Synopsis: ‘The Stardust Thief will transport you, enchant you, and revive your belief in the magic of storytelling’ Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the SunInspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights, The Stardust Thief weaves the gripping tale of a legendary smuggler, a cowardly prince and a dangerous quest across the desert to find a magical lamp. […]
Fiction
Book Tour: Hag of the Hills by J.T.T. Ryder
Let the god of wordsmithing drape me with his cloak and light our night with his inspiration. I will tell you, my dearest Luceo, the tale of how I came to sit next to you at this fire, far from our homeland, after the so-called queen Slighan and her Hillmen tore it asunder. May you always recount my words at anyone’s beckoning. You are a budding bard, and your skill will wilt if your attention wanes.
Review: One Foot in the Fade (The Fetch Phillips Archives #3) by Luke Arnold
Detective and noir fiction is one of those sweet spots for me as a reader. Those times when I’m not reading fantasy or science fiction, I love basking in the mystery and dark explorations of books by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and the like. There’s something raw about those works, their characters and their worlds, that pulls me in every time.
That’s why my discovery of the urban fantasy detective genre five or six years ago quite literally blew my mind (it’s a mash-up made in heaven!). I have since devoured countless great genre-blending gems, and Luke Arnold’s The Fetch Phillips Archives stands high among them. Now, three books in with One Foot in the Fade, I can safely say this is a series that has cemented itself as some of the best urban fantasy detective literature out there.
Book Tour and Review: A Man Named Baskerville by Jim Nelson
Hello, all! Thank you for tuning into my stop on the Escapist Book Tours run of A Man Named Baskerville by Jim Nelson. Below, you’ll find information about the book and my review! I hope you enjoy.
Review: Six Gun Shuffle (Black Sun #2) by David Dixon
Synopsis: Snake and the boss have made a lot of enemies, but up until their trip to Yaeger, they’ve never had any beef with Michael Ver, the galaxy’s most bankable popstar-mainly because they hadn’t met him before. After the boss teaches Ver a lesson about the difference between looking tough and being tough, he finds […]
Book Tour: Where Blood Runs Gold by AC Cross
Synopsis Sheriff Errol Thorpe’s life is chaotic, brutal, and above all, solitary. After an unimaginable loss years ago, all he feels is the compulsion to seek vengeance. But when a vulnerable family arrives in town, facing an ugly future, he is pulled headfirst into a web of violence, secrets, and things he never imagined. In […]
Review: Into Every Generation a Slayer is Born: How Buffy Staked Our Hearts by Evan Ross Katz
A perfectly balanced celebration, scrutinization, and discussion of the cultural phenomenon that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Out of everything I’ve read since the beginning of the pandemic, Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is the book that truly snuck up on me and made me soak in the reality of what we are living in. I write this from a place of relative isolation: I am a stay-at-home dad who makes a podcast, writes and gets most of his social fix virtually. So here we all are, in the midst of a strange world, a strange time, and Sea of Tranquility captures that isolating strangeness with a sublime beauty and simplicity. This book is at once a thought experiment in loneliness and the human condition, while also reveling in the love and connection that binds us a species across time and space. No other story in recent memory has made me think so deeply about what I have experienced during this pandemic, nor to ponder on the realities of what it means, for me, to be human.
Review: At the End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp
Nijkamp has written a wonderful, diverse YA book that really hits home. You never learn too much about the teens lives’ before they were sent to the Juvenile Centre, there are theories about what each teen may have done but you never really find out about their lives before. The focus is far more on the current situation, how a group of forgotten teens try to survive the pandemic that has broken out.
Review: The Blood Trials (The Blood Gift Duology #1) by N. E. Davenport
I loved N. E. Davenport’s The Blood Trials. I went into this book without any expectations and turned the final page both surprised and satisfied. It offers up a complex world, rife with geopolitical conflicts, futuristic technologies and awesome fight scenes. But it also introduces a dark, supernatural magic system that plays into the racial and social dynamics of its corrupt society. All of this combines for a solid debut and a wondrous world that I can’t wait to read more of.
Book Tour and Review: The Jealousy of Jalice (A Disaster of Dokojin #1) by Jesse Nolan Bailey
Every scene was fresh and each turn of the page brought some new creature, new horror, or new mystery to be solved. I was not left wanting as I read, as each challenge the characters faced was intense and exciting. The stakes were never lowered and lives were always on the line.
Review: Age of Ash (Kithamar #1) by Daniel Abraham
As a lover of science fiction, I can appreciate the breaking of the status quo. Every so often, genres like cyberpunk or post-apocalyptic fiction came in to stir shit up and make it messier, so to say. But fantasy, I’ve found, is much more comfortable resting on its laurels—challenges to foundational fantasy conventions have been slower, and few and far between. In the last decade or so, though, the intention from authors to actively challenge fantasy’s history has been growing.
Daniel Abraham’s newest novel Age of Ash, book one in The Kithamar Trilogy, seems to do just that. It tackles the notion of “epic fantasy,” questioning the epic-ness of it all and how big battles and a fast pace have dominated that landscape. But beyond that, Age of Ash is a heartfelt story that grounds itself in genuine characters in grim circumstances. What follows is a novel that is epic in its ideas and execution, but relatable in its perspectives and emotions.