#mistmantle

I’m excited to do Fortnight of Books again for 2025! Thank you to @idratherdreamofjune for the questions and to @valiantarcher for organizing this each year. (Since I didn’t manage to write or post any book updates in the first two weeks of January, I’m queuing these posts for the second half of January.) 

Fortnight of Books: Day 1

Overall - best books read in 2025?

Top 3 - 5 stars -

Secrets of the Wild Wood by Tonke Dragt - A riveting medieval fantasy adventure about a young knight and his squire who venture into a dark and dangerous forest to uncover the mysterious evils within it and find their friend, a knight who has gone missing. I could not put this book down, and it made me feel a wide range of emotions. I loved the characters and story so much. It’s everything I want in a book, and the genre of non-magical fantasy suits me perfectly. (It’s a sequel to The Letter for the King. This young adult duology was originally written in Dutch and published in the early 1960s, and it’s famous in many languages.)

Urchin and the Rage Tide (Mistmantle Chronicles, Book 5) by M. I. McAllister - Adventure and intrigue, heart and humor, coziness and comfort…and not your average fantasy book with animals, in my opinion. I love the story and characters so dearly. I sobbed over the ending several times over. I still can’t think of it or of a certain character without wanting to cry. I didn’t discover Mistmantle until just a few years ago, but it immediately became one of my favorite book series of all time. I read the series gradually and saved the fifth book to savor for the first time in 2025. 

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - My first time reading Sense and Sensibility! It was one of the only major Austen novels I lacked. I really, really enjoyed it, especially the characters and platonic relationships. I hadn’t seen the 1995 movie in well over a decade, and I only remembered a few scenes and some basics of the premise and plot. Much of it was new to me, and I read the book relatively unspoiled. This meant that I was surprised by things like Colonel Brandon’s backstory. 

Runners-Up - 4.5 stars -

Race Across Alaska by Libby Riddles and Tim Jones - The nonfiction memoir of the first woman to win the Iditarod (the famous dog sled race). It was adventurous, thrilling, and fascinating, a thoroughly enjoyable read, and very well-written.

Rebel Wave: Season 2 by Tor Thibeaux - A futuristic undersea adventure serial, featuring underwater cities and submarines, and most of all, a great cast of characters. A new favorite and one of my most anticipated reads of 2025. After I read the first season of Rebel Wave, I could not wait to read the sequel in paperback, and Season 2 did not disappoint. Each season is 12 episodes, which are available as individual ebooks or in a season collection (ebook or paperback). I’m now hotly anticipating Season 3.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater - An atmospheric, adventurous, dangerous, mysterious, and riveting young adult modern fantasy book, set in a fictional island in the Atlantic ocean. I loved it. I’m so glad I finally got to experience the characters, story, and setting of The Scorpio Races. I’ve long admired the author as a master of the writing craft, but this is the first time I’ve read a book by her. I was very impressed with the tight plotting and pacing, strong character motivations, and vivid writing style. (CONTENT WARNING for frequent innuendo and extreme violence and gore.)

Other Favorites - 4 stars -

Follow the Lonesome Trail edited by Allison Tebo (a multi-author anthology of Western short stories, all by authors that are already favorites of mine; my favorite story was “The Princess of Flat Rock by Elisabeth Grace Foley, which I rated 4.5 stars, and there were two others by Emily Hayse and Rachel Kovaciny that I rated 4.25 stars)

The Realm Beneath edited by Allison Tebo (a multi-author anthology of undersea fantasy short stories; my favorite was “The Song of Arion” by Emily Golus, which I rated 4.5 stars)

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion series by Beth Brower (see below) Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff (a prose retelling of The Iliad that preserves much of the original language, story, and intensity)

Kill the Dawn by Emily Hayse (a heroic and tragic Viking epic fantasy retelling of Hamlet with themes of light and hope amid darkness and grief)

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (Tumblr knows this book. I really wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, because the book suits my favorite style of realistic writing, characters, and story.)

Huntingtower by John Buchan (a vintage mystery/suspense novel featuring a multi-generational cast of motley adventurers, including a middle-aged protagonist that reminds me of Bilbo Baggins)

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai (the nonfiction memoir of a Pakistani Muslim girl who was targeted and nearly killed by the Taliban because she spoke out about girls’ education rights)

Best series you discovered in 2025?

Definitely The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. It’s a fictional journal of the entertaining daily adventures of a quirky, witty young woman and her unlikely friends, set in an alternate 1880s London, with a slight hint of magical realism. There are eight Emma M. Lion books (so far), and I read one a month for the first eight months of 2025, with my book club. It was lovely. I got very invested after the first book or two. Book 5 was a particular highlight for me, since I really connected with Emma’s experience healing from past grief. Though these books are humorous, they are also heartwarming and surprisingly profound.

Best reread of the year?

Asmodeus, despite his name, is just a giant adder. Hardly unusual, but it's the scope of the threat.

It's rarely mystical (mainly with Martin), but you can read it both ways sometimes.

There's something eerie about Malkariss being an old man in a statue who has conned slavers and hooded weirdos into kidnapping children. It's almost cult like.

I’m running out of things to say about returning to Mistmantle…

You know the drill, by now. This post is reviewing The Mistmantle Chronicles, Book Four: Urchin and the Raven War. It was published in 2008, written by M. I. McAllister and illustrated by Omar Rayyan.

You also know the deal about spoilers. There will be spoilers, as well as discussion of violence and death.

This book jumps forward in time a significant amount (although it doesn’t specify how much). Urchin is fully grown, and Princess Catkin (who was a baby last book) is up and around. She is talking, making decisions, and fed up with boring island life. When swans from Swan Isle come for help, the animals of Mistmantle go to their rescue. Doing that, though, draws the anger of a flock of ravens and Mistmantle is put under siege.

I’ll confess I was pretty anxious about this book. Last one was especially good, worthy of being an ending to the whole series. Luckily, book four delivered. I love that every book has very distinct tension. There’s usually a mix of threats from outside and inside the community.

It’s hard to say if the books are getting better, or if I’m just growing fonder of the series. I’m far from objective at this point. But that’s also a major testament to McAllister’s skill. She makes a world, and characters, that really draw readers in. I think Rayyan’s illustrations continue to improve, too. This is an archetype of the genre. This is what animal fantasy for children should be.

What could be better than a generational story with an ensemble cast? It’s very special to see characters mature and grow in responsibilities. The books were published at a rate of about one per year (which is remarkable) and I’m curious how people who actually grew up with this series felt about seeing characters go from children to being adults. The characters certainly grow up faster than the readers.

I really think that, finally, we got a Mistmantle book without a boring early bit. The other consistent problem, of too many characters, is also slightly improved. I think it helps to have characters who are swans and ravens.

This book has swans shown in a more sympathetic light, after they were kind of empty-headed in the first book and they didn’t even talk in the second. The ravens are pretty flatly dehumanized, though. It’s a common trope with nonhuman protagonists to have another species be monstrous. “Maybe rats and mice are okay, but owls and snakes are even worse!”

One character, Corr, is a young otter who’s searching for adventure. I find his journey interesting because he lives on his own for a while, after leaving home. It makes me wonder— what would society be like, if we could easily go off into nature and live without other people? If a human wants to try being self-sufficient, they’d need a lot of distance from other people, plus clothing, shelter, tools, and training to boot. But couldn’t Corr just hunt fish to feed himself?

Later, the otter Fingal kisses a squirrel on the cheeks because he promised he’d kiss whoever killed the raven prince. That’s the closest the books have gotten to addressing inter-species relationships.

Speaking of… At one point, a healer is urging Urchin to stay alive.

“Stay, Urchin,” she said. “Stay with me. Stay for Mistmantle. Stay for Crispin, for Juniper, for Needle, for all of us. Think of—” Is he in love with anyone? Take a guess. Stay for Sepia. Stay for your friends.”

That cracked me up. And, it made me realize how light on romance the books are. Almost all of it happens offscreen. Usually, we have a couple and then timeskip to them being parents. The most interesting relationships are platonic. I like that.

One thing I admire about this series is the treatment of violence. In the first book, a mole assassinates someone and then is killed himself. This book brings back his brother, seeking vengeance. That made me realize, violence is essentially never the answer in these books. It just begets more violence.

Ultimately, Mistmantle defeats most of the ravens with sticky nets. Plus, leadership struggles make the ravens fight each other.

At the end, even though the Mistmantle animals cut down the surviving ravens, they’re so badly injured that they die within minutes. That detail was so unbelievably convenient that I had to laugh.

Now for some worldbuilding. This book finally made Threadings merit the capital T, in my opinion. We meet a hedgehog who occasionally, unintentionally, includes the future when she’s making the tapestries that tell Mistmantle’s history. It’s pretty cool to imagine someone accidentally including the future in a historical document. Preemptive history.

There’s another kind of prophecy with the Silver Prince. He’s a kind of messiah for the ravens. They used to rule Swan Isle, but after they were defeated they promised never to return unless they had a Silver Prince to lead them. The swans agreed because silver ravens are rare, and only female.

I was wondering if I’d be able to claim him as a trans icon, but it seems like he’s just a grey raven who they got overly excited about. (You can still headcanon him as trans tho.)

Aah, these books make me happy.

I would love to hear any opinions about this series, especially if you read it when you were young!