6/26/26 • 3 min read
This novella may only be 102 pages long, but each and ever page of In Shadows We Fall drips with palace politics, intrigue, and deception. Madson’s Aurealis award-winning prequel to the Vengeance trilogy, rips along at a blistering pace leaving the reader no time to pause and catch their breath. Let alone stop to reflect as, in a pitched battle of wits, the Empress Li plots the downfall of her God-Emperor husband, the Emperor Lan.
6/23/26 • 3 min read
The Last Smile in Sunder City is a dark urban fantasy and the first book in a planned series, the Fetch Phillips Archives, which promises a great deal more in depth world building and character development. And, even for a debut, Arnold packs it in—for a world that once ran on magic nothing will ever be the same. Every conceivable magical creature, and there are some that even defy imagination, the loss of magic has been devastating.
6/20/26 • 4 min read
The world building in Race the Sands treads familiar ground and gives us an Egyptian style setting and culture, living along a great river—the Aur—surrounded by desert. A fabulous dressed fantasy city, the Heart of Becar, and the usual slew of towns and villages with people focused with making a living off the land. Where Race The Sands differs from the standard tropes, is two-fold. The spiritual needs of the population are administered to by Augurs, and not priest.
6/18/26 • 5 min read
Nahri is a young woman living by her wits on the streets of Cairo, running lucrative cons and healing rituals and staying one step ahead of being caught. She knows nothing about who she is or where she came from, but knows she has a gift for languages, and can heal herself from just about anything. It’s while she’s conducting an elaborate con of a young woman possessed by a daemon spirit, that Nahri’s story takes a turn when she accidentally summons a fiery, good looking djinn warrior.
6/13/26 • 2 min read
Let me just say up front, this is not a book for the faint of heart, and would definitely be PG-13 if not higher given some of the content, themes and descriptions. Including some grisly deaths. But that said, all of it is within context to the world in which this story is set. It’s a dark, definitely bleak story, and yet? And yet, the author, Robert Jackson Bennett, does something unique amid all the darkness he gives us hope, he gives us humour and plenty of courage, as his characters fight through the harsh realities of their lives and situations.
6/11/26 • 2 min read
Not all fantasy has to be grim. After having a back and forth chat with an online friend about fantasy reads, I admitted I had never read GRRM and was not likely too, ever. The truth is I’ve not read a great deal of fantasy over the last 4-5 years and it took the likes of the masterful SA Chakraborty and her Daevabad trilogy to rekindle my love of the genre before Covid hit us hard.
6/10/26 • 3 min read
From the minute I saw the cover for Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire by Dan Hanks, I fell in love with it and knew I had to get my hands on a copy. Well, the cover conveyed everything this brilliant piece of escapist fun promised, and then some. A blisteringly fast-paced archaeological adventure populated with a number of dynamic characters, hell bent of either saving the world, or destroying it.
6/9/26 • 3 min read
The premise for SCYTHE by Neal Shusterman is a really good one. It comes across as being unusual—here we have people who train to deal death as a means of culling the growing population in a world were everyone is, technically, immortal. This is a story that should have everything going for it. Sadly, however, the author fails to deliver on a rich promise in a satisfying or fulfilling way and the awful black and white view on morality is absurd for a so-called utopia.
5/26/26 • 4 min read
WE RIDE THE STORM by Devin Madson has definitely been a wild ride of murder, mayhem, and enough twists and turns to make a reader dizzy! Madson is not averse to throwing in a good blindside. So that, just when you think you know what’s going on, she sucker punches you in the gut with a twist you never saw coming. Well, for me at least, there were some really delicious twists I never saw coming.
5/25/26 • 3 min read
In THE PHLEBOTOMIST, Chris Panatier takes us into the heart of an almost Orwellian dystopian future set in 2067 (so not a too far distant future) where a mega corporation, PATRIOT, controls everything. From what people eat, to how people live after an apparent nuclear disaster starts a chain of events, allowing the corporation greater, and greater control under the guise of helping others survive after the first and subsequent nuclear strikes, and the devastation that followed.
5/24/26 • 4 min read
This was Abaddon Books first anthology which features fourteen very assorted stories in which the invited authors were given carte blanche by editor, David Thomas Moore, to put Holmes, Watson, Mrs. Hudson and yes, even Inspector Lestrade, anytime and anywhere they want. And, as a result, we are presented with a varied and eclectic mix that include a female Holmes, a gay Holmes, a couple of classic Holmes, a Holmes who owns a travelling circus and, just as much fun, a Holmes who is a summoned demon; but more on that later.
5/21/26 • 2 min read
As with book one in this series from Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop Of Corruption is an action-packed adventure come murder mystery, and fantastical exploration of a magical world that sees our erstwhile heroes, Dinios Kol and brilliantly eccentric Ana Dolabra, doing what they do best. Sifting through the clues however confounding and tedious a job, to catch a brilliantly clever killer. This time around, Din and Ana are far away from all they know in Yarrowdale, a territory outside of the Empire.