Smorgasbord Fantasia

After the Goblin Emperor , Katherine Addison 's next book The Angel of the Crows is clearly her ode to the genius of Arthur Conan Doyle - and the BBC Series 'Sherlock' ( self proclaimed as "Wing-Fic" by the author herself)  This is not the book I had been expecting. Period.  I mean, after the initial shock wore off, Katherine's smooth prose soon sucked me into the middle of the 1880's foggy and dreary London with hansom cabs,  restless Scotland yard police officials and the dark waters of river Thames hiding gruesome secrets. But Katherine's version of London also has a number of the inexplicable supernatural creatures that inhabit the dark alleyways or the grimy tunnels beneath. Angels, the proper ones that are bound to their habitation [ like Angel of the Victoria's Square who looks after this area/habitat] and then there are the Nameless ones who are still quite befuddled without much purpose or a direction in life. Among the viler versions are...

Kappella is a Malayalam movie, directed by debutant Mohammed Mustafa ( incidentally a national award winning actor) set in the pristine valleys of Wayanad. A very well crafted coming-of-age drama that completely pivots in the second half of the movie, to become a tense thriller.  Jessy ( Anna Ben ) is simple girl with simple dreams who lives in their hillside village with her sisters and her seamstress mother and a daily-wage father, the quaint high range village nestled in the beautifully verdant valleys of Wayanad. She longs to see the beach one day and hopes that a movie-theatre and shopping mall would come up, making their village into a town. For a 12th-class fail, a monthly visit to the main centre of her village where she can buy new dresses or sarees defines the extent of her ambitions.  Until the day. she dials a wrong number to this auto rickshaw driver named Vishnu ( Roshan Mathews ) in the big city of Kozhikode. That leads to many more stolen conversations, with a...

Sebastian De Castell rose up to be one of my all-time favourite writers with the brilliant, swashbuckling Greatcoats series. So when I read that there's a new book in this same world coming out, I was beyond excited!  Here's the details that we know : Set in the same world of Tristia, the new series is called Court of Shadows , first part of which is called Play of Shadows - and this happens few months after the end of Tyrant's Throne.   It's a gorgeous cover - and Fantasy Book Critic has a fabulous interview with the author himself, that details out how this cover came into being.  And Sebastian has put out the first chapter - that will definitely set your pulse racing.  IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE PAST, WOULD YOU REVEAL THE TRUTHS THAT WOULD SHAKE YOUR SOCIETY TO THE CORE? When the grandson of two famous sword-wielding Greatcoats flees a duel to hide out in a theatre, he unwittingly becomes a conduit for the spirit of a legendary Archduke portrayed as a villain o...

So Kingdom of Liars by Nick Martell is definitely one of the most anticipated books on my list, for this year and having been out in the wild, for a month or so now, has been garnering a lot of good reviews across the internet, for good reasons.  An epic fantasy blurbed by Brandon Sanderson and a catchy, intriguing summary of the plot got me instantly hooked. Michael Kingman, all of eighteen years, is standing trial for the murder of the king. Ironically. he's in the exact same situation as his father was, ten years ago, who was executed for treason and being accused of having killed the prince. But Michael's memories around that night, all those years ago, is blurry and hazy around the edges. In a world, where the price of magic is the loss of memory, this is sort of expected. The only thing is, Michael doesn't exactly have a grasp of his own magical capability.  The narrative takes the form of a recounting of all those incidents that has led Michael upto this juncture ...