The King of the Rising is the follow-up to 2019’s Queen of the Conquered (my review of that book is here) and the finale in Kacen Callender’s Islands of Blood and Storm duology. This is a complex fantasy series built around themes of colonialism and power dynamics. I have mixed feelings about the direction this book ended up taking, so let’s dig in.
Review: Mistborn (Book 1) by Brandon Sanderson
Reading Mistborn, formerly known as The Final Empire or book one of the Mistborn series, felt like arriving late at a party when everyone’s drunk—like I had missed out on something special! I bought the Era one trilogy a few years back and never got to it until now, and man was I missing out on the kool-aid. This book took all my expectations, put them in a blender with a high dose of sugar and hit frappe. I haven’t been that much engaged in a book since I read the Harry Potter series.
Author Chat – Lee Matthew Goldberg
Come join David as he chats with author Lee Matthew Goldberg about life, writing, and his upcoming sci-fi debut, Orange City, hitting store shelves on March 16th. You can grab your copy here, which is perma-$1.99: https://amzn.to/38oPKeL
Review: Mordew (Cities of the Weft #1) by Alex Pheby
Mordew is a wondrous, richly crafted and grimly set first in a new series that surpassed my expectations in everyway possible. It’s the marvel of Guerdon in the Gutter Prayer and the oddity of His Dark Materials mixed into one. To say that it was full of original wonder would be an understatement, it truly took me through a fever dream, a hallucination of new ideas moulded together by Nathan, Gam, Prissy, Joses, Anaximander and Sirius, and the Master; it’s the start of an absolutely stunning new fantasy trilogy that you just won’t want to miss.
Review: Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi
Review: The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst
The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst really caught my attention in the beginning. The author uses emotion and adventure to bring the reader in and set up the main storyline.
Review: Among Thieves by M. J. Kuhn
Cover Reveal: White as Frost (The Darkwood Trilogy #1) by Anthea Sharp
Review: Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles #1) by Kevin Hearne
I’ll admit that urban fantasy is one of the genres of speculative fiction that I am the least familiar with. For the longest time, I would see the covers in bookstores and just assume that they were like the fantasy romance novels that I grew up watching my grandmother tear through, one after another. I have since learned that this is not (always) the case.
Review: Inscape by Louise Carey
Review: The Sadeiest by Austrian Spencer
I want to start this review off by pointing out a few important trigger warnings. The Sadeiest is about death and describes people dying in many different ways in detail (including death by suicide, disease, drowning, etc). If that is a trigger or even just an upsetting topic to you, please do not continue.