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In February I read 9 books. You can see the reviews for all of them, which ones were my favorite, etc. below. Hope you all had a great month of reading!

I started the following series:

• Quicksilver (Fae and Alchemy, Book 1) by Callie Hart (2/5 stars)
• The Faithful Dark (The Brilliant Soul Duology, Book 1) by Cate Baumer (3/5 stars)
• Mimic & Me (Mimic & Me, Book 1) by Cassius Lange and Ryan Tang, Narrated by Jeff Hays, Various (3/5 stars)

I finished the following series:

• None!

My Favorite Books of the Month Were:

• The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula (4/5 stars)

– Goodreads Reading Challenge (Progress: /150)

The full list of books that I read this month are shown below:
1. Carnival Fantastico by Anglea Montoya (4/5 stars)
2. The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2/5 stars)
3. Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman (3/5 stars)
4. Kirkyards & Kindness (A Rip Through Time, Book 4.5) by Kelley Armstrong (4/5 stars)
5. Quicksilver (Fae and Alchemy, Book 1) by Callie Hart (2/5 stars)
6. The Faithful Dark (The Brilliant Soul Duology, Book 1) by Cate Baumer (3/5 stars)
7. Mimic & Me (Mimic & Me, Book 1) by Cassius Lange and Ryan Tang, Narrated by Jeff Hays, Various (3/5 stars)
8. Black Butler Vol 34 by Yana Toboso (4/5 stars)
9. The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula (4/5 stars)

I've officially started work on The Commander!

Of course, "started" is a bit of a fuzzy concept. I'd done some initial work on The Commander last year, along with The Pilot, but now I'm full-on writing the book.

What did I write in between? I'll share more details on that when I'm allowed to. Currently, your security access isn't high enough.

If my new, secret manuscript were in Resident Evil 9, it would be hidden behind two doors, one of which is opened by a horse-shaped crystal and the other by a crystal-shaped horse. Top security, that's what I'm saying.

But for now, it's back to the open ocean for me, where I will return to The Last Horizon while on the deck of a ship. A regular water ship, not a spaceship, unfortunately. I've only written while on a spaceship once.

​In preparation for The Commander, I re-read the existing four books, which was pretty fun. It's always hard to read your own stuff, but I don't get to read enough about wizards flying spaceships. So it's a welcome break from what I normally read: arcane tomes written in languages that only exist in dreams.

If I were a Resident Evil 9 character, I would end this by saying something like "I sure am glad to not be getting eaten by zombies right n--"

-Will

P.S. You get no points for guessing what game I'm playing.

Great plot so far can not wait for book 4 to come out. Its fantastic to see you continuing on with writing on book 5.
Its a pity edits for book 4 is taking longer but it can’t be help.
keep going….

Yes, we find out the Queen put members of the Seelie Court under a geas that prevented them from saying certain things about Ash to outsiders/non-Seelie Court members. We find this out from a different faerie under the geas, who tells it to Kit, and it's mentioned in relation to Nene as well. We haven't explored the concept of the geas much before, but it's an old part of Faerie folklore and would supersede the "not lying" — especially since most of what Nene says in TDA (that she doesn't know exactly how old Ash is now and wouldn't recognize him) — is true.

Tom’s Crossing (Pantheon, October 28, 2025)

Every now and then I reach for a copy of Anna Karenina on my TBR bookshelf, but hesitate to wonder, “Do I really have time to get into this kind of heavy reading of some 800 plus pages right now?” So far, the answer has been, “No.” I really do intend to get to it at some point because, well, it’s Anna Karenina. Just not quite now.

Why then, did I pick up the 1,227 page opus by Mark Z. Danielewski, Tom’s Crossing?

Mainly because of the one and only blurb on the book jacket:

This is an amazing work of fiction. I absolutely loved it. At the heart you’ll find a blood drenched story of pursuit and two brave and resourceful children. But there’s so much more. I immersed myself in. Have never ready anything like it.

So, despite what we know about glad-handing you-blurb-my-book and I’ll blurb yours endorsements, this is the only blurb on a book by an author with a low profile and cult status, and the if it’s genuinely that great a read for Stephen King, it’s certainly good enough for me. (And, besides, I was going on a long trip where it made as much sense to take one big book rather than several. Sorry Tolstoy.)

So who is Tom and what is he crossing?

Tom is a Gatestone, a family that has a generational McCoy-Hatfield feud with the Porches. The story takes place in 1982  in Orvop (an anagram for Provo), Utah and neighboring Orem (i.e., Rome) amidst the mountains of Mt. Katanogos (Timpanagos) in the Isatch (Wasatch).  Why the need for a slightly alternative universe? Possibly to convey a heightened sense of the mythological. Add to this a mild dissection of the Church of Latter-Day Saints and some Native American folklore, but, most essentially, references to Homer’s Odyssey. For, indeed, this is a hero’s trails and tribulations quest in the classic  Joseph Campbell sense.

The crossing refers both to a treacherous mountain expedition to fulfill an oath as well as the transition from life to death — indeed, the eponymous Tom dies by page 37:

Tom always said he was gonna die young. The way he described it, with a glee his mother abhorred, he’d be hung up on some mighty bull, hand caught in the ropes tied by his own division, swung this way, that way, until he was broken, scraped off, gored, ground down, and finally stamped into an icy black dream, and in front of thousands too, maybe even on television, Gone like that and not even twenty-seven.

Gored by cancer rather than a bull, Tom is not entirely gone. Only his physical presence. Tom becomes a spiritual guide from the grave, albeit not all-seeing, a ghost to escort travelers to  safety, even while sometimes unsure of how to get there. (So while not strictly speaking a fantasy, the ghostly presence and narrative foreboding of horrors to come — “Hard to figure how so much awful horror could have started out” is the opening line — I think qualifies it as Black Gate adjacent. Plus if Stephen King likes it, Black Gate readers should.)

On his deathbed, Tom extracts a promise from his friend Kalin March, like Tom a natural equestrian, to rescue a pair of horses set for slaughter and take them across the mountains  to the safety of “the Crossin.”  (The omniscient narrator, possesses a sophisticated command of English mixed with hick slang and spellings, such as dropping the “g” in “ing” ending words; somewhere toward the last 100 pages or so you’ll begin to guess who the narrator is, though how the narrator knows as much about events to which they are not present only becomes evident at the end. Note that the title page identifies the “author” as E.L.M. and to an anonymous transcription.) This request reflects how Tom had earlier rescued Kalin from a bullying attack, and that “aside from Tom, no one else welcomed him into their fold.”

Kalin is the true outsider, neither Gaestone nor Porch, the archetypical, if even a teenaged one, Western hero (the novel’s subtitle is “A Western”). Kalin is also the naive protagonist in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, eager to do the right thing despite societal pressures to do otherwise. Indeed, Tom’s indefatigable good humor is somewhat reminiscent of the mischievous Tom Sawyer.

Tom is Kalin’s literal spiritual guide from the grave, though not all-seeing, a ghost that helps escort Katlin and the horses across the mountains to “the Crossin,” even while sometimes unsure of how to get there. (So while not strictly speaking a fantasy, the ghostly presence and narrative foreboding of horrors to come — “Hard to figure how so much awful horror could have started out” is the opening line — I think qualifies it as Black Gate adjacent.)

Navigating steep mountainous terrain during winter is a challenging enough pursuit, but further complicating matters for Katlin is the unwanted addition to the treacherous journey of Tom’s sister, Landry, who serves simultaneously as sidekick, cheerleader, adolescent crush, and, ultimately, redeemer.  A rescue mission of another kind is also underway by the respective mothers of the two adolescents, who bond despite their different religious views and that Katlin is (falsely) accused of a murder and the kidnapping of Landry.

It wouldn’t be a Western without the bad guys, of which there are more than a few. The patriarch Old Porch, whose set-to-be-butchered ponies Kalin has “stolen” (it can’t get any more of a Western story than a horse rustling), in a fit of rage commits a murder he attempts to blames on Kalin. Old Porch and his for the most part equally no-good sons set out to follow Katlin, Landry and the horses ostensibly to gain vengeance and return of their property, though actually to cover up their father’s crime.

Further adding to the tales’ fabulism are constant references, sometimes including extensive description of their often unpleasant demises, to various local folks who’ve painted or sketched depictions of key events during these escapades. For example:

Both Marsha Taylor, a baker, and Lou Keele, a florist, would in 1985 admirably render this moment on thick sheets of cotton paper, watercolors for Marsha, colored pencil for Lou…

These works of arts at some point go on display, are destroyed in a fire, and somehow resurrected as part of a memorial art show. There are also re-enactment ceremonies of the Crossing events among the “many commentators”:

Not entirely on their own in the creative retellins, rants, iterative speculations, and musins regardin the events that transpired in and around the Isatch Canyon and Katanogos massif that late October in 1982.

These “musins”serve as a sort of Greek chorus, lamenting how fate dictates bad outcomes that could have been avoided, if only if:

Kay Shroeppel would many years hence, and in an empty theater in Helsinki, in 2028 in fact, declare to her friend Gaylene Zobell, who was just then visitin from Belgrade, Serbia… that if only Old Porch had embraced his thespian inclinations, he might’ve lived a more fulfillin life.

And because this is a Western, there is a stolen gun of seeming worth. And in keeping with Chekov, since there is a gun, it eventually goes off.

How the narrator somehow knows all these things and the way they are conveyed may prove annoying to some readers. And given that this is the proverbial doorstep of a book, these readers might be inclined to abandon the journey.

That would be their loss. Like another not always easy-to-read novel, Moby Dick, the hunt must be seen to its conclusion. As any worthy journey must.

David Soyka is one of the founding bloggers at Black Gate. He’s written over 200 articles for us since 2008. See them all here.

Yes, you'll see his POV in Last King of Faerie.

In the Anna and Ariadne story in Better in Black, we do see what Matthew and Sylvain are up to! There are also hints about them in several of the other stories, like Who The Wolf Loves (Luke/Jocelyn.)

Hey LitStackers! Here’s a Double LitStack Rec, of two wildly good reads, The Marriage Plot…

The post “The Marriage Plot” and “Thief River Falls” appeared first on LitStack.

In reply to Jim Sackman.

Yes, there’s no such thing as an off-the-shelf sigl.

And essentia is very much a limited resource. That doesn’t stop companies from selling it to their own employees, providing those sales are profitable.

In reply to Celia.

It’s roughly measurable, so yes, buyers can take manufacturers to task over it.

In reply to Jason Enberg.

Yes, the “you can’t buy sigls off the shelf” thing was discussed back in book 1.

Lead time is going to vary. The cheaper the sigl, the lower the lead time.

Okay so I guess I misunderstood when I was listening. Stephen was offered Locator sigils that were threaded for a price. My read of that was that these were off the shelf and available at will. But after reading this, he would have had to buy a threaded locator sigil made just for him. Correct?

I recognize that this became overcome by events, but it seems to me to be a waste of good essentia. That, in turn, leads me to believe that essentia is not a scarce resource. Otherwise there would be more profitable ways to employ it.

I will share a thing to think about? Ash has the power to make people love him and want to please him, so how does that go when he can't turn it off? Even if he wants to? :-)

Well, you can’t say that reading Fantasy genre books is ever boring. Having last read and reviewed a lovely book involving magic and cats at a cat shelter, this novel is a bit of an about-turn. Between Two Fires is in the publisher’s details described as a story of medieval horror. For those of a…

I mean, I have adored writing Dru. She is so sharp and so funny, and I loved writing her reactions to Faerie, especially when things are ridiculous. And her annoyance that you cannot find a bra in Faerie because of course not.

I love her dynamic with Ash, too, and writing a plus-size Shadowhunter was incredibly interesting and fun. I got to draw on a lot of my own teenage experiences (not that I was ever a badass demon hunter) which is always interesting and revelatory.

Hi! I hope you've been well, too.

I am not sure where the idea comes from that Ash is not trained? He is very well trained and an excellent fighter.

In Forever Fallen we already know Ash can fight; Sebastian dropped Ash into a pit of demons with only a sword and Ash fought them off. So that is canon. At that point, he is a much better fighter than Kit.

In FF, Janus agreed to try to train him as a Shadowhunter but in TKLOF we learn that due to his nature, there is some angelic magic Janus cannot access. That doesn't mean Ash isn't trained though; he has been training for years. He just doesn't know a few Shadowhunter things. He knows, however, plenty of other fighting skills Shadowhunters do not know. He has his own training room and weapons, etc.

Kit and Ash are not in competition — not in the books or, I hope, outside it! Ash's strengths are not Kit's weaknesses nor are Kit's strengths Ash's weaknesses. They are very different characters, just as Kit is very different from Will or Jace and Ty is very different from Dru or Julian.

They know Kit and Ty had a fight and that things are weird between them. They are not dumb, and know there was a romantic aspect to Kit and Ty's relationship even if they think Kit and Ty themselves might not have known that. Without being able to answer any questions about whether they are even around to see Kit and Ty's relationship develop in TLKOF I am sort of stuck saying anything else. :) We do see how the Carstairs-Herondale family functions a bit though. They're very cute.

Manipulative.

I think you may well suspect who it is the first book.

Friday means winners! And today we have three of them for the This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me giveaway.

US Winner – This Kingdom Hardcover Copy International Winners – 2 ARC pdf copies

and

Congratulations all!

Winners will be contacted from the modr@ilona-andrews.com email. If we don’t hear back by Wednesday, March 4th, a new winner will be drawn next Friday.

A special thank you to the Horde’s creativity for keeping me snorting through the week with over 3,000 comments of the most flooftastic alter egos. The portal fantasy realms would not know what hit them if we landed.

Online safety reminder: please be vigilant for social media scammers. We will never ask you to cover postage costs or have any other money transfer related to these giveaways and will only contact you from the official Ilona Andrews accounts, with the public blog post link as proof that you are indeed the winner.

If your name was not drawn this time, do not despair. There are more prizes and surprises to come, as we’re finally heading into the release month of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

Squee and happy weekend!

The post Winners of This Kingdom Will Giveaway first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.