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King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

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So this weekend I was spoilt for choice when it came to the movies. Seriously, weekends like this haven’t happened in a long while. First up – was of course the legendary star-lord and his ragtag bunch of misfits out to save the galaxy from itself, the sequel to the wildly popular and absolutely brilliant first part, Guardians of the Galaxy from Marvel. Next on the plate, was the Alien prequel which is going to be a mindfuck, I can guarantee. With Ridley Scott spinning the wheels crazy in the first prequel to the original Alien series in Prometheus that gave us a twisted convoluted legend of the Aliens ‘origin’ story, the trailer looked mind-boggling. But the movie that I finally settled on, of course was the return of my all-time movie director: Guy Ritchie stamping his unique signature on the much loved legend of the “The Man who would be King”.


In King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, one of the oldest legends is re-imagined in signature Guy Ritchie fashion – complete with a non-linear …
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Waiting on Wednesday

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Continuing with our featured meme ( started by Jill of the Breaking The Spine) this Wednesday, we feature another gem, that looks Oh-so-good in terms of the premise. I cannot wait for this one!


Even gods can be slain

The Hokkaran empire has conquered every land within their bold reach—but failed to notice a lurking darkness festering within the people. Now, their border walls begin to crumble, and villages fall to demons swarming out of the forests.

Away on the silver steppes, the remaining tribes of nomadic Qorin retreat and protect their own, having bartered a treaty with the empire, exchanging inheritance through the dynasties. It is up to two young warriors, raised together across borders since their prophesied birth, to save the world from the encroaching demons.

This is the story of an infamous Qorin warrior, Barsalayaa Shefali, a spoiled divine warrior empress, O Shizuka, and a power that can reach through time and space to save a land from a truly insidious evil.

A crack in th…
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Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

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Mark Lawrence's name springs to mind, two of the bloodiest and the most enthralling protagonists sketched in modern fantasy. Jorg, the prince of thorns, a cunning and deadly player of politics and Jalan, the laid-back self-centered young man forced to the ways of magic and politics to save an empire.

Both these series are very dear to me. For numerous reasons but the special manner in which Mark writes about the grim truths of life laced with dry acerbic wit and fantastically violent action is just amazingly compelling. And it's his dramatic departure from using the tropes of this genre, spinning his own original stamp on the twists and turns of the events in these remarkable stories that makes him stand tall above others writing today.



With Red Sister, the first in the Book of Ancestors, Mark's chosen protagonist is a young girl, growing up in a convent, learning the ways of faith and war simultaneously and also discovering truths about herself amidst all the brutal cold …
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Waiting on Wednesday

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Continuing with our (ir)regular feature of bringing you books that we're super excited about in the coming months (A meme as started by Jill of Breaking the Spine) - I am looking forward to the start of a brand new series by the talent powerhouse and Hugo-Nebula & Arthur C Clarke award winner, Ann Leckie, called Provenance.


Following her record-breaking debut trilogy, Ann Leckie, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke and Locus Awards, returns with an enthralling new novel of power, theft, privilege and birthright.

A power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She must free their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned.

Ingray and her charge will return to her home world to find their planet in political turmoil, at the heart of an escalating intergalactic conflict. Together, they must make a new plan to salvage Ingray’s future, her family, and her world, bef…
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Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

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I make no bones about announcing that Brian Staveley is my go-to-author when it comes to reading some seriously crunch-worthy fantasy books, that are original, thought-provokingly jarring ( and I mean like bone-deep!) and swathed in enough grim-dark to keep it dialed way beyond 'just interesting' for me. His first series, that started with The Emperor's Blades was suitably epic but didn't exactly set things on fire. But the amazing follow up in the next couple of books, really blew things over in a true-blue kettral-style explosion, concluding a fantasy series in one of the best possible manners.

His writing is modern in it's sensibilities. With the first series books that feature an expansively rich world with a hefty twist to it's history, epic in it's sheer scale (Gods, men both mortal and immortal, empires clashing and the world balanced on a knife's edge), we knew there were more stories lurking in the depth of this beautiful world.



And so came Sk…
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Signal to Noise by Silvia Morena-Garcia

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I only picked up Signal to Noise because I had got approved for Silvia Morena Garcia's second book, Certain Dark Things review copy - and when I did a quick search, Signal to Noise surfaced as her debut - highly acclaimed, a literary work with splashes of supernatural magic and copious references to popular music. Intrigued, I went ahead and got myself a copy - but got around to reading it at a stretch only a few days back. Suffice to say that retro Mexico, birthday mix-tapes and vinyl records drew me in, like  a magical spell, not unlike the ones that play out in the book itself; a magic that resided in the musical records that the protagonists of Signal to Noise kept obsessing over.




So the story is set in parallel time-lines, 1988/89 and 2009 - ping-pongs back and forth building on the suspense and the emotional resonance - building on the life and times of Meche, Mercedes Vaga who has come back to mexico city to attend her father's funeral in 2009. And being back in that h…
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Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells

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I am a huge fan of mostly anything that comes out from Angry Robot - as I believe they've got it almost right when it comes to talent-spotting. Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells, was frankly a bit of an odd-ball of a choice for my reading. It's science fiction, mixed in with some goodly measure of low-magic. I don't generally read so much of science fiction in general. Maybe its an injustice that I'm labeling the book so because, really this book is so much more than that. A space-opera that is very accessible in that it's focused on the intense happenings in just one strange off-world planet and relentlessly drives the narrative forward through some delectable characterization and commendable world-building. Corporate politicking, a fantastical magic system and biker-gangs! How can I forget the uber-cool biker-gangs that forms the backbone of this sci-fi thriller and the kickass Hob Ravani, a female lead who along with her best friend Mag plots to bring down th…
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