In Case You Missed It: Backlist Book Love (October 20)
Magic in Our World Edition
Happy October! We’ve been enjoying some properly autumnal weather here in Virginia, at last, and it always puts me in the mood to just curl up with a good book. And that’s what this post is for: to help you find some new-to-you but not new-to-the-world reads. Why? Because authors shouldn’t have to thrive or perish based on a book’s first week sales — but the publishing industry too often expects them to. Check out the first installment for the full explanation!
For October, it’d be easy to recommend some favorite witchy reads, but I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction. As seems fitting for a time when the veils between worlds are thin, how about some books that bring magic into our reality?
Links in this post are affiliate links to Bookshop; if you buy a book using them, then I get a little somethin’-somethin’ from Bookshop, which I will then use to… buy more books.
An Unkindness of Magicians, Kat Howard
Published September 2017
A secret society of magicians operates in New York City — but their magic is powered by a dark secret. On top of which they’ve piled other dark secrets. And a newcomer to their ranks (though not as new as she might seem) is hellbent on bringing the whole damn thing to its knees.
This book (and its sequel, A Sleight of Shadows) is entrancing, addictive, magnetic. In some ways, it’s also brutal, unflinching — and yet not so grimdark as it might initially seem. The people trying to do right are people you want to root for and see succeed, and their opponents are people you really want to see destroyed. It’s a book of high tension and painful magic, and well worth reading.
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina, Zoraida Córdova
Published September 2021
Absolutely gorgeously written and thoroughly compelling family fantasy drama, spanning vast distances temporal, physical, and emotional. The driving force here is more the characters than the magic, but the magic is still utterly inescapable (and, really, that’s part of what makes their lives so very complicated).
This isn’t a quick read, persay, but it’s one that I read very quickly because I got so lost in it. The tale wends around itself with entrancing grace.
Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
Published August 2010
And now, a historical entry: like Jane Austen, but with magic. I love the base premise here, which is that magic exists, but within very particular social boundaries. It’s glamour, illusionary, suitable for art and making life more comfortable, but not an occupation for a real man. It’s the domain of ladies, one of the social graces, like painting watercolors or playing the pianoforte.
That whole concept becomes more complicated as the series goes on, and the plots of the later books have larger stakes, but this first one is a quiet fantasy of manners, and it’s utterly charming.
If any of those tickle your fancy, I heartily encourage you to pick them up to keep you company as the autumn leaves fall. (Assuming, of course, that you live in a place where they do so. Otherwise, pick them up to keep you company as the… palm trees wave?) Go forth and read!
