Smorgasbord Fantasia

After the blood-soaked finale to the Godblind series that saw Anna Stephens firmly being entrenched on to my pantheon of go-to-authors, for any thing fantasy (grim, dark and brutal) - I never thought she could top that with anything better. After all, this was the culmination of a tale , three books in the making with rogue gods and blood-thirsty gods meddling in the human affairs, a story crafted, honed and polished over a full series ending in a wholly satisfying manner. This time, she has turned her sights onto the Central American myths and blended all of that into her own vision of a terrifying epic of clashing faiths, warring humans and monstrous blood-thirsty Gods in this new book, called The Stone Knife , first in the series,  Songs of the Drowned .  The forests of Ixachipan have been clashing with the sounds of battle, forever now. The Pecha empire wants to awaken the world-spirit by conquering the lands of Ixachipan and the only deterrent against this mighty ambitio...

Happy New Year folks!  It's the start of a new decade and I am super excited. Looking back at how 2019 has gone down for me, I mostly take pride. My total books read has hit 54 (That's a book every week!) with a few in various final stages as they stand today, on 31st Dec. What has helped that tally this year, is the advent of audio books in a big way in my life. I have managed to finish 13 audio books this year (A book every month!), which is phenomenal for me. Combing through this list, there are quite a few shining gems for the year, that I have loved to bits and would categorise as the best reads of the year. A Little Hatred by Joe Abercrombie: The return of the Lord Grim Dark to his brutal lawless world of the First Law trilogy was indeed, a welcome one.  The wheels of time are turning and an age of madness descends into this world.  A Little Hatred  features the sons and daughters of our intrepid 'heroes' of the original trilogy. Complex, twisted, n...

Bloodchild is the third and final book in the debut series by Anna Stephens . Back in 2017 when Anna's debut came out, I actually gave it the skip. I was inundated with other "good" books - in particular, two other debut authors ( Anna Smith Spark (Empires of Dust) and Ed McDonald's Ravencry caught my attention. I was late to this series, starting on Godblind only last year but that was a boon in disguise. I read Godblind and DarkSoul back to back. While Godblind was good, Darksoul wasn't just great, it was brilliant. A heart-rending emotional upheaval of a journey. A long fuckin' siege that went on and on, presenting drama of the darkest kinds - desperate, terrified humans fighting ugly for their very lives against forces much larger than life. And after finishing both books, I couldn't wait for Bloodchild! Bloodchild released in the UK yesterday (Sept 5) and trust me, this year-long wait has been more than worth it. To jump back once again t...

Godblind is Anna Stephen 's spell-binding debut that captured the fantasy world's imagination over - her unflinching story is splotched dark and grim with blood, unapologetically pitching her as one those worthy successors to Joe Abercrombie and Mark Lawrence. I didn't get to read this one last year and am kicking myself for the miss. Anna is one of the top notch talents who burst onto the fantasy grim-dark scene last year - along with the likes of Anna Smith Spark and Ed McDonald ( Incidentally both of whose second books are excellent fare establishing them as major forces to be reckoned with!) So when Darksoul came out this year, I knew I had to go back and read her debut and catch up, with this rising tide of red. The Red Gods are coming back and their thirst for blood is unquenchable. Exiled a millennia ago and plotting their return, the blood-thirsty Gods ( Dark Lady and her brother, the God of Pain) are worshiped by the tribe/kingdom in the west known as M...