Smorgasbord Fantasia

Myke Cole happens to be one of my favourite authors, his stories a great mix of well etched strong characters and fast paced narratives punctuated by explosive action sequences that propel the story onwards. Sacred Throne, part - I The Armored Saint that gave us Heloise Factor, the plucky young girl forced to don up a machine-powered armour suit and protect her family and friends against a tyrannical religious order, was one hell of an introduction to the series. I had loved that book ! The Queen of Crows is book-II in this series and picks up right where we left Heloise and her rag-tag bunch of mutineers, who have won the skirmish and lived to see another day - Heloise herself now bears the tag of the Emperor's 'Palantine' one of the chosen ones, who has killed a devil and lived to tell the tale. There is no break in proceedings as Myke pitches the reader headlong into one frenzied skirmish after the other, frequent back to back violent confrontations with the en...

Armored Saint by Myke Cole is his first foray into the world of epic fantasy - Having read his previous works, I know that Myke can spin a yarn well enough and make us care. And this being something of a dream project for him, our expectations as readers familiar with his class, were stratospheric to say the least. Does he deliver or what . No punches pulled, this turned out to be a gut-wrenching tale of reluctant heroism, forbidden love, blind faith and heady rebellion in a well realized world that I cannot wait to get back into. In Armored Saint, Myke sets his story in a quasi-medieval European world where life is hard and ruthless, men and women living in constant fear of either the devils breaking through the Veil that protects the world or of being branded as heretics by the religious order of knights, left to guard the world against evil. We encounter this world on the weary dusty roads with sixteen year old Heloise Factor , who loves her father fiercely enough to challe...

Continuing on with our (ir)regular featured meme about bringing up to notice, upcoming gems in the SFF space that we cannot wait to get our hands on, here's another one. The Armored Saint, by Myke Cole . Yeah, the same guy who gave us the extremely hard-hitting military-ops with magical fantasy settings series called Shadow Ops . So TOR.com had acquired the publishing rights to this super exciting series, which is dark medieval and thus, new grounds for Myke. I loved his writing, the grim realism and the headlong narrative that is both an emotional knockout when it comes to the brilliant lead characters, along with the big-bang action sequences. Here's the cover( reveal as done on Verge  along with a detailed interview with Myke about why he wrote this book!  ) It is slated to hit the world on Feb 20th, 2018 from tor.com books. So buckle up! 

After a highly successful outing with his blistering take on Military Urban Fantasy in the Shadow Op trilogy series, Myke Cole returns back to his gorgeously realized world that has seen the “ Great Awakening ” – with this new novel, Gemini Cell.  And this time, he is in unstoppable scintillating form. Gemini Cell is a sort of prequel set in the same world – years before the events that are detailed in his first series. So the magic is still unexplored or unexplained. People going “latent” or manifesting their magical abilities are just about popping up around this world. The US Military SOC is still in its infancy and shrouded in secret. And into this setting ripe for exploring, Myke drops his protagonist Jim Schweitzer – a US Navy SEAL struggling to comprehend what really struck him. Myke’s novels have tremendous mass appeal – He brought the curtains down on the tale of Oscar Britton, Book Binder and Harlequin versus Scylla (For those of you who have not rea...

Edit: I stand corrected - Control Point is published by Ace Roc (Penguin) books and NOT Night Shade. Thanks, Myke for putting me back on track :) Another excellent debut by Ace Roc that has been garnering praise for all the right reasons and getting nominated for the biggies for the past one year now. This comes on the heels of two super awesome debuts I have read (technically should have been in 2012 though!!). There was Kameron Hurley who ran away with all the praise and the awards the year her debut, Book One of Bel Dame Apocrypha hit the stands. Then I chanced upon the excellent russo-setting epic fantasy by Bradley Beaulieu, Winds of Kalakhovo. Now this. Shadow Point by Myke Cole. Excellent stuff really – doesn’t read like a debut. Polished prose, jet-setting pacing, fantastic premise that doesn’t disappoint when executed novel-length, authentic and accurately detailed world-building. Check against all of this, this book pretty much scored on all fronts for me. Pe...