Isaiah Roby's Blog: MI Book Reviews, page 66

The Scapegracers

Whoa.
This certainly packed a punch! Full of magic, queerness, and unapologetic girlhood.

An outcast teenage lesbian witch finds her coven hidden amongst the popular girls in her school, and performs some seriously badass magic in the process.

Skulking near the bottom of West High’s social pyramid, Sideways Pike lurks under the bleachers doing magic tricks for Coke bottles. As a witch, lesbian, and lifelong outsider, she’s had a hard time making friends. But when the three most popular girls pa...

Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology

“Across many worlds and many timelines, these stories depict the moments when people see the fascism in front of them for what it is, accept it as real, and make the choice to fight it. Who are the canaries in the coal mine? When can the long-hidden voice no longer be ignored? Anti-fascist rebellion can take many forms. A transgender woman living on an artificial satellite learns to reject oppression via poetry. A machine ethicist finds a way to dance with her gods in a surveillance state. An un...

The Winter Duke

Super cool and twisted political intrigue fantasy set in a palace made out of ice.

An enchanted tale of intrigue where a duke’s daughter is the only survivor of a magical curse.
When Ekata’s brother is finally named heir, there will be nothing to keep her at home in Kylma Above with her murderous family. Not her books or science experiments, not her family’s icy castle atop a frozen lake, not even the tantalizingly close Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family wi...

ARC Review: Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Awesome story about a nonbinary artist thrown into political machinations featuring art, automaton dragons and revolution in an East-Asian historical fantasy-ish setting.

Dragons. Art.  Revolution .
Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.
One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.
But when Jebi discovers the depths of the ...

The Hollow Places

“A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel from the author of the “innovative, unexpected, and absolutely chilling” (Mira Grant, Nebula Award–winning author) The Twisted Ones.

Pray they are hungry.

Kara finds these words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and sta...

How to They/Them: A Visual Guide to Nonbinary Pronouns and the World of Gender Fluidity

A great guide from the basics to more complex matters all around they/them pronouns and the people who might use them.

Ever wonder what nonbinary or gender nonconforming really mean? And how the heck do you use they/them pronouns for just one person? Isn’t it supposed to be plural?

This charming and disarming guide unpacks all these questions and more with a fun, visual approach. From a real-deal they/them-using genderqueer writer, this book makes it humorous and easy to learn so that everyone...

Dan’s Hauntastic Haunts Investigates: Ivarsson Schoolhouse

“When a curse comes calling, Daniel and Chad confront their greatest challenge yet.

Hauntastic Haunts is investigating the historic Ivarsson School. With Halloween right around the corner, the vlog is in peak season. Dan and Chad are eager to explore the decades-long string of strange deaths among the school’s young scholars. While they delve into the mystery, both men must come to grips with Chad’s newfound talents as a medium.

Dan and Chad’s efforts to uncover the haunting’s truth meet w...

A Neon Darkness

Oof, this was exactly as frustrating and twisted as I expected it to be – and unfortunately just as unsatisfying character-development wise.
Definitely stays true to it’s subtitle “What if the villain of your story is you?”

The second Bright Sessions novel from creator Lauren Shippen that asks: “What if the X-Men, instead of becoming superheroes, decided to spend some time in therapy?”

Los Angeles, 2006. Eighteen-year-old Robert Gorham arrives in L.A. amid the desert heat and the soft buzz of n...

A Touch of Death

“A thousand years in the future, the last of humanity live inside the walls of the totalitarian Kingdom of Cutta. The rich live in Anais, the capital city of Cutta, sheltered from the famine and disease which ravage the rest of the Kingdom. Yet riches and power only go so far, and even Anaitians can be executed. It is only by the will of the King that Nate Anteros, son of the King’s favourite, is spared from the gallows after openly dissenting. But when he’s released from prison, Nate disappears...

The Art of Saving the World

I was drawn to this by the doppelgänger shenanigans and got an original view on the Chosen One trope and an intriguing and fresh take on the involvement of a mysterious government agency. Cannot recommend this enough!

One girl and her doppelgangers try to stop the end of the world in this YA sci-fi adventure

When Hazel Stanczak was born, an interdimensional rift tore open near her family’s home, which prompted immediate government attention. They soon learned that if Hazel strayed too far, the...