Smorgasbord Fantasia

Armored Saint by Myke Cole is his first foray into the world of epic fantasy - Having read his previous works, I know that Myke can spin a yarn well enough and make us care. And this being something of a dream project for him, our expectations as readers familiar with his class, were stratospheric to say the least. Does he deliver or what . No punches pulled, this turned out to be a gut-wrenching tale of reluctant heroism, forbidden love, blind faith and heady rebellion in a well realized world that I cannot wait to get back into. In Armored Saint, Myke sets his story in a quasi-medieval European world where life is hard and ruthless, men and women living in constant fear of either the devils breaking through the Veil that protects the world or of being branded as heretics by the religious order of knights, left to guard the world against evil. We encounter this world on the weary dusty roads with sixteen year old Heloise Factor , who loves her father fiercely enough to challe...

Continuing on with our (ir)-regular feaure focused on highlighting eagerly anticipated SFF novels, this week we shine the light on Empire of Sand ( First in the Books of Ambha series) by Tasha Suri . Why am I so amped up about this one? It's based on South Asian myths and influences. [ I stalk Tasha on twitter and I know her interests in Mughal Empire and period bollywood movies should have sparked off some ideas :D] A nobleman’s daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri’s captivating, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy. The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited. When Mehr’s power comes to the attention of the Emperor’s most feared mystics, she m...

Angry Robot books are usually a safe bet, them having almost perfected the art of perhaps spotting the next big talent and getting it right a lot of times. I enjoy their books because of two reasons, exciting new talent and also the breakthrough original storylines that push the boundaries of the genre and make you think. I can sense a pattern - and so with Time's Children as well, the latest from DB Jackson ( Who is popular for the Thieftaker series writing as David B Coe) ( Those covers are absolutely gorgeous, ain't they?) A time-travel concept melded with flintlock fantasy? Wohoo, reel me in. D B Jackson wastes no time in setting us up for a complex web of time-travel ( with of course the complexities that arise with parallel time-lines), political intrigue and conspiracies galore. Things can get hairy soon with the world going topsy-turvy on parallel time-lines but the focus of Jackson's tale never wavers from the central plot. Of conspiracies being thwarted...

I first heard of Rosewater , when I read Tasha Suri 's tweet on the same. " So. ROSEWATER by @tadethompson needs to be a Netflix series. Nigerian setting, aliens, 'telepaths', zombies, fiercely weird biopunk, an intricate unfolding plot... The whole time I was reading it, I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd watch the *hell* out of it. " A science-fiction set in futuristic Nigeria? From an up and coming 'hottest' new talent, I knew I had to check this out. And my fingers were busy, requesting for a  netgalley of the same. Got lucky and now here I am, sitting dazed and awed by the vision and the execution of a future, that is weirdly compelling, bizarre and absolutely stunning. Rosewater is one of those precious new books that manages to throw off all the yokes of 'prescribed writing guidelines' for science fiction. Indeed, Tade Thompson is a refreshing new talent and a world-class one at that.  Rosewater is a town on t...