Reviews of favorite books

Fiction: The Valkyrie by Kate Heartfield

9/25/2026

The Valkyrie excels on all levels: fascinating characters, a propulsive plot, historical depth, and intriguing magic.
The novel begins with the Norse god Odin exiling a Valkyrie named Byrnhild after she questions his divine judgement when choosing which warriors to cull from battle (Valkyries bring the souls of culled warriors to Odin's hall in Valhalla). She falls to Midgard (the mortal realm) and loses her Valkyrie abilities of flight and invisibility. She does retain her fighting skills and knowledge of rune magic—and her stubborn persistence.
When she hears of a lindworm poisoning the land, she puts herself into a magical sleep so she can gather supernatural strength to fight it.

The creepy lindworm attacks the human kingdom of Burgundia during a betrothal ceremony between Princess Gudrun and Atilla the Hun’s brother. The fragile peace with the dangerous Huns is shattered, and Gudrun’s brother King Gunnar disappears, leaving Gudrun to prepare their people for battle.

Meanwhile, the would-be hero Sigurd hunts the lindworm, Fafnir, for his foster-father. He has a magical sword crafted specifically to kill the creature, but is an unschooled swordsman and has no magic of his own.
He naively “rescues” Brynhild, cutting her magical sleep short.
She has garnered supernatural strength, but not enough to kill Fafnir alone. And her spears are no match for the lindworm’s tough hide.
She and Sigurd team up to trap and kill the monster, in what becomes a harrowing fight—and superb example of crafting tension, suspense, and exciting action scenes.

The magic in the story takes two main forms: Brynhild's rune magic based on knowing specific symbols, and animistic magic that draws from nature. Gudrun’s mother is able to draw on the Rhine River and Gudrun learns to coax plants and sometimes small animals to help her. Both types of magic are easy to comprehend in the novel's context, and play critical roles in story events

The author embeds the reader in the fifth century with realistic details:
There were markings of mortals on the land: hoofmarks in the dried earth, the sharp stump of a felled tree, a small pile of whitening dog dung.
I [Gudrun] walked around the room, pouring my mother’s beer into every cup. It smelled a little grassy; she brewed it with myrtle, yarrow, rosemary, and God knew what else. (For the fascinating story behind this description, read the author’s annotations).

Two “villains” in the book, the lindworm Fafnir and Atilla the Hun, both call themselves “the scourge of God.” And both, it turns out, are being used as playing pieces in a divine strategy game.
The novel deftly explores the tension between mortals at the mercy of cruel gods, and gods who approach mortals with kindness.

Brynhild’s relationship with Odin provides a thematic framework for exploring both mortals’ relationships with the divine and daughter/father bonds. Brynhild initially holds Odin Allfather in high esteem, but that changes:
I thought he cared about my welfare, and the welfare of all his followers. . . . "When his choices seem strange to us, the failure is in our understanding, not in his choices. He can see the future. Nothing he does can be without a greater purpose. " Now I know a god can go wrong, and he can go very far wrong indeed. . . . How I wanted to be that girl again, the one who believed Odin was the source of light and love.

In the end, Brynhild must come to terms with Odin's betrayal and assert her agency—similar to mortal daughters finding a way to love our flawed fathers and assert our personhood within a patriarchy that would keep us small.

A related theme is believing what we’ve been taught. Brynhild is one of many women dedicated as girls to the father-god Odin the Deceiver. She “knows” that the goddess Freyja is an evil sorceress. When Brynhild meets Freyja, the goddess says:
“Unlike Odin, I don’t steal living people to do my work for me.”
[Brynhild] “Nothing is as I thought it was.”
“Of course not. You were taken by the Liar [Odin] as a child.”

The novel is also a love story, exploring the nature of casual sexual trysts, marriage, jealousy and romantic love. Both Gudrun and Brynhild navigate political treachery and deception in their marriages, and use perceived jealousy to their own ends—a wonderfully clever twist on the original tales.
The book’s conclusion is entirely satisfying, with the surviving characters choosing lasting love and sailing together into their own story.
The Valkyrie won the Aurora Award for best novel. Highly recommended.

Read other excellent historical fantasies:
The Witch’s Heart, Song of the Huntress, The Queens of Innis Lear, Ithaca

Nonfiction: How Flowers Made Our World by David George Haskell

9/20/2026

“When flowers evolved, they upended and transformed the planet. …
“They created habitats like tropical rainforests and prairies, catalyzed the evolution and diversification of bees, butterflies, birds, mammals, and many other animals.
Today 90 percent of all plant species on the planet are flowering plants.”
So begins How Flowers Made Our World, a fabulous exploration of the many ways flowers create, nurture, and sustain interspecies communities with color and style.
By highlighting the community-building aspect of flowers, the author expands the limited scope of evolution’s “survival of the fittest.”

“The first cells on the planet, 3.5 billion years ago, lived in communities held together by reciprocity and mutual interdependence. [And] flowering plants took this ancient practice of symbiosis and extended it in unprecedented ways.” In doing so, they outcompeted more solitary life forms.

Sea grasses make their own habitat, accumulating “as much as three centimeters of sediment a year.” The larger the sea-grass meadow, the slower the water current, and the more sediment that settles to nurture more grasses. The sea cows and manatees that graze sea grasses “evolved from hoofed land mammals about fifty million years ago”!

These underwater grasses survive by creating internal “scuba tanks,” air channels that run from the sunlight-kissed leaves to the “roots buried in oxygen-starved mud. Air channels also buoy the leaves, holding them up to the light.” The grasses also harbor bacteria in their roots that provide nitrogen “fertilizer” in exchange for excess sugar. “Worldwide, seagrasses are among the most threatened of all habitats.”

Flowering weeds are “good at arriving on recently disturbed soil, swiftly dropping roots, unfurling their leaves and flowers, then flinging fruits to the wind or onto animal fur in the hope of finding a new patch of exposed soil. [Long before] bulldozers and spades, these weeds sought recently burned soil, exposed areas around fallen trees and landslides [and] the churning aftermaths of hooved and burrowing animals.” Because we frequently plow, till or otherwise disturb the soil, we’ve essentially “remade the world in the weeds’ favor.”

Weeds tend to reproduce quickly, which means they can adapt swiftly to changes in their environment.
“The arms race between chemical manufacturers and plants has bred what are now called “superweeds,” plants so resistant to one or more herbicides that they become a stubborn presence in agricultural fields.”
A stubborn infestation of bindweed helped me accept that my gardening days were over. Like the many-headed hydra of Greek myth, pulling the weeds merely created more—and they regenerated from mere scraps of root.

Fun facts/great quotes:

The sunflower and orchid families “include more living species than all mammals and reptiles combined.
“If plant life stops, all life stops.”
Flowers “enthrall animal senses with floral aromas and colorful petals” to attract pollinators—and encourage human cultivators.
“Flowering plants mother and feed the world.” [As wheat, rice, corn, barley and other grains]
“Almost all newly germinated orchids [are] entirely dependent on fungi for their food, a radical departure from the sunlight-fueled growth of most young plants.”
Prairie grasses encourage fire by providing ample dried fuel and grow tasty leaves to promote grazing—both of which favor fast-growing grasses over brush and seedlings.
If the 2023 world cereal harvest were stacked in 110-pound sacks it “would reach to the moon forty times.”
“When attacked by insects, plants release volatiles into the air and soil that summon parasitic wasps, predatory mites, and insect-killing nematode worms. The bodyguards, drawn by plants’ scent, kill the plant-eating pests.”
Bat-pollinated flowers have "reflective cups to bounce back the echolocating sounds of bats, the acoustic equivalent of a brightly colored bloom.”
“Jasmine and violet were considered masculine scents in medieval Islamic cultures” and rosewater was considered “both masculine and feminine in the Middle East” where it has been used for over three thousand years.
“Flowers and humans alike flourish in relationship with others and wither in isolation.”

The author notes that science is “always wrapped in the cultural context of its time and the prejudices of its practitioners.” An example is the Linnaean classification system used to categorize our living world:

“By using the Linnaean system, we value database consistency over local knowledge. We turn living kin into abstract categories. … Linnaeas took the task of naming upon himself, with the explicit intention of centralizing authority.”
Even more disturbing are the chemical toxins and horrendous environmental destruction supporting the floral and horticulture industries. “In our pursuit of beauty [we] inadvertently cause harm, often to the very life processes that we want to nurture in our gardens.” Bees and butterflies are among the pollinators dying from toxins infusing many nursery plants.

“We humans are causing a mass extinction, a collective act of stupendous harm and disrespect for the living Earth. [But,] Flowers made our world and they will remake” the post-human world.

There’s lots of fascinating science in this book, from biology to genetics to paleontology, laid out in easy-to-grasp language. The author’s colorful stories and poetic language make these facts come alive:
“Bees sense rose volatiles through hundreds of minute hairs that fur each antennae, along with odor-sensitive pits between the hairs. Scrabbling through a flower must be an intense aromatic thrill for the bees, every sensor slathered.”
“The [rose’s] aroma is a brocade, soft sweetness textured by threads of golden spice and a few strands of musk.”
“[L]avender is the signature aroma of [Provence, France], a lively, slightly astringent, herbal smell, like pine resin dressed up for a Saturday night.”

When we interact with flowering plants, our senses become “enmeshed with more-than-human lives.” Flowers are “there to get attention. They’re there to be alluring. And we are seduced [just] as we should be.” Gardeners, flower lovers, environmentalists, artists, anyone who looks to nature for spiritual solace, and science nerds will all find something to love in How Flowers Made Our World.

Read other books by award-winning David George Haskell: The Forest Unseen and Sounds Wild and Broken
Read more about our fabulous plant cousins: The Hidden Life of Trees, The Light Eaters,
Serving Plants, Whacky Weeds, The Green Man

Fiction: Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher

9/5/2026

I am deeply in love with Paladin’s Strength, the tale of two colossal people navigating a short-person’s world, told with warmth and wry humor.
Our main characters are:
Clara, a lay nun of the convent of Saint Ursa, trying to find and rescue her kidnapped sisters.
  Istvhan, a former paladin of the Saint of Steel god, posing as a mercenary captain escorting oak barrels to a distant city.
  They meet after Istvhan kills a local boy in an unavoidable duel. Clara, who was rescued by the locals after being left for dead, is given to Istvhan (along with a sword) as forfeit from the dead boy’s family.

The author makes excellent use of the characters' large size. They jam themselves into short beds and sit at low tables with their knees at their shoulders, and are always grateful for open spaces:
Istvahn straightened up with a sigh of relief and felt the vertebrae in his neck crackle.

Handsome Istvhan is sensitive to the effect his large size has on others, particularly women:
The larger part of power was understanding the power you had over others, even if you would rather not have that much power in the first place. . . . And so, he went to great pains to be a courteous, polite lover. When he flirted, he made absolutely sure that the other party was just as interested as he was. He did not ever want to see fear in a woman’s eyes.

The prose is straightforward and engaging, yet with deeply immersive moments:

Banked firelight left orange splashes across her skin, and the shadows of the wheels were edged in purple.
She had never been in a city this size before and the smells and the sounds formed a multi-layered din that left her squinting, despite it being an overcast day.

The exploration of gender roles is especially delightful. We soon learn that big, strong Istvhan accepted this assignment in part to escape a voracious female lover:

[She] had nearly run him into the ground [and] he’d been looking forward to a few months of celibacy to recuperate. . . . He had taken the assignment to the north with a sense of relief, and not just because he was having a hard time keeping up with her. . . . He’d been worn to a shadow. Human flesh could only take so much.”
Istvahn reminiscing: His old sword-master would have groaned to see how he was gripping [the stave], but she would also have been the first to admit you worked with what you had.
Istvhan expressing admiration:
Clara walked like she was taller than everyone else and knew it and if anyone cared, be damned to them. As someone else built to a different scale than the rest of the world, he admired that.

Though our two main characters are mostly heterosexual, this is not a restrictive world:
Clara did wish occasionally that she was the sort of woman who could love another woman as more than a sister. . . . Sister Rose and the Sister Apothecary, for example, had been devoted to each other for over a decade.
Istvhan describes the character Galen when he smiles at Clara:
Istvhan knew that smile meant absolutely nothing but friendship--Galen had definite tastes and they did not run to women--
Clara mentioning a transgendered man:
“One of us lived as a brother, but he was very old when I was a novice and he had the same parts as the rest of us.”

The book also touches on meaningful themes, such as theology when Clara speaks about her relationship with Saint Ursa:
“I talk to Her in my head. I pray. If I didn’t have Her, I suspect I’d pray to someone else. Perhaps She’s just the name I put on that which I pray to, and it’s easier to picture the divine as someone who understands [me].”

And ruminating on old emotional pain:
You learned better and you got on with things. You learned that you were what you were, and tried to be the best version of that person, because you were never going to be anybody else. And you stopped envying other people because everyone had problems you didn’t know about.

Istvhan’s take on friendship:
“. . . we love our friends enough not to put them in situations where they will be called upon to do things that they cannot do.”
Him reassuring Clara:
“You are not a failure, you know,” he said, “simply because you can’t endure something unendurable.”

I laughed out loud many times reading this novel.
* Here is Istvhan feeling tempted:
Paladins were famous for resisting temptations, but life was a lot easier when temptation kept at least ten feet away and only offered easy things, like wealth and vengeance and earthly dominion.
* Istvahn and Clara trading quips:
“Nuns are sadists,” he muttered. “I always knew it.”
“And paladins are martyrs.”
* Istvahn gets an earful from an elder:
“I do appreciate your advice, sir,” said Istvahn. Politely.
“No, you don’t,” said Doc Mason. “The young never do.”
* Istvhan being self-conscious:
He walked up to the tree, trying to look harmless and good-natured and also sexy, which was a complicated thing to convey. He wasn't sure what to do with his hips.

Suspense and tension build throughout the novel, delivering an exciting climax in which both main characters give their all despite being discouraged or terrified much of the time. Without giving away spoilers, I will say Clara’s connection with her saint is especially intriguing. I felt deeply bonded to both main characters, rooting for them to triumph against the world and with each other.
Paladin’s Strength is a mature romantic-fantasy, but it’s also a sword and sorcery adventure, a fantasy-mystery, and a well-written yarn that held me close from start to finish. Highly recommended.

Read more fabulous fiction by T. Kingfisher:
Paladin’s Grace,  Swordheart,  Thornhedge,  Hemlock & Silver,  What Moves the Dead
Read other fantasy-mystery:
The Tainted Cup,  A Drop of Corruption,  City of Stairs
Read other romantic-fantasy:
Best New Romantic Fantasy,  The Unspoken Name,  Fire Logic,  The Everlasting

Fiction: The Valkyrie by Kate Heartfield

Nonfiction: How Flowers Made Our World by David George Haskell

Fiction: Paladin’s Strength by T. Kingfisher

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