The Tangleroot Palace

Starred review from January 11, 2021
Liu (the Monstress series) charms with this spellbinding collection of six short stories and one novella. The standouts are “The Briar and the Rose,” a darkly fascinating retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” in which a female duelist discovers her witch employer is living in the stolen body of Princess Rose, and helps Rose to regain it; and “Call Her Savage,” a steampunk western set during the Opium Wars and following half-Chinese antiheroine Lady Marshal as she struggles to be the hero others need her to be. Also of note are the haunting and eerie, “Sympathy for the Bones”; “The Last Dignity of Man,” about a would-be supervillain who realizes he must be his own superman; and two stories set in the world of Liu’s Dirk & Steele paranormal romance series: the atmospheric historical fantasy, “Where the Heart Lives,” which serves as a prequel to the series, and the dystopian “After the Blood,” about Amish vampires, set in the series’s future. The title novella offers a more standard secondary world fantasy, about a runaway princess drawn to an enchanted forest, but uses this familiar plot to probe the character’s feelings of being trapped. Liu’s mastery of so many different subgenres astounds, and her ear for language carries each story forward on gorgeously crafted sentences. This is a must-read. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi Agency.

March 1, 2021
A collection of short stories exploring the emotional complexity, diverse physicality, and layered sexuality of resourceful women. In "Sympathy for the Bones," Clora is old Ruth's unwilling apprentice witch in Kentucky, forced to murder men with hoodoo magic or surrender her soul. Having lost her family, Clora longs to know what it feels like to love and be loved, even as she plans her escape. Another kind of escape is brewing in "The Briar and the Rose," a retelling of "Sleeping Beauty," only this time the charming prince is a brown warrior-woman who must walk the dangerous line between freeing the woman she's come to love and her duty to her mistress---the sorceress who inhabits Rose's body six days out of seven. In "Call Her Savage," a striking magical alternate history, ex-Lady Marshall Xīng MacNamara--who comes from New China, on the Pacifica coast of an America allied with its Native peoples--must kill her former lover Maude in order to stop the Redcoats from colonizing the world. Rounding out the collection are a story about Amish vampires and a secret marriage in a plague-ridden future that gingerly explores trauma and strength; a gay wannabe-supervillain looking for a superhero to love him in a story that asks what true vulnerability can awaken; and a princess, determined to forge her own path through sentient trees and evil queens, who wrestles with how to remain true to duty, heart, and mind. Within each tale, author Liu gives a masterclass in the art of storytelling. She doesn't waste a word or a comma, nor does she miss an opportunity to dive into what makes us human, no matter who we are or who we love. In the title novella, the protagonist learns that "some trees are bark and root, and some trees have soul and teeth." So, too, will readers find that Liu's writing is all "soul and teeth." Neither will release them quickly. The only drawback to these seven stories is that readers will want far more time in each world.

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February 26, 2021
On the surface, the stories in Liu's first solo collection seem to have little in common as they span from fairy tales to westerns to dark fantasy. In truth, they are united by dangerous, strong, and determined women as lead characters, and by themes of freedom and self-determination. The lead short story tells of Clora, a young girl who finds a way out from under the thumb of the witch who saved her. The titular novella centers on Sally, a young princess who is headstrong, with a bold spirit that seems to twist the same way other modern fantasy heroines do, but is actually more like a character from Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind (2007). Briar Rose reimagines the story of Sleeping Beauty as the tale of two women, one a brutal swordswoman who helps a beautiful victim trapped in her own body break free of a sorceress who has possessed her. Fans of Liu's paranormal romance and urban fantasy series will enjoy exploring the many facets of her imagination.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.