As a longtime Joe Abercrombie reader, I had high expectations for the follow-up to his original trilogy and the series that would come after the last novel, the stand-alone Red Country. To take a world as grim as The First Law trilogy and bring it into the industrial age was a bold move but one …
This book, friends. THIS BOOK. Do you want to read something you will then have to close and hug to your chest partway through? Do you want to read a book that never flinches from the truth but never gives up on beauty? Do you want a queer loves story, a celebration of so many …
Now that we’re all refreshed with where our characters left off in part one, time for some reckless speculation. All of this is pure conjecture. These predictions were written before I received the advance reader copy. These ideas of where I think the story is going have rattled around in my brain since The Trouble …
If Charles Dickens had been locked in a room, given only 20th century fantasy to read for five years, and then told to produce a novel, he would have produced Mordew. Alex Pheby is only ostensibly the author; I’m still not entirely convinced that it isn’t an elaborate misdirect, and that Dickens isn’t really scribing …
The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is a skin-crawlingly good horror book by Andy Marino, his first novel for adults. It explores the real and supernatural darkness inside one woman and has an excellent blend of psychological and body horror that will keep you turning pages. Marino’s visceral and descriptive style set you firmly in …
Anthony Ryan’s Blood Song was one of those fantasy books I instantly fell in love with when I first got my hands on it, devouring it faster than a pizza in college, without that gross feeling afterward. So it’s difficult not to compare his subsequent books to it. But, of course, when you love work …
In the Watchful City is an amazing novella, a stories-within-a-story narrative that unfolds and expands in bright fractals. We were lucky enough to be able to grab some of S. Qiouyi Lu’s time in advance of the book’s release on August 31 and ask her some questions about her work and philosophy What inspired this …
This September we say goodbye to Joe Abercrombie’s Circle of the World with the final book in The Age of Madness series, The Wisdom of Crowds. Before it releases though, let’s take a look back at where our main characters are after The Trouble with Peace.
I am not a Hemmingway fan but I have to appreciate his comment on sleep: “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” This feels extremely true sometimes, but in fiction, sleep isn’t always safe from disaster either. Here are 15 stories that feature strange relationships with …
How Kinch, our narrator, tells the story makes this novel so exceptional. It’s as if you’ve run into the thief at a tavern in this world, after the events of a series, and become drinking buddies with Kinch. Now, he’s telling you the whole story of how he ended up here in the first place as you pick up the next rounds of ale.