather than bullied. His mother Jolie is a former actress, who impelled the move to the country for a better lifestyle. His dissatisfied father, Robert, commutes to London. Lanny spends a lot of time learning from Mad Pete, a well-known elderly eccentric artist. Old Papa Toothwort, some kind of ancient earth spirit, is drawn to Lanny and this could mean trouble for the village and the family. Told in three parts, this story has an unusual structure, with frequently alternating voices of Jolie, Robert, Pete, Old Papa Toothwort and a kind of Greek chorus of villagers. Toothwort’s thoughts literally slide around the page, presumably to emphasise what a different being he is, but it is really physically hard to read. Many aspects of society cop a serve in this tale, including the media and people’s tendency to assume the worst and pile on. A down-to-earth evocation of love, fear and tragedy is cloaked in almost poetic magical realism in this rather strange book.

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

Three very different young women find their lives entwined in this rather different take on the Rumpelstiltskin tale. Myriam is the daughter of an unsuccessful moneylender who must chill her heart in order to take over the business and feed her family. Wanda is the daughter of a violent drunken farmer, brought up in poverty with her two brothers. Irina is the daughter of a wealthy duke who is valued only for her potential as a political pawn through marriage. Despite their social and religious differences these three have a lot in common. None are considered beautiful but all are talented, resourceful and resilient, which they need to be to survive. They must all battle the patriarchy and rely on each other for support and assistance. Like Novik’s first novel, Uprooted, Spinning Silver is strongly influenced by folk tales and set in feudal eastern Europe, in an agrarian society. The supernatural elements include the Staryk, who terrorise mortals and want to bring winter all year round, and a fiery demon who has possessed the Tsar. Our three heroines find themselves caught between these two powers, in a battle that may result only in bitter losers. Novik does a good job of distinguishing between the voices of the three young women, so the reader always knows which is speaking. This success is diluted when she introduces a myriad of other voices as the story develops. There is not enough difference in tone and it sits oddly when first the little brother, then the nursemaid and finally even the Tsar get a first-person narrative. It may have worked better to put them in third person to help distinguish them from the main three. Neverthless it’s an intricate tale that takes the reader on a wild ride before reaching a satisfying conclusion.

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Agnieszka lives in a small village near the ominous wood housing dark creatures that threaten all the villages in the district. The Dragon is a wizard who protects the region and every 10 years selects a young woman from the local villages to be his companion in his remote tower. Everyone knows he will choose her best friend Kasia this time, because she is the brightest and most beautiful, so it is a shock to all when Agnieszka shows signs that she is a witch and must take precedence. Despite its elements of Beauty and the Beast and Rapunzel, Novik subverts the classic fairy tale tropes with this tale of strong women battling a malevolent force and educating all around them while they do it. Agnieszka and Kasia grow, change and adapt, supporting each other through thick and thin. The Dragon learns to share and work with others and the leaders of the kingdom pays a heavy price for failing to curb their ambition and arrogance. Eastern European folk tales underly the narrative, enlivened by delightfully different characters and exciting magic that is deeply entwined with the natural world.

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, by Garth Nix

After turning 18 Susan Arkshaw moves to London to prepare for art school and to find the father she has never known. She is immediately plunged into a secret world of booksellers, who are guardians of the intersection between the old world and the new. Things are out of balance in the old world with a malevolent old power growing its influence while the Booksellers have been asleep at the wheel. But what has Susan’s absent Dad got to do with it and will charming but deadly Bookseller Merlin help or hinder her quest? Set in the 1980s, where Thatcher is the second female PM, this novel adds an alt history dimension to its fantasy premise. The alt is subtle, rather than a major a plot component, expressed mainly via women cropping up in positions of strength and authority. Susan is an endearingly grounded heroine and Nix skilfully blends the tropes of myth and magic with the day-to-day of 80s England, tossing in humour to keep it real. The Booksellers are an intriguing organisation and it will be interesting to see if this is the start of a new series.

A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik

In a very different kind of boarding school story, the Scholomance is as far from kindly Hogwarts as it is possible to be. Constantly under attack from dark magical creatures, its students have the best incentive to learn and pass assignments – it is literally do or die. Galadriel ‘EL’ Higgins has been so well brought up by her hippy mother that she wouldn’t dream of using her considerable powers for evil. This is despite the fact that she has the potential to be the strongest dark sorcerer ever known and that it would make her life considerably easier and more secure. In her penultimate year at the Scholomance, El’s spiky personality makes it difficult to make friends or allies, which limits her chances of surviving to graduate. But incurable hero lifesaver Orion Lake changes the odds considerably when he realises El won’t use him or lie to him and he won’t leave her alone. El is often her own worst enemy, but her moral code shines through as she struggles to do the right thing regardless of her own best interests. There are a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of exposition used to explain how the Scholomance works, which makes the story slow going in parts. But El and Orion are well realised and relatable against a backdrop of class and privilege in the magical world. There is a nice cliffhanger to whet the appetite for the sequel, which should be a bit zippier now that the scene has been set.