The Fantasy Hive Celebrates…

Here on the Hive, there’s nothing we love move than recommending you our favourite books, especially through our themed posts for Halloween and Christmas! So we put our heads together and thought, what else can we celebrate throughout the year with reading?

(Titles link to book reviews where available)

We hope you all enjoyed our romantic recommendations for St Valentine’s day; settle in as we recount our favourite authors from or with heritages of nations who celebrate –

Luna New Year!

Nils

The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao is a wonderful surreal, dreamlike novel which I feel holds an impressive amount of meaning and depth. Yambao takes you on a train journey like no other with the most gorgeous prose and heartfelt characters. 

Blood of the Old Kings and its sequel Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-il Kim and translated by Anton Hur is an epic fantasy full of mystery and quests. I found the magic in this one to be fascinatingly inventive and the worldbuilding richly crafted. There should be a third book on its way at some point too. 

A Palace Near the Wind by AI Jiang blends sci-fi, fantasy and a touch of dystopian together to craft a beautiful haunting story that is both strange and fascinating. This is a novella which reflects upon the conflict between our natural world and the industrial world with poignancy and inventiveness.

The Scarlet Throne by Amy Leow features a world filled with complex politics, meddling priests, and kingdoms built on faith and devotion. It’s a dark fantasy which explores the intricacies of the thirst for power and status. This is unapologetically a fascinating portrayal of one woman embracing the villain within her. I am eagerly awaiting a sequel! 

Kat

The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw is a short, sharp, and nasty horror novella about what happens when the mermaid who marries the prince has teeth. Our mermaid stumbles across a forest cult of ageless children and the ‘saints’ they worship. It’s fast-paced and punchy with deeply unsettling scenes.

Vinay

Jared Poon’s City of Others is a fantastic entry to the SE Asian fantasy genre and is also one of the most recent ones. The book taps into the lore and mythologies of the various communities that makes Singapore the melting pot that it is to narrate a story on a government agency for dealing with the supernatural. Fun, relatable and quirky, this is a book for likeable harasses underdogs 

Cat

It’s got to be the book that was my gateway drug to South Korean fantasy: The God and the Gumiho by Sophie Kim. A snarky trickster god and a barrista fox-spirit are thrown together to solve a mystery that turns out to have higher stakes than anyone anticipated. This is a world of (brand new to me) mythology that is so wonderful and fresh, I’ve been seeking out more ever since! 

Hil

I’ll always recommend the fantastic Aliette de Boddard, and they have new editions of the sumptuous Dominion of the Fallen out next month! A ruined belle epoch iteration of Paris, fallen angels, dragons, love, betrayal, queer… what more could you want? 

Gray

Tao Wong’s A Thousand Li and Celestial Cataclysms are excellent wuxia/xianxia fantasy series set in the same world. If you are new to the world of cultivation novels, they are the perfect starting point, traversing the full breadth from the bloodthirsty lowest levels of brutal martial arts contests all the way through to ascension to the heavens themselves, and I believe that they’re now being traditionally published too.

Cassandra Khaw’s Food of the Gods collects the Rupert Wong (ex-gangster turned cannibal chef for a rich family of ghouls) stories into one convenient package, and it is everything that you could want from an urban fantasy; at turns horrific, whimsical and bizarre. One of my favorite books from one of my favorite authors.

Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became The Sun is a gripping piece of historical fantasy that dissects fate and the inherent sexism of 1300s China. Following a fateless peasant girl as she rises to seize the mandate of heaven. It is perilous and glorious.

I’m also legally obliged to shout out Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, as it is a fantasy giant robot fighting alien bug monsters series, that is also having a poke at sexism while resolving its love triangle in the only correct way.

Beth

Xianxia is one of my favourite genres of fantasy, I love learning about Chinese mythology and deities so I’m excited to share some of my favourites here!

Let’s start with Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan. I buddy read this with Nils but despite loving it, didn’t get around to reviewing it for some reason, so I’ve linked to Nils’ review. Sue Lynn Tan’s debut novel is a reimagining of the story of Chang’e, the eponymous Moon Goddess, and the daughter Tan creates for her, Xingyin. It’s a beautiful retelling the brings the story to life in a new way by focusing on characters around the main mythology.

Rather than reimagining specific stories, author Amelie Wen Zhao takes threads and elements from her favourite stories and uses them to create gorgeously imagined new ones of her own. In her first book of hers I read, Song of Silver, Flame Like Night Zhao creates a secondary fantasy world heavily inspired by China’s history of wars and colonisation by other nations, skilfully weaving through figures of mythology such as the Four Auspicious Beasts. Recently, I read her romantasy duology that begins with The Scorpion and the Night Blossom; with a love-triangle romance story at its heart, it still heavily features immortals and demons, mythological creatures, and trials.

Speaking of trials, that brings me to A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin! Whereas Tan and Zhao included a great deal of mythology and immortals, Lin’s story focuses more on an Imperial court, competitions, and magic practised by mortals. It was the magic system in particular that captured me here, as it centres around different kinds of tea to awaken and enhance a person’s magical abilities.

If you want a story that combines a mortal world with mythological creatures, you should definitely give Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan a go, as this is absolutely packed full of mythological creatures! Set in a world under threat of drowning beneath rising sea levels, there are strong themes of climate crisis and learning to live with the natural world, as well as displaced cultures and diaspora people and the injustices and subjugation they face.

Is there an event you’d love to see us cover? Let us know in the comments!