Book Review: The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

Book title: The Lion Women of Tehran
Author: Marjan Kamali
Genre: Historical fiction
Published: July 2, 2024
327 pages
My rating: 5/5

“Someday, you and me – we’ll do great things. We’ll live life for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who make things happen.”

Seven-year-old Elaleh “Ellie” Soltani’s comfortable middle-class life is upended by the unexpected death of her father when she and her mother are forced to move to a poorer neighborhood. In school, she meets Homa Roozbeh, and the two girls become best friends to Ellie’s mother’s dismay. Together they play games and dream of becoming lion women of the first generation of working women in Iran. Opportunity allows Ellie to return to her earlier lifestyle, and memories of Homa fade, until years later Homa suddenly reappears in her life.

The Lion Women of Tehran is a historical fiction by Marjan Kamali. Told mostly from Ellie’s point of view with a few chapters from Homa’s perspective, this coming-of-age story follows the two Iranian girls from the early 1950s, when Iran was modernizing, to the early 1980s and the aftermath of the Islamic revolution.

Reaching the Midpoint of a Pride and Prejudice Retelling: A Writing Update

I've been busy with my multiple writing projects lately. Project Prehistory is still resting after I finished the fifth draft, but I have been doing query prep, researching for agents, and drafting a query letter and synopsis. I have a query letter critique scheduled in late October, so I still have plenty of time to polish the letter before the critique.

I finished final edits to a cozy fantasy short story and sent it to a literary magazine. Unfortunately, I got an almost immediate no from the magazine. Now I have to wait for another magazine to open their submissions.

Most of my writing time I've spent editing the second draft of a modern Pride and Prejudice retelling. I reached the midpoint a couple of weeks ago, and I'm now securely in the latter half of the story. The second half needs a lot more work than the first half, but I'm slowly working through it.

You can find out more about what I've been up to in the writing vlog below.

Book Review: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This is How You Lose the Time War

Book title: This Is How You Lose the Time War
Author: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Genre: Science fiction
Published: July 16, 2019
209 pages
My rating: 3/5

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.”

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. This begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival time-traveling agents Red and Blue. What begins as a taunt grows into something more, but if they are caught, their bond means a death for them. Because around them, the time war rages on.

This is How You Lose the Time War is a science fiction novel by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I listened to this book as an audio book in Finnish translation. I don’t know if it was the (otherwise competent) translation or the format, but I didn’t connect to the story. If I had read this book in original language instead of listening to it, I might have enjoyed it a little more. The concept certainly was interesting, but the execution felt lacking.

Book Review: The Winter Goddess by Megan Barnard

The Winter Goddess by Megan Barnard

Book title: The Winter Goddess
Author: Megan Barnard
Genre: Mythological retelling, historical fantasy
Published: March 11, 2025
304 pages
My rating: 3.5/5

“I don’t know how old I was, but a child still, and Danu and I had been walking through the deep parts of the forest, heading back to Tara. I was holding her hand and she was talking of this and that – Danu was always talking – when we crested the slope of a small hill, entering a clearing ringed with huge fir trees. I tilted my face up to see where they seemed to graze the sky and watched as something brushed the very tops of the branches – something white and gentle and mesmerizing. Snow, I somehow understood, though I had never seen it before.”

Cailleach, the goddess of winter, despises selfish and destructive humans. When her sacred grove is destroyed, she unleashes a brutal winter, killing hundreds of people. As a punishment, her mother Danu, the queen of the gods, sends her to live on earth among the people she disdains until she understands what it’s like to be a mortal.

The Winter Goddess is Megan Barnard’s historical fantasy inspired by Gaelic mythology. The concept was fascinating, and I wanted to like this book, but it let me down. For the longest time, I could not figure out what the book was trying to say. It felt that it either had the wrong main character or was telling the story in the wrong way.

Book Review: Cecilia by Frances Burney

Cecilia by Frances Burney

Book title: Cecilia
Author: Frances Burney
Genre: Classic
Published: 1782
1004 pages
My rating: 4/5

Cecilia Beverley is an heiress who can only keep her fortune if her husband agrees to take her surname. Surrounded by fortune-hunters and other people who want to use her money for their own gain, the beautiful and virtuous Cecilia has to navigate the world with only the help of three questionable guardians. She falls in love with Mortimer Delvile, the son of one of her guardians, but his father insists that he keeps the family name, and it seems impossible they will ever have their happy ending.

Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress is Frances Burney’s second novel, published in 1782. I started this book for this year’s Jane Austen July, but as the book is closer to thousand pages (plus foreword and appendices), it took me over two months to finish it. I don’t usually mind long classics, but Cecilia was way too long.

Book Review: The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon

Book title: The Hurricane Wars
Author: Thea Guanzon
Genre: Romantasy
Published: October 3, 2023
470 pages
My rating: 3.5/5

“He heard the girl before he saw her, a high and golden hum that cut through the chaos of battle like the first flare of sunrise.”

Having grown up as an orphan in a nation occupied by The Night Empire, Talasyn has only ever known the Hurricane Wars. She uses the power of light to fight for freedom, but everything changes when she uncovers the secret of her past. Alaric Ossinast, on the other hand, wields shadow magic to crush those who stand in the way of the Night Empire. But then he clashes with Talasyn, and soon they are thrust into an uneasy alliance to save the world.

The Hurricane Wars is the first book in Thea Guanzon’s adult romantasy trilogy. If you want an enemies-to-lovers fantasy where a petite and helpless woman learns to use her powers and spends half of the book marveling at how tall and solid and muscular the dark and brooding love interest is, you’ll probably enjoy The Hurricane Wars.

August Wrap-Up and September Hopefuls

August reads

August Wrap-Up

• Finished: 5
• Started/continued but not finished: 4
• Total pages read: 1,949
• Average rating: 4.8

August was another great reading month for me. Four of the five books I finished were five stars, and one was four stars. The two fiction books I’ve written longer reviews of were both written by Madeline Miller, novel-length Circe (5/5 stars) and short story Galatea (5/5 stars). Needless to say, I loved them both! Click the links to read more about my thoughts.