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A Different Time and Space
Fae of Legacy and Lies follows a seemingly powerless priestess who leaves her home and discovers that her fae heritage, hidden magic, and even her identity have been shaped by secrets, and she now has to decide what path her destiny will take. What first inspired Magdalene of Avalon and the world surrounding her?
I read The Mists of Avalon during a rough transition right after I got out of the U.S. Military. The book had a way of pulling me into a different time and space that I deeply needed. That escape inspired me to go on a sacred sites tour of southwest England, where the heartbeat of King Arthur influenced me and the mysterious Black Madonnas scattered throughout the territory fed into a story developing in my head. Coupled with my lifelong love for Tolkien and a deep fascination with my Welsh heritage, the Magdalene of Avalon series was born.
Magdalene can be stubborn, insecure, devout, impulsive, and humorous. How did her personality develop as you wrote her?
I have to confess there might be a bit of myself in her—okay, a lot of myself. I’ve always used humor to soothe my nerves and unwind when tension piles up. Because of that, I ended up drawing on my own life’s progression to imagine how Magdalene would react, stumble, and grow as she faces the monumental challenges throughout the series.
The story repeatedly asks whether protection can become a form of control. How did that theme develop?
It naturally emerged as I wrote, but I’m no stranger to the theme itself. Whether people realize it or not, we often try to control the people we love. Be it out of fear or affection, we tend to place heavy influence on their choices in hopes of keeping them safe or close. I wanted a theme that readers could relate to from both sides of the coin—because we’ve all experienced being held too tightly, and we’ve all inadvertently held someone else too tight.
Without revealing too much, what aspects of Magdalene’s heritage and abilities are you most excited to explore as the series continues?
Oh my gosh, there is so much! I love writing her adventures because they lean heavily into Welsh folklore, which is where her true fae nature comes from. Her heritage as an elemental fae is just the beginning after Book One. I’ve packed this series with loads of power progression, deep magic, and plenty of surprises that I can’t wait for readers to uncover.
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Priestess Mary has lived a shadowed life on Avalon, silenced by her vows. Determined to awaken her dormant fae magic, she defies ancient law and ventures to the mainland of Ancient Wales-an act that shatters her world.
Exiled for her actions and cast into the hands of her manipulative, estranged father, the druid Cyrus, Mary is no longer just a priestess; she is a target. Pursued by the blood-drinking Grymadder, she faces a perilous journey where visions foreshadow war, magic is unbound, and a forbidden attraction to a dangerous warder with a shifting nature threatens the wrath of the goddesses.
Caught between meddling deities and protectors she cannot trust, Mary must stop listening to the whispers of what others expect of her-and seize the power within her own blood, taking control of her journey. This isn’t just about returning home-it’s about survival. And as an imprisoned fae tribe calls for freedom, Mary must embrace her heritage, which is her greatest weapon and deadliest curse.
Perfect for fans of the high-stakes Fae magic of Sarah J. Maas, the capable heroine in From Blood and Ash, the intrigue of Outlander, and the mythic atmosphere of Daughter of the Forest. This immersive, slow-burn historical romantasy explores the struggle for identity and the courage to forge a path of one’s own.
With themes of prophecy, forbidden love and fated mates, this epic fantasy-where Welsh whispers within the fraying mists-is an essential read for those who crave origin stories that expand the heart of Avalon and Arthurian lore with Welsh mythical beings and beasts.
Ancient magic never truly dies.
It simply waits…
For someone desperate enough to wake it.
Fae of Legacy and Lies
M.J. Azinger’s Fae of Legacy and Lies is a historical romantasy built around identity, inherited secrets, Welsh mythology, and one young woman’s uncomfortable discovery that almost everything she understands about herself has been shaped by someone else. Mary begins the story as the Maiden of Avalon, devoted to the Triple Goddess and convinced that the island is where she belongs. She’s twenty-three, half-fae, apparently powerless, and still grieving her mother, Caerllion. When her estranged father, Cyrus, arrives and takes her away from Avalon, the world Mary has carefully organized starts coming apart. Even her name eventually changes. She becomes Magdalene of Avalon, and that choice says a lot about the novel. This is a story about a woman slowly deciding which pieces of her inheritance she wants to carry and which ones she wants to define for herself.
One of the book’s strongest features is Magdalene herself. She’s curious, funny, stubborn, insecure, devout, impulsive, and frequently arguing with herself, her father, the gods, animals, insects, and occasionally the weather. Her internal commentary gives the story an unexpectedly playful personality even when the larger plot deals with death, manipulation, imprisonment, sacrifice, and violence. Her relationship with Cyrus is especially effective because it refuses to stay emotionally simple. Magdalene resents him for abandoning her after Caerllion’s death, yet she still wants his attention and approval. Cyrus loves her deeply, but his version of protection depends on secrecy and control, which makes him part of the very problem he’s trying to solve. Caerllion is just as complicated. Even from the Otherworld, she remains a major presence, and the gradual discovery that she suppressed Magdalene’s abilities and even kept her mentally subdued in the name of protecting her gives the word “legacy” a much sharper meaning.
The mythology gives Fae of Legacy and Lies its particular flavor. Azinger draws heavily from Welsh folklore, filling the story with the Tylwyth Teg, the Gwrach y Rhibyn, the Llamhigyn y Dŵr, the Gwyllgi, standing stones, ley lines, druids, spirits, gods, and competing interpretations of magic and divination. Welsh language is also worked throughout the dialogue and world. That density makes the setting feel culturally specific and gives Magdalene’s journey a sense of moving through an old landscape full of stories that are still alive. The multiple viewpoints help widen that world. Cyrus, Caerllion, Talorc, Cadfan, and others reveal schemes Magdalene can’t yet see, so readers often understand just how dangerous or ironic a situation is while she’s still trying to piece it together. That structure creates a fun tension between what Magdalene believes, what other characters believe, and what the truth might eventually turn out to be.
The book reminded me most of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon in its fascination with Avalon, priestesses, feminine divinity, spiritual power, and the way religious duty becomes tangled with politics and personal identity. Azinger takes those ingredients into a more contemporary romantasy direction, with fae factions, supernatural bonds, playful banter, hidden powers, and a developing attraction between Magdalene and Talorc. Their romance is a slow burn. Talorc is drawn to her long before they properly meet, while Magdalene experiences him through strange dreams, energy, scents, and half-understood encounters. That makes their connection feel tied to the same mysteries governing her emerging abilities. The novel spends considerable time inside its characters’ thoughts, particularly as they reconsider secrets and past decisions, so its pace is patient and deliberately accumulative. Readers who enjoy watching revelations alter a character’s understanding piece by piece will probably get the most from that approach.
What stayed with me most after finishing Fae of Legacy and Lies was the question of whether protection can remain loving once it takes away another person’s ability to choose. Nearly everyone around Magdalene believes they know what should happen to her. Caerllion hides her power. Cyrus hides her heritage. The druids see potential value in her abilities. The fae have their own claims and needs. Even the goddesses seem to be steering her toward a destiny she barely understands. Against all of that, Magdalene’s growing curiosity becomes one of her most important strengths. By the time she reaches Oak Hallow, she still has a great deal to learn, but she’s thinking more freely, questioning the stories she inherited, developing frightening abilities, and forming a purpose beyond the boundaries of Avalon. The cliffhanger ending leaves the major conflicts intentionally open, particularly the threat posed by the druids, the stolen fae map, the imprisoned Tylwyth Teg, Cyrus’s departure, and Magdalene’s connection with Talorc. As the opening novel of the Magdalene of Avalon series, it establishes a mythology-heavy fantasy about a heroine learning that claiming her own life may require understanding every lie that helped create it.
Pages: 430 | ASIN : B0HFR4CYT2
Pallomand
J. W. Murray’s Pallomand, the second book in The Winter’s Twins Series, is a sprawling epic fantasy novel built around prophecy, fractured kingdoms, ancient crimes, cloudships, dragons, and a war that keeps widening in scope. Murray opens with the fall of the Winter Kingdom and the murder of King Karradine Tieton, then carries that history forward into several interconnected storylines whose characters are living with the consequences centuries later. The central prophecy gives the novel its gravitational pull: the Pallomand, or Traveler, is destined to unite the Raven clans, while the Arcusian is tied to the destruction of the ruling Triumvirate. That setup makes Pallomand feel like high fantasy in the fullest sense, with old bloodlines, competing religions, magical artifacts, hidden civilizations, and political powers all converging on the same approaching crisis.
The worldbuilding is probably the book’s most immediately distinctive feature. Murray has created a fantasy world where air currents function like highways, rocky aerracks float in the atmosphere, Raven navigators sail cloudships, the Haik fly on their own wings, and time itself can be manipulated through objects and places such as the Oculan and Nol-Tajerus. The Moonstones can harness tremendous elemental power, while the book’s other supernatural systems involve telepathy, weather control, temporal travel, animal communication, prophetic visions, and the disturbing ability to steal memories through a victim’s eyes. The extensive glossary shows just how deliberately all of these cultures, technologies, titles, creatures, and magical concepts fit together. As epic fantasy worldbuilding, it has a lived-in quality. Terms such as Ko’journ, Saken, Marschirne, Strix, Navarasche, and har’korda gradually become parts of a coherent history.
What keeps all that lore grounded is the book’s attention to family, belonging, and identity. Marek’s story carries much of the emotional weight as he learns the truth about his Nordac ancestry, struggles with his failures as a father, and reaches a breaking point with both Elenya and the Triumvirate. L’dai’s arc has a different kind of force. After losing her wings, she has to rebuild her sense of self among the Snow Walkers, a people carrying their own inherited shame. Cassille develops from a stubborn child into someone frighteningly powerful, while Caleg wrestles with the legacy of Tadral the Traitor and the possibility that his people might finally redeem themselves. Even secondary threads, such as Alexi’s determination to protect his son and Harnen’s attempt to save Serrat through preparation, reinforce the same concern: what do people owe their families, their communities, and the generations that come after them? That gives this fantasy adventure a strong human center even when armies, dragons, and prophecies are moving across the page.
Murray also gives Pallomand a darker current that suits readers looking for dark fantasy alongside traditional high fantasy. The Korgon’s power comes as much from understanding desire and weakness as from military strength, which makes him a more interesting presence than a distant monster at the head of an army. His dominions embody different forms of corruption and control, from the Strix and Sedurai to the memory-stealing Navarasche. The Legion’s use of bonded soldiers and creatures gives the recurring image of chains real thematic importance. At the same time, the book knows how to stage large fantasy set pieces. The hunt for the Moonstones beneath the ice, L’dai’s encounters with the Strix, the dragon assault on Serrat, and the fall of Caladrin all have their own visual character. The attack on Caladrin in particular combines dragons, flying warriors, cloudships, collapsing towers, and an evacuation into a sequence that feels enormous while still making room for individual acts of courage.
By the final chapters, Pallomand begins pulling its many threads into a clearer pattern, and some of the book’s earlier mysteries take on entirely different meanings. Marek’s encounter on the Southern Ocean gives the prophecy a deeply personal dimension, while Tylene’s return as the Winter Queen reshapes Elenya’s understanding of her visions and of the Korgon’s long manipulation. Elenya learns that her supposed gift of prophecy is actually something else, and that another presence has been fighting to reach her through those visions. The ending provides revelation, which fits a continuing epic fantasy series whose central conflict is now expanding into something much larger than the original search for the Moonstones. Pallomand is ultimately a lore-rich, character-driven high fantasy adventure about people discovering that the histories they inherited are incomplete, the roles assigned to them can change, and the approaching war will demand that scattered families, clans, and kingdoms decide what they’re willing to become together.
Pages: 350 | ASIN : B0H2BY12HS
Doll God
Luanne Castle’s Doll God is a poetry collection about the things we make, keep, inherit, damage, lose, and sometimes ask to stand in for us. Dolls are its most visible objects, but Castle quickly expands their meaning beyond childhood play. They become doubles, bodies, relics, artworks, containers of memory, and sometimes unnerving little witnesses. The collection is arranged in four sections, and its imagery moves outward from dolls and domestic objects into lakes, animals, family histories, marriage, illness, death, art, and questions of the sacred. Castle is especially interested in the strange border between an object and the life we invest in it. A doll can be tender, comic, damaged, threatening, or holy, sometimes within the same poem.
One of the pleasures of Doll God is how physical these poems are. Castle notices chipped paint, satin pillows, tangled hair, lake water, bird wings, scars, bones, cactus, glass, mud, thread, and household clutter with the eye of someone who understands that objects accumulate meaning simply by surviving beside us. In “Vintage Doll Buggy,” a child’s toy made from scrap metal carries the history of a factory that later produced rifle components, letting war, fertility, childhood, manufacturing, and memory occupy the same small object. Elsewhere, a Hakata figure becomes a way of seeing a husband and a marriage, while a jar of collected pebbles registers loss without needing to explain it away. Castle’s poems often work this way: they look closely at something ordinary until another emotional reality begins showing through it.
The collection grows more intimate as it goes. Family stories and remembered childhood scenes mingle with grief, strained relationships, aging, bodily vulnerability, and the knowledge that almost everything we love is temporary. Water keeps returning as lake, ocean, memory, danger, inheritance, and a place where the living search for the dead. In “A Bone Elegy,” childhood lake memories intertwine with surgery and the navicular bone, whose name comes from its resemblance to a small boat. The poem joins anatomy and memory so naturally that the body itself begins to feel like a vessel carrying earlier versions of the self. Castle also has a sly, surreal streak that keeps the book from settling into solemnity. A marriage becomes a business packaging arguments on meat trays, a morning cup of tea turns into an Alice-like trap, and God himself appears as a peculiar handmade figure with a notepad and a sighing pen.
By the final section, Doll God has widened into a meditation on creation itself: who makes whom, what survives its maker, and what kind of meaning can be fashioned from a mortal body in a mortal world. Castle’s spiritual imagination is grounded in animals, weather, plants, scars, ghosts, domestic rituals, and art. Her poems keep returning to the possibility that holiness may be less a distant answer than a way of paying attention. In “Focus,” the sacred finally resides in the palo verde, the cactus, the hummingbird, the burros and jackrabbits, while the elaborate religious apparatus falls away. That movement captures what the whole collection does so well: it takes the handmade, the wounded, the remembered, and the living seriously enough to let them become mysterious. Doll God makes a world of dolls, bones, scars, and memories feel charged with the startling possibility that everything we touch is already touching us back.
Pages: 118 | ASIN : B0H8B39LCL
Strangers From the South
Strangers From the South by Forest Woodes is an ambitious prehistoric fantasy novel set in 31,000 BCE, when glaciers are advancing, mammoths still roam, and magic remains woven into the natural world. The story begins with Ashwyn, a wandering elf who discovers Lukos, a human boy hiding near the remains of his slaughtered village. Their meeting grows into a moving father-and-son relationship, but it also draws Ashwyn back toward his royal family, an ancient war, and responsibilities he’s spent years avoiding. What starts as an intimate survival story gradually expands into an epic fantasy journey across a vividly reimagined Ice Age world.
The novel’s greatest strength is its worldbuilding. Woodes combines Pleistocene ecology, reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology, and elements of historical fantasy to create a setting that feels ancient, dangerous, and surprisingly tangible. Sacred trees stretch across entire landscapes, gods walk among mortals, revenants hide behind beautiful faces, and cultures are shaped by their relationships with animals, weather, migration, and death. The book travels across a huge geography, yet the attention to forests, grasslands, glaciers, rivers, wildlife, food, and material culture keeps that scale grounded. It reads like mythic fantasy told by people who experience magic as part of everyday reality.
Ashwyn gives the story its emotional center. He’s funny, weary, capable, and deeply uncomfortable with the harm he can cause, especially when he becomes the leader of a human army. His struggle isn’t simply about defeating an enemy. It’s about recognizing the patterns that keep violence alive and deciding whether he’ll repeat them. Lukos, Sandya, Tamir, Altan, Yama, Ana, and Thunder give the sprawling narrative warmth and personality, while the dialogue keeps the book conversational even when the characters are discussing gods, prophecy, sacrifice, and the end of an age. The relationships matter because the novel treats family as something created through promises, shared hardship, forgiveness, and the choice to remain present.
As a work of epic prehistoric fantasy, Strangers From the South is rich, immersive, and packed with ideas. Its three-part structure carries the reader from a ruined highland village to wars in the west, cities between rivers, the mammoth steppe, tropical jungles, and the sacred lands surrounding the Sindhu River. Beneath that scale is a thoughtful story about grief, cultural memory, cycles of violence, and humanity’s emergence into a changing world. The ending brings its mythology, ecology, and character arcs together in a conclusion that feels both mournful and hopeful, closing one age while showing how its stories survive in the next.
Pages: 364 | ASIN : B0H237L5F4
Fall of the House of Taga
M. K. Aleja’s Fall of the House of Taga is a CHamoru historical fantasy and mythic retelling that brings several fragmented legends together as one sweeping tragedy. Set across Guam, Rota, and Tinian, the story follows Taga from an ambitious chief’s son into exile, redemption, leadership, and eventual ruin. Aleja grounds the novel in CHamoru language, spiritual traditions, community values, and the enduring presence of the latte stones, giving this Indigenous folklore fantasy a strong cultural identity from its opening pages.
At the center of the book is Taga’s complicated relationship with shame. His youthful pride opens the door to I Guaifi’nao, a supernatural entity that feeds patiently on isolation, fear, and unresolved pain. Taga’s years in Tinian offer real healing as he learns to serve others, builds a family with the capable and perceptive Liho, and earns his place as maga’låhi. That long path makes the later tragedy hit harder because readers see exactly what he’s built, how much he loves it, and why its destruction matters. As a dark fantasy family saga, the novel treats redemption as something created through daily choices.
The book’s second half moves firmly into supernatural horror, with sleeplessness, whispers, hallucinations, and changes in Taga’s behavior building toward a brutal, emotionally intense climax. The short chapters and direct prose keep the story moving quickly, though some lessons and emotional ideas are repeated often enough that their impact occasionally softens. Even so, the clearest moments are powerful, especially those involving Samai, who becomes more than a witness to her family’s fall. Her compassion and determination transform the ending from pure devastation into an account of survival, truth-telling, and cultural memory.
What gives Fall of the House of Taga its lasting weight is its portrayal of storytelling itself. Aleja presents oral tradition as a living safeguard, then shows how colonial interpretation can separate connected histories, dismiss spiritual knowledge, and turn a complex tragedy into a simpler tale of jealousy and violence. That makes this historical fantasy novel and colonial folklore retelling feel both intimate and purposeful. It’s a fast, sorrowful read about a man haunted by an old wound, a family caught in its consequences, and a daughter who makes sure the stone’s true story is remembered.
Pages: 275 | ASIN : B0HD2WYX4R
Crescent City Requiem
Brian Kaufman’s Crescent City Requiem is a slow-burning psychological horror novel that blends private-eye fiction, blues history, New Orleans folklore, and supernatural dread. Francis Mallory, a hard-drinking investigator and amateur blues musician, accepts an unusual assignment: locate a supposedly haunted recording by Ike Zimmerman, the guitarist credited with helping Robert Johnson master his craft. The song, “Seven Moons,” is rumored to drive anyone who hears it toward suicide. What begins as a hunt through the secretive world of rare-record collectors gradually expands into a story about obsession, racial history, voodoo traditions, personal guilt, and the possibility that one piece of music can open a door that should remain closed.
Mallory gives the novel its bruised, uneasy center. He’s observant, intelligent, self-destructive, and often difficult to like, but his harshness is complicated by moments of generosity and genuine tenderness. His relationship with Grace, the sharp young woman who unexpectedly becomes his assistant, brings energy and warmth to the investigation. Their connection also becomes increasingly uncomfortable, tangled, and morally fraught, which fits a novel so concerned with the excuses people make for their worst choices. Kaufman doesn’t treat Mallory’s damage as a charming detective quirk. His drinking, violence, grief, and hunger for redemption shape nearly every decision he makes.
The strongest element is the atmosphere. New Orleans feels crowded, damp, musical, decaying, and fully inhabited. Record shops, bars, restaurants, cemeteries, alleys, street musicians, tourists, and local legends all feed into the book’s mounting sense of unease. The blues material is equally important, giving the mystery a convincing foundation and tying the supernatural threat to questions of exploitation, ownership, race, and cultural memory. The pace is deliberate, with plenty of conversations, historical detail, and philosophical reflection between the major turns. Some passages linger longer than necessary, and Mallory’s repeated thoughts about guilt and evil can become heavy, but that repetition also creates the feeling of a man circling an answer he’s afraid to face.
I’d recommend Crescent City Requiem to readers who enjoy character-driven horror, morally compromised investigators, Southern Gothic settings, and mysteries that unfold through mood and conversation as much as action. Blues fans and readers fascinated by rare records will find an extra layer to appreciate, while anyone drawn to ambiguous supernatural fiction should enjoy the way the book keeps psychological collapse and genuine haunting in tension. It’s a dark, patient novel that asks whether evil comes from spirits, systems, other people, or the choices we keep making after we know better.
Wistman’s Wood – A Tale of the Moors and Beyond
Wistman’s Wood is a mystical, idea-driven novel that begins with one man’s walk into an ancient Dartmoor oak wood and grows into a story about human consciousness, planetary responsibility, and the possibility of change. Michael Trelawny’s quiet ramble through Wistman’s Wood turns strange when he encounters a mysterious woman whose presence unsettles him and pulls him toward something far larger than local legend. The book has the feel of a spiritual quest wrapped in folklore, with the moor itself acting less like a setting and more like a living intelligence.
The strongest part of the novel is its atmosphere. The early chapters move slowly in a good way, letting the reader settle into the landscape: the granite, the twisted oaks, the stream, the old pub, the sense that Dartmoor is watching. The line “Entering the woods was almost like saying hello to an old friend” captures the book’s relationship with place beautifully. Wistman’s Wood feels ancient, protective, and not entirely knowable, which makes Michael’s growing obsession with the woman of the wood feel natural rather than forced.
As the story expands, it becomes much more than a ghostly encounter on the moors. Clair’s arrival gives Michael someone to question, challenge, and believe alongside, and their connection grounds the more cosmic elements of the plot. Through Enchantment, the novel introduces the grey mist, an ancient constraint woven into human consciousness, and the story moves into an ambitious blend of myth, environmental concern, artificial intelligence, sacred sites, and spiritual awakening. It’s a big swing, and the book clearly wants readers to think about empathy, long-term responsibility, and what humanity might become if it could get out of its own way.
What’s interesting is that the novel doesn’t treat transformation as instant perfection. Even after the solstice ritual, the world still has conflict, doubt, media noise, and people trying to understand what happened. That choice gives the final third of the book a more reflective feel. Michael’s realization that “The correction has been made. The rest is up to us” sums up the heart of the story. The mystical event matters, but the real focus is what people do afterward, in their ordinary choices and relationships.
Wistman’s Wood is a contemplative novel for readers who enjoy folklore, metaphysical fiction, and stories that ask large questions through a personal journey. It starts with mossy stones and strange laughter in an ancient wood, then opens into a vision of humanity standing at a turning point. Its voice is earnest, its concerns are deeply human, and its best moments come when the mystery of the moor and the hope for inner change meet in the same scene.
Pages: 152 | ASIN : B0GT25WNRX
