James Nicoll Reviews

2025‘s Vanya and the Wild Hunt is the first volume of Sangu Mandanna’s middle-grade magical-school contemporary fantasy series.

Aside from her ADHD and her parent’s curious reticence about their past, Vanya is an unremarkable Anglo-Indian British schoolgirl.

Well, there is the matter of the rare books in her parents’ bookstore talking to her. And the books’ frustratingly vague prognostications, which Vanya discounts. And the horrifying monster who breaks into the family home.

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2021’s Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom is the first of Sangu Mandanna’s Kiki Kallira middle-grade modern fantasy novels.

Anxious eleven-year-old Kiki Kallira is plagued by obtrusive thoughts, nightmare scenarios she cannot ignore no matter how absurd or unlikely. Otherwise enjoyable activities are routinely spoiled as Kiki involuntarily dwells on implausible possibilities.

At least Kiki has her art to comfort her. Too bad her drawings may well have doomed the world to apocalyptic tyranny.

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Sangu Mandanna’s 2022’s The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches is a stand-alone contemporary fantasy novel.

Despite her pretensions to eccentricity, Mika Moon does follow the rules she learned from Primrose, oldest and most powerful of Britain’s small witch community. The prime rule: protect the secret that witches exist at all, lest witches once again find themselves the focus of official and mass hatred. Primrose is convinced that this means avoiding close friends, lovers, and any other social connection that might give a non-witch the chance to discover the secret. Even associating too often with other witches could give the game away. Thus far, Mika has been diligent, which is to say very, very alone.

Except … Mika does post online videos in which she cosplays a stereotyped witch. Since she never uses actual magic, those videos cannot possibly expose the secret. Or so Mika thought.

Ian Kubo-Hawthorn knows a witch when he sees one. As it happens, he and his colleagues have a use for a witch, if they can entice one into isolated Nowhere House.

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