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-groun...

 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 a...