Smorgasbord Fantasia

The Wolf of Oren-Yaro by KS Villoso is a stunning debut about a conflict-ridden empire built on Asian cultural folklores (mainly Filipino) featuring an absolute badass leading lady known as the Bitch Queen who is ready to die and kill equally, to protect her duty, honour and love. This book is one of the self-published success stories, that got picked up by Orbit and re-released into the larger world ( to the absolute delight of readers like me!) - the paperback version just released last week and I happened to get an ARC for the same, a while back. Had been seeing glowing reviews of this character-driven epic fantasy all over the my feeds and I knew, I had to check this out. Having sat through yesterday night, feverishly turning the pages like mad at two thirty am yesterday night to reach the end, I can vouch for the fact that you haven't read anything like this, in a while among the whole epic fantasy stories or narratives. Initially and even till the point of three-fo...

Django Wexler 's new fantasy book is always a thing to celebrate! This week, on Waiting on Wednesday we are featuring Django Wexler's new upcoming epic fantasy novel - Ashes of the Sun ( Burningblade & Silvereye # 1) Long ago, a magical war destroyed an empire, and a new one was built in its ashes. But still the old grudges simmer, and two siblings will fight on opposite sides to save their world in the start of Django Wexler's new epic fantasy trilogy. Gyre hasn't seen his beloved sister since their parents sold her to the mysterious Twilight Order. Now, twelve years after her disappearance, Gyre's sole focus is revenge, and he's willing to risk anything and anyone to claim enough power to destroy the Order. Chasing rumors of a fabled city protecting a powerful artifact, Gyre comes face-to-face with his lost sister. But she isn't who she once was. Trained to be a warrior, Maya wields magic for the Twilight Order's cause. Standing on opp...

Titanshade by Dan Stout has to be the most enjoyable urban fantasy book that I have read in the recent past. It is gritty noir, a police-procedural set in a masterfully created world. An absolute blast of fresh air - doesn't read like a debut at all. Dan Stout's writing is a great balance of assured masterful storytelling gorgeous world building and some compelling characters. The narrative is relentlessly paced, starting off as a murder mystery investigation set in this dark gritty town fraught with suspense and perils before heading down the lanes of twisty political intrigue - all of this headlined by a brooding cop hero named Carter, who's been dogged by misfortunes all his life and now has a penchant for the bottle but also built up a reputation for solving crimes. An excellent nose for detective work and perhaps trouble. If you think you've read this before, then think again. Be prepared, for Titanshade will blow your mind wide open and then some. Titanshad...

Myke Cole happens to be one of my favourite authors, his stories a great mix of well etched strong characters and fast paced narratives punctuated by explosive action sequences that propel the story onwards. Sacred Throne, part - I The Armored Saint that gave us Heloise Factor, the plucky young girl forced to don up a machine-powered armour suit and protect her family and friends against a tyrannical religious order, was one hell of an introduction to the series. I had loved that book ! The Queen of Crows is book-II in this series and picks up right where we left Heloise and her rag-tag bunch of mutineers, who have won the skirmish and lived to see another day - Heloise herself now bears the tag of the Emperor's 'Palantine' one of the chosen ones, who has killed a devil and lived to tell the tale. There is no break in proceedings as Myke pitches the reader headlong into one frenzied skirmish after the other, frequent back to back violent confrontations with the en...

Kingdom , a period zombie thriller set against the colourful backdrop of political intrigue and courtroom drama of a Korean kingdom, is all set to return to Netflix for a season 2. Yup - after that dramatic ending of Season 1 left us all on a cliffhanger, yearning for more as we struggle to piece together the narrative around what will happen to the heir to the throne, the prince who has fled the courts to the countryside, in search of the answer to what has assailed his kingdom. This was one of the favourite zombie thrillers I have watched on TV and I am super amped about its return for a glorious season-2. If the pics are anything to go by, then we have another intense, terrifying narrative ahead of us. All our favourite characters return even as the noose tightens around the Prince, the zombies are still out at large and the queen has just revealed a secret, devastating in nature that could set plans go awry and civil war looms right ahead. March 13th, cannot wait! ...

Remember Joker's girlfriend, Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad ? I don't blame you - despite some big names, Suicide Squad went off the radar quicker than a damp spot drying under the sun. But Margot Robbie has revived (executive producer) the most sparkling madcap from that bunch of murderous pyschopaths, namely Harley Fuckin' Quinn in this exuberantly unhinged (sort of) sequel - called Birds of Prey . Along with director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson of Bumblebee fame, Margot Robbie works hard to make Birds of Prey the most zany DC Movie ever made. And frankly, it was so much fun that I felt this was indeed the most enjoyable movie from the DC Labs. Someone's getting something right in there, huh. Irreverent to the core, giddy with inventive and explosive action sequences, the movie is a ride on the wild side of reason, almost true to the comic book glee. Smart script, terrific performances and fun violent action sequences. Do we need more of a reason t...

Hazel Wood  (and its sequel, Night Country) by Melissa Albert have been described as a tantalizingly dark, modern day spin on our favorite fairy-tales, a nod to Alice in Wonderland and perhaps a lot more thrown in. I went into the book without much expectations frankly but Melissa's beautiful prose quickly sucked me  deep into the vortex of the stormy lives of Alice and her mother, Ella - who have always been on the move for reasons unknown, except for a foreboding sense of misgiving that something or someone is following them. Bad luck certainly seems to top that list. For Alice is the granddaughter to Althea Proserpine, a small time writer whose single book, called the Tales from the Hinterland, became kind of a cult success among a small clutch of hardcore dedicated fan base of readers. Now Althea has secluded herself in this obscure ancestral property called the Hazel Wood, the whereabouts of which remain hazy and unknown. Alice has never met her grandmother and q...

The Daughter That Bleeds , a short story by Shweta Taneja , opens up in post-apocalyptic India, where fertile women are rare and sold as commodities by their family. Told with a sense of humour, the story reflects upon notions of gender, class, fertility and parental affection. The short story has was awarded the Editor's Choice Best Asian Speculative Fiction Award in 2018. The story has also been translated to Romanian and Dutch. Pierre Gevart, Editor, Galaxies SF, speculative fiction magazine "'La Fille qui saigne' by Shweta Taneja (in Galaxies n° 58) was given a pre-finalist in the prestigious French awards Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. I want to congratulate Shweta Taneja for her wonderful dystopian tale." Shweta Taneja, author:  "It's a huge honour! As our world tumbles towards chaos, speculative fiction has become a space where we imagine the alternative, rethink our society and culture and who we want to become," says Shweta Taneja. ...

So 2019 was a fabulous year in terms of great reads and titles, in this SFF space. And 2020 looks to continue the trend with some amazing highly anticipated new series kick-offs, some hyped up debuts and of course, some beloved authors' series continuation. Here I wish to list down a few of my own hotly anticipated 2020 titles  ( some of which, I have been fortunate enough to grab the ARC's !) 1. The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence : No big secret - Mark Lawrence is one of my all-time favorite authors out there. And since the Girl and the Stars is set in the ice-laden ruthless world of Abeth ( which was the primary world in the whole story of Nona Grey in the YA-Fantasy series called Book of the Ancestor )  I cannot wait to dive back into this gorgeously realized dark and dangerous world. Set to release in April this year, it kicks off the series Book of the Ice . 2. A Time of Courage by John Gwynne: Rounding off the extremely entertaining and epic tale of ...

Sarah Gailey 's stories are usually set in the wild weird American West and her stories punch way above their weight in terms of being moving and thought-provoking narratives that are an entertaining mix of violent action and well developed characters. Her latest, Upright Women Wanted is a little gem of a story that is possibly the shiniest gem in her Tiara. Still set in the weird Wild West of a Futura-South West Americana, where there is always a war going on, men are constantly being conscripted and the patriarchal society is steeped in strict fascist homophobic rules and propaganda. Women, on the other hand, are still being treated as furniture, pressed into marriage against their wishes. Our story follows stowaway Esther who is running away from her oppressive household. She's running away from her father who wants her to marry her best-friend Beatriz's ex-beau. Beatriz was sentenced to hanging ( in the name of having possessed illegal propaganda material. but ...

This book, Gideon the Ninth (part of a proposed trilogy called the Locked Tombs ) from TOR about necromancers crossed with weird lesbians and stuffed to the gills with tons of swashbuckling sword-fights was a readers’ favorite world over. In fact looking at the glowing references and the reviews, this one’s a writers’ favorite too. As well as a blogger universe’s darling. It took me a good long year to land my hands on this one. Perhaps in good time , because Harrow the Ninth is all set for a bumper release in the first half of this year. So Gideon the Ninth, I can safely claim, is nothing like anything I have ever read before. Is that a good thing? Where your writing cares nought for a rat’s ass about established guard rails and thwarts preconceived notions about a mixed-genre narrative, skewering them repeatedly and by a good long measure. I say, fuck yeah! Take the snark levels of Shrek the Ogre and dial it up to a level thousand and one. Mix parts of Harry Potter,...