Smorgasbord Fantasia

I know I'm coming late to the American Hippo party but better late than never!  River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey a neo-western that pulls no punches, by way of an imagined American alt-history romp where Hippos have been introduced into domestication [ Think Hippo-farms or ranches] It's a very clever twist on what could have been, based on an actual attempt to pass a bill in the US Senate to import hippos for meat. The story follows the capers [ Oh despite so many tedious reminders, I just cannot think myself to call that an "operation" all aboveboard! Come on. ] of a group of determined men and women, out to ensure that a lake full of feral wild hippos can be herded out into the wilds, clearing up the Lake for safer commercial uses. The only issue may be, that the man who claims to have gotten this "legitimate" job order from the Feds, maybe holding out on a dirty secret, a deeply nursed personal vendetta. And little matter that the dangerous man who ru...

I confess I have never read anything by Kiersten White - and this book, And I Darken that is the opening salvo into an alternate history epic, The Conqueror's Saga - was a complete surprise package for me. I picked this up on a whim - wherein I read that the book is a twist on the historical facts about Vlad the Impaler and the tyrannical rule of the Ottoman Empire. What if Vlad had been female? But as I read the sampler, I realized Kiersten digs much deeper than just alternating the gender of Vlad, building up an entire world around these characters that are nothing more than just side-notes in the annals of history. There is rich detail, vivid imagination and scrumptious world-building at hand as Kiersten peels off the layers from that age of history where women were relegated to the Harems and siblings killed each other for the throne, bringing us a well-thought picture of what could have been. The first book follows the life of Ladislav Dragwlya known as Lada, daugh...

The Custodian of Marvels marks the end of the amazing series that was Rod Duncan 's successful foray into fantasy - with the Bullet Catcher's Daughter - bringing things to a satisfactory finish, tying up most threads introduced over the course of the last couple of books. In the Gas-Lit Empire, Rod has built one of the most fascinating alternate historical settings, a world teetering on the edge of technological innovations, running on steam-punk somewhere in an alternate nineteenth century world, where the lines are drawn between the Anglo-Scottish Republic and the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Into this setting, Rod gave us Elizabeth Barnabus - a child of a disbanded traveling circus, who grew up never compromising on her disgraced father's truths & principles, mastering the art of disguise and guile, hanging on to that desire to avenge the wrongs done to her. A clever, resolute and a very brave young woman who's learned to walk the tightrope o...

So the Angry Robot has been marching on dauntlessly and coming up with some pretty cool titles in the past few years. I am still catching up on my 2014 to-be-read books pile and so the beautiful cover for The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter from the Robots stable caught my eye. On a whim I started the first few pages and then without realizing it, I soon got around to reading it full-time – putting other books on hold. A good book does that to you. Immersive and real fun. That’s what the Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter was. Rod Duncan ’s entry into the speculative fiction/fantasy genre couldn’t have been better written. The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter (A pretty title huh?) is a fast-paced mystery/adventure novel set in an gorgeously detailed alternate steampunk London with a plucky heroine as the lead protagonist with plenty of harrowing twists and hoops through Victorian England. Add illusion, magic and some amounts of science to this nice little potboiler – that just about starts to ...

WolfHound Century is a debut that defies any genre and thus manages to be delightfully original, free of the trappings of existing fantasy sub-genres. Gollancz comes up with yet another winner in Peter Higgins who has woven a magical tale set in alternate Russia where folklores come alive, hunger and revolution is still the language the poor understand, giants live amongst humans and a totalitarian regime has plunged the state into a hopeless endless war. It’s beautiful, it’s grim and dark as the starless black of the night and yet so starkly fascinating. A noir- thriller that twists into a surreal dark horror introducing us to darker corners of the mind we never thought existed. That quote from Richard Morgan definitely captures the feel for the book. Definitely among my top reads for 2013.  The book starts off like any typical noire– introducing us to Vissarion LomMagical, an investigator down on his luck being summoned to the Capital state of Mirgorod to app...

Clay and Susan Griffith’s first book in a new series, Vampire Empire is now perhaps a couple of years old. I know that the third book has just come out recently and I had almost missed out on this delightful series because of my ever growing TBR pile.  But here I make amends and stand absolved of that mistake, I tore through the first book Greyfriar. An absolutely delightful read. Been long since I read a book that is so much fun. It’s not heavy on your senses and takes us on a flight of imagination through an alternate course of world history still thriving on Steampunk technology and cleaved into two halves, the human empire and that of the vampires.  In 1870, the year of the Great Killing, Vampires took over the Northern half of the world and laid to waste the entire human settlement who fled to the southern hemisphere. Now two great super powers exist in the human world – the Equatorial empire and the American republic. At the beginning of the story ...