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THE HIVE by Ronald Malfi
Epic Horror is one of the most ambitious kinds of horror stories to tell. Horror is a genre that relies a great deal on tension and can often be strengthened by intimacy of character or situation. In other words, relatively small stakes. Maintaining a level of tension and mounting dread over the course of a…
Categories: Fantasy Books
MARS ONE by Charlotte Robinson
One of the recent discussions about Science Fiction I’ve had with non-genre readers has been about what readers want from Science Fiction. “Why do sci-fi writers explain things SO much?” was the question. This made me think. Personally, I think that it is part of the SF heritage. Modern SF came from a group of…
Categories: Fantasy Books
THE DEMON KING (Nightfall #3) by Peter V. Brett
The Demon King is the third and final installment of Peter V. Brett’s Nightfall saga, closing the saga of Olive Paper and Darin Bales, as well as the world introduced in The Warded Man, the first Demon Cycle novel. For now, at least. The second installment, The Hidden Queen left readers in a lurch, with…
Categories: Fantasy Books
PARADOX by Douglas and Aletheia Preston
So: what do holy relics, Neanderthals, UFO researchers and secret societies all have in common? They’re all in the latest book by Douglas Preston! Does the name sound familiar? Douglas has been a consistent best-seller writer since the mid-1990’s, perhaps best known for writing nearly 30 crime fiction novels with Lincoln Child, although he has…
Categories: Fantasy Books
THIS KINGDOM WILL NOT KILL ME by Ilona Andrews (Maggie the Undying #1)
Portal Fantasies are some of the earliest subset of fantasy novels, going all the way back to the great Lord Dunsany. In those early stories, characters were often transported to a “Fairyland” but over the years, there are other worlds characters can visit. Take Ilona Andrews’s This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, the first novel…
Categories: Fantasy Books
STARTER VILLAIN by John Scalzi
I’ve often said that writing humour (sorry, American readers: ‘humor’) is HARD. The difficulty is, as I understand it, that writing humour means that it doesn’t come across in the same way as a spoken one-liner. Perhaps more problematical is that a person’s sense of humour is not the same as another’s. What can seem…
Categories: Fantasy Books
GREEN & DEADLY THINGS by Jenn Lyons
Jenn Lyons has published a slew of well-received epic fantasy novels over the last few years (she launched a 5-book series in 2019 with The Ruin of Kings [click the title for a link to my review] that concluded in 2022), an epic standalone and now Green & Deadly Things, a dark-fantasy standalone about dead…
Categories: Fantasy Books
WRETCH by Eric LaRocca
Eric LaRocca is one of the cutting-edge voices of horror today (mid 2020s), known for uncompromising stories that defy boundaries of any kind. When I was provided the opportunity to review his novel Wretch after his publicist reached out to me, it was an easy yes, please. This was my first opportunity to read his…
Categories: Fantasy Books
NO MAN’S LAND by Richard Morgan
You may know Richard for writing SF (Altered Carbon, Thin Air) or perhaps his A Land Fit For Heroes series involving Ringil the elf (The Steel Remains, etc). In his new book, his first fiction novel for eight years – Thin Air was published in 2016 – he takes up that idea of ‘A Land…
Categories: Fantasy Books
THE FOX AND THE DEVIL by Kiersten White
Abraham van Helsing is the most famous vampire hunter in literature, and while he vanquished the Count, he may not have been the best father. His daughter Anneke is on the hunt for the creature who killed her father (she happened to be the only person to see this haunting creature), which has helped to…
Categories: Fantasy Books
JITTERBUG by Gareth L Powell
“On Earth, they depicted justice as blindfolded and impartial, but out here on the frontier, she was red in tooth and claw.” It’s not every book that begins with the unanticipated dismantling of a planet. But that is what happens here, when people in South London watch through a telescope the disassembling of the planet…
Categories: Fantasy Books
THE BODY by Bethany C. Morrow
A young couple – Mavis and Jerrod – have what seems to be a wonderful marriage despite the tension that has been simmering for years between Mavis and her parents. The novel’s action kickstarts early when Mavis gets into a very bad car accident. The first oddity she realizes is that she knew the other…
Categories: Fantasy Books
BETWEEN TWO FIRES by Christopher Buehlman
Well, you can’t say that reading Fantasy genre books is ever boring. Having last read and reviewed a lovely book involving magic and cats at a cat shelter, this novel is a bit of an about-turn. Between Two Fires is in the publisher’s details described as a story of medieval horror. For those of a…
Categories: Fantasy Books
THE RED WINTER by Cameron Sullivan
The origins of the werewolf legend are explored, as well as demonic possession, witchcraft, ancient gods, queer love, the life of a succubus, as well as a thinly veiled Joan of Arc in Cameron Sullivan’s centuries spanning historical dark fantasy debut, The Red Winter. The main character, Professor Sebastian Grave of Larnaca, a famed monster…
Categories: Fantasy Books
WEAVINGSHAW by Heba Al-Wasity
A young girl named Leena is desperate to save her ailing brother pleads her case to the Saint of Silence (AKA St. Silas), the most dangerous man in the city. He collects secrets and more, but in turn, provides the bearer of those secrets with their heart’s desire. Leena’s secret – she can see the…
Categories: Fantasy Books
AGNES AUBERT’S MYSTICAL CAT SHELTER by Heather Fawcett
It’s well known that a genre – any genre – often relies on its tropes – some might say cliches. You know, fantasy involves elves, dragons and swords, SF involves spaceships, and so on. It’s part of the fun, and also the elements that fans love. To that group I must add the preponderance of…
Categories: Fantasy Books
ON SUNDAYS SHE PICKED FLOWERS by Yah Yah Scholfield
Yah Yah Scholfield’s On Sundays She Picked Flowers marks her impressive debut. It is a novel about perseverance, generational abuse, race, and shapeshifting creatures. It is part horror, part southern gothic and has the surreal, magical feel of a fairy tale. It is an arresting, powerful debut, in other words. In this sinister and…
Categories: Fantasy Books
NINE GOBLINS by T. Kingfisher
In the scale of things fantasy, goblins since the age of Tolkien (and before actually) have tended to have a bit of a bad reputation. Seen as smelly, violent, greedy, selfish, grumpy, lazy and well, a bit dim, they’re not the first choice for literary inspiration. To this we then have T. Kingfisher’s latest novella…
Categories: Fantasy Books
TWELVE MONTHS by Jim Butcher (Dresden Files #18)
Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is one of the best selling and most beloved fantasy sagas on the shelves. How can a series that is now 25 years old with 17 books on the selves stay fresh? Well, one way is to change up* how the story is told. Jim Butcher has said that a Dresden…
Categories: Fantasy Books
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