Smorgasbord Fantasia

Angry Robot books have yet to disappoint me. The same goes for Smoke Eaters by Sean Grigsby - a new twist on the urban fantasy genre, with a highly original take on the dragon mythos paired up with some pulsating action sequences, terrific humour all headlined by this grizzled veteran fire-fighter dude with balls of steel. This is high-class entertainment and a book that truly deserves all the accolades pouring in for being such a wicked good fun read.



So 22nd century America is as you would imagine it. A dystopian piss-bowl with high levels of environmental degradation and a poor place to live in by any standards. America is now split up into different independent sovereign city-states. Technological advances are slick and aid life. The only problem is, dragons are no longer part of the fairy tale -They are real, ugly scaled, fire-breathing monster having clawed their way up from the core of the earth and are now having a whale of a time above-ground, shooting fire-balls and being …

If Terry Pratchett decided to write a tale about a bunch of oldies going up in arms against ALL the bloodthirsty monsters you have ever read about, to save one girl and in that process, maybe the world too (A trivial side- benefit of course) all the while tripping on the sounds of Rock for Ages, then it would have sort of ...become Kings of the Wyld. I know it totally doesn't do justice to the genius of
Nicholas Eames - But hey, I so totally loved this book.



Celebrating rock and epic fantasy in a totally inscrutable mash-up that nevertheless turns out to be a runaway platinum jubilee record hit, Nicholas Eames gives us the opening act of The Band - in Kings of the Wyld. This is a rollicking tale of backslapping bromance borne out of the sort of wild road-trip undertaken by a bunch of ageing rockstars, dragging themselves out of retirement for that one last-ditch all-out  effort to revive the glory of old and to experience the unbeatable high of that unadulterated adrenaline-rus…

As the first superhero Marvel Cinematic Universe movie of 2018, there was a lot riding on Black Panther. And then there was this racist group that tried to sabotage the movie on RT through discriminatory messages on FB and other social media. The furor perhaps just added fuel to that brightly burning fire. At 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, boy - does Black Panther deliver! After having watched this movie twice last weekend ( That is how much I LOVED it!) I now think about whether, this indeed is the greatest of all the series of superhero movies produced in the recent times.



Sure - It is part of the burgeoning universe of Marvel Superheroes. And we first saw Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War, where the character T'Challa watches his father, T'Chaka die in the bombing of the UN Assembly in Berlin. We watched his pursuit of a speeding car in a bullet-proof catsuit and wondered whether this guy can actually stand up to the cool factor and the might of the rest of the A…

So the first WoW meme on my blog [ Picking up on the themes originally started at Breaking The Spine blog, we feature the second installment of The Band, the sequel to the wildly popular debut that hit the charts on the top ten world over last year, Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. Described often as George RR Martin meets Terry Pratchet - I am currently half way through book one and I cannot put into words, the indescribably warm and fuzzy feeling I get as I read the same. It's absolutely nuts, cracks me up every few pages and is a quest of old men, banding together for that one last adventure before kicking the bucket. It's just such a riot of a read that I cannot stop blubbering. But hark back to the book on hand, we present Bloody Rose, Band# 2 by Nicholas Eames.



Live fast, die young.

Tam Hashford has always dreamed of living through glory days of her own. With a renowned mercenary for a mother and an illustrious bard for a father, battles and adventure seem the only w…

I had completely given John Gwynne a miss the last few years - Despite Malice, the first book in his previous series ( The Faithful and the Fallen ) winning the best debut, Gemmell Award in 2013. He wrapped that one up with Wrath last year and this year, starts off a brand new epic series in the same world as that of the Banished Lands, set one hundred thirty years later.

Call it a selfish wish, But I always have this thing about being among the first few. (Anything! reading, sports whatever!) And so, with A Time of Dread (ATOD) I knew, I was jumping in on a brand new series. But from what I could gather in my first few minutes of the read, the entire previous series forms the history to what transpires in ATOD. How cool is that. That mammoth berg buried under the sea, I knew I had to dig under and find out more about Corban and his friends. But it could wait. Because before I knew it, I was nose-deep, nose to the grinding-wheel find out what is causing A time of dread in the Banishe…

I recently finished binge-watching  the vastly popular and extremely thrilling Stranger Things on Netflix - Set in the cozy nostalgic 80's, in a small town in Pennsylvania, US in late Nov'83, the series explores the themes of supernatural horror and the amazing endurance power of the human spirit. Paying homage to the nerdy pop-culture of the 80's ( Hell, the series-premiere starts off with the eleven-year old boys playing Dungeons and Dragons in full earnest!) Stranger Things is one of the most original series, from the Netflix stables ever, I think. A gripping mystery that blows up into creepy horror that really fucks with your mind with a propulsive story-telling that is almost pitch-perfect.



Notice, I said almost? So I went absolutely  nuts over the first season. Blowing through the eight episodes in less than a week, I felt like Netflix finally got over this habit of hooking us in, with an irresistible opening bait and premise, that ultimately leads to disappointing …