🇺🇸 What happens when The Handmaid’s Tale meets Pacific rim? The Iron Widow is born as a sci-fi retelling of the story of the only female emperor of Chinese history. It is really difficult in 2021 to find a young adult fantasy that is well written and deals with interesting topics, and, above all, it does so in a non-trivial way. The Iron Widow is all of this and something more.

🇺🇸️ The most common story told in the literature is the one between two persons of opposite groups that should hate each other but end up loving each other. This is the kind of love that must fight against everyone and everything (most of the time even the prejudice of the lovers itself) and could end really tragically (Romeo and Juliet’s story affected more than one generation) or really beautifully (like Kestrel and Arien in the Winner’s Curse trilogy. I thought that The Wolf and the Woodsman was another love story of this kind, but I ended up being utterly wrong.

🇺🇸 The Nature of Witches is the debut Young Adult fantasy novel of Rachel Griffin. It is a novel about self-acceptance, growth, trust, love, and, mainly, climate change. It could seem strange to include a topic that is so sensitive in a YA fantasy, but the writer does an amazing job of interwave it with the plot of the book.
It is never too burdensome for the reader who can enjoy the book while, at the same time, realize what we are doing to the Earth.

🇮🇹 Qualsiasi cosa voi stiate facendo, qualsiasi genere letterario voi prediligiate, in qualsiasi stato mentale voi siate:

abbandonate tutto e leggete questo libro.

🇮🇹️ Praticamente mancavo solo io a non avere letto La guerra dei papaveri di R.F.Kuang. Romanzo super chiacchierato del 2020 ed esordio della scrittrice datato 2018, è il primo volume di una trilogia che è già stata tradotta e portata in Italia da Mondadori (per farvi capire quanto sono arrivata in ritardo a leggerlo). Io ho letto solo il primo volume della trilogia e l’ho letta in originale, quindi non mi saprei sbilanciare sulla traduzione, ma in qualsiasi lingua decidiate di leggerlo io lo consiglio vivamente.

🇺🇸️ This is my first English review of a book. Why have I decided to switch language for this review instead of my classic Italian? No particular reason really, I was just so frustrated after reading the book that I thought English readers could be the right audience to complain together about it. Will I switch completely to English as the language of the blog? No, definitely no. I still think my potential (if it exists) is the best express in Italian. Will I write other reviews in English? Yes, probably. Regardless of my origin, I live in the US now and all the books that I read are in English. Still, be gentle, because I am not a native English speaker or writer (Seneca would say that to err is human).