Headley’s retelling of Beowulf through the eyes of Grendel’s mother and Hrothgar’s wife takes on epic heroes, American veterans with PTSD, gentrification, the monstrosity of racism, and Edward Scissorhands.
Read more"Muse of Nightmares": Looking Through the Lens of Trauma
Laini Taylor put a restriction on this project: killing couldn’t be the solution to her characters’ conflicts. The result is a harrowing exploration of nightmares, both lived and dreamed.
Read moreTheir Hungry, Thirsty Roots: McGuire's latest Wayward Child
Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series continues with a story that asks, “What if life were fair?” It’s portal fantasy at its best: A door appears, a choice is made, you come back changed … if you come back at all.
Read more"Finding Baba Yaga": The Perfect Book for the Season of the Witch
Jane Yolen’s novel-in-verse, Finding Baba Yaga, arrives just in time for the season of the witch.
Read more"Circe": A Thousand Ways to Deal with Lovers
Yes, you can turn them into pigs, but there are so many other situations women find themselves in and such a variety of possible responses. Gods and Heroes, trigger warning: not all of them act like gentlemen.
Read more"The Hazel Wood": Interrogating the European Fairy Tale
Melissa Albert’s debut novel cuts to the bone of European fairy tales to find the essence of nightmares: horrors that are both seductive and disturbing.
Read more"The Queen of Sorrow"
The final tale in the Queens of Renthia saga is here. More queens, more lands, more spirits, and answers to questions as large as the universe.
Read moreSouthern Gothic: The Present Haunted by the Past -- Part I, Short Stories
Eudora Welty, trees in the White River, Tania James, and a mural in Prescott, Arkansas (not-so-accidentally chosen because it's the hometown of Amanda's grandma)
An exploration of Southern Gothic speculative literature.
Read moreThe Wild, Raging Girl
River Tam, not using her words in Firefly.
Wild, raging girls seem to be everywhere these days, from movies like Logan to books like The Girl with All the Gifts.
Read moreThe Heroine’s Journey: Beyond the Bindings of the Western Tradition
S.A. Chakraborty's debut novel sweeps readers away on a flying carpet to the magical city of Daevabad, where Cairo orphan Nahri will learn the truth - both the incredible and the ugly - about her family's history.
Read moreSabaa Tahir: Hope in a Dark Universe
How far would you go for family and freedom? Sabaa Tahir pits hope against darkness in An Ember in the Ashes.
Read moreThe Future of the Princess: Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles
In The Lunar Chronicles, Marissa Meyer re-imagines four classic princesses and their associated princes. With the five-book series now complete, it's time to unpack these princesses and see what patterns, new and old, have emerged in their heroic journeys.
Read moreInvasion of the Tearling -- on Secret-Keeping and Tearling as Moses
The second book of Erika Johansen's trilogy, published by HarperCollins in June of 2015.
"The Invasion of the Tearling" is the second book in Erika Johansen’s "The Queen of the Tearling" trilogy. We discuss character and story development, biblical allusions...and propose spoiler-ridden speculations about the upcoming final book.
Read moreContemporary Hero's Journey: The Post-Campbell Post
Join the Unbound Writers on a few hero's journeys as we illustrate a classic quest with Luke Skywalker, then diverge to follow Garth Nix's Clariel and Moira Young's Saba across The Dustlands.
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