Difference between revisions of "Newest Fantasy Reviews"

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|summary=A young woman, newly married. Discovering her husband is not all he seems. That he has secrets. That she has needs, wants, desires. That she will need to take things into her own hands if she is ever to be satisfied in her new role as wife.
 
|summary=A young woman, newly married. Discovering her husband is not all he seems. That he has secrets. That she has needs, wants, desires. That she will need to take things into her own hands if she is ever to be satisfied in her new role as wife.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007163541</amazonuk>
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007163541</amazonuk>
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kelley Armstrong
 
|title=13 (Women of the Otherworld)
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=''13'' picks up where ''Spell Bound'' left off. A terrorist group is still trying to expose the supernaturals and create a new world order. Our heroes, from among the ranks of the werewolves, the witches, the half-demons, the vampires, the necromancers and the sorcerer cabals, are trying to stop them. Savannah takes centre stage and the majority of the narration. Her spells are still on the fritz but she thinks she knows why and she survived the explosion.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498033</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Lilith Saintcrow
 
|title=The Iron Wyrm Affair
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Someone is killing off Mentaths - geniuses, logic machines - in the city of London and it's up to Emma Bannon, sorcerer Prime, to protect their next target Archibald Clare. Emma is powerful and resourceful, but she has problems of her own - such as whether she can trust her Shield, Mikal, who killed the last sorcerer whose service he was in. And while Clare is as keen as she to uncover the conspiracy behind the murders, the illogical world of sorcery and the logical minds of Mentaths don't mix well.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356500926</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=N K Jemisin
 
|title=The Shadowed Sun: Dreamblood: Book 2
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Ten years after the events of [[The Killing Moon: Dreamblood: Book 1 by N K Jemisin|The Killing Moon]], the events of the earlier book have left their mark on the world. Gujaareh is now under the oppressive rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. Worse, a plague of nightmares is killing the once peaceful city's inhabitants in their sleep. It falls to two unlikely heroes, Wanahomen, son of the late Prince, and Hanani, the first female to train as one of Hananja's priesthood, to try to save the city from both of these problems.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0356500772</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jeanette Winterson
 
|title=The Daylight Gate
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=1610s Lancashire, and Alice Nutter is the best landowner you could wish for.  Single, rich and connected, she takes no sides in the religious schisms James I has inherited, and takes no bull from those trying to oppress the poor, putting them up and feeding them when no-one else will.  But those poor are seen as sinful by others - amoral, dirty in mind, body and spirit, and in league with the devil.  And people are beginning to question Alice's attitudes, choice of company - and ageless beauty.  This, then, is the based-on-truth story of how Alice Nutter got to be one of the accused in the Pendle Witch trials.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099561859</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Stuart Sharp
 
|title=Court of Dreams
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Thomas and Nicola are no longer students.  Finals finished, Nicola can start planning life after uni and with Thomas... and then he dumps her.  To be fair, Thomas has a great job offer abroad and doesn't think that Nicola would want to go but Nicola's still flaming angry.  Adhering to the 'and another thing' school of arguing, Nicola tracks Thomas down.  He's already busy dealing with someone but being the assertive modern woman she is, Nicola barges in front of the hit man attempting to kill her now ex-boyfriend so she can give him yet another piece of her mind.  In the ensuing tussle (hit man trying to skewer Thomas and Thomas trying to prevent Nicola from becoming an ex-person as well as an ex-girlfriend) the formerly blissful couple fall back into a tree... and then onwards, through the tree towards somewhere that's other worldly in all meanings of the phrase.  For they land in the Court of Dreams, which isn't necessarily a good thing.  Meanwhile the tumble has separated Nicola and Thomas, the hit man is not only determined but also a local lad so knows his way around and Thomas' mother has neglected to tell him a thing or two about his origins, as he's just about to find out.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0982991320</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Michael Boccacino
 
|title=Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Widowed under tragic circumstances, Charlotte Markham needs an income and so she's employed by widower Henry Darrow as a governess for his sons James and Paul.  Their home 'Everton' may seem a typical Victorian mansion but the town of Blackfield isn't your average English small town; the Darrow's Nanny Prum is found murdered in a particularly grisly manner.  It's a mystery to the local police but Charlotte's friend Susannah has a clue if only they'd listen to her.  Meanwhile the Darrow boys' nights are spent dreaming of a house in the woods where their mother still lives.  Charlotte decides to treat this head on and takes them for a walk to show them there's no substance to it.  However, in doing so they discover the nightmare that is The House of Darkling.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781164460</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=K J Parker
 
|title=Sharps
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Fencing - it's such an exotic, rarefied world with it's own language, that it's no surprise to remember the director of ''Alien'', ''Blade Runner'' and ''Prometheus'' started his career with a fencing film.  And it's all over this fantasy, but not in the usual sword-and-sorcery way of old, as a delegation of swordsmen and -women visit Permia from Scheria - two fencing-loving countries that until recently have been at war.  But why exactly are they going - separately, and as a group?  Who is playing what kind of diplomatic game between the two countries, and is a wielded sword the only danger they'll face?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841499269</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jon Courtenay Grimwood
 
|title=The Outcast Blade
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=After defeating the armies that threatened Venice single handedly, the newly knighted Sir Tycho finds himself with status, wealth and the subject of much interest to the Venetian citizens. But all Tycho really wants is Lady Giulietta, niece of the city's steward. Giulietta, grieving her dead husband, is desperate to escape the backstabbing, poisonous world of the Venetian court, and isn't in the mood for Tycho's clumsy attempts to woo her.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1841498475</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Benedict Jacka
 
|title=Cursed: An Alex Verus Novel
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=A beautiful enchantress steps through the door just as an evil construct beast hurtles through the window.  Not an obtuse Chinese saying, but a typical day in the life of future-diviner and magic shop owner, Alex Verus.  Add to this the benign magical animal that seems to have died mysteriously and unmarked and you begin to realise something's afoot.  It's the sort of day that could only be made worse by the realisation that Alex's curse-soaked friend Luna has fallen in love with someone other than Alex and... yes, the downward spiral has just taken another turn.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>035650025X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Cathy Farr
 
|title=Moon Crossing
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=
 
Wil Calloway returns to Saran in the most unwelcome of circumstances. Tally, Lady Elanor's young sister, has been abducted by the evil Lord Rexmoore in an attempt to find the whereabouts of the Legacy. Tally doesn't know it, but that won't save her. So Wil has come to rejoin his Fellmen friends and mount a rescue mission. But it's not going to be easy. Gisella and Mortimer aren't talking. Seth is as accident-prone as ever. And Leon and his father are still deeply suspicious about Wil's part in Giles's death during the last Moon Chase.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781485151</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 15:21, 26 January 2013

Fantasy

The Twyning by Terence Blacker

5star.jpg Fantasy

Efren is a nobody in the kingdom of rats till he witnesses the kidnapping of the king. His future changes in a moment as he's sent up to the human world to rescue him. Talking of humans, 11 year old Peter is abandoned by his parents and left to scrape a living from London's streets. His affinity with animals gives him the name 'Dogboy' and employment with rat catcher Bob and scientist Dr Ross-Gibbon. The Doctor's ambition is to encourage humanity to annihilate the rats by dragging them into a war. Efren and Dogboy, both insignificant in their own worlds, must make both man and rodent see sense; easier said than done. Full review...

The Rook (The Checquy Files) by Daniel O'Malley

5star.jpg Fantasy

A woman wakes up with amnesia surrounded by dead people wearing gloves. In her pocket she discovers a letter from Myfanwy Thomas, the previous inhabiter of her body. Myfanwy tells a strange story of working for 'the Checquy', a paranormal version of MI5 which has been permeated by a web of betrayal and danger. The problem is that Myfanwy never discovered the source before her body changed hands (so to speak). The amnesiac has a clear choice: to continue Myfanwy's investigation or to do a runner. It's her decision but Myfanwy's warning is less than encouraging:

Remember they want you dead.

Something for her to bear in mind along with the fatal, unintended consequences of permitting cheap cheese into the UK. Full review...

Seven Kings: Books of the Shaper: Volume 2 by John R Fultz

5star.jpg Fantasy

Runaway slave Tong suicidally avenges his lost love but death seems to elude him. Meanwhile King Vireon is happily married to the beautiful shape-shifting sorceress Alua, although his sister has problems with her husband, King D'zan. A courtesan is carrying his baby; odder still when you realise he's impotent. The Twin Kings of Uruz, scholarly Lyrilan and war-hungry Tyro, can't agree on how to rule so Tyro's wife Talondra puts a real spanner in the works to force a decision. However bad their lives currently are, evil is spreading through their world like a dark shadow and, to make things worse still, Ianthe the Claw and Gammir the Reborn aren't as dead as everyone supposes them to be. (You'd think the clue would be in Gammir's name wouldn't you?) Full review...

Glass Thorns - Touchstone by Melanie Rawn

4.5star.jpg Fantasy

Cayden is a hybrid being part elf, fae and human but all wizard. He also has a day job as a tregetour or playwright with his own touring company, Touchstone. They're ambitious and planning to get through the trials and into the upper flight. As you would expect from a wizard, this troupe doesn't just act; they also weave magic imbued in hallucinations and encased in glass withies. The problem is they're short of a glister, a troupe's wielder of withies. Or rather they were until Mieka arrives. Actually short's a good world as he's an elf but he also happens to be the best glister anyone's ever seen, thorns permitting. With one problem solved, another remains. Namely prophetic dreams that have haunted Cade since boyhood and they aren't improving, in fact they're more like nightmares. Full review...

Blood Bonds: The Caravan by Rosanne Licata

4star.jpg Teens

Raj is part Arab, part Roman. She's independent and strong-willed - too independent and strong-willed to fit well into a society where women belong in the home and only men can bring change to the world. So she runs away. Disguised as a boy, she is roaming the streets of Antioch when she encounters Bjornolf, a Danish king. Drawn to him in a way she can't explain, Raj stows away on the caravan he is guarding. As the journey continues, Raj must decide whether the terrible dangers to both Bjornolf and herself are worth risking if she reveals her true nature to him... Full review...

Legacy Of Kings (Magister 3) by Celia Friedman

4star.jpg Fantasy

Three years is a long time to wait between parts of a trilogy, especially one as good as Celia Friedman's Magister Trilogy. I'm not someone blessed with great patience, which has made the wait interminable, but finally I get to find out what happened to Kamala and the other Magisters and to see how Salvator Aurelius is coping with being the first Penitent King. Full review...

Aralorn: Masques and Wolfbsane by Patricia Briggs

4star.jpg Fantasy

Here is what seems quite a rum Patricia Briggs compendium – her first attempt at a fantasy novel, published and read by roughly six men and an orc back in the early 1990s, and what would appear the fourth book in the same series, dusted off after they both got a rewrite in 2010, and together at last for the curious completist. And if the rewriting ironed out a few creases it shows just how much there was needed done – for the first book is still full of minor problems – a man immune to, or invisible to, magic unless when it's needed for the plot, a host of exposition all throughout, and much that marks it down as a debut effort. It doesn't mean it's not worth reading however. Full review...

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

5star.jpg Fantasy

Happy birthday Harry Dresden! And what a birthday as life becomes a little hectic for the Winter Court Knight. He returns to life in time to fight in the Winter Palace, have a near death experience at the hands of dark, mini-people, then is nearly killed again (by a friend this time) and his island of Demonreach is about to explode taking a chunk of the USA with it. He therefore has 24 hours to save some world. Oh, and you know those headaches he's been having? HIs head is on the verge of exploding too. Indeed, it's the sort of birthday that it's hardly worth reanimating for. Full review...

The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington

4star.jpg Fantasy

It is the 1420s, and a lot of what we now think of as The Netherlands is underwater. Crossing the deluge is a most unlikely trio – a posh man seeking something with the help of the others, including a girl who has survived his sometimes-fatal test, and a manic fellow fresh from saving himself upon the gallows, who might or might not have been down to hell in the interim. What that quest is, and how it will lead to nightmares, deaths galore and a lot of other interesting parts of the story, is for you to discover, in this absorbing cross-genre piece. Full review...

Stealing Into Winter: being the first adventure from the chronicles of Jeniche of Antar by Graeme K Talboys

4star.jpg Fantasy

Streetwise young thief Jeniche wakes up to find her prison cell's walls collapsing around her. This is no natural disaster but an invasion by the Occassans, mercilessly brandishing 'moskets', weapons that fire death rendering the native Makamban cudgels futile. Whilst scouring the streets and avoiding the marauding army, Jeniche visits old haunts, checking on her friends and wondering what to do next. This last part is solved for her: a band of Tunduri monks and nuns, including their young God-King himself, want a guide to take them home to Tundur, the land of winter beyond the desert. The journey may be hazardous but nothing's safe anymore, and so, accompanied by the muscular, slow-witted stable owner, Trag and mysterious swordsman Alltud, their journey begins. Full review...

The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding

4star.jpg Fantasy

For once I don't feel like devoting my first paragraph to a teasing plot summary. And while I'm here to judge the book and not the cover, even the British paperback blurb agrees, and gives nothing away in its woolliness. I am duty bound to say this is the third book to feature Darian Frey and the rest of the crew of his flying craft the Ketty Jay. If pressed I will say it starts with him indulging in a further instance of thievery, making a mistake, and then finding just how much is in the science fantasy universe that can possibly get between him and what might repair the damage. Full review...

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin

5star.jpg Fantasy

Sharon Li has a normal job in a London coffee shop but doesn't feel normal. She's beginning to realise she's a shaman, especially when she is so at one with the city, she vanishes. In order to meet others who'll understand, she starts Magicals Anonymous, a self-help group for the mystically confused coming to terms with their gifts. The meetings come with various beverages, biscuits, a Facebook page and a very good turnout. However all is not herbal tea and crunchy-creams as someone or something seems to be stealing the spirits that make London's soul and another something walks the streets tearing people limb from limb. The city is dying and gradually Sharon realises that Magicals Anonymous are more than just a social group. As odd as it sounds to look at them, the Midnight Mayor wants them to save the capital. Full review...

Red Glove (Curse Workers 2) by Holly Black

4.5star.jpg Teens

Cassel lives in a world where magic is frowned upon. Practice is banned and everyone wears gloves to prevent being worked. Cassel himself is a transformation worker - the rarest type. And he is the most powerful transformation worker in living memory. This makes him extremely valuable to the crime families who use curses to support and maintain their empires. It also makes him extremely dangerous as far as the authorities are concerned. And that's why Cassel tries to keep his status to himself, since he discovered it in the first book in this Curse Workers sequence. Full review...

The Blinding Knife (Lightbringer 2) by Brent Weeks

4.5star.jpg Fantasy

Gavin Guile thought he had five years left to complete his seven great purposes. But now it seems he has less than one. He might be the Prism - the most powerful light drafter in the Seven Satrapies, capable of drafting huge amounts of light without risk of losing his mind to the colours - but he's lost blue. He can't see it or draft it. Full review...

The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

4.5star.jpg Fantasy

Don't get yourself noticed and you won't get yourself hanged.

Such is life for peculiars like Bartholomew Kettle and his sister Hettie. Their mother is human but their - absent - father is a Sidhe, a high fairy. Fairies are contemptuous of the half-breed peculiars and humans distrust and suspect them. Hapless peculiar children are often hanged by humans. And, even more worryingly, bodies of peculiars have been turning up recently, quite dead, covered in ancient faerie script and as empty of bone and organ as they are of life. Full review...

Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

5star.jpg Fantasy

Warrior Masaru has raised his daughter, Yukiko, alone since his wife left. Yukiko is now 16; a feat more due latterly to her own strength and resourcefulness than his care. For since his wife's departure, Masaru has gone to pieces, addicted to gambling and the narcotic effects of lotus smoke. The days when he was the legendary Black Fox are behind him which is a shame as the Shogun (not a man known for calm reasoning or lack of ferocity) has a mission for them. Masaru, Yukiko and an entourage must hunt and capture the legendary stormtiger. But they're extinct aren't they? Well, no, they aren't as Yukiko discovers when the hunt goes terribly wrong and she's left alone with just a storm tiger for company. She fights to find a way home, learning as she goes the full extent to which the Shogun has worked against the good of the nation in general and her family in particular. And the stormtiger? Let's just say he's had his wings clipped and he's not happy about it. Full review...

Alif the Unseen by G Willow Wilson

5star.jpg Fantasy

Alif lives under an alias and he has a good reason for that: he's a hakinista in an Arabian oil producing country that, to put it mildly, doesn't encourage free speech. He sells IT know-how and wizardy to any covert organisation that works against the government, their agenda unimportant as long as the aim is the downfall of their oppression. But all that's about to change as Alif falls in love and, as it's the wrong girl at the wrong time, is spurned. His response to this romantic let down is to create a computer programme that will identify her internet activity by her individual typing pattern. Unfortunately what works for him also works against him. It's captured by the notoriously dangerous government censor 'The Hand' who also wants Alif and his hidden network of colleagues. Now Alif runs to preserve his life and those who have trusted him, his only possession an ancient manuscript from his former love. Just a book, albeit one that's accompanied by myths and old wives' tales rendering it irrelevant a logical world. However, sometimes the most desperate of times requires more than logic and, sometimes, a mere book of stories may be more than it seems. Full review...

Taken: An Alex Verus Novel by Benedict Jacka

4.5star.jpg Fantasy

Alex Verus, future-diviner and erstwhile Camden magic shop owner has dusted himself off after the rigours of Cursed and is good to go once more. He continues training Luna as his apprentice but all is not completely well. Alex has been asked to investigate the disappearance of apprentices by Council representative, Talisid. Now, Alex's involvement with the Council (and indeed Talisid) hasn't always been good for Alex's health in the past, but his commissioning may be a sign of his enhanced reputation and this time there's a note of self-interest: Luna may be the next to vanish. Alex receives a tip-off that Fountain's Reach (a stately home with a mysterious past) has something to do with it and, as luck would have it, it's also the venue for the next apprentice tournament which Luna has entered. The investigation begins and hopefully they'll survive to see it through to the end. Full review...

The Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher

4.5star.jpg Teens

Jake's father disappeared while working on a secret project with his best friend, the celebrated explorer and recluse Oberon Venn. Jake is sure that Venn is a murderer and sets out to prove it, dragging his teacher, Mr Wharton, into the investigation. But the truth is perhaps even more frightening: David Wilde isn't dead, he's lost in time. Venn and his sidekick Piers are intent on re-entering the past to find him, using a device called the Chronoptika. But it's dangerous and they aren't the only ones hell bent on using the time machine. There's Sarah, who can turn herself invisible, and who's being pursued by a murderous Replicant and his wolf. And there's the scarred man with his acolyte and his strange weapon. And there are the Shee, who keep their own counsel, but have their own ambitions, and who enchant the forest on Venn's estate... Full review...

Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich

4star.jpg Women's Fiction

Following on from Wicked Appetite, pastry chef Lizzy and paranormal bounty hunter Diesel continue to seek the seven powerful stones linked to the seven deadly sins. They're looking for the stone associated with lust and it becomes a bit of a treasure hunt as, accompanied by Gloria (the slightly wizardy un-witch) and Carl (the ill-mannered monkey) they have to work their way through a string of clues. However, they aren't the only ones looking; for wherever goodies seek power, the baddies lurk also. The baddies in question are again the deliciously dark (on many levels) Gerwulf (Wulf) Grimoir and his medieval minion Hatchet. Wulf may be Diesel's cousin but there's not a lot of family love in any room they both occupy so let the race to the stone commence. Full review...

Wolfsbane (Rebel Angels) by Gillian Philip

5star.jpg Teens

After the terrible events at the end of the second book in Gillian Philip's Rebel Angels sequence, we move on a decade or so. Finn is back in the mortal world. But Rory and Jed have stayed with Seth, now the captain of the MacGregor clann's dun. Faerie queen Kate NicNiven continues to plot against Seth and to wrest Rory, the Bloodstone and prophesied saviour, from him. She is as determined as ever to destroy the veil separating the mortal and faerie worlds. Full review...

The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell

3star.jpg Fantasy

A young woman, newly married. Discovering her husband is not all he seems. That he has secrets. That she has needs, wants, desires. That she will need to take things into her own hands if she is ever to be satisfied in her new role as wife. Full review...