Smorgasbord Fantasia

This one's been a low-key one from Marvel but frankly, based on what I see on the trailer, I might just LOOVE it the most. Sooo looking forward to this one!!! 

 Continuing with our meme Waiting on Wednesday where we feature some of the most awaited books releasing this year on the SFF radar - today we feature a little known Scottish Author Debut - from the stables of Head of Zeus, called The Gauntlet and the Fist Beneath by Ian Green.  It had a wonderful premise and an absolutely bonkers prologue that I managed to read after I snagged a galley copy. And I cannot wait to dig into this one! I cannot seem to find much publicity/ PR around this title and it's a shame, because truly, I got the feels after I read that brilliant prologue and have high hopes for this debut!  Protect. Fight. Destroy. Protect your people. The endless rotstorm rages over the ruins of the Ferron Empire. Floré would never let the slavers of the Empire rise again. As a warrior of the Stormguard Commandos, she wrought horrors in the rotstorm to protect her people. She did her duty and left the bloodshed behind. Fight for your family. Floré’s peace is shatter...

Marvel's new set up on TV has kinda been a mixed bag for me. I never did get around to watching the WandaVision/ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was great in parts but overall disappointing. Which is probably why I am pinning my hopes on this next one, out in June.  Loki gets an entire series for himself - and there's this new storyline about the TimeKeepers ( in trademark Loki style, there's a lot of wit, action and backstabbing!) that seems pretty kickass. And then there is Owen Wilson!! Woot-Woot! 

 Mark Lawrence will always be among my top 3 favorite go-to-authors for his craft, his uncanny ability to spin a crackling narrative that is always a unique mix of myth, fantasy and science. Guess being a "rocket-scientist" he just cannot keep that element of his under wraps, his undying love for science which always wriggles into any of his stories.  And so with The Girl and The Mountain as well. Perhaps the most overt allusion to Artificial Intelligence comes in this series. Continuing on with that harrowing story of survival beneath the freezing ice and the found-family that helped Yaz, our protagonist, survive the harsh realities of life in this ice-laden world. This is the second book in the series, Book of the Ice and is set in the same planet Abeth as his previous Book of the Ancestors. Be warned that the review below contains spoilers for book one, so if you haven't yet met Yaz and her bunch of rebels yet from The Girl and the Stars , please stop and pick up boo...

 Multiple Award winning author Stina Leicht has been an author I have been meaning to read, for the last few years now. So when I got my hands on this "fiercely feminist" space-opera Persephone Station (Jan-2021) I was super excited to finally read her.  Persephone Station unfortunately has been a mixed bag for me. Stina throws in a lot of things in here and I am not sure all of it sticks. The setting is a frontier theme, a wild wild west in the faraway out-back planet called Persephone, it's where crime-bosses and armed corporate syndicates rule the roost on the very few human settlements. There's corporate politics. There is a poignant first-contact story (shapeshifting intelligent aliens!) And there is also the whole artificial intelligence versus humans angle as well that is prominently present throughout the narrative. All of this in the backdrop of a hostile takeover situation that involves Giant Mecha-soldiers, rogue AI's and combat veterans in an explosi...

 Hello! Giving you a glimpse of some of the most-sought after titles releasing later this year, on this week's Waiting for Wednesday blog meme, we feature this book from Orbit books - For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten  - an up and coming twist on one of our favorite fairy tales (Red Riding Hood)  The first daughter is for the Throne. The second daughter is for the Wolf. For fans of Uprooted and The Bear and the Nightingale comes a dark fantasy novel about a young woman who must be sacrificed to the legendary Wolf of the Wood to save her kingdom. But not all legends are true, and the Wolf isn't the only danger lurking in the Wilderwood. As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose-to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he'll return the world's captured gods. Red is almost relieved to go. Plagued by a dangerous power she can't control, at least she knows that in the Wilderwood, she can't hurt those she loves. Again. But the legend...

Sarah Beth Durst was one of my favourite authors of last year - with Racing the Sand among the top few favourite novels of mine. And this year, she does it again with The Bone Maker, one of the most anticipated releases of the year from the author.  The Bone Maker is a standalone fantasy novel, a rarity among today's multi-volume epic stories and that itself is a matter of curiosity.  But Sarah's done this before with her previous book and I was confident about her ability to spin a self-contained highly entertaining story with all the rollicking elements of high fantasy within. So The Bone Maker explores the facets of the Hero's Journey, except ...wait for it..the hero is a middle-aged woman, trying to piece together her life in the aftermath of the big war.  It's an unusual subject but deftly handled, where Sarah immerses us into a richly drawn fantasy world on the back of a fabulous magic system based on bones.  Kreya is the leader of the five heroes, the fabled...