Smorgasbord Fantasia

This book is an unabashed butchery of all fantasy tropes you can think of. A blurb by the King of Gritty Fantasy himself, Joe Abercrombie sets the stage for you "Bold, Brutal and Making No compromises..Morgan doesn't so much as twist the clichés of fantasy as take an axe to them.." Marking Richard Morgan's foray into Fantasy, the Steel Remains is a prized book you'll love if you like your epic fantasy tales dark, visceral and gory. Blood spritzes at a second's notice, people fly into guttural filthy curses at the drop of a hat, demons and ghouls out of your darkest nightmares leap out of the pages and you're always in the miserable company of this washed out war hero who bleeds rancor and cynicism out of every pore of his body. If you are still along for the ride, well sample this too: Extremely Strong Characterization, a no-nonsense plot that flies along at a break neck pace. Peppered with gratuitous explicit sex and some graphic violence (Mind blo...

I got sucked into the world of Justin Cronin's vampires in The Passage a few months back and ever since I have been just panting for the next book in the series to come out. Well as luck would have it, I couldn't have timed it better. Book two of the trilogy, "Twelve" is out !! National Post Books got the immensely talented author talking - he who claims that he spends six months wandering around the house in a bathcoat muttering to himself while in the stages of "writing" - and well, gets expansive about book two and even talks about venturing beyond the Passage, away from the vampires. All that and more : http://natpo.st/RV7heQ

As you would have noticed, my blog is still evolving. Keeping in with the stages of evolution for a book blog, now I venture into the newer arenas with an author interview! Yes!! Pretty damn big for me to host a bestselling author up on the blog and then proceed to peel the layers to get down to the "real" person behind that smiling face on the book jacket. Wait up while I pat myself a few good times on the back ( on an interview well done and also to make myself believe that this actually happened :D ) Since you're chomping at the bit, let me hold back no further. Today we have the super talented Krishna Udayasankar who's made quite a splash in the Indian literary scene with her debut novel, Govinda , Book one of the Aryavarta Chronicles. While I quite enjoyed book one, don't take my word for it. The Hindu speaks highly of the "epic revisited" in that despite the burden of detail, the pace of this novel never lapses into a lull.  Anyway...

Book Review: The Adamantine Palace by Stephen Deas I have not read Stephen Deas before. I should have. He’s already a phenomenon in the fantasy scene. Having completed an astounding epic fantasy series called the Memory of Flames, he’s sitting pretty on top of the pile. Adamantine Palace is his debut novel and introduces us to the world of Dragon Realms where Kings and Queens rule with an iron fist the lands divided between and pay their homage to the Speaker of the Realms, a powerful figure who arbitrates between the dragon lords and rules from the Adamantine Palace and of course, where the skies are ruled by the magnificent creatures of fire, dragons.  The first book traces the Machiavellian plots and the titanic struggles between the scheming kings and queens as they vie for the position of the Speaker. It also draws up a parallel plot of the dragons within this realm who are domesticated with the help of potions brewed by the alchemists and thus serve their riders ...