MELONPAPER

The Unbroken is a complex, fascinating work of political fantasy and the opener for what promises to be a compelling series. This book has it all: an incredible cover, compelling and complex characters, and a fully-developed world that takes a loosely historical setting and weaves in a thread of magic.

Silvertjärn was once a bustling mining town that went the way of many such towns: once the mines closed, most of its population left to find work elsewhere, while those who remained stagnated. The killing blow came one summer day in 1959, when the remaining 900 inhabitants disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a dead woman, an abandoned newborn, and a wealth of questions and theories.

Relationships are messy and complicated. Darcy Phillips knows this firsthand: the daughter of divorced and busy parents who struggle to make quality time for their kids, she took her hobby of studying relationships and relationship advice and turned it into an afterschool business during her freshman year. Read the full review here.

The Conductors stalled me for a solid two weeks and I had a hell of a time pinpointing why. There are a lot of great things about this book. The concept is creative and interesting; the summary immediately drew me in. Nicole Glover’s characters are full-fledged and sympathetic. The setting is richly imagined and the characters move about in a complicated and compelling world. In spite of these great elements, however, there were narrative choices that made it hard for me to stay engaged with the central plot.

A Dark and Hollow Star is, to describe it in one word, chaotic. There’s a lot going on with its worldbuilding: Fae courts, gods from various pantheons, figures from religious and cultural myth… Immortals, mortals, and everyone in between… Unseelie and seelie, lesidhe and sidhe… All of these elements lay the groundwork for an interesting premise that suffers from pacing issues.