Very Small Troll

13/06/2024

Naomi Novik has been pretty hit or miss for me in the past and unfortunately this was a miss. I was really excited by the concept of historical dragons but i got i little too much of what i was asking for. This is historical fiction about the Napoleonic wars but dragons exist too. I loved the way that dragons were portrayed in this, but it turns out i really don't care about the Napoleonic wars and when the fantasy boundary doesn't extend to including significant female characters in this time period, I'm out. This was a DNF at 75 pages.

12/06/2024

I'll be taking part in this in July! Will you? 🐉⚔️

The Fantasy Hive will be hosting another Women In SFF photo challenge during July!

We’ve decided to do just three prompts a week to make things a bit easier. Please feel free to join in as much as you want, or dip in and out of the challenge whenever you feel like it. We just hope everyone has fun!

Please use the hashtag and/or tag me or whenever you post.

We have so much planned for next month, I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Story shares appreciated to reach more people ❤️
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12/06/2024

👀👀

Kat reviews Veronica Roth's contemporary fantasy WHEN AMONG CROWS:

"an eerie, enchanting novella... thick with Slavic folklore"

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/yx5a5tjj

Very Small Troll

10/06/2024

I thought i knew the story of Beowulf and was curious about why this was titled 'Dragon Slayer', but apparently i just forgot the second half of his story? This was a very easy read at about 100 pages and had some great illustrations inside. Rosemary Sutcliff strikes again!

09/06/2024

A new reading vlog where I end up reading about a lot of witches, dragons, and other weird monsters 🐉

https://buff.ly/3ySznY3

06/06/2024

Another book very kindly sent to me by the publisher to review for The Fantasy Hive. This is a short and sweet novella that feel like The Witcher but in Chicago and also we're sympathising for the monsters. A great concept that i would have loved a longer story from.

03/06/2024

I was very kindly sent an arc by the publisher so i could review it for The Fantasy Hive and it was genuinely so, so good. Q***r and polyamourous rep all over the place, dragons dotted all across the cute-scary spectrum, and fast-paced, brilliant writing that made it seriously hard to put the book down. Please give this a read when it comes out on July 9th!

Oh and it's a heist book.

02/06/2024

Here is my abominably late April wrap-up! I chat about six of the most notable reads from April and some of them elicit strong opinions.

The link is in my bio as per!

30/05/2024

This book cracked my reading slump wide open. It was the oldest book on my tbr when i picked it up and i was so relieved it lived up to my expectations after some truly mediocre reads these last two months.

Five gold shining stars, i fully recommend reading this.

29/05/2024

Spoiler Alert: i loved it.

27/05/2024

This is your regular reminder that this books exists and is fantastic.

Imagine if the Addams Family were dysfunctional in a superbly toxic way and the two daughters are left to fend for themselves are their parents are murdered so the youngest sister is raised by her absolutely psychotic older sister and then the leader of their country is murdered and everyone wants to hunt the Addams Family down.

Imagine that but better and with tiny dancing mouse skeletons and lots of necromancy.

26/05/2024

George is back on the channel and this time we read each other's favourite books!

https://buff.ly/4a6gJc2

23/05/2024

This is a cute little book of two moomin short stories that I bought in an Oxfam book shop and I am very excited to read them.

23/05/2024

The founder of Handheld Press, Kate Macdonald, has revealed more about the pressures behind the indie’s closure, including the impact of Brexit and the cost-of-living crisis. 

20/05/2024

Hello this book exists and it is very good I recommend it.

A warrior nun saves a relic from the enemy's grasp and then ends up with the relic's revenant chatting inside her head while they do their best to overthrow the enemy forces.

19/05/2024

Need some recommendations for stories about sentient houses? Look no further.

17/05/2024

I enjoy this view quite a lot ☁️

Currently reading: The Sky On Fire by Jenn Lyons (out in July)

16/05/2024

I rearranged my books to make shelving them easier and I can't decide if I like it or not. Usually i'm a big fan of the all the books being squished together with no gaps, but with the double stackage happening, I think this opens it up a bit?

Maybe it'll grow on me.

15/05/2024

My review of Slewfoot is live on The Fantasy Hive website! 😈

Kat reviews Brom's eerily beautiful SLEWFOOT:

"This is a vicious story of revenge and survival that delivers crisp, horrifying scenes"

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/mynvh5e5

13/05/2024

Have you read The Bear & The Nightingale trilogy? I found a lovely hardback of the second book in a charity shop and it's creeping its way to the top of my tbr.

12/05/2024

I created a new TBR game to keep my reading interesting and this first attempt was... debateably successful 👀

https://buff.ly/3w98uhk

09/05/2024

This is the current state of my tbr cart - I can juuust fit all the of the books from my tbr that don't require me to have read other books first. See if you can spot the library books.

07/05/2024

Kat reviews Willow Smith & Jess Hendel's BLACK SHIELD MAIDEN, out today from DelRey!

"powerful representation that has been missing from Viking books for too long and I am very excited to see a book like this being released"

More: https://tinyurl.com/4jfy9aed

Very Small Troll

05/05/2024

My quarterly wrap-up is now live with all my stats, goals, budgets and everything else!

https://buff.ly/3WiLCqA

01/05/2024

Here's a little run down of Alix E Harrow's main works to help you work out if any of them are up your alley!

29/04/2024

This is the stunning sequel to Godkiller that came out this month. There was no dip in quality of the storytelling, the character arcs, or the worldbuilding. The intrigue just ramped up and up, and the representation in this story just keeps getting more varied and it's all so well done!

28/04/2024

My middle grade reading vlog is up now!

25/04/2024

Here's my little libarry stack for April!

One of these is my buzzword read, one of these is a social media rec, and one of these is an author's second (and possible last) chance for me.

24/04/2024

Found in the wild: two of my favourite reads from the first chunk of this year!

22/04/2024

This was a hand-me-down book from my mum and colour me intrigued by the blurb:

"Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie’s vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff’s new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world."

Blurb from Storygraph.