RaveEntertainment WeeklyWe’ve got normal words capitalized, mentions of physics-defying phenomena like imprisoned oceans, and the ancient mythic resonance of labyrinths. Sounds like some of that Good Fantasy Stuff, right? It is indeed (there’s even a tight-knit circle of occult academics if that’s your preferred flavor), but we so often associate fantasy with adventure, and Piranesi is the farthest thing from adventure. It’s a trap .. . This is something else that is present in Piranesi: Caring for the dead. The protagonist goes out of his way to honor the remains of people who have died in the labyrinth — to the point that he often generates confusion by talking about them as if they were still alive. Piranesi knows the difference between a living body and a biscuit-box full of bones, but he also knows (perhaps better than we do) that they are still people ... Although it is a fraction of the size of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell , clocking in with fewer than 250 pages, Piranesi hit my mind and soul like a thunderbolt. It is a work of deep power that has given me a lens through which to understand my 2020 experience — both the despair and the catharsis.
Philip Pullman
RaveEntertainment WeeklyLa Belle Sauvage is a thrilling adventure and a welcome return to the world of daemons and Dust, though it does suffer from some common prequel pitfalls ... Pullman is great at getting readers to invest in brand new characters rather quickly, so it’s a disappointment to see them left hanging at the end ... Once again, Pullman’s fantasy arrives precisely when it can teach us the most about ourselves, as if it were guided by Dust itself.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Ed. by Christopher Tolkien
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyWithin the pages of The Silmarillion, Beren and Lúthien’s story adds some laser focus to a book that can otherwise get rather rambling. But with this book, Christopher proves it can also stand on its own — and in many different forms! ... imbued with a real sense of love, as well as a deep knowledge of loss (Lúthien must ultimately decide between immortality, and most characters don’t make it out of the story in one piece). Tolkien wrote eloquently but also elementally, and it’s fascinating to watch the story’s primal energies channeled across different versions. Beren and Lúthien therefore makes a good introduction to LOTR fans nervous about taking on The Silmarillion, and also gives longtime fans a fascinating look at the Tolkiens’ myth-making process.
John Scalzi
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyScalzi has constructed a thrilling novel so in tune with the flow of politics that it would feel relevant at almost any time ... Scalzi is good at writing two-faced political cutthroats and usually manages to make their machinations interesting. He balances humor with action throughout the book, and always keeps the plot twists coming ... One annoyance is that The Collapsing Empire does not bill itself as the beginning of a new series (in the vein of Scalzi’s breakthrough Old Man’s War saga) and yet it leaves most of its story untold by the end. Scalzi does a good job of building this unique world and setting up a lot of dominoes, but only a few have fallen by the end of this book’s 300 pages.
Paul Goldberg
MixedEntertainment WeeklyThere’s a lot going on, which makes it hard to keep track of everything. The book’s more vivid sequences sometimes get lost in a tangle of bilingual dialogue, alternating formats, and shifting tenses.
Gregory Maguire
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyMaguire plays with the ancient archetypes at work in Wonderland while injecting them with fresh perspective.
