Orbit Books | Author, editor, caffeine-addict, wannabe ninja

Ah, it’s review time again! Evan Winter‘s African (Xhosa) inspired epic fantasy The Rage of Dragons (The Burning, Book #1) is a story I wish I’d dived into sooner as I am in love with this book and its characters. If you haven’t added this to your TBR mountain, then rectify this immediately!

In keeping with the short reviews (because time and I are still at loggerheads), I’m not going to go into a huge, in-depth breakdown of character and worldbuilding and plot — others do that far better than me, but know that the characters reach into your chest and do both terrible and wonderful things to your heart, that the worldbuilding is unique and beautiful and terrifying, and that the plot arcs with a deft hand through the story.

The journey with Tau is a fraught one, and you can’t help but want him to reach his end goals despite knowing it likely isn’t going to end the way you’d want it to. The secondary characters, particularly Tau’s Scale, are diversely unique, with their own quirks and their own secrets, their own desires too, and the influence they have on Tau and he on them, the building of friendships that start unwanted was a joy to read.

The political ideology of the world, the caste system that’s one of oppression with a baited hook of betterment strung with a poisoned worm hits hard, and continues to hit ever harder as Tau starts to really understand what’s at play and what those in power will do to maintain their hold of it. The ‘Rage’ is real, folks, I felt it through them, for them.

Rage of Dragons

The magic system, holy shit, the magic system. There’s some terrifying shit in the Isihogo, and Winter’s descriptions of the demons within and the destruction they wrought on bodies was top notch. As were all the battle scenes/skirmishes — I love me a good fight scene, and Winter knows how to write them, to give them the speed and believability, the horror of it.

I flew through the last third of this book, reading way past the witching hour — this book is a sleep-thief, and I gladly let it do so. Thing is, I NEED the next instalment because goddamn, that ending… How Aran would have been proud. Hit me right in the feels.

I can’t recommend this enough, and I give it all the stars!

Bring on book two: The Fires of Vengeance. I am so here for it.

Oh, oh, oh! And look at that cover! Like, get your face in it!

There are books that sneak up on you, teasing you with glimpses of the fantastique, of possibilities within possibilities, shaded with darkness and radiating light. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow is a tale that defies expectation, folds in on itself in a compelling origami, creating shapes and stories and Doors both beautiful and terrible.

I didn’t know what to expect from the book; I had little idea of the plot or the characters or the path the story would take… and that discovery as I turned each page was the best way to step through the Door Alix Harrow opened into January’s world.

My partner, who’s had to put up with me reading to the wee hours while he’s trying to sleep, asked me what it was about. I explained it woefully of course, because words – my words – don’t do it justice. A book within a book within a book, and magic and love and adventure and Doors and self-discovery and self-belief. It breaks the fourth wall and fifth wall… and god, all the walls. It shows the good in people and the evil, the struggle of trying to find your place in the world and of the worlds. It’s knowing you’re different, that you don’t quite fit, that an in-between girl has a foot in each world but stands in none. Defiantly so.

It’s words. Not just words upon the page (although the narrative is divine) but the power of them, the way they twist and turn and shape themselves and those around them and those who gaze upon them.

January Scaller would have the right words, and they would be beautiful. It’s her story… and the story of beginnings and middles and not-quite-ends. Even thinking of it now, I’m smiling. There’s hope, even in the darkest lines of the pages, and that spark lights January’s way… with her ever-faithful dog (I love him).

The Ten Thousand Doors of January goes onto the top shelf of my bookcase, alongside other tales that will stay with me for a very long time, and each time I walk past, I will think of Doors and magical places… and oh the possibilities.

GET THIS BOOK IN YOUR EYES!

Ahem.

Eleventy stars out of five.

(Oh, and a special shout-out for the cover — much pretty, such sigh.)