By the end I was really enjoying myself. This is romantasy where it’s light on the fantasy plot and heavier on the romance. The Courting of Bristol Keats’ main fantasy plot is ‘there’s a portal open and we need to close it using a rare power’, by all means not a bad fantasy plot, this is really just the intro book to it where Bristol is learning to use her power and learning about faerieland as a whole. The romance I got quite swept up in by the end of the book.
Tor
Review: Rise of the Mages (Age of Ire Book 1) by Scott Drakeford
Drakeford rises to the occasion Synopsis A young warrior and his improbable band of allies face impossible odds as they seek to rescue his brother from the servants of the Fallen God. Emrael Ire is a student of war with lofty ambitions, despite being so poor his boots are more hole than leather. He and […]
Review: The Night Cyclist by Stephen Graham Jones
Synopsis: “The Night Cyclist” by award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones is a horror novelette about a middle-aged chef whose nightly bicycle ride home is interrupted by an unexpected encounter. There must be no compulsion to hide the bodies. Otherwise I’d have never found them. Review: Every now and then, I need to remind myself that […]
Review: Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
Synopsis: Misha is a jaded scriptwriter working in Hollywood, and he’s seen it all. All the toxic personalities and coverups, the structural obstructions to reform, even dead actors brought back to screen by CGI – and finally, maybe, the hint of change. But having just been nominated for his first Oscar, Misha is pressured by […]
Review: The Fireborne Blade (The Fireborne Blade #1) by Charlotte Bond
The Fireborne Blade is a speedy yet enthralling and gritty read to enrich your afternoon with knightly heroics, dragons, magic, and a badass female protag making her way in a man’s world, while trying to reclaim her honor by slaying the dragon and retrieving a legendary magic sword. This is the kind of fresh and modern epic fantasy I am glad to be getting to read more of because it has everything that I love about classic fantasy but is more nuanced and seamlessly inclusive towards its current readership and not everything is like it seems.
Review: Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Synopsis: Something evil is buried deep in the desert.It wants your body.It wears your skin. In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face to face with it. They survived―but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person. Sixteen years later, only the scarred and […]
Review: Fall of Ruin and Wrath (Awakening #1) by Jennifer L. Armentrout
Hello again dear reader or listener, tis a romantic fantasy review I’m regaling you with today and let’s just say it’s a bag of mixed feelings to say the least!!
Review: Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini (Fractalverse #0.5)
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is possibly my favourite book of all time, and I’ve been (im)patiently waiting for the next Fractalverse book ever since. I’m very happy to say that Fractal Noise lived up to my expectations and I’m so excited that it’s setting up for the next book in the series!
Book Review: Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee
Synopsis Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family. Ester’s path leads her to the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to […]
Review: Weaponized (A Polity Novel) by Neal Asher
Synopsis She wants a new future. But her past comes along for the ride. Ursula has lived two human lifespans, courtesy of the latest technology. Now she’s struggling to find excitement and purpose. And after a failed stint in the Polity’s military, the ex-soldier heads for the stars — hunting for a simpler, more meaningful […]
Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #3) by Tamsyn Muir
Nona the Ninth is tremendous—there’s maximum intrigue right from the start in true Muir fashion; in the form of, we don’t know who Nona is and neither does she, though there’s rubbish meals, cool t-shirts, a dog with three legs and a looming … something. It reeks of … something punk—cyberpunk?—punk something as we’re treated to a hopeful story of a person called Nona, and her minders Palamedes-and-Camilla, and the ten-thousand-year-old Pyrrha. Our favourite necromancers-in-space series stops off for a break in a desolate city, in the desert of a world besieged by blue light.
Book Review: Leech by Hiron Ennes
I was completely blown away by Leech. From the very first page I was completely drawn in, and by page 60 I was hooked and loath to put the book down.
Leech is an atmospheric, gothic horror of the best kind. The atmosphere is just perfect and the setting of a remote castle in the far north just added an extra layer of dark & creepy to the story. Nothing is ever quite as it seems and Hiron Ennes really embraces that in this book.