Better late than never! I wasn’t sure I’d manage to get a post up this week at all, but thankfully, here we are. I hope you have all had a good start to your week–we spent the weekend enjoying some sunshine at the beach, and are now fully in school-and-work mode, happy to be moving forward into autumn properly. It is chilly enough this morning that I had to put on wool socks and my cozy Jesus College sweatshirt! Hard to believe I was strolling barefoot on the golden sand just a few days ago.
On to the post! I hope you’ve been able to find something to enjoy in my previous book recommendations. If nothing in those posts has caught your fancy, though, never fear: I have three more authors to throw at you today.
First up: M.L. Wang, author of The Sword of Kaigen.
This book is considerably darker than my usual reads, though it never falls into the category of grimdark, or darkness for the sake of darkness. You guys don’t have to worry about that on this blog–I will never, ever recommend a book that glorifies darkness. The Sword of Kaigen, though, definitely explores some heavy topics and depicts a lot of violence. There were a few times when I wondered if I was reading a tragedy (yes, I admit–I peeked at the back just to make sure I wasn’t). But it did end with hope, even if it was a hope tinged with sorrow and grief, and even if everything wasn’t beautifully rosy and happily-ever-after. The prose in this story is beautiful, and the characters are real and vivid. This book won the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (more usually known as SPFBO) in 2019, and reading it makes it easy to see why.
Next we have Sabrina Chase, who I discovered just now has written a substantial amount of books I was not aware of, but who I primarily know as the author of the Guardian’s Compact books.
Set in an alternate world very similar to ours in the Victorian era, save with magic and elements of steampunk included, these books follow the two main characters as they stumble into adventure and intrigue, building close bonds with each other and a few other good friends as they go about doing the right thing even when it seems fruitless or too hard. In other words, exactly up my alley!
Finally for this week, we have Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal, one of the most memorable and hard-to-categorize books I’ve ever read.
The basic premise is: a young girl living in a floating community off the Gulf Coast in the US tosses a message in a bottle into the sea. It eventually ends up with a political prisoner in a fictional country on the other side of the world. As the two continue to communicate–well, that’s as far as I am going to describe it, because pretty much anything else is going to spoil the story–and this is one story where it absolutely pays to go into it unspoiled. Thoughtful, luminous, heart-breaking, hopeful … this is absolutely a story worth your time to read.
There you have it, three more authors for you to discover! Only one week left to go–have I missed your favorite self-published fantasy author? Drop me a line in the comments and maybe I’ll be able to add them to next week’s post! As it’s the final week I think I can allow myself to go with more than three should I need to.
Have a wonderful week, my friends!
