Tough Travels: Mothers

It’s Tough Travelling time again! Tough Travels was originally created by Nathan at Fantasy Review Barn, revived on Fantasy Faction, and is now hosted by the team at The Fantasy Hive. Inspired by Diana Wynne Jones’s humorous classic The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, every month it highlights a particular fantasy trope, theme or cliché, and invites bloggers to list stand-out books related to that week’s theme.

This month’s theme is mothers. 

Now this is a tough topic, because as I already mentioned in a post last year about absent parents, it’s often hard to find mothers or fathers who aren’t dead or otherwise absent in fantasy narratives. However, there are definitely some out there, so I’ve picked five I found particularly memorable:  Continue reading

Loved It, Hated It: A Wizard of Earthsea, Angelfall and The Knife of Never Letting Go

Sometimes when I’ve absolutely adored a book and given it 5 stars, I do something a little counterintuitive. I go to Goodreads and I scroll down till I find a one star review and read it. Why? Because it has always fascinated me how much people’s taste in books can differ. I wonder how a book I thought was amazing has inspired someone else to launch into an angry rant, or vice versa. Continue reading

Please, No More Love Triangles

I’ll be honest, it has to be a brilliant, addictive, or particularly unique paranormal romance to tempt me to read beyond the first book. Even then, I’m hesitant. And it’s not because I don’t enjoy the genre. I love a well-crafted supernatural romance. I’m not even turned off by the copious vampires and werewolves. Sure, I’ve seen a lot of them, but if they’re done well, they’re still enthralling.

The reason for my hesitance is that I’m thoroughly sick of love triangles. Continue reading