Smorgasbord Fantasia

Elizabeth Bear is one of the most prolific, award-winning authors today - writing across genres whom sadly I haven't yet read. I have been yearning to get my hands on the World of the Eternal Sky series - a lush eastern-world fantasy. So when Tor announced a new book set in the same world, I knew this was high time! The Stone in the Skull reads like a taut, tense thrilling fantasy set against the backdrop of cruel cold mountain slopes and features a brass-robot and a dead man fighting to stay alive and finish their mission. Intriguing, yes? Exotic, hell yes!  And the cover looks sooo beautiful!! Book one in the Lotus Kingdoms trilogy, The Stone in the Skull publishes October 10th with Tor Books. From the catalog copy: The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom.

Wake of Vultures hit all the right notes with me – right from the start. Trippy headlong ride into the weird wild west. Horrific monsters that go bump in the night – Vampires, skinwalkers, shapeshifters, vultures with claws and boobs that mock you and cackle in glee! You name it. The baddest of them being a monstrous Cannibal Owl that hunts and kills kids in the night! FTW!! Leading the charge against these horrors is an absolutely kickass protagonist, Nettie Lonesome – who’s as different from any conventional lead hero/heroine you’ve read about. Just like this book is an unconventionally refreshing and an absolutely delicious mash-up of elements like slack-jaw horror and mind-boggling world building of the wild-west minus the gunslinger tropes of old. But the heart of this book that appealed to me as a reader is the raw emotional core, the truths that cut away the cloak of childhood and helps the teenage protagonist come of age in a ruthless and brutal bad world. This i