The Best Book I Read This Month: The Witch and the Tsar by Oleysa Salnikova Gilmore

The best book I read this month was a magical tale, a retelling of the Russian legend of Baba Yaga. Olesysa Salnikova Gilmore’s The Witch and the Tsar transplants Baba Yaga to Russia during the rule of Ivan the Terrible, where the witch and the tsar are first allies and then enemies.

The story is infused with magic and the supernatural side by side with history. It even includes my favorite figure in Russian folklore, Koschei the Deathless. We learn Yaga’s story—past and present—as she fights to save Russia from a supernatural threat that has consumed the tsar. It is an interesting take on Ivan’s madness and blood-thirst.

But the story is about more than death. It is about love too: love of country, love of family, romantic love, platonic love, filial love.

I enjoyed this book. I found Yaga a sympathetic character, not the boogeyman she’s often portrayed as, and her love story, compelling. I especially loved being immersed in Russian mythology. I discovered new legends and new figures that I want to read more about. I am eager for Gilmore’s next book.

The Best Book I Read This Month: Horseman by Christina Henry

It’s spooky season, so it’s fitting that the best book I read this month had a spooky bent. Horseman by Christina Henry is not so much a retelling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as it is an imaginative sequel. I adored Henry’s Alice in Wonderland retellings, and this one didn’t disappoint, either.

The story follows Ben Van Brunt, grandchild of the original Legend’s Brom Van Brunt and Katrina Van Tassel. Ben wants nothing more than to be just like brave, bombastic Grandpa Brom, but that determination is put to the test when two village children turn up dead and mutilated. Ben knows a monster killed the boys, but Sleepy Hollow’s residents want something human to blame—something like Ben.

Henry has crafted a story in which nothing is quite what it looks like—not Ben, not the murderous monster, not even the legendary horseman. I loved that. And while I can’t imagine a sequel to this book, I would happily read anything else set in this world.

The Best Books I Read This Month: The Sixth World Series by Rebecca Roanhorse

The best books I read this month (yes, books—plural) were two books by Native American author Rebecca Roanhorse. The books—Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts—are the first two of Roanhorse’s four-book Sixth World series.

The series is set in the future, after climate change and other disasters have destroyed life as we know it in North America. The disasters have left the Navajo Reservation (Dinetah) isolated and independent—and awakened Navajo gods and monsters. It is Maggie Hoskin’s job to deal with them.

In the first book, Maggie reluctantly teams up with a medicine man’s grandson to track the source of a zombie outbreak. In the second, she and her small guerrilla group set off to rescue the grandson when he is taken off the reservation by a doomsday cult. The world-building in both books is excellent. Trauma is a continuous theme across both books, and I expect it will be throughout the series. In Trail of Lightning, there is a clear sense of how desperate life is on the reservation. In Storm of Locusts, the world widens a bit and we start to get a sense of how broken civilization is outside Dinetah.

Throughout, the world is steeped in Navajo lore—and that’s what I liked the most about these books. This isn’t fantasy with fairies and dragons and elves and other elements reminiscent of medieval Europe. This is fantasy with Navajo gods and demi-gods, a world in which trauma awakens people’s clan powers. (Maggie’s powers are killing and speed; the grandson’s are healing and persuasion.) And even with the presence of gods and demi-gods, there is no deus ex machina. Maggie and her fellow human beings are on their own, more pawns and playthings of the deities than protectees.

There is no title or release date for Book 3 in the series yet, but I’m already eager to read it. Roanhorse can’t write it fast enough!