Cozy fiction is still on the rise, and I’m here for it. The more hectic life gets, the more appealing it becomes to read stories about likeable characters just kind of living their lives and vibing without any clear stakes or massive conflicts to deal with. That lack of a clear plotline is supposed to be storytelling poison according to conventional wisdom, but I’m happy to learn I’m not the only weirdo who has been liking books that my high school English teachers would have had a fit over.
That lack of a clear plotline is also the point of Royal Red by K.C. Shaw, a cozy fantasy adventure in a quaint world of domestic dragons that promises “Art. Adventure. And lots of tea.” And it delivers all three in spades, even if that second bullet point is very low-key and personal throughout.
Rose is a dragon and an artist living in a co-op of other artist dragons, but lately she’s found herself in a slump and unhappy with her style of painting. At the urging of her mentor and roommates, she packs up some funds and some art supplies and flies away from her homeland for the first time to travel abroad and experience more of the world in the hope of growing and evolving as an artist and a person.
And that right there is the start and finish of the plot. Rose gets up to a handful of unexpected adventures on her travels, meets other dragons in a wide range of personalities and likeability, paints a lot of different subjects, and has a lot of little meals and tea breaks along the way. To dwell too much on any detail of her journey counts as a spoiler, because the whole thrust of the book is wondering what the next little event will be on Rose’s mostly aimless tour of self-discovery.
Life comes at you fast, and these past few years have come with a whole lot of extra life stuff to deal with. So it’s been a bit of a while since I’ve actually read much of anything, much less read anything to completion, and much less even than that read anything that’s left me with strong enough feelings to write another one of these.
But then I saw this book on a little shelf in a thrift shop a couple months ago offering “high fantasy and low stakes,” and it looked like the kind of chill, cozy, light read that might lull me back into reading more regularly.
The jury’s still out on that point, because busy life things are still happening and I only just finished this book; but regardless, Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree definitely delivers on the “slow down, take a breath, have a nice time” vibes it was giving. It is, in a word, charming.
The story follows Viv, a freshly retired orc barbarian who’s decided to swap her greatsword for a bean grinder and get away from the bloody, hectic life of a professional adventurer. To this end, she rolls up in the city of Thune with a nest egg and a plan: introduce the townsfolk to this wonderful gnomish concoction she fell in love with on her travels, a liquid hug in a mug called “coffee.”
Well, we made it to the last 50 out of the original 300 titles before our book was cut. While The Black Lily didn’t make it into the top 10 finalists, our reviewer Kitty G enjoyed our book and left us a wonderful review on her Youtube channel. Check it out!
Heart of Sherwood was an enjoyable read. I love the idea of Robin Hood being a woman in disguise, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen it done before (the closest I’ve seen is the movie Princess of Thieves, in which Keira Knightley played Robin Hood’s daughter disguised as a boy). The story included the well-known beats and characters of the Robin Hood legend but also sprinkled in historical details and political intrigue appropriate to the time period of the Third Crusade.
I absolutely loved this book. I love faerie lore (both traditional and reimagined in a second world setting), and Shadowfell is full of faerie creatures. While there are your more well-known creatures like will-o-wisps, pixies, brownies, and redcaps, there were a few new ones to me, such as the stanie mon, brollochan, and urisk. Probably my favorite was the Guardian of the South, a trickster figure of fire that can shift between an old man, a young boy, and a fierce warrior. He definitely reminded me of Loki, and I’m anticipating reading more about him as the series goes on.
Avast, Ye Airships! is a wonderful little gem of steampunk airship fantasy. All of the stories in it are well-written and intriguing. While they all have the same premise, a steampunk story set on an airship, each author contributes a story that is completely original and different from the others. While some are more “traditional” steampunk (Victorian England), there are others that are romance, adventure, scifi, horror, and even Southern steampunk. The stories are varied in length and style.
My personal top five were “Maiden Voyage,” in which a lesbian couple must outwit the pirates seizing their ship, “Captain Wexford’s Dilemma,” in which a captain suddenly finds her airship has been possessed by ghosts after mooring near a cemetery, “Hooked,” in which a young lady, on her first airship adventure, finds the ship under attack by a dashing rogue, “A Steampunk Garden,” in which a clever mechanic must outwit her captors, and “Lotus of Albion,” in which an airship captain falls for a beautiful woman whom he believes to be a damsel in distress.
What I really appreciated was the careful attention to diversity. The stories in this book included people of color, queer characters, those with disabilities, and strong female characters. This one is well-worth the read.
I love fantasy novels, but I have a hard time sticking with a series that has more than four books, especially if they follow a single main character. What can I say; I’m a trilogy kind of girl. However, Maria V. Snyder did an excellent job of keeping me hooked all the way through the end of her nine-book series, The Chronicles of Ixia (AKA Poison Study, AKA Soulfinder—publishers really need to learn to just find one series name and stick with it). It helps that the nine books are divided into three sub-trilogies.
The first trilogy, comprised of Poison Study, Fire Study, and Magic Study, follows Yelena Zaltana. The second series, also called the Glass series, follows her friend Opal Cowan in Storm Glass, Sea Glass, and Spy Glass. The final trilogy, Shadow Study, Night Study, and Dawn Study, is where things get a bit odd. Maria V. Snyder had thrown in a few short stories/novellas throughout from different characters’ points of view. Perhaps she got bored of just sticking to one POV, or maybe fans wanted more from the other characters, so the third trilogy is from Yelena’s POV in first person and the POV’s of multiple characters (mainly Valek, Leif, and Janco, with a few others popping in from time to time) in third person.
I’m not sure which editor thought it would be a good idea to have POV switch from first person to third person in the same novel, but—yikes—is it jarring. I don’t know if the editor thought readers would be too confused because the first two trilogies were first person, but I think the entire last trilogy should have been third person. Now, I will admit my bias here—I personally always prefer third person, and I especially love third-person limited that switches between multiple characters. I think the first two trilogies in the series would have been much stronger if they had been written as such.
But enough of my rant. Because even with the wonky POV stuff in the third trilogy, these books are amazing and absolutely worth your time to read. Snyder’s world-building is compelling, detailed, and original. The books take place mostly between two pre-industrial countries: Ixia and Sitia. Ixia is a post-revolution country ruled by Commander Ambrose. His personal body guard and assassin is Valek. In the first novel Yelena is in prison for murder and is offered the choice to be the Commander’s food taster in exchange for her life. She agrees, and throughout the first book she and Valek begin to fall in love.
