Review: The Northern Witch Series - K. S. Marsden

K. S. Marsden is an accomplished writer with three series under her belt.  The Northern Witch series is Marsden's new YA series featuring Mark, an openly gay witch in training, who is navigating high school, boys, relationships, and his apprenticeship as a new witch.  His Nana is an integral part of the series, delivering sassy lines and adding so much to the experience for the reader.

The first book in the series, Winter Trials, is a great introduction to the world and it's main cast of characters.  We have Mark, one of two openly gay students at his high school.  His Nanna, a witch and his mentor.  An insanely hot new student at the school, along with several other people that interact with Mark.  Winter Trials is a short read, but a great introductory work for this series.  This is definitely a coming of age story about a boy in high school who happens to have magical powers.

Book 2 in the series is Awaken, which picks up where the first book left off with Mark still coming to understand his powers and what he is truly capable of.  Again, this is a relatively short read, but a riveting story about love, loss, high school, and magic. 

The Breaking is the third book in her The Northern Witch series, which follows Adam, a witch in training, as he learns the craft and navigates being a teenager.  The world in which The Breaking takes place has an interesting blend of technology and magic, both work together.  This is in contrast with many novels dealing with magic and technology where magic makes technology nonfunctional.  This world is very much like our own with social media and cell phones.  This book features intrigue, demons, deception, drama, love lost, love found, and, of course, teenage angst. 

This series is perfect for fans of Jordan Hawk, Blair Babylon, and Nicole R. Taylor.  I would absolutely recommend this book series for fans of LGBT/YA high school dramas and magical adventures! 

All three books are available at most online retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and SmashWords.  Check out K. S. Marsden's website as well:  K. S. Marsden

Thank you to the author for sending me a copy of all three books in exchange for an honest review!  Happy reading!

Review: Stranger in the Shogun's City - Amy Stanley

Amy Stanley weaves a masterful narrative, from the prologue to the epilogue.  Beautiful prose

like, "Eventually, the shapes of the characters would become as familiar as the mountains on the horizon." 

This is a work of history that reads like a novel and is easily accessible for those who are not familiar with the inner workings of Edo period society in Japan.

The narrative lends itself to explaining the particulars of the Edo period without getting too bogged down in the technical aspects of society, culture, and daily life.  Stanley's extensive historical research can absolutely be seen in the descriptions of Buddhism,  the intricacies of women's lives, and the contemporary accounts of those who lived in the time period.

The first chapter details the birth of Tsuneno, her family history, and provides comparisons between her privileged life and the lives of others around the world.  The reader meets her father, a True Pure Land Buddhist who makes a very good living, but struggles with his identity and the mark he intends to make on the world.  Others include Tsuneno's siblings with comparisons between a boy's education in early modern Japan and a girl's education in the same period.  

The following chapter tracks Tsuneno's story from her village in Echigo province to her marriage and move to ōishida, and beyond.  Tsuneno's story is tempered through the lens of her siblings and their transitions from childhood to adulthood.  Readers track her younger sister Kiyomi and the struggles she faced in her early marriage and her brother Giyū's challenges in marriage.  Stanley is careful to highlight the individual struggles that men and women both faced at this time, though they were different, each did share similarities. 

Stanley's narrative leads the reader through Tsuneno's life from marriage to divorce, feast to famine, and rural to urban.  She weaves a complex and compelling tapestry depicting the struggle and strife of women with a backdrop of the City of Edo.  Tsuneno may be the leading lady in this historical narrative, but Edo is a beautiful supporting actor. 

"Tsuneno's legacy was the great city of Edo:  her ambition, her life's work.  Her aspiration for a different kind of existence propelled her from home, and she might have said that the experience of Edo changed her.  But she also shaped the city.  Every well she waited at; every copper coin she spent."

This book is accessible to readers from casual to academic and would be a useful tool in the classroom.  I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject matter.

Funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, Stanley's research and subsequent book effectively show the importance of not only grants supporting the arts, but the importance of research in the early modern era. 

This book releases July 14th, 2020 from Scribner and is available for Pre-Order on Amazon and at other fine book retailers!

I received an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review from Edelweiss+.  

Review: Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats

Wales in the twelfth century was a dangerous place for a woman, especially a woman with a secret.

This is the story of Elen, a girl I slaughtered whose family at the hands of one Owain ap Cadwgan and his band of warriors.  Elen intends to survive.  She finds herself assaulted, but in a position to use her power to spin a lie and convince Owain that he has been blessed and cannot die while under her protection.  Clothed, fed, and living a lie, Elen finds herself well cared for, until Owain kidnaps the wife and children of a Norman warlord.  Elen's lies seem to be on the brink of spinning out of control as war rages with the Normans. 

This is a meticulously researched and written novel that evokes the brutality of the world in the twelfth century.  Interesting action scenes pared with beautiful prose make this an enjoyable read for anyone who loves history and appreciates the gritty-ness of the time period.  Coats describes in brutal detail the challenges, battles, and sexual assaults that likely took place at the time.  This is not a book that is a watered-down accounting of Norman warlords in the twelfth century, this is the all-out, all-encompassing, and incredibly brutal novel that is, most likely, very close to the reality. 

The book has solid character development through the second half of the book, though I do agree with other reviewers that the overall pacing in the first half of the book is slow.  I do think that the writing makes up for this slow exposition through the exploration of the relationship between Elen and Nest, the kidnapped wife of Gerald of Windsor. 

Though this is a young adult novel, I would caution anyone under the age of 16 to read it due to its graphic violence.  It wouldn't be a good historical fiction novel without violence, but this can get extreme at times.  My only other criticism is that the passage of time seems to be choppy and the scene structure can get in the way of the narrative, but this is a small complaint.

I really enjoyed this book and I would encourage historical fiction lovers to pick up a copy!  The book releases March 10th, 2020!  I originally requested this book because it has a beautiful cover and an intriguing premise!  

Thank you to Candlewick Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book, it was a privilege to read it and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  This is a freely given review.

Later this week I will be posting my review of not only The Breaking by K. S. Marsden, but a review of the two previous books in her The Northern Witch series!  You don't want to miss this!