Smorgasbord Fantasia

 The reigning king of grim dark fantasy is back at it. And for a series that picks up decades after the First Law trilogy - the Age of Madness is truly rolling on in spectacular style. The "little hatred" has gone onto become full fledged conspiracy, betrayal and the spark is lit for a rebellion. The trouble with peace...is that it hardly lasts, ending too soon. And the trouble with this book, is that it ended too soon for me as well.  The Trouble With Peace , sequel to A Little Hatred , the second book in this new trilogy from Joe Abercrombie is even better than the first book and pushes ahead the overall narrative by a mile, brimming with tension and action - all coloured by the same shroud of grim hopelessness and underlined by that gut-punch of black humour that differentiates Abercrombie from others.  We start the second book, right after the catastrophic reveals and twists of A Little Hatred . Peace reigns within the Union, but a brittle one at that. And reluctan...

Jay Posey 's Legend of the Duskwalker series was a personal favourite. Even though I personally thought the first book trumped books two and three, Duskwalker was a great platform to establish Jay in genre fiction. A dystopian post-apocalyptic setting, enigmatic heroes, well-etched characters and kinetic action sequences.  So when Every Sky a Grave was announced - ( with similarities to Mark Lawrence, for fans of Ann Leckie and Star Wars! Ha ha clever marketing there, eh.) and the wonderfully kind folks at Harper sent me an ARC, I was thrilled.  I was dropped right into the middle of an action scene ( And we know Jay writes some phenomenally explosive sequences, maybe perhaps his experience in writing for the gaming industry!) - and that formed my first impressions of Elyth, a warrior-monk in the ways of the Deep Language, Advocate of the Voice and loyal to this organisation called The First House. I know, this was a bit overwhelming and I felt the same way. We are thrust in...

Sebastian De Castell rose up to be one of my all-time favourite writers with the brilliant, swashbuckling Greatcoats series. So when I read that there's a new book in this same world coming out, I was beyond excited!  Here's the details that we know : Set in the same world of Tristia, the new series is called Court of Shadows , first part of which is called Play of Shadows - and this happens few months after the end of Tyrant's Throne.   It's a gorgeous cover - and Fantasy Book Critic has a fabulous interview with the author himself, that details out how this cover came into being.  And Sebastian has put out the first chapter - that will definitely set your pulse racing.  IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE PAST, WOULD YOU REVEAL THE TRUTHS THAT WOULD SHAKE YOUR SOCIETY TO THE CORE? When the grandson of two famous sword-wielding Greatcoats flees a duel to hide out in a theatre, he unwittingly becomes a conduit for the spirit of a legendary Archduke portrayed as a villain o...

We should preserve this guy for the next few generations so he continues to enthrall and entertain us with such wildly exciting books across a wide spread of genres. Period . He is one of the best writers out there – a prolific productivity, an inimitable sense of dark realism tinged with shiny hope and the gift to entertain through sheer imagination that knows no bounds. Heartland trilogy chugs ahead full speed with Blightborn, the second book that follows the adventures of Cael McAvoy and his buddies set in a dystopian future where evil schemes of the greedy man has killed the soil – there is only corn that grows out here on earth – and the Heartland dwellers – the “have-nots” stuck in this sunny dustbowl of a wasteland are grubbing their way through lives suffering under the tyranny of the sky-dwellers or the Empyreans. The title of the first book, Under the Empyrean Sky was apt. Evocative and lush, as the title imagery suggests, much of book one happens on the ground hid...

The Troop is Nick Cutter’s homage to Stephen King and Scott Smith –He openly acknowledges and candidly admits to “Carrie” being a big inspiration that propelled him to write in this genre – a horror novel that is said to be the cross between Lord of the Flies and The Ruins.  I got an ARC from the publisher on NetGalley and was sold on the mouthwatering premise on offer . A book that has spooked even Stephen King?   I mean, c’mon that guy is the grandfather of horror itself right? So the byte-sized back-of-the-book summary: A troop of boy scouts go camping on a far-away island off the coast of Canada for a stormy weekend. But the cheer soon turns to spine-chilling horror when they encounter a haggard stranger dragging himself up the beach – infected with a horrific affliction that turns him into skin and bones within hours – a biogenetic horror mutation that will spread like crazy. Stranded on the island without any lines of communication and their only boat sa...

The Dire-Earth cycle series by Jason M Hough is touted to be the best thing to have happened to the almost dying genre of Science Fiction today. I would agree to a certain extent, but with a degree of caution.  Best thing? Questionable. A good thing? Most emphatically yes. It’s pumped the interest back in to Science Fiction stories but it is nowhere enough to trump the amount of foaming-at-the-mouth raving attention that Fantasy has generated ( thanks to HBO Original Series of Game of Thrones??) But we’re digressing here. Let’s get back to the series and the book in general. What is attractive about the book is the SF-nal premise of the whole book with alien contact and it’s very accessible nature. Instead of being hard-ass high-flying sci-fi (which trust me, turns off a lot of people wanting to wade into the SF territory), Jason keeps this book easy enough to be liked. Big guns, alien technology, futuristic earth with a touch of dystopian horror. Check. Jaso...

THREE is Jay Posey's debut, the first book in the Legends of the Duskwalkers series, this was an ARC I got from Angry Robots, perhaps the first book that I'm reading from their stable. It's an odd ball mix of western, science fiction and horror and a very entertaining tale of flight and survival set in a distant dystopian-end of the world kind of settings. The story follows the fate of a lone gunman with a mysterious past, Three, whose life changes when he decides to protect a woman and her gifted six-year old son fleeing from unknown assailants. Three, a bounty hunter who lives by his gun, runs into Cass ( a chemic who survives on body-boosting energy shots) and her six-year old son, Wren,  who is special. ( Now that's a dead giveaway, I agree but i wont harp on it)Three saves her from a bully and inadvertently ends up killing another in a bid to save her.  This sweeps him into a murky conspiracy from which the woman and kid are trying to flee - maki...

Beaten by Bhagath! claims to be the first-ever tale about the unseen side of the wonderland of Indian Fiction. That was the hook for me to say YES – to an offer from BookVault to review this book. I mean, hey! this was a behind-the-scenes look at the Publishing industry from someone who’s been there, done that and is willing to lay bare the ugly truths and bust some myths. So bring it on, huh? I was ready to lap it up – that small worm inside of me delighting at such an opportunity to learn more of this industry I was trying to break into.    This isn’t a debut and definitely reads like a polished effort from a talented author.   S V Divaakar is a multi-talented personality currently having forayed into Writing and Public Speaking and music forms a large wedge in the circle of his life. The tag-line, “A tale of two writers” succinctly sums up the whole book – even though it’s written from a first-person narrative, the whole book centering around the effo...