Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree is High Fantasy. I recently learned this term from @Eliabeth_Wheatly on YouTube. It means a story that takes place in a realm other than this one, like Lord of the Rings, whereas Low Fantasy is set in our world. An example is the Harry Potter series.
As the fantasy genre has grown beyond its earlier sci-fi category into its own genre, it has many spawned subgenres. Here is a link to a list of fifty: https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/fantasy-subgenres.
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I have read the Martha Wells series The Murderbot Diaries and loved it. Here is a link to my reviews: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=murderbot.
I was excited to read her book, Witch King. However, the audiobook starts with several minutes of a list of characters with a brief description and affiliations, and I realized it might be tough to keep everyone straight. And it was. Yet it was still a captivating, inventive story. Wells is a fantastic architect of imaginary, robust worlds. The main character, Kai, is a demon prince of the underworld who inhabits a mortal body. The story starts with his being awakened from an imprisonment in stasis. He frees is his witch bff Ziede. Together with a ragtag band of misfits, they journey to find Ziede's captured wife, discover who has imprisoned them, and try to make the world a better place. This universe is infused with magic that is used for good and evil purposes. It is a world that has been conquered and now seeks to be liberated. Wells creates a place where gender identity and queerness are the norm. This aspect reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's writings.
For a clearer and more in-depth review, I recommend:
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I watched the series 3 Body Problem, based on the book The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. It is unusual that I watch the series/film before I read the book. There is so much happening in the book that seeing the series helped me understand as I read. In the book, most of the action takes place in China; the series has locations and characters that are more international. The author is Chinese and a computer science engineer. This gives the book a non-western feeling and adds to its alien feeling. Strange things are happening to Earth's scientists. They are seeing things no one else can see, and it causes them to commit suicide. The reason this is happening is slowly revealed to be tied to one woman--a Chinese physicist--who serves at an isolated radar station. Her actions set in motion world-ending events.
I found this book somewhat technical, but I understood what was happening and why. There are two more books in the series, and I plan on working through them. If you like science-y science fiction, this is a terrific read.
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