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Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Length: 384 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: March 31, 2026
ASIN: B0FH1G5QT9
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: eGalley from NetGalley for Review
Rating: 4/5 stars

“When sixteen-year-old Calisa arrives at her great-aunt’s B&B in rural Vermont for the summer, she’s shocked to find a rundown inn rather than the cozy bed-and-breakfast she was expecting. Grumpy and eccentric, Auntie Zee is determined to keep anyone from messing with her beloved inn . . . even though she clearly needs the help.

To convince her great-aunt to keep her around, Calisa sets to work fixing up the inn, enlisting extra help from the groundskeeper’s (handsome) son. But the longer she stays, the surer she is that there’s something strange about the B&B—and its guests. Something almost . . . otherworldly.

The inn is keeping a magical secret—but to protect the place she’s come to love, Calisa must unravel the truth before it’s too late.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got an eGalley of this from NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: I ended up really enjoying this but thought the beginning came off as much more juvenile sounding than a lot of Durst’s other books (maybe because it is more aimed at young adult readers). I am a huge fan of Durst and have read most of her books. This definitely comes off as more middle grade/young adult than her other adult fantasy books. I enjoyed the premise and found this easy to read.

Calisa’s boyfriend cheated on her, and she needs to get away for the summer to decompress from the drama. Her moms suggest spending the summer at her Aunt Zee’s inn helping out. When Calisa arrives she find that Aunt Zee does not want her there. Not only that, but the inn is really run down and a bit…odd. Aunt Zee gives Calisa three days to visit and then wants Calisa to leave. Calisa is desperate to convince her Aunt that she needs to stay the summer. Then Calisa starts noticing odd things about the inn…

Calisa grew on me as a character, although initially I thought she seemed a bit immature and naive about things. As the story continued, you start to see more of her depth. All of the characters in this book lack some depth and seem a bit stereotypical. I was surprised by that because I am normally sucked in by Durst’s characters (although lately I have been reading her adult novels). Maybe that is because this is a stand alone, but I wanted to know more about how the characters thought and felt. Especially Aunt Zee, she kind of remains a mystery, and I would have loved to learn her background.

I loved the inn and the magic there but again felt like I didn’t get to learn enough about it. How did this inn get to be, how does the travel work? I kept feeling like this would have been a better duology or trilogy that would have allowed more page space to add a bit more depth to this cool inn and the characters that dwelt there. Maybe we’ll get a companion book from when Aunt Zee was younger or for one what happens after this book.

I also thought the reveal about what Aunt Zee was felt abrupt, and then we never really learned more about her type of magic. I wanted to learn more about this and have it expanded on. I also thought the intriguing visitors to the inn were kind of glanced over. They seemed like interesting characters sketches that weren’t fully realized.

This is a cute YA contemporary cozy fantasy read. I enjoyed it and read it quickly. My main complaint is everything about it felt a bit too simple; the characters, the world, the story, and even the dialogue. It’s still a really good read, I just feel like it could have been an amazing story if it wasn’t forced into this one short volume.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I liked this story and thought it was a fun, simple, cozy, contemporary fantasy read. My main complaint is everything felt a bit too simple and under-explained. How did Aunt Zee get to where she was? How did the Inn get there? Calisa felt pretty immature and naive for an older teen as well, although she did gain a bit more depth and grow on me as the story progressed. While this wasn’t my favorite Durst book, it was a fun one. I would love to see some companion novels written about this world.

No One Will Save You (Hulu, September 19, 2023)

Hold onto your butts — my new watch-a-thon continues! You can find Part 1 here.

Who likes alien abduction flicks? I’ll soon fix that.

No One Will Save You (2023)

Kicking off the second half of this truncated list with the best invader film by far, 2023’s No One Will Save You, which had a somewhat muted limited theatrical release and subsequently can be found on Disney+/Hulu, but should not be overlooked.

Brynn (played brilliantly by Kaitlin Dever) is a young woman coming to terms with the death of her best friend and her mother. Her friend’s death is partly her fault, and for this reason she has been ostracized by the nearby town and is now living a solitary life in an expansive inherited farmhouse. Her grief is rudely interrupted by a home intruder, who only turns out to be a flippin’ alien.

After successfully fending the creature off, her life rapidly spirals into a deadly game of cat and mouse with more invaders, and a town overrun with mind controlling parasites.

This is a solidly made film, with genuine creepiness running throughout and impressive effects. The plot takes a couple of unexpected turns, and gets a little too frantic for my liking in the third act, but the build up is great, and the final payoff is thought-provoking. Definitely worth a watch.

9/10

Watch the Sky (ROC Film Partners, 2017) Watch the Sky (2017)

Apparently this one was based on a YA novel, and you get the feeling that the filmmakers just took all the dull character introduction paragraphs and threw them into a screenplay blender.

The premise isn’t bad; a pair of brothers send a camera into the stratosphere strapped to a weather balloon to get some shots of our fair planet, but their actions gain the unwanted attention of a gaggle of cow-fiddling aliens, and a government agency that believes boys should be poking frogs with sticks, not doing ‘science stuff’.

This flick has a bit of a faith-based tinge, combined with a coming-of-age flavor, covered with sprinkles of teen emotions, and is therefore all over the place, taking its sweet time to get to any actual alien stuff, and fluffing the catch when it does so. You’ll be delighted to learn that not only does the film end abruptly and leave itself open for a sequel, but I can’t find any evidence that a sequel is being made.

4/10

Alien Hunter (Columbia TriStar Home Video, July 19, 2003) Alien Hunter (2003)

This American/Bulgarian production is one of those forgotten films that you suddenly realize you’ve never seen, seek out, and then regret. Ah, but I’m being a little harsh, for as daft as much of it is, there are some gems to be unearthed along the way, so let’s dig in.

James Spader plays Julian Rome, the horniest cryptologist the University at Berkeley has ever known. We know this because during his introduction he delightedly receives an email with the subject line ‘SEX’, and the message ‘I WANT YOU.’ Before he can bang another student however, he is yanked off to an Antarctic research base to aid a team who have just discovered a weird, pod-like structure in the ice, and who presumably have never watched The Thing.

This object is emanating a signal sound, which Rome is tasked to decipher. Naturally he does so (it translates to ‘Do Not Open’) just as the team opens it. An alien emerges from the shell along with a ghastly liquid virus that kills most of the team, and now, in a rare moment of solidarity, the US government has asked a Russian sub to launch a nuclear missile at the facility.

Can Julian Rome find out what the alien’s agenda is? Will they all die in a fiery inferno? Is that student still waiting for a reply?

Only good for Spader completists.

6/10

Flatwoods (Ghost Cat Films, April 5, 2022) Flatwoods (2022)

Here’s a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a serious expose of the Flatwoods Monster based on West Virginia folklore, a documentary of one woman’s struggle to uncover the truth, or a mockumentary chock full of tropes and poor filmmaking decisions, and fails at all three.

Mandy June Simpson plays Carol James, a documentarian on the hunt for the truth about the Flatwoods Monster, a creature as elusive as Bigfoot’s accountant. She visits the Flatwoods Monster Museum (a real place) and takes in a plethora of rubbish drawings, blurry photos and expensive souvenirs, while talking to local residents and obligatory weirdos. The film jumps from scene to scene with nary a care for stylistic continuity or progression, and the final reveal is limper than a piece of kelp in a carwash.

I very nearly didn’t finish this one, but I hate-watched it to the end purely because I’m dedicated to my craft.

3/10

Monsters of California (Screen Media, June 10, 2023) Monsters of California (2023)

Tom DeLonge of Blink-182 sets out to make an epic sci-fi/monster mash, and turns in quite the atrocious mess. Well done, Tom.

We are introduced to a group of stoner dudes and dudettes who are trying to Scooby-Doo the shit out of a supposedly haunted house and get their asses handed to them by a ghost, or something. This does nothing to curtail their paranormal investigations though, and we are ‘treated’ to various scenes of them doing other spooky stuff, including a spectacularly cringe-worthy sasquatch encounter.

When the most sensible one out of them, Dallas (played by Jack Sampson), stumbles across a military macguffin, the gang must fend off the government, aliens, and dick punches, as they blunder from one horribly scripted moment to the next. The dialogue is terrible, the pacing all over the place, and a couple of fun actors, Casper Van Dien and Richard Kind, are thoroughly wasted. The big reveal, that aliens are already among us and helping humanity to advance, begs the question ‘how long is this advancement going to take?’, because by God all the characters in this film need a helping hand.

A great time for anyone who likes mom jokes, spying on sunbathing girls, and dick punching.

4/10

Explorer From Another World (Piranha Drama, October 30, 2024) Bonus: Explorer from Another World (2024)

I just watched this 45-min short and wanted to slip it in as it meets the criteria just as vaguely as some of the other entries on this list.

I nearly turned it off after 30 seconds as I was convinced I’d stumbled across an A.I. generated film, but aside from some suspicious moments, the film is generally a human effort. The story is slight (alien explorer visits Earths, chaos ensues), the script is purposefully tongue-in-cheek, the acting ranges from okayish to terrible, and the wigs are awful in that shiny nylon way (there are a LOT of wigs).

I don’t mind a pastiche, but I can’t forgive average filmmaking, and the shot choices and editing left a lot to be desired. However, I also can’t stay mad at it, because the filmmakers leaned into the practical gore effects with gusto, and I chortled once or twice as the human fodder got offed in ascending levels of grue and stickiness.

If you’ve got a little bit of popcorn left at the bottom of your Project Hail Mary popcorn bucket, stick this on and suck on those kernels.

6/10

Previous Murky Movie surveys from Neil Baker include:

Probing Questions, Part 1
My Top Thirty Films
The Star Warses
Just When You Thought It Was Safe
Tech Tok
The Weyland-Yutaniverse
Foreign Bodies
Mummy Issues
Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Monster Mayhem
It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos
You Can’t Handle the Tooth
Tubi Dive
What Possessed You?

See all of Neil Baker’s Black Gate film reviews here. Neil spends his days watching dodgy movies, most of them terrible, in the hope that you might be inspired to watch them too. He is often asked why he doesn’t watch ‘proper’ films, and he honestly doesn’t have a good answer. He is an author, illustrator, teacher, and sculptor of turtle exhibits.

Writing and publishing plans, Dolly the crazy chicken update, one of my series leaving KU, and other news.

I received a review copy from the publisher. This does not affect the contents of my review and all opinions are my own.

Dollface by Lindy Ryan

Mogsy’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Genre: Horror

Series: Stand Alone

Publisher: Minotaur Books (February 24, 2025)

Length: 304 pages

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Ever since her Bless Your Heart series, I’ve been on a bit of a Lindy Ryan kick. So, I went into Dollface already expecting a good time, and honestly, it was awesome! This book is like a love letter to the classic slasher movies with just the right amount of self-awareness to pull off the campiness, and despite the violence and chaos, its lively tone ensures that things never get too heavy.

The story follows Jill, a horror author who has just relocated to suburban New Jersey with her husband and young son. Struggling with writer’s block, she’s hoping the change of scenery might even offer a little inspiration for her next book. Instead, she finds herself immediately roped into the baffling world of PTA mom politics and meetings, thanks to her bubbly new neighbor who volunteers Jill for a position on the committee. Unsure how well she’ll fit into this strange new social ecosystem, Jill nonetheless decides to make the best out of the situation, using the opportunity to settle in and make friends.

But suddenly, things take a terrifying turn. A mysterious killer begins targeting the women in the community, starting with the barista at the local coffee shop. And then, one of Jill’s fellow PTA moms is brutally attacked in her home. Could these incidents be connected? As more women are attacked, Jill is starting to think so. After all, she’s no stranger to slasher movies, and as the body count continues to rise, she also can’t help but notice a pattern emerging. The killer wears a plastic doll mask, appearing to choose their victims and methods with a specific purpose. Things are shaping up to be just like the kind of stories she writes about, making Jill think she’s on to something. But can a horror author and PTA mom turn detective and crack the case before she becomes the final girl?

This meta quality of Dollface is where it really shines, with the story going all in on embracing its inspirational origins while affectionately poking fun at them. Take the masked killer, for example, reminiscent of Ghostface of the Scream franchise but reimagined with an uncanny twist that’s both a little creepy but also ridiculous in the best way. Fans of the classic slashers will recognize all our favorite tropes, and what makes it even better is that our protagonist knows all these tropes too! Jill sees them happening in real time, literally even calls them out, but still makes the same kinds of mistakes that land her deeper into trouble. And yet, readers know all this is done by design, because Lindy Ryan is a great sport.

That tongue-in-cheek energy also adds a lot of charm to the story. There’s something genuinely entertaining about watching a horror-savvy character try to outmaneuver a narrative she considers herself an expert in but still messes up. But the fact that Jill is such a congenial protagonist gives this book a playful edge, almost like it’s in conversation with the genre itself, rather than simply existing in it. She’s also an endearing and uplifting figure, despite plenty of trauma and heartbreak in her past. It’s just hard not to root for a character who keeps soldiering on, even in the face of looming publisher deadlines or all the absurd crap she has to put up with from the PTA.

Yet here the supporting cast shines through as well, with the over-the-top moms and neighbors that make up Jill’s new social circle. If you’re wondering if there might be a satirical element to this, the answer is absolutely! The suburban dynamics are exaggerated and a little ridiculous, but that is clearly the point. Even so, the portrayal never feels truly negative. Instead, it comes across as affectionate, rendering the characters in a larger-than-life way that perfectly suits the tone. The novel knows exactly what its going for and doesn’t take itself too seriously, which works well in its favor.

At the end of the day, that’s really the key to enjoying Dollface. Get ready for something quirky, a little messy, but also very self-aware. Rather than trying to reinvent the genre, it embraces it, plays with its conventions, and has a blast along the way. In between all the nostalgic moments and nods to classic horror, there’s humor and there’s gore, coming together beautifully to create a story that’s just plain fun.

Actually I had to deal with the fact that Kit at eighteen/nineteen cannot POSSIBLY fit into a jacket he had when he was fifteen so he obviously had to go out and buy the exact same jacket in a larger size. Which does get mentioned. Kit thinks that might make him weird, and it probably does.

(He does take it off when he wears gear, though, and enough time doesn't really pass in TKLOF to worry about laundry.)

First: I want to apologize. I normally post the full cover (front, spine, back), but… I missed the window to download that from the publisher =/. Second, someone in comments asked about sample chapters—and I realized that it is, in fact, the end of March, and Cast in Blood is coming out on the 28th of April. So: I have sample chapters, and the regular front-only cover. Much of my day is focused on my youngest at the moment, but as he gets used to being at home, he is much, much happier than he was during his long hospital stay—and that makes things easier for me. It gives me more of my brain-space back; it gives me room to think … Continue reading →

Camelot fantasy novels have always held a special place in our hearts, reading that offers…

The post Camelot Fantasy Novels | 6 Paths of Hope, Courage, Fairness and Justice appeared first on LitStack.

Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
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Jonathan Maberry’s Red Empire is the fifteenth Joe Ledger novel and the fifth Rogue Team International book. At this point, the series is long enough that picking up a single entry without context is a bit like walking into season twelve of a TV show and hoping for the best. Maberry does try to make the story understandable on its own, but the emotional weight, the grudges, and half the revelations only really land if you’ve been here for the long haul.
I have. And that probably means I liked this book more than it objectively deserves.
We finally got the long-promised look into Mr. Church. For years he’s been the most mysterious person in the series - Ledger’s boss, puppet master, and occasional badass. Red Empire finally digs into who he is and where he came from. The answers are satisfying. Maberry reveals a lot, but leaves room for questions. The infamous cookie code, for example, remains unsolved. 
Also, the Red Order is back and that means things will spiral fast. These genetically altered vampire-like warriors take center stage again. Their return ties together a lot of old plot lines. It also allows Maberry to reach deep into history, jumping back to the Crusades and the Black Death. I loved the  historical sections that made a lot of things clearer. 
On the modern-day side, a weaponized version of the bubonic plague may wipe away humanity. Between that and the usual Joe Ledger combat scenes, this book gets very violent. Anyone squeamish should probably look elsewhere. Longtime readers already know the deal and enjoy brutal fights, ugly deaths, and the constant sense that no character is entirely safe.
And yes, some familiar faces die.
Maberry has been thinning the cast regularly for years. Fans are used to it, even if it still stings when it happens. The series has always balanced its action with the sense that these people matter to each other, and when one of them goes down it hurts.
The action itself is fast, loud, and relentless. The last third of the book in particular barely slows down. There’s a long siege inside a sealed London skyscraper where plague, terrorists, and Joe Ledger collide. It’s chaotic, tense, and a lot of fun to read.
After fifteen books, the characters feel like old teammates. Ledger’s grim humor still works. Havoc Team still operates like the world’s most dangerous family. And when Maberry throws them into chaos, it’s easy to get pulled along.
In the end, Red Empire isn't the tightest book in the series but it is one of the most revealing. It finally opens the door on Mr. Church’s past, pushes the Red Order storyline forward in a big way, and reminds readers why this series has lasted so long.

Last week, I had the dumb good luck to be sitting to dinner with Christopher Buehlman just after the news came out that Nightfire’s new edition of Between Two Fires had hit #4 on the Bestseller list.

I want the record to show I was on the BTF train long before that.

Indeed, Buehlman, who’s garnered a lot of (deserved) attention for his recent fantasy novels The Black Tongue Thief and The Daughter’s War, had a previous career writing horror, including some of the most creative horror novels (IMO) of the 21st century I have had the privilege to read, and definitely one of the best vampire novels of all time (The Lesser Dead).

But any student of the fantasy genre knows that horror and fantasy, especially the sort of “street level” fantasy found in Sword & Sorcery or Grimdark, shares a large dose of its literary DNA with horror. And so, over a dozen years ago, Christopher Buehlman penned his first fantasy novel under the guise of horror (or is it horror under the guise of fantasy?): Between Two Towers.  The premise was brilliant: what if what medieval people believed was simply… true… and the Black Death was a supernatural event, devils running amok on Earth.

The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysm — that the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict.

Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned.

As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.

Sexy, right?

Unfortunately, the book crashed-and-burned in the realm of sales, stalled its author’s career in the horror genre and really was only known by those who were already fans — 14th-century history geeks like me.

Flash forward to two successful fantasy novels and Tor suddenly gets the brilliant idea it should re-release the novel (via its horror imprint) in a hardcover with sprayed pages and fancy endpapers and voila! A success. It should be. It always should have been. You should read it.  Because, although the above synopsis is spot on covering the plot, it only sort of tells you what the novel is about.

Certainly, this is a book with some big action sequences, following the format of a quest novel as our characters travel down a river and make their way to Avignon. But you know, The Heart of Darkness is a “journey down a river” story too, and yet a lot more is going on inside the narrator’s head and in the eventual meeting at journey’s end, than the plot about steamer trip down the Congo with an attack by natives, and a very much failed attempt to bring the missing man back.

In a very similar vein, BTF is far more Heart of Darkness than Lord of the Rings: each of our characters are very much on a journey inward as they outwardly travel, and the very palpable, very real manifestations of Hell have the powers they do because of what lives in the human heart. Along the way, the author is creating a story comprised of common genre tropes and turns them all on their heads.

Trope #1 The Young Savior and Old Guardian

We know this one: a young, pre-pubescent girl or boy is the unbeknownst savior of humanity and must make some dangerous journey. Along the way they are befriended by a grizzled, disenchanted or unlikely warrior past his prime, forming an odd couple. Name your story and characters here: from the original intent of Strider vis-a-vis Frodo to John Connor and the T800 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, to the tale of Arya Stark and the Hound in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Eragon has this. The movie Ladyhawke has a lower-stakes version of it, with a love-story thrown in. Hell, you can probably wedge Luke and Han in there, because Luke’s such a youthful innocent in Episode 4. Point is, it’s been done, a lot, with lots of variations.

Yet BTF’s Delphine is literally not that pre-pubescent heroine (for reasons I will withhold) and she really may be mad. Also, in this case our tale is told far more from the PoV of the disgraced knight-turned-routier, Thomas, so we can debate who is truly assisting whom…

Trope #2 The Embittered Hero-Despite-Himself

Thomas is our *primary* PoV character, which is unusual in the Young Savior story, but the embittered, fallen man who suddenly finds himself with a chance to be something more “this one last time” is not. This story has played out so many times, in so many ways, I’d waste my time listing them but think of much of Clint Eastwood’s later film career from Unforgiven forward, about half of the noir cannon, and so forth.

But tropes are only problematic when they have nothing new to give and there is a great deal here. All I will say is that anyone will see some of themselves in Thomas if they can recall being 20 and full of dreams, then one day being middle-aged and not sure how they got there; or has had a marriage fail or lost a dear friend and knows they own some of that failure; or who finds themselves struggling to believe in a higher purpose or ideals in a world that seems increasingly not just callous, but actively ruled by the hostile. Like the best of “literature,” BTF is being driven by these characters, whom you will come to love and worry about, and whatever they are. Only, unlike a lot of modern literature, it actually uses the workings of plot to help tell their tale.

Trope #3 The Quest

I mean, duh. It’s literally a journey to bring a message to the Pope from God (or not). Quests are old as time, and they are often linear. The in-world name of The Hobbit is literally “There and Back Again.” One could argue that a linear journey “there and back” is all that drives The Lord of the Rings, or in Woodrow Coll and Gus Macrae’s long journey in the greatest American quest novel, Lonesome Dove. (Maybe someday I will sit down and write a column on why the real “American Tolkien” is not white-bearded, former TV-writer with an unfinished hack-job of the War of the Roses with elements directly lifted from better writers but Larry McMurtry, but I digress.)

But without doing a Joseph Campbell deep-dive, the “quest” tale is a mythic version of the pilgrimage — a journey part and parcel to the Medieval lived experience, and still lived today. Santiago de Campostella, Rome, Jersualem — theses were the great destinations, but many more existed from Chartes to Canterbury. The Quest, expressly the Grail Quest, had dominated medieval literature since the 12th century and was decidedly popular in the 14th, and southern France, site of the fallen “Languedoc” with its Cathars, and Marian-cult, its Courtly Love — and a lot of the Grail literature, is where the French popes had set up shop. Sauron squatting in Minas Tirith.

This makes Avignon the PERFECT place for our heroes to travel in a world in which the devils of Hell are literally running amok. Avignon was *not* a pilgrim’s destination; rather it was the seat of the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, a vast, beautiful papal residence that had begun as a forced retreat for the Bishop of Rome, and then the gilded cage where the papal institution found itself captive to the ambitions of French kings and French cardinals. The damage caused in the fight to return the papacy to Rome cast a long shadow that takes us to the deadly Wars of Religion in the 16th century. In a way, nothing could be more the Mordor of Christendom, whatever the pope’s role as Vicar of Christ on Earth.

So now, imagine if Frodo’s job was to go find Sauron and say, “hey buddy, I know you and the Valar had a falling out, but I have a message from Eru the One, and he needs you to listen so you can save us from Morgoth.” Gonzo, right?

Trope #4: The Devil

This is the biggie. Lucifer the Lightbringer, Satan, Old Nick — the Adversary is a recurrent theme in literature who really only lost his power as a compelling villain in the post-modern world, which sometimes struggles to even acknowledge the idea of *evil*. The modern literary Devil’s largely relegated to film, which needs to make its supernatural villains easily understandable to wide audiences, or he is “contemporized” as one more dark god in a universe with counterparts like Loki, Set, Hades, yadda yadda (see, for example, the way Lucifer fits in to the DC Universe in Hellblazer or The Sandman). Sometimes, he’s even just a chummy ne’er-do-well you can’t help but like, as in the novel Good Omens. Even a lot of modern possession stories just choose to dodge an explanation of Devil or Hell — Demons are “something otherworldly” and malevolent, and that’s that.

The only major exception to this I can think of in novels is so-called “Christian Lit” where the Devil is very much real, there’s very much a battle, but it is also all very black and white… and strangely it all makes exactly sense via the lens of American conservative Evangelicalism.  The Devil is pretty much behind everything bad about the modern world, and the angels those sweet, lovely people you see in card shops….

Yeah, forget all of that.

To understand what is happening in Buehlman’s world, you need to look at evil and Hell through medieval eyes. These are the tormentors of Dante, and the fever dreams of Bosch; these are the fallen angels in the famous 14th-centurty Apocalypse Tapestries in Anger and the tempters of medieval romance: monsters horrible to behold, wielders of glamour and deception, doomed creatures eternally hopeful of overthrowing their Creator — or to at least have vengeance via the destruction of His favored creature: Mankind. You cannot reason with them, you cannot win a contest of bargaining, they are incapable of mercy, and you cannot truly comprehend them for they are made of a different sort of spiritual stuff than you are.

But worst of all, the Devil “doesn’t make you do it.” You do it because the capacity for Evil is in you, and devils merely know just how to bring that out.

And the Angels?

Sure, angels sometimes walk among men in human form — see the Annunciation — but that is not their true form, nor how they appear when they represent the Creator’s divine wrath. The angels you will meet herein are the cherubim and seraphim that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the heavenly warriors of Revelations and the Book of Daniel — creatures so powerful and alien to the mortal world that they are “terrible to behold.”

Lovecraft has nothing on them with his servitors of the Outer Gods in terms of weirdness, and when Heaven does  make its presence known, it is decidedly not Gandalf’s arrival on the third day with the Rohirrim at Helm’s Deep. Instead, readers become reminded how the words awe and awful are related terms.

A Medieval Mystery Play

But what makes Between Two Fires so much more than the sum of its parts isn’t the way Buehlman reworks these tropes, but instead, well-versed in Tudor literature and medieval history, how he casts his story in the form of a medieval saints play and a medieval morality play.

Saints plays were stories highlighting the moments in a Saint’s life that were notable to their elevation — their martyrdom, miracles, etc. — and was a creative way to teach such to the faithful, although the plays themselves soon became secular. On one hand, this is very much the story of Delphine, who claims to talk to God, and who, if she is not mad, is the one person with the knowledge to prevent Hell’s triumph.

Morality plays, were more complex: an allegory, told through drama, and like most medieval quest literature, was written to be understood on more than one level. Its characters are personified abstractions with a protagonist who represents either humanity as a whole (Everyman) or an entire social class (as in Magnificence). Antagonists and supporting characters are not individuals, per se, but rather personifications of abstract virtues or vices, especially the seven deadly sins. Most often, morality plays were an externalized dramatization of a psychological or spiritual struggle: “The battle between the forces of good and evil in the human soul.”

The driving force is the hero’s own internal flaws and his struggle to overcome them. Perhaps the most famous of these, The Castle of Perseverance, is one of the oldest and is about the battle between vice and virtue, the mixing of allegorical and diabolical figures, and the enactment of Death and Judgment, with Good and Bad Angels on either side.  This is literally the ride we are on with Thomas during the novel’s course.

I am not sure whether or not this was all consciously in Buehlman’s mind as he wrote, but it does not matter: a medieval morality play is exactly what he has written, only for the modern agnostic living in a world very much sure of its materialism, not always comfortable with its inner life.  Between Two Towers is packed not with assurance, but with crisis. This is a story about inner struggle — with failure, with self-worth and self-identity, with hope, and indeed, with faith. That seems an odd thought in a story where literal devils are running amok, but as we are told at the start of the tale…”and Heaven made no answer.”

There is much of that problem in this story: how does one believe in God, or let us say godliness, when so much evil prevails. It’s a very inward-looking novel… told in the midst of a dark fantasy with monsters and battles. It is not a religious novel — the story will take its shots at religion, but also ruminate on its worth, but it is a deeply spiritual one in the oldest sense of that word.

That’s the best you can ask from a novel.

I have to emphasize that while I’ve called this Buehlman’s first fantasy novel, the horrific elements are truly horrible. I will not tell you much other than to say that from a literal “noble court of the damned” to a river monster, to the final denouement in Avignon, the scenes with the powers of Heaven & Hell are truly disturbing, relentless and at times, terrifying — the stuff of nightmares.

But then, what devils are more terrible than those that dance inside our own troubled minds?

In reply to Celia.

Maybe a Light sigl that allows you to project a blinding field around an enemy’s eyes, similar to the Haywire Stephen uses to mess with strength sigls?

She is separated from him a time or two, and the separation does affect them both. It's very clear that their bond is under a lot of pressure, magically speaking.

You know, he actually did remind me a lot of Conor while I was writing him — probably the dissipated prince thing. He definitely has nice clothes and is fashionable, and does a certain amount of complaining when his clothes are ruined, but I don't think anyone is as much of a fashion icon as Conor, though it would be fun to see if Ash could start a trend in court of like, faeries wearing cowboy hats made out of moss or something. If he wore it everyone else would probably have to.

That's a good question! TWP is the first series to really revolve around a prophecy. The current prophecy (not all of which has been deciphered) is a bit like a series of threats ("If someone does not do X, Y will happen) but they feel obligated to take it seriously since it's been right about a lot of things that have happened and continue to happen (so it cannot be mere speculation). Even though, you're right, they don't know the source. It's probably always a good idea to regard the source of a prophecy with some suspicion. :)

Hi! I am so sorry if there was confusion about this. The Wicked Powers was never supposed to be four books that I remember — it was sold to publishers as a trilogy. (If it was meant to be four books, it would have been sold as four books, publishers like to know what they are getting!)

Here is the official announcement of Wicked Powers being sold, which calls it “the final trilogy” in Shadowhunters.

In 2023 I sort of mused out loud about how many books it might end up being, but it was very “I don’t know” and that that was before the announcement (in 2024) that it was going to be a trilogy. And you never do know. I’d have to be further along in the story to decide whether a fourth book was needed, so all I can say is that it’s supposed to be a trilogy, it was sold as a trilogy, but then so was TMI.

I know there is a lot of anxiety about the fact that there are four main characters and three covers at the moment. I don’t know who is going on the later covers but I can promise you this is something my publisher is well aware of! We’ll figure something out. And if eventually it does stretch to four books, well, that would fix that problem!

Hey! Well, as authors, we don't really get to determine who does what special editions. It's up to stores and the like. I can tell you there will be at least one book box edition that isn't US based and at least two other UK based special editions. If you loved the B&N one, you just need to wait about a week or two.

The Scholomance isn't really about chasing down students and making them come back if they don't want to. It's voluntary to be there.

This is a very funny question. I do get what you mean: in the past, young Shadowhunters have had to deal with a corrupt or incompetent Clave along with other enemies. Now we know the Clave is neither corrupt nor incompetent, and hopefully not too many jerks are in positions of influence. I can promise that Alec has not gone mad with power or anything.

So indeed, in this iteration of things, the Clave is not the problem. The Clave is also sort of split, and the Cohort remains a threat, along with plenty of other evildoers. As for why the kids have to handle some of this themselves and not have the Consul etc. handle it, well. Let's just say things are chaotic and it isn't possible for the adults to handle all the kids' problems.

(Ty, Kit and Dru are not currently doing any necromancy, although they will have to all deal with the fallout from past necromancy. )

Also, I set my alarm to remind me to open up my inbox for questions, then it didn't go off! I am technologically cursed. Trying to be more reliable, though!

Art @sincerely.candice.slater

“So House Andrews are on tour and Mod R is ‘in charge’. Pah. As if we need a babysitter. When did we ever get in trouble?”

“I have the alphabetized list here somewhere…”

“All right, so we’ve occasionally been in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one can link it back to us.”

“Mod R is cool anyway. She supports Horde rights.”

“And more importantly, she comes up with defenses for Horde wrongs. Which never happened.”

“Nice save.”

“Focus! What’s the situation?”

“Only four sleeps until This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. Tuesday, we ride at dawn!”

“Um, I can’t actually ride at dawn. I couldn’t take time off work, sorry.”

“We ride at lunch break!”

“That works, thanks.”

“FOR MAGGIE! She’s one of us, one of us, one of us!”

“Imagine, dropped into her own favourite story… historically, we’ve dealt with that very well.”

“Have we, though?”

“Well, we’ve done Nav.”

“Eh. More like Nav did us.”

“The point is: CASTLES! Politics. Assassins. Questionable decisions. Emotional compromise. That’s our natural habitat.”

“Maggie’s adventures are a trilogy, Ilona confirmed it. Seems unsafe to me. That means w*iting for two sequels.”

“Dollar for the swear jar, we’ve talked about this. It’s not like House Andrews even do actual cliffhangers. Cliff-leaners, at most.”

“But with no one coming to save us…”

“Think about it. That means no one’s coming to stop us, either.”

“Ooooh. Game changer! So we can do anything.”

“Even better, my friend. We can do everything.”

Mod R: “Okay, let’s remember fluffiness … is that Andrea’s crossbow?!”

“It’s fine, I’m practically an honorary bouda.”

Mod R: “No weapons during Horde strategy! It’s Ferret Safety 101, people. We are regrouping, we are being chalant, we are—”

“Barsa?”

Mod R: “Resting. You need your strength.”

“Can we get a bedtime story? We’ll lie down and pretend to nap.”

Mod R: “Once upon a time, in the great world of readers, there lived a Horde…”

“Not a nasty, pillaging Horde!”

“The best Horde.”

Mod R: “…and they were given a book, for them and for all readers who have ever wished to get lost in a story…”

“And then, we made it into a bestseller?”

Mod R: “And then, we made it into a bestseller indeed. And we devoured dushegubilly ever after.”

“Read it again, Mod R?”

The post 4 Sleeps ’till Maggie first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

F. Anstey

Thomas Anstey Guthrie was born in London on August 8, 1856. He attended King’s College School and studied at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. Over the course of his career, he used multiple pseudonyms, including Hope Bandoff, William Monarch Jones, and the one most associated with his genre work, F. Anstey. He had meant to publish under his first initial and middle name, but a typo rendered the initial F and he elected to keep it.

Anstey studied law and briefly practiced beginning in 1880, but gave it up to write, with numerous short humorous pieces appearing in Punch. He was also known for writing humorous novels, the most famous of which, Vice Versa, originally published in 1882, was adapted into a play by Anstey in 1883. He similarly adapted several other of his novels and short stories into plays, as well as adapting multiple of Molière’s works into English.

The Strand, December 1905

His novels and short stories are explorations of normal, bourgeois English life when they are touch by elements of the fantastic and magic. Many of his stories show the influence of William S. Gilbert, not only his plays like The Sorcerer, but also his short stories and The Bab Ballads.

Anstey anonymously published the story “The Wraith of Barnjum” in the March 1879 issue of Temple Bar, reprinting it under his byline in his 1884 collection of short fiction, The Black Poodle and Other Tales. His stories not only appeared in Punch, but in other Victorian magazines, and as Anstey built a reputation for incorporating magic into his stories, he would sometimes use that reputation to subvert the readers’ expectations by hinting at the possibility of magic, but writing a story without any fantastic elements.

His novels The Brass Bottle, The Tinted Venus. The Man from Blankley’s, and Vice Versa have been filmed multiple times, with two versions of The Brass Bottle filmed during Anstey’s lifetime (1914 and 1923) and The Man from Blankley’s released in 1930 and 1934. The earliest version of Vice Versa filmed in 1916 and The Tinted Venus in 1921. Vice Versa was also filmed in 1948 featuring a sixteen year old Petula Clark, and in 1988, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. It was also adapted for television at least four times.

Popular throughout the Victorian period, writing for adults and children, his style of writing influenced authors who would follow him, and his style became known as Ansteyan fantasy. However, the Edwardian era was not as enamored in his style of Victorian writing or morality and, while his writing remained influential on other humorists who followed, such as P.G. Wodehouse, his general popularity waned.

Guthrie died on March 10, 1934. He is buried in St Peter Churchyard in East Blatchington in East Sussex.

Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 492 pages
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Release Date: November 2, 2021
ASIN: B08VNWJTXT
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed ebook from Kindle Unlimited
Rating: 5/5 stars

“The realm of Azenor has spent years plagued by a curse. Every new moon, magic flows from the nearby mountain and brings nightmares to life. Only magicians—who serve as territory wardens—stand between people and their worst dreams.

Clementine Madigan is ready to take over as the warden of her small town, but when two magicians arrive to challenge her father for his domain, she is unknowingly drawn into a century-old conflict. She seeks revenge, but as she gets closer to Phelan, one of the vexingly handsome young magicians, secrets—as well as romance—begin to rise.

Clementine must unite with Phelan to fight the realm’s curse, which seems to be haunting their every turn. But will their efforts be enough to save Azenor from the nightmares that lurk around every corner.”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on ebook from Kindle Unlimited.

Thoughts: I have been a fan of many of Ross’s novels, and this is one of the few I hadn’t read yet. Previous books I have read by Ross are “Sisters of Sword and Song” ( loved it), The Queen’s Rising (okay), Wild Reverence (loved it), and the Letters of Enchantment duology (loved it). I ended up really loving this book as well. I loved the creative world here; this was very well written and easy to read. I thought the magic in here was especially intriguing and would have loved to learn more about the magic system.

Clementine (Clem) is training under her father to become the Warden of her small town. The Warden protects a town from the curse of the Nightmares of the residents that come alive every new moon. Clem’s future takes an odd turn when two magicians arrive to challenge her father for his domain. Clem finds herself drawn into a past and conflict that she never knew existed. She is forced to uncover the truth behind many lies and tell many lies of her own if she is going to survive the path forward.

I absolutely loved this world where Nightmares comes alive and wardens must protect people against them. It is a fascinating curse to have on a world and the magicians that fight this curse are intriguing as well. I thought the magic system here was interesting and would have loved the chance to hear more about it and understand it better. There are multiple kinds of magic in this world, and although we hear about them, we never really get to delve into how they work.

This starts as a revenge story, but quickly morphs into Clem trying to uncover secrets and mysteries from multiple directions. I really enjoyed all of the characters in here, including Clem. They are all very morally gray, none of them are really evil, but they make as many bad decisions as they do good ones. There is an enemies to lovers type of romance blended into the story, which I thought was well done. These are complicated characters, and making assumptions about any of them can be dangerous.

I enjoyed how the story wrapped up and always love a good fantasy that is contained to one book; however, I loved this world so much that I wanted more. I wanted to know what happens after all these events that take place and what happens to this amazing world in the future.

Ross is an amazing writer, and I find her writing both easy to read and incredibly beautiful. It always flows off the page so well.

My Summary (5/5): Overall I really loved this story. I loved the complex characters, the intriguing world, the mystery, and the magic. I thought the story wrapped up nicely but wanted more. I wanted to learn more about the aftermath in this world and more about how the magic worked. I always really enjoy Ross’s writing style; it flows so well, is easy to read and beautiful. I would highly recommend if you are looking for a stand-alone dark fantasy with a creative world and intriguing characters.