speculative
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This is my fifth book of HG Parry’s and she never fails to impress. Like The Magician’s Daughter before it, this is a gentler, more involved story than the Magical Histories. But this also has a fullness that the previous book did not, following every moment of the deep friendships that this book is about…
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This is another deeply passionate and lyrical cautionary tale from Beth Lewis, and a powerful page-turner. It’s a real emotional companion piece for The Origins of Iris, and develops some of the themes begun there. The terrible ache to take back our mistakes forms the heart of the Atlas community and it’s leader Sol’s teachings,…
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Another fantastic magical history! Finding a way to weave an alternate plot into established history is no easy task, and often historical fiction finds greater freedom by looking at minor figures, on the fringe of history, to find the wiggle room to invent. But, as HG Parry so recently showed with her Shadow Histories duology,…
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This is an extraordinary book; unsettling and challenging, unexpected and compelling. Iris isn’t an easy character to connect with when you first meet her—goofy is an horrendous term to describe her, given where the rest of the book goes, but it’s the first impression one gets. It undermines her, it invites us to judge her,…
Damien Kelly 