Smorgasbord Fantasia

A recurring meme, every wednesday in the blogosphere (Hosted by Breaking the Spine ) , here is where I list down some of the most anticipated titles I am waiting to my  hands on and read! 2016 till now has been a stellar year in some of the best titles coming out in this genre. This week, my pick would be, The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu , the celebrated writer whose 'novel' debut last year rocked the genre fans worldwide ( Grace of Kings , by Saga Press) releasing on Oct 4, 2016. "In the much-anticipated sequel to the “magnificent fantasy epic” Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders. Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara, but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara—...

Tor.com publishing schedule has this frequent habit of derailing me from my reading schedule. And they did it yet again – forcing me to pick up Cold Forged Flame by Marie Brennan. Marie Brennan is a name that should be familiar to me, but sadly I haven’t jumped onto the bandwagon of readers, who are enamored by her series, A Natural History of Dragons and the subsequent sequels, detailing the adventures of Lady Trent and co. So Cold Forged Flame was a book I went in, without any preconceived biases – and damn, it helped. The book is a relatively straightforward, fast-paced scorching tale of self-discovery and also, survival. Written in first person, with an unreliable narrator who suffers from amnesia, thus setting up the intrigue and mystery right from get go. Old trick in the book, executed so well by a writer of master-class. Marie really hooks us into this tricky and dangerous quest of the un-named narrator who wakes up to the clarion call of a war-horn summoned against...

Cheesy as it sounds, love is the central premise that makes up the core of Dark Matter , the latest by Blake Crouch . Blake shot up to be one of my most-awaited authors, after I had blown through the first two books of the Wayward Pines trilogy, and even pre-ordered The Last Town . The series was the fastest ever that I had read through – the same holds good for his latest, Dark Matter. I blasted through the book in one day! It’s a propulsive definitive thriller with a solid science-fictional conceit at its center, that of multi-dimensional realities and identity crisis. But hark, am getting ahead of myself. So here's the byte-sized version:  Jason Dessen is a mild-mannered local college professor in Chicago who gave up on what could have been a grandiose scientific career with breakthrough research and inventions, all for a happy marriage with his middling successful artist wife, Daniella and has a fifteen year old kid, Charlie. We peek into his almost ‘boring’ lif...