I’ve been eagerly waiting for a series that makes me fall in love like Harry Potter. Sure I’ve found great books like A Discovery of Witches, and The Night Circus, but nothing has quite hit the mark. Until now.

The Bone Season is everything that I’ve wanted: action, world-building, unique magic, touches of romance and an underlying British sensibility. Sure, it helps that her whole idea of the future is predicated on the idea of Jack the Ripper (see my obsession here and here), and that a woman younger than me managed to write the book. But honestly, the book is spectacular in its own right. It’s perfect for those who have grown up with Potter but are looking for something with a little more grit.

Unlike many dystopian novels, the future is dictated by a shift in the past. History as we know it stops in 1800s when Jack the Ripper released spirits from the aether, causing clairvoyant tendencies to erupt. These clairvoyant “others” have been shunned by the government for their powers but are prized by another race called the Rephaim.

One part Harry Potter, two parts Hunger Games with just a dash of Lirael, The Bone Season just might make you forget that you wanted another Rowling novel.

Amanda Rosenbloom, a vintage clothier living in present-day New York is confronted with the past when she discovers a journal hidden in a mink muff. As Olive’s story unfolds, Amanda realizes that the past is closer than she thought. I particularly liked the main characters’ voices in this novel. Both Amanda and Olive seemed to have a distinct way of seeing the world and the author was able to show this. This novel falls somewhere between I’ll Be Seeing You and Gilt on the historical fiction cheese factor so if you prefer your historical fiction with a side of soap opera, this is your book.

Every once in a while a book comes along and takes your breath away. If you’re very lucky, you stumble across a gem with fully developed characters, beautiful prose, and an engaging story. The Song of Achilles is that book. I’d fallen in love with the idea of Achilles in high school Latin class but my passion for the myth came when I read The Iliad in college. Homer’s musical language is so beautiful even in translation.

Perhaps it’s a bit haughty to try and compete with Homer. However in what is essentially fanfiction, Miller manages to glorify the original myth while still providing new and interesting insight. Achilles seems more alive than he did in the epic poem and is simultaneously more vulnerable and more powerful. Perhaps it’s because Miller manages to fill in blanks that Homer left out such as why Achilles was so distraught at Patroclus’s death or how Achilles came to be the warrior who fought with the Greeks.

I was particularly interested in the way that Miller characterizes Achilles’ mother, Thetis. We get only a glimpse at her rage in The Iliad but in The Song of Achilles we really feel her strength. She is a woman who had her whole life stolen by an unworthy prince and knowing her emotions makes her fury a little easier to bear.

I love a good fanfic as much as the next girl, but this book is so much more than that. Like Wide Sargasso Sea did for Bertha, The Song of Achilles fills out Patroclus’ character. I’ve been eager to re-read The Iliad with this new perspective.

Looking for other bits of glorified fanfiction? Try these:

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Based on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)
Grendel by John Gardner (Based on Beowulf)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Based on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
March by Geraldine Brooks (Based on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (Based on The Odyssey by Homer)

Every once in a while a book comes along and takes your breath away. If you’re very lucky, you stumble across a gem with fully developed characters, beautiful prose, and an engaging story. The Song of Achilles is that book. I’d fallen in love with the idea of Achilles in high school Latin class but my passion for the myth came when I read The Iliad in college. Homer’s musical language is so beautiful even in translation.

Perhaps it’s a bit haughty to try and compete with Homer. However in what is essentially fanfiction, Miller manages to glorify the original myth while still providing new and interesting insight. Achilles seems more alive than he did in the epic poem and is simultaneously more vulnerable and more powerful. Perhaps it’s because Miller manages to fill in blanks that Homer left out such as why Achilles was so distraught at Patroclus’s death or how Achilles came to be the warrior who fought with the Greeks.

I was particularly interested in the way that Miller characterizes Achilles’ mother, Thetis. We get only a glimpse at her rage in The Iliad but in The Song of Achilles we really feel her strength. She is a woman who had her whole life stolen by an unworthy prince and knowing her emotions makes her fury a little easier to bear.

I love a good fanfic as much as the next girl, but this book is so much more than that. Like Wide Sargasso Sea did for Bertha, The Song of Achilles fills out Patroclus’ character. I’ve been eager to re-read The Iliad with this new perspective.

Looking for other bits of glorified fanfiction? Try these:

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Based on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)
Grendel by John Gardner (Based on Beowulf)
The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Based on Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf)
March by Geraldine Brooks (Based on Little Women by Louisa May Alcott)
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (Based on The Odyssey by Homer)

I started reading the In Death series by J.D. Robb about 8 years ago, and these were books 34 and 35. I've been a bit behind since starting grad school and still have two more to catch up on this summer. Obviously, I kind of love this series since I'm so invested in it. I love the main characters and feel like I've developed a pretty close relationship with them over the years. The center of the story is Lt. Eve Dallas who solves homicides for the New York Police and Security Department in 2058 and onward. Of course she has an interesting and terrible secret in her past and because J.D. Robb is really Nora Roberts in pseudonymous disguise, she has a hot and steamy romance going on with Roarke, the hottest, richest man on the planet who also happens to have an Irish accent. If that isn't enough to make you start reading the series, then I don't know what is.

Meanwhile...I'm 35 books in, and I've now listened to the last four on Audible since I had a bunch of extra credits lying around and didn't know how else to spend them. As for being so far into the series, I still enjoy the books and how the backstory (read: interesting and terrible secret) is continuing to be developed. That said, there have been some issues for me lately with predictability and some cheesy writing. Though I must hand it to Nora Roberts since she cranks out like 5 books a year so it's a miracle they aren't all terrible and sloppy messes. As for listening to books in this series as audiobooks, it's ok, but I think some of the voices the narrator uses are kind of cheesy and I find that really distracting in the more serious moments of the stories. It's also kind of awkward during the sex scenes. I'd recommend skipping the audio versions if you are able to read the books, but audio is fine if you just want a fun book to listen to on a long car trip.

Series warnings: As both murder mysteries and romance novels, there are a few things you should keep in mind. These books can be pretty squicky if you don't like to read stories with detailed descriptions of violence, sex, harsh language, child abuse, and rape.

As Meaghan Lanier journeys through the lands of " ice and fire" she brings us a review of George R.R. Martin's fifth installment, A Dance with Dragons. SPOILER ALERT!!!

A Dance With Dragons is the fifth installment of George R.R. Martin's series, A Song of Ice and Fire series (in other words, the books that the HBO series, Game of Thrones, is based on). As mentioned in the review for A Feast for Crows, A Dance With Dragons begins directly after the third book, A Storm of Swords, and follows the characters missing from the fourth book. The fifth one goes beyond the time frame of, Feast, however, to bring all of the characters together again and give us a bit more to everyone's stories.

There are spoilers ahead if you are watching the show or in the middle of the series!

The first two-thirds or so of the book were really interesting to read because I already knew the outcomes of some of the decisions being made. For example, Jon Snow decides to send Sam and Gilly to Oldtown, but I already knew what happens to them on their journey because of the previous book. I liked this added depth and although I wouldn't relish reading another book split up in this manner, it definitely added an interesting element. Dance is also much more action-packed than Feast (though not quite as action-packed as Storm), which I appreciated. Some characters change a great deal and we learn more about them. I found Theon Greyjoy's story to be particularly compelling in Dance. Out of the series, this may be my second or third favorite - in other words, not the best of the bunch but pretty great. Would recommend!

Fair warning upfront: if you aren't already an Alice McKinley fan, this book won't appeal at all. It's a straightforward chronology of what happens to Alice and her friends after high school up until age sixty. Long-time Alice fans will probably know why Naylor chose this age as her cutoff. Always Alice suffers from trying to cover such a wide swath of time - no matter how you slice it, trying to capture this much time in 544 pages is incredibly difficult. I thought Naylor would have done better to cover Alice and co.'s life up to her mid-twenties, and then include the last chapter of the book as an epilogue. It would have eliminated a lot of the fluff and allowed me to spend more time with the characters I've grown to love, like Lester and Pamela, rather than with ones introduced only in this book.

Frankly, although I like the early Alice installments and feel they do a good job of capturing those terribly embarrassing things that happen to us as we navigate adolescence, the series has been deteriorating over time. This was evident in Always Alice; several events in Alice's life that should be a huge deal are glossed over, while others (like vacations) that are of little consequence have entire chapters devoted to them. Still, ultimately Alice is Naylor's creation, and I am glad for her sake that she got to end this series (which she's been writing for almost thirty years) on her own terms, writing about the things she wanted to write about and giving her characters the endings she thought they deserved... even if they weren't always the ones I would have chosen.

This was a digital ARC that I requested via Edelweiss in return for an honest review.