Archita Mittra

Sun of Blood and Ruin, Mariely Lares (Harper Voyager 978-0-06325-431-2, $30.00, 384pp, hc) February 2024.

Pitched as a reimagining of Zorro against the backdrop of Mexican anticolonial resis­tance, Sun of Blood and Ruin – the debut novel by Mariely Lares – manages to be a fun com­fort read with a distinctively folkloric bent. Like its gender-flipped Zorro protagonist who constantly switches between two identities (Lady Leonora, a member of ...Read More

Thief Liar Lady, D.L. Soria (Del Rey 978-0-59335-805-4, $28.00, 416pp, hc) June 2023.

Fairytale retellings have been perennially popular, offering readers the chance to relive the magic and mayhem of a familiar world while also discovering something new about it. Take for instance the tale of Cinderella, where the main character’s escape from a dreary and deeply unjust reality isn’t just temporary (as secretly at­tending a royal ball might ...Read More

Maddalena and the Dark, Julia Fine (Flatiron Books 978-1-25086-787-2, 304pp, $28.99, hc) June 2023.

Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine is an exquisite and lyrical imagining of the lives of two girls, Maddalena and Luisa, who meet at a prestigious music school and whose devotion to each other slowly and carefully builds up to a devastating crescendo that unfolds against the decadence of 18th-century Venice. Fine’s prose, delicate ...Read More

The First Bright Thing, J.R. Dawson (Tor 978-1-25080-554-6, 352pp, $27.99, hc) June 2023.

The First Bright Thing by J.R. Dawson is crafted on an enchanting premise – a magical circus that can move through space as well as time, powered by people with special abilities called “Sparks.” The chief players are Rin, the Ringmaster who can bend time and space to her will; her wife, Odette, a healer; ...Read More

Shanghai Immortal, A.Y. Chao (Hodderscape 978-1-399-71741-0, £18.99, 352pp, hc) June 2023.

Shanghai Immortal by A.Y. Chao’s is a flamboyant debut fantasy novel featur­ing deities and demons from the Chinese pantheon that follows the escapades of Lady Jing – a half-vampire and half-hulijing fox spirit – as she traverses through the realms of Hell, 1930s Shanghai, and the Celestial lands. Vaguely remi­niscent of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow ...Read More

The Moon Represents My Heart, Pim Wang­techawat (Blackstone 979-8-21234-003-8, $25.99, 272pp, hc). June 2023.

Pim Wangtechawat’s debut novel, The Moon Represents My Heart, is an am­bitious, timey-wimey, multigenerational saga about love, grief, and healing, although for me it never quite reaches its emotional po­tential. The story revolves around a family of British-Chinese time travelers whose frequent forays into the past influence their relations in the present. Joshua and ...Read More

The Jasad Heir, Sara Hashem (Orbit 978-0-31647-786-4, $18.99, tp, 528pp) July 2023.

Familiar tropes get rewritten with a twist in The Jasad Heir, the debut novel by Sara Hashem. Billed as an ‘‘Egyptian-inspired political fantasy,’’ it also straddles a deftly written slow-burn enemies-to-lovers romance, although the political intrigue falls a little short. We fol­low the story of Sylvia/Essiya, the heir to the Jasad throne, presently hiding in a ...Read More

Pomegranates, Priya Sharma (Absinthe Books 978-1-78636-875-1, £24.00, 108pp, hc) December 2022. Cover by Jeffrey Alan Love.

Priya Sharma’s latest novella, Pomegran­ates, is a lovely, layered, and luscious retelling of the story of Persephone and Demeter, unfolding against the backdrop of climate change and patriarchal violence. While Greek mythology has been in vogue at least since the success of Rick Riordan’s bestselling Percy Jackson books, Sharma’s novella sits closer ...Read More

The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, Charles Vess (NewCon 978-1-914953-27-9, £12.99, 262pp, tp) September 2022. Cover by Charles Vess.

Charles Vess’s award-winning illustrations have a spellbinding quality to them, but his debut novel, The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, a Tam Lin retelling richly shaded with evocative descriptions, failed to similarly bewitch this reader.

There are only a few notable adaptations of the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin – Diana ...Read More