Horror is a fairly broad genre. Suspense and gore fall under its umbrella, the subtle and the explicit. Monsters both human and non-human, with and without motive, inhabit its works, and the architects of its worlds seek quite the spectrum of responses. Are you unnerved, or actively nauseous? Do you check under the bed for …
All good things must come to an end. It’s a cliché because it’s true, but less cliché is the truth that not all good things come to a good end. Fantasy buffs know all too well the disappointment of loose ends and failed character arcs. Therefore, fantasy buffs—rejoice! For The Discord of Gods is an …
This is a difficult time of year. Not quite winter and not quite spring, there are few holidays to celebrate and precious little opportunity to adjust to Daylight Savings if you’re in the U.S. Plus, you know, the many ongoing crises of the world. No wonder more people are complaining about reading slumps! To help, …
As someone who has read a hefty amount of detective novels, I knew precisely what Richard Swan was doing in The Justice of Kings, the first book in his The Empire of the Wolf trilogy. It’s written like a classic Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot in a fantasy setting, with elements of both making up …
The Maze of the multiverse and our friends from who explore them are back in A.K. Larkwood’s The Thousand Eyes in the second book in The Serpent Gates series. According to the author, this sequel was not planned initially, and this will be the end of the adventures with Csorwe, Shuthmili, and Talasseres. Whether that …
There are a lot of books you can wax effusive about by saying that you stayed up too late, that you missed your subway stop, or that you forgot to adhere to some other daily tasks. I’ve done all of that and more for good books, but The Bone Orchard is the first book I read …
Last Exit is the latest novel from Max Gladstone, and I am here to tell you that it is a doozy. It was one of the strangest reading experiences of my life, which sounds like a knock against it but truly isn’t. Last Exit is the story of what happens after the youthful golden heroes …
There’s horror—and then there’s horror. There’s gore and shock and dread and cosmic nothingness, all kinds of thrills and chills, all of them bounded between the beginning and end of a narrative and the physical covers of the book. And then there’s The Impossible Resurrection of Grief, which spills over its scant pages in all …
One of the best parts of the Fantasy genre is it doesn’t have to be just one thing. It can contain other genres within its genre. Engines of Empire by R.S. Ford, the first book in the new Age of Uprising series, is a hodgepodge of different fantasy elements, telling different stories with its point-of-view …
Are you the type of person that gets down on a high realism tabletop RPG? Maybe you read Wikipedia articles of living conditions in medieval Budapest for fun? If so, Age of Ash is an upcoming novel from The Expanse co-author Daniel Abraham and it is for you. Much like The Expanse, Age of Ash …