Transgender manga artist Keito Gaku won the 77th Tetsuya Chiba Prize for a one-shot manga about a transgender teen. His four-volume series based on that story, Boys Run the Riot, was released in Japan in 2020. In an interview in … Continue reading →
Ferryman by Scottish writer Claire McFall and Along the Saltwise Sea by A. Deborah Baker (Seanan McGuire) are both beautifully written fantasies with protagonists who seem to me much younger than the teenagers they’re supposed to be. Both stories are … Continue reading →
Ropa Moyo is a fourteen-year-old high school dropout with green dreadlocks, black lipstick, and a massive attitude fueled by a ferocious intelligence. She has taken over her grandmother’s marginally profitable business as a ghost-talker, conversations which are made possible by … Continue reading →
Fans of the epic Chinese fantasy series ‘The Untamed’ will be happy to hear that the first volume of the official, uncensored English translation of the novel by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu is now available. The book has been given … Continue reading →
Fans of the 1984 film and book The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension will be thrilled to learn that, finally, the chronicles of the world-famous Buckaroo Banzai, MD, GBE (adventurer, scientist, rock star, race car driver, and … Continue reading →
As a bookseller, any story that features a bookstore makes me happy, but this time-travelling fantasy really stands out. The bookshop in question is named Rhyme and Reason, and is run by our teenage protagonist, Poppy Fulbright’s, father. It is … Continue reading →
I’ve been a fan of Anne Ursu since reading her first fantasy for young adults, The Shadow Thieves, some years ago. I love her simple but elegant style, that never talks down to kids. I hadn’t known, until the arrival … Continue reading →
Every now and then, a reader needs to step away from great literature, or horror as metaphor, or fantasy that reflects the end of civilization, and pick up an old-fashioned, sword-and-sorcery adventure. I have been a fan of Canadian writer … Continue reading →
This book comes highly recommended by Neil Gaiman, who reports in the forward that it was Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s favorite book as a teenager, and was a huge influence on his life and films. It took me a little … Continue reading →
The cover copy states that “hope is a fragile thing,” yet this brilliant little book is full of it. Despite having an overwhelming number of things to despair about, the narrator, Tetley Abednego, feels herself beloved and living in a … Continue reading →
This is a second novel for Byrne, whose first novel, The Girl in the Road, won the Tiptree (now Otherwise) Award in 2015. It is a dense, disturbing work, spanning two millennia and three human civilizations: a well-researched Mayan realm … Continue reading →
I have been a fan of British-American author Patrick Ness’ books since The Knife of Never Letting Go, which won the Tiptree (now Otherwise) Award in 2008. He also wrote another of my favorite fantasy books, A Monster Calls. His … Continue reading →
Fatma el-Sha’awari, of the Egyptian Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, prefers to wear European suits, always impeccably matched with shirt, tie, and bowler hat, of course. Since the 1912 Cairo in need of magical protection is a colorful … Continue reading →
Jake Livingston is a “medium” who can see ghosts and ghouls, mostly of people who died violently, replaying their deaths in fading “death loops” on street corners and in schools and just about everywhere. It’s disturbing and distracting and, since … Continue reading →
This brutal, magnificent historical novel takes place in central China (sort of around Wuhan, if my correlation between the map in the book and today’s maps is correct), when the Han Red Turban Rebellion was fighting against the Mongol Yuan … Continue reading →
This was supposed to be a review of TJ Klune’s newest book for young adults, Flash Fire, but that is a sequel to The Extraordinaries, and I found that I couldn’t write about the second book without revealing spoilers from … Continue reading →