The Blighted Stars by Megan O’Keefe is a mix of the horror of human expansion, the fear of limited resources, and humanity’s resolve. Her characters are engaging with conflicting motivations in a situation where they must work together. The first book in The Devoured Worlds series is full of action and small character moments that …
It’s the kind of book I’ll recommend to everyone to read simply so there are more people to talk to about it.
Do you like violence? Alexander Darwin’s The Combat Codes is about a world where society has traded war for hand-to-hand combat bouts. Where the Grievar are trained, given performance-enhancing stimulants, and all sorts of experiments by the Daimyo in order to win their newfound way of waging war. Murray, who used to be a knight …
The Traitor, the last installment of Anthony Ryan’s The Covenant of Steel, staked me through the heart. The ending of the previous book, The Martyr, left little doubt that the events of Alwyn Scribe’s life would be entering the heartbreak section of the trilogy when it ended with not only Alwyn sleeping with Evadine covered …
Nine heroes came together and defeated the dark lord of Necrad twenty-two years ago, losing one of their own in the process, and now have been doing their best without him trying to lead the city to mixed results. On the surface, The Sword Defiant is a story of one warrior realizing the good old …
Since the release of her novella Silver in the Wind in 2019, I’ve been a fan of Emily Tesh, so her debut novel, Some Desperate Glory, was high on my anticipation list for 2023. In this science fiction thriller, contact with aliens has happened, and it ends with the destruction of Earth. Now Valkyr is …
Fantasy has always had a gift for being malleable to incorporate other genres of fiction from horror, historical, mystery, folklore, fairy tale, humor, romance, suspense, and westerns, so why not slice of life? It has been a staple for anime for years and has become quite popular as a video game genre, so it’s about …
The days of The Lord Ruler and his Final Empire are long behind the Wax and Wayne gang and us as readers. Yet, the rippling effect of Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy echoes all the way to the final book in Mistborn’s second era, The Lost Metal. Before now, the series stood alone in the …
Who is Nona? That’s the question you may ask yourself repeatedly throughout Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth, the third installment of The Locked Tomb series. Like the two books before it, you’ll be asking yourself many questions at first, but Nona the Ninth gives far more answers than before. Like you, Nona doesn’t know who …
A teenager discovers they have magic abilities and joins a group with the same abilities hoping to learn from them. Sound familiar? Yet, The Daughter of Redwinter by Ed McDonald is anything but that simple. It is a story with those elements, but so is it a tale of the class divide, finding a place …