Smorgasbord Fantasia

It's that time of the year again, gentle friends. When we look back, at perhaps one of the longest year we've had in all our lives combined. [ Thank you for that Theory of Relativity, Mr. Einstein] For all that time spent at home, pretending to work and also working my ass off on 14-hour workdays where the lines blur, I managed to smash my reading goals for the year. Already at 58 books and looking good to hit a couple more. And amidst this 58, found a few gems - Some series endings, a series starter, a couple of mid-series bridges that I thought definitely are amongst my top books I read this year [ published this year in 2020 ]  A few call-outs, before I get onto my top 5.  1. Was the year I discovered Martha Wells and that endearing fellow called MurderBot in the first four novellas, starting with All Systems Red. while the novel-length story of the MurderBot series came out this year ( Network Effect ) I unfortunately, didn't get around to reading it this year.  2. ...

 This week we are featuring the upcoming new epic fantasy series opener from Stephen Deas , The Moonsteel Crown - from Angry Robot books. For now, while the description seems a bit sparse I will trust that Stephen Deas is a prolific writer and definitely one of the masters of the genre (Memory of Flames series) - and quite blindly take the plunge into this exciting new world he is building out.  The Emperor of Aria is dead, and three junior members of a street gang are unwittingly caught up in the ensuing struggle for the throne, in the first epic adventure in a new fantasy world from a master of the genre. The Emperor of Aria has been murdered, the Empire is in crisis, and Dead Men walk the streets... But Myla, Fings, and Seth couldn't care less. They're too busy just trying to survive in the Sulk-struck city of Varr, committing petty violence and pettier crimes to earn their keep in the Unrulys, a motley gang led by Blackhand.  When the Unrulys are commissioned to ste...

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...

The Forever Sea by Joshua Johnson is on my 2021-most-anticipated releases for several reasons. The premise sounds different, original - and this is being touted as first in an "Eco-Fantasy" series. With a fantastic cover and a brilliant premise, today we feature this debut fantasy opener in our Waiting on Wednesday meme series. ( And did we say, Pirates?!!!)  On the never-ending, miles-high expanse of prairie grasses known as the Forever Sea, Kindred Greyreach, hearthfire keeper and sailor aboard harvesting vessel The Errant, is just beginning to fit in with the crew of her new ship when she receives devastating news. Her grandmother—The Marchess, legendary captain and hearthfire keeper—has stepped from her vessel and disappeared into the sea. But the note she leaves Kindred suggests this was not an act of suicide. Something waits in the depths, and the Marchess has set out to find it. To follow in her grandmother’s footsteps, Kindred must embroil herself in conflicts bigge...

 If you, like me, are stumped by the unexpected Diwali rains, and are surfing aimlessly on Netflix or Prime, then let me suggest an absolutely well-made movie about an underdog triumphing against the sky-high odds (pun intended!) story - called Soorarai Pottru , on Amazon Prime Video .  Inspired by the aviation stories from "Simply Fly" by Captain K Gopinath - the pioneer of low-cost aviation in India, this movie is a dramatised version of his realisation of this impossible dream, a epic David-vs-Goliath story of how he moved mountains to achieve his dream and make India fly. With Suriya firmly in the pilot's seat, this movie doesn't just fly, it soars!  With his inimitable style and characteristic intensity, Suriya triumphantly carries through this whole narrative on his able shoulders, making us cry, cringe and then smile as he brings alive the pain and triumph of "Maaran", the man behind the impossible one-rupee air-tickets.  While yes the story remains ...

 We are the Dead is Mike Shackle 's genre-busting debut that straddles a thin line between grim-dark and heroic fantasy, that came out in 2019. I am late to this party, but with the Fool's Hope , the sequel to this Last War trilogy coming out soon, I thought I had to jump onto this one.  This is a book on post-war trauma, about unlikely ordinary people stepping up to start a bloody revolution against the oppressive new tyrants. It's a grim book that details the depressing state of affairs, in a country ravaged by war, famine and poverty being the only tokens allowed for the occupied, to eke out a sorry excuse for living. And as the title states categorically, there are no "heroes" left to come sweeping in and save the day. It is left to a coward who failed her military vows, a young boy gone crazy with grief and who doesn't see the difference between a friend or a foe, a maimed one-armed army general and a fierce protective selfish mother to mount the beginni...

It is actually hard to believe that The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart is her debut - Inspired by multiple Asian-cultures, the first book of the Drowning Empire trilogy reads like a seasoned, epic fantasy that features a vast and fascinating world, a well thought-out magic system - all of this headlined by well rounded interesting characters, whose motivations, flaws and inspirations drive the narrative forwards in fluent confident prose, that never takes the foot off the pedal.   The broad contours of the narrative in this first of a series goes like this: Lin Sukai is the heir to the The Phoenix Empire ruled by a reclusive Emperor, who unfortunately isn't willing to accept Lin as his successor until she proves herself worthy enough to take on the reins. Lin is obviously frustrated by this but more importantly, by the fact that she has no memory of her last four years before she woke up, supposedly from a coma recovering from a disease. And the Emperor sets her on a task to...