Smorgasbord Fantasia

A Flicker in the Dark is Stacy Willingham 's masterful debut - a well-constructed clever suspense thriller full of twists and thrills. The story is set in the small town called Baton Rogue, in Louisiana and told through the POV of Chloe Davis, a successful psychologist in her early thirties, engaged and about to be married to this workaholic Pharma-sales rep Daniel. Chloe is shaken out of her idyllic dream life when a series of murders rock the small town. Taking her back twenty years, when the exact same thing had happened, when she was only twelve. Six teenage girls who were abducted and killed in her childhood town. But the shocker was when the police finally figured out that it was her own father, who had committed these heinous crimes. Chloe is rattled as she tries to piece together the clues, as to who could possibly be this 'copycat' killer in her neighborhood. Because these crimes not only cut open those scabs from her own childhood but also, threatens to blow apart...

 Mark Lawrence, one of my all-time favorite fantasy authors, brings his 5th series to a brilliant conclusion with the soon-to-be released The Girl and The Moon ( #3 in the Book of the Ice series). Featured here on my Waiting on Wednesday meme.  The green world exceeds and overwhelms all of Yaz’s expectations. Everything seems different but some constants remain: her old enemies are still two steps ahead, bent on her destruction. The Corridor abounds with undreamed of plenty and with unsuspected danger. To stand a chance against the eyeless priest, Eular, and the god-like city-mind, Seus, Yaz will need to learn fast and make new friends. The Convent of Sweet Mercy, like the Corridor itself, is packed with peril and opportunity. Yaz needs the nuns’ help – but first they want to execute her. The fate of everyone squeezed between the Corridor’s vast walls, and ultimately the fate of those labouring to survive out on ice itself, hangs from the moon, and the battle to save th...

  Obsidian is Sarah J Daley 's debut epic fantasy novel from Angry Robot overlords, that released last month. This was on my list of Debuts to watch out for, in 2022 ( A year incidentally filled with some incredibly exciting debuts coming out!) and it didn't disappoint.  Overall, Obsidian was an intense, action-packed traditional fantasy novel, packed to the gills with white-hot action sequences, featuring a very well crafted magical system and in-depth world building full of lores, myths. The narrative itself is paced pretty well, full of betrayals, found family, love, power and sacrifice all headlined by a gutsy heroine, an abomination witch who defies tradition and stands up to the tyrannical rule of the bloodwizards in this ancient land of power and swirling magic.  So the story is set in this land called Malavita, protected by "Veils" that keeps the encroaching blight from turning the land into waste-lands. This Blight of course is the result of ancient magic go...

This has been one hell of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me. The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph started off as a darkly comic satire on life in the streets of the 90's Madras. Where getting into IITs or going abroad is a tradition for the Tam-brahm boys and where singing is a national pastime for the girls, who are protected fiercely as the shining family heirlooms - and where the parents head off to their respective offices in their old Bajaj Chetak or Vespas. We are introduced to the rebellious Kottayam Christian family of the Chackos - the anarchist Ousep, with his undying desire to rebel-yell against the societal conforms through not just his journalistic columns or reporting during the day but also his drunken anti-social antics at night. Then there is the 'brilliant' Mariamma a postgraduate in economics and housewife, who everybody in the street knows is a little bit of a cuckoo as she talks to imaginary beings, wagging an accusatory finger - ...