James Nicoll Reviews

2023’s A Sleight of Shadows is the second volume in Kat Howard’s Unseen World series. The first volume was An Unkindness of Magicians, whose review may be found here.

During the revolution called the Turning, Sydney sacrificed her magic to bring down the malevolent House of Shadows. Thanks to Sydney, the mages of the Unseen World can no longer draw their power from the slaves of the House of Shadows. They must draw on their own power. That’s painful.

Many sorcerers are unhappy with the new state of affairs. Spells may not work; using magic hurts. Ill-will is building. Can the Turning be reversed?

As it happens, the House of Shadows has begun reassembling itself without human intervention.

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Kat Howard’s A Cathedral of Myth and Bone is a collection: fourteen short stories, one novella, and one novelette. She is also the author of several well-regarded novels, which I reviewed here.

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Kat Howard’s 2017 An Unkindness of Magicians is a standalone urban fantasy.

Every twenty years, the magical houses of New York City’s Unseen World struggle for dominance in a series of increasingly dangerous contests known as the Turning. This time, the Turning is seven years early. The premature Turning is just one of the disquieting anomalies plaguing the Unseen World. Which may hint that magic itself may be dying.

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2016’s Roses and Rot is Kat Howard’s debut novel.

Imogen and Marin have a nasty mother, an insidiously spiteful mother, a mother worse than an evil step-mom. Imogen escapes domestic torture by enrolling at a distant school that is so prestigious that her status-conscious mother cannot bring herself to cut off that escape. But Marin does not have the option (much to Imogen’s distress; she does not want to abandon her sister). Marin has to escape on her own, which she does indeed manage. She becomes a dancer. 

Years later, both sisters win fellowships to an artists’ colony, Melete. It’s a chance to reconnect. It also turns out to be an encounter with fairy danger.

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