Fantasy Book Review

Automatic Noodle Review

Book: Automatic Noodle
Author: Annalee Newitz
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Year: 2025
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots comes back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know : making food – the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around – for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other – and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.”

Review : Automatic Noodle is a sweet, quick, low-stakes read that I managed to get through in under a day. Weighing in at just 160 pages (in ARC form), when I tell you this is a quick read, I mean it; while Automatic Noodle tells one small story quickly, it isn’t without substance or a deeper meaning. Newitz has done what I have found happening with regularity these days, they’ve disguised within their robot novel a story with a greater meaning, taking a group of othered people and mirroring them to our current world, perhaps not in a perfectly seemless manner, but with dedication that pays off.

In a world where robots have been granted some, albeit small, level of rights (particularly if they’re of a sentient class of robot) following a brutal war between California and the rest of the United States, we enter this novel to find that the sentient robots don’t have much in the way of rights after all. Living either slaved or indentured to corporations or woken to find they’ve been created by a debt that’s strapped not to who created them but to the robot themselves, most sentient robots have little to no choice about the life they must live. They may also find themselves the subjects of hate speech, disgust, cancel culture, and worse due to the nature of their capitalistic society that created a thing to do a job that a human would otherwise have been hired to do. I’ll admit, it was hard for me to wrap my mind around the first layer of this novel, which is, at face value, robotphobia, given the horrific misuse and abuse of generative AI in our current world; destroying the planet, replacing jobs, and demolishing our creative abilities all in one fell trendy swoop. It feels as though Automatic Noodle might be a look through time at ourselves if we don’t get behind human beings pretty immediately. And that’s where our second layer comes in.

Automatic Noodle is a clever mask for a narrative driven by the gross inequities people of all creeds and backgrounds face even in 2025, particularly our queer, trans, neuro-spicy, and non-white friends. Empathy is the thread Newitz binds this story together with, putting the reader into the shoes of sentient robots who just want to live and thrive in a world where others are so able to live and thrive within. In a world where they are outcast and othered simply for being exactly who they are, they find a way to engage with each other, with their community, and to find their own personhood in the midst of everything. Without needing to ask their community for assistance, it’s freely given to them because in Newitz’ world, empathy exists in the majority of people and for those who seem incapable of seeing a person as a person, they appear to be the minority, enraged and bated by targeted online attacks from those with outdated ideas of what might make a country great. Uncanny, huh?

If you want to know how a society is functioning, simply look to the sci-fi and fantasy world to tell you. It’s no coincidence that the last two books I’ve read in this realm have emphasized the concept of empathy. In a world where we forget that people are people and our humanity makes us inherently more alike than different, it’s no surprise to find stories that allude to the hate and vitriol that’s being spewed with more and more vehemence and frequency. Automatic Noodle does an excellent job of relating a futuristic scenario to our present-day troubles, all while cultivating a narrative of joy, peace, friendship, and community despite and because of our differences. Love is a greater force than fear and hate and we see it time and time again in sweet novels such as this. And while I didn’t find the flow of robotic narration my favorite to follow (in fact, I enjoyed Newitz’ writing the best in their letter to the reader), Automatic Noodle is a book I’ll be recommending to friends in the future. It’s a joyous journey into the world of savory noodles, found family, and community support despite raging phobias and hate over a group of people who are simply trying to live their lives in peace. We are all deserving of a peaceful, joy-filled life. Full stop.

Advice : If you’re looking for a quick, cozy read in the vein of A Psalm for the Wild Built, I think you’ll really love Automatic Noodle. If you enjoy a reclamation story, found family, or how food gets made, this is definitely for you!

The Devils Review

Book: The Devils
Author: Joe Abercrombie
Publisher: Tor Books
Year: 2025
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Holy City, where he is certain a commendation and a divine assignment await him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.
Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before hi, it’s a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.”

Review : Weighing in at a whopping total of 547 pages (in the advanced copy), before I’d cracked the spine I assumed The Devils would be slow-going, what I didn’t account for was my own reluctance to finish the book. Joe Abercrombie has crafted one of the single most enjoyable books I’ve had the pleasure to read in longer than I can remember; The Devils was perfection, could I have given it more than 5 stars, I would (being that it’s my own rating system is completely beside the point…I believe Brother Diaz would agree that some things benefit from structure). Abercrombie had me from the word ensorcelment and he didn’t let go until the final word on page 547. There’s a massive book-shaped hole in my life and, full disclosure, I will be filling it with additional Joe Abercrombie works, for surely they are just as excellent as this.

Told through the jumping narration of multiple, though not all, characters, The Devils spans, what I can only assume is, a fairly short amount of time but no shortage of adventure, daring feats, bloody scenes, laugh-out-loud funny dialogue, and is capped off with a dash of romance. Set in a world that feels juuuuuust a little too familiar, Abercrombie has crafted an ingenious fantasy novel that needed so little extra explanation that an entirely new world would beg from a reader, it felt like I was right at home. In a world separated by bickering factions of the church – one lead by a ten-year-old girl as the Pope, the other by a Patriarch, one featuring a wheel, the other a circle – not only was the geography near enough to our world that any differences only served to make me laugh, the morality of the world he’s created feels eerily similar, if not absolutely pointed. We begin The Devils by finding one Brother Diaz, a monk in the service of the Pope, being granted a new post : leader of the Church of Holy Expediency. In a world where the greatest threat to humankind comes in the form of Elf invasion, the church is determined to heal the rift between East and West factions in order to build a solid foundation against humankind’s mortal enemy, who, by the way, is overdue for an invasion that would likely be met with failure rather than success in battle. The Church of Holy Expediency seeks to fight fire with fire – if a war with devils is looming on the horizon, who better to fight devils than the church’s very own band of misfit devils?

The Devils features a cursed knight who cannot die, a jane of all trades, a not-as-decrepit-as-he-seems vampire, a true Scandinavian werewolf, a corpse conducting magician, a semi-invisible elf, and a street rat turned princess. It’s exactly the kind of good time you’d hope from a ragtag list such as this. Tasked, and magically bound, with delivering Princess Alexia (street rat by nature, princess by birth) to the throne of Troy, the crew embarks on a dangerous and bloody adventure, bound only by Papal magic…though, like every good buddy story, friendship and love are not as far off as they may seem. Between Alexia’s many murderous cousins and a leaked copy of the Papal Bull announcing her right to the throne, the crew is met with no shortage of devastatingly gore filled encounters. And YES, this book is incredibly graphic! There are so many fighting, pillaging, and all out scrambling-for-their-very-lives scenes, but…but Abercrombie has deftly wielded the pen, creating humor and humanity with each stroke. I laughed out loud so many times, even in the midst of the Viggo-Wolf ripping limbs and snuffling out the good meat, it was truly a work of art – much unlike the way our beloved Jakob of Thorn, the cursed knight who just cannot die, wields his sword, that is to say, not so deftly.

Intertwined throughout this hilarious, gripping, suspense-filled book we come to find a few profound theological delights. Not only are we told right from the start that these creatures are devils, we’re bombarded with that information throughout every step of the way. Culturally, the world Abercrombie has introduced us to seems to believe that the only people worthy of a soul’s eternal salvation are, well, people. Anyone else is an unrepentant sinner, never mind whether the Viggo-Wolf has been baptized (twice), or whether the cursed knight has spent hundreds of years attempting to earn salvation, or the semi-invisible elf actually yearns for personhood. We find, by the time we reach the final page, that Abercrombie has been tenderly carrying us through to the very heart of his point : that one group of people is not inherently more worthy of salvation than another simply because they were born a certain way. We come to realize that in Abercrombie’s world, the Devils are in fact, no different than the humans. And, while I don’t know this information yet, I suspect humans are really no different than the Elves, either – perhaps even worse.

Bereft. Devastated. Aimless. All words to describe how I feel now that I’ve finished reading The Devils. Absolutely crushed that it’s over. But fear not! Abercrombie has written us a small opening, a thread, if you will. I feel certain that there will be a second book and hopeful that there will be a third after that. While The Devils doesn’t end on a cliffhanger (not so much a spoiler, but hopefully you don’t mind this information), it does end in such a way that makes me want to know more, that has me asking questions that went unanswered, intentionally, I believe, throughout this tome. Like a dark fantasy suicide squad, Abercrombie has a cast of characters who are begging to be put through another gritty adventure and I, for one, cannot wait to read what he comes up with next. I think it’s also worth pointing out that a significant number of the books Abercrombie has written all came in the form of a trilogy, so finger’s crossed!

Advice : The only thing I can really say is that if you really, really, really dislike any mention of blood or guts or gore, you might not enjoy this book. However, if you love witty repartee, a stunning vocabulary, nuanced characters and character arcs, or a buddy comedy, I think you’ll fall as head over heels for The Devils as I did. Put this one on your calendar – May 6, 2025. Preorder it. Trust me.

The Queen of Days Review

Book: The Queen of Days
Author: Greta Kelly
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Year: 2023
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “For Balthazar and his family of thieves, stealing a statue during the annual celebration of the god Karan’s was just a good bit of fun…or a way to stick it to the governor who murdered his parents. And yeah, the small fortune in reward doesn’t hurt – even if his boss also hired the mysterious Queen of Days to join the crew as “the weapon of last resort…”
Whatever that means.
But Bal doesn’t know the ceremony isn’t simply the empty words and dusty tradition; it’s true magic. The kind of magic that rips open a portal for the god himself. Only the idol that Karan’s planned on using for a body now lies broken at the Queen of Days’ feet. And half of it is missing.
With the aid of a lovable brawler, a society lady turned bomb maker, a disgraced soldier, and a time-eating demon, Bal must hunt down the missing half of the statue if he has any hope of earning his money, keeping his crew alive…and perhaps even saving all of humanity. But as his journey sends him racing through the city – and across realities – he discovers that doing all this might just doom the city.

The city be damned. It’s time to kill a god.”

Review : The Queen of Days bounces between two points of view; Balthazar (Bal), the leader of a crew of thieves called the Talion gang; and Tassel Janae (Tass), aka The Queen of Days. Bal and his crew have been commissioned by a mysterious patron for what’s supposed to be a simple smash and grab at a largely symbolic ceremony of ruling class elites within Bal’s home city of Cothis. We learn early on that Bal and the members of the Talion gang are not only related to each other, some through illegitimate affairs on Bal’s father’s behalf, but were once the children of the previous ruling elite of Cothis themselves – before Bal’s family was ousted (and killed) by the members of the city for a superstitious belief that they had angered the god of water, Karanis. Several years of drought will do that.

Though the Talion gang are a crew of experienced thieves with years of work under their belts, their patron has a singular request : they must hire and work with the Queen of Days, a masked mercenary with a reputation that precedes her. She’s rumored to be able to defy the laws of nature, to have extraordinary powers, and worst of all, to be a demon of the Nethersphere. She comes to the Talion gang rather mysteriously herself, all but proving the rumors true and creating fear and suspicion within the gang, particularly when she asks for payment in days off their lives rather than in coin. As Bal, Tass, and the rest of the crew work to layout a plan, they become increasingly fractured and disorganized and it takes the remainder of the book to bring them back together into a family unity again.

Spoilers Ahead

As the crew attempts their simple robbery (with a huge payout, mind you), they almost immediately come to find it isn’t quite as simple as they were promised. When the symbolic ceremony turns anything but, Tass takes matters into her own hands and smashes the statuette they were commissioned to steal. Realizing that the ceremony was designed to draw down the god Karanis from the Nethersphere, Tass acts without explanation, saving the youngest member of the Talion gang, Bal’s sister Mira, and escaping the ceremony. When Karanis arrives and finds his vessel destroyed, he takes possession of the current city’s ruler (and Bal’s father’s usurper) Paasch – a move that will not allow Karanis to exist within this world for long. He must find the statue, it must be restored, or he will wreak unstable and unmeasurable damage upon the world. What ensues is about 300 pages of Bal, Tass, and the crew working to figure out what’s really going on, where the pieces of the statue may have ended up, and how they can save themselves in the process.

I chose to give TQOD 3 stars because I found this book to be quite long and difficult to get through. I don’t actually mind an almost 400 page book, I enjoy a lengthy tale, particularly if it’s something I can’t stop thinking about, but that’s exactly the problem I had with this one. I’ve often said that it doesn’t take quality writing to create a compelling story, there have been many books I’ve found lacking when it came quality that kept me turning pages simply because I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen. Unfortunately, TQOD didn’t hit the mark for me. I found myself distinctly disconnected from the characters, I would put the book down and easily walk away, I found myself thinking of other things when I was reading and often had to go back and reread passages in order to figure out what was happening because I was so lacking connection. There were about 100 pages right at the end that found me turning pages to see what was going to happen, but sadly the 200 something pages that preceded it were so uninteresting enough that the final 100 weren’t enough to make me want to give this book a higher rating.

I will say, it was written quite well and utilized a trope many people thoroughly enjoy : found family. I found the world building to be fair, but not great, as I had a lot of unanswered questions about the world Kelly created. It didn’t help that I was so disconnected from the story, I think had I found more connection with the characters I might have found more connection with the world, but there still remain many unanswered questions about the world, what it looks like, and how it interacts with the characters, and why it does the way it does – for example, Kelly mentions a flood mythology that exists within this world, much like exists within our world. I have questions. Fortunately for readers, TQOD is very clearly the first of at least two books so there will be time and room for questions to be answered, but that does rely on readers finding their own connections that will compel them to continue reading, and of that I’m not sure they will.

Advice : If you enjoy fantasy, the found family trope, and don’t mind reading several hundred pages, you just might like this one. I personally found it lengthy and difficult to get through, but if you like a series, enjoy thievery and magic and gods who aren’t really gods, I think this would be worth the time.

Witch King Review

Book: Witch King
Author: Martha Wells
Publisher: Tor
Year: 2023
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “Kai-Enna is the witch king, though he hasn’t always been, and he hasn’t even always been Kai-Enna!

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to end well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.”

Review : Martha Wells is no first timer at the fantasy rodeo, her list of past works spans an entire front page in Witch King, including several long-term series, and honestly you can tell this is the work of a person deeply familiar with the inner workings of creating a successful fantasy world. It was a joy to read.

Like many of the advanced reader copies I receive, Witch King came with a little letter from the author. In it, Wells explains her motivation for creating this book: it was conceived in the early months of the pandemic, attempting to visualize what it would look like to see a “conquering genocidal attacker” ultimately defeated by an uprising of ordinary people (or semi-ordinary). She wanted to visualize what that world would look like during the attack and several decades later, hence the perfect setting for a fantasy novel full of immortal beings and beings who can live incredibly long lifespans.

Witch King is written from a singular point of view, but it’s told by jumping back and forth between the present (several decades following the defeat of an attacker) and the past (during the actual uprising). Kai-Enna is an immortal underworld demon prince inhabiting a mortal body, the only way he is able to exist in the upper world. Thanks to a treaty that his half mortal-half immortal grandmother brokered between the Grass Kings, a nomadic people group in the upper world, and the demons of the underworld, Kai is able to partake in a sacred ritual that allows him to enter into a recently deceased mortal body. This ritual allows the loved ones of the deceased to hear the final thoughts and words of their beloved while also giving them a demon who will both learn the ways of the upper world in order to fully understand and appreciate mortal life, and bring protection to the clan they’ve entered into a relationship with. Because Kai is still a demon, he will be able to live as long as he pleases inside a mortal body without being wounded thanks to his ability to heal inordinately fast, and the only real give-away that he isn’t mortal are his all black eyes.

Kai is still a young demon (and living in a young mortal body) when the Heirarchs, a ruling class of people from an unknown land, take over and conquer the known world. The Grass Kings fight back, but being a nomadic group of people, they are unaware of the reach the Heirarchs have, the weapons they’ve acquired, and the magical tools at their disposal. The Heirarchs, unbeknownst to Kai or his mortal family, have a super weapon that can knock the life out of a mortal and inflict incredible pain on an immortal, allowing demons to be captured and imprisoned.

*Spoilers Coming*

Wells returns us to these moments of war throughout the book, jumping back to Kai’s former body, his former life, and his fight to overturn the Heirarchs. In the present moment, some 60 years in the future, we see that the Heirarchs have been defeated, the passage from the upper world to the underworld permanently blocked, and Kai, though a demon, is referred to as the Witch King. As the book begins, we find Kai’s consciousness awakening outside of a deceased mortal body he’s been occupying for several years – no longer the young body of the Grass Kings. His body has died, but he has been imprisoned in a tower of water, the only real achilles heel for a demon. Because of this prison, he’s been in a suspended state, unaware of how much time has passed or where his friends and chosen family are located. We spend the rest of the book reuniting this family and seeking the remaining members who have gone missing, all the while eerily retracing his steps from the past when he worked to defeat the Heirarchs.

Wells has created a book that functions on multiple fantasy levels; it can be read alone, it ties up nicely in the end, and we get to see how Kai defeated the Heirarchs in the past, and worked to defeat a growing world alliance that’s attempting to create an empire in the present; I believe it will also function as an excellent book one of several and I look forward to seeing where Wells goes in the future. And I hope she does, because while this book didn’t end on a cliffhanger or leave you wishing for more of the story, there are pieces and parts of the past that remain untold, certain adventures to be had now that the family is reunited, and we make it to the end of the book without finding out definitively how Kai came to earn the monicker “Witch King”. While it can be inferred, I’m craving the full story and I have hope that Wells will add another book to this title and make it a series.

Advice: If you love fantasy, if you enjoy getting wrapped up in a world of unearthly creatures, if you love an excellent retelling of past events, this is it. It’s well written, it’s easy to understand, and it resonates with current events without being in your face or even hard to read. This book uses gender-neutral pronouns for several characters without being fussy about it and exhibits a great deal of inclusivity as well, making it a must read for so many reasons. I highly recommend it.