Smorgasbord Fantasia

I know am late to this rocking party that’s got Adam Christopher right in the center – what with a couple of his novels getting nominated for the biggies recently and his hotly anticipated space-horror(?) novel Burning Dark soon to be released by angry robot this year. So as soon as I got the ARC for burning dark, I went and bought his debut, Empire State to dig through the media-generated hype around the breathlessly positive buzz that this “stunning mash-up of trending cultural touchstones” was generating – A pulpy sci-fi cooler by juxtaposing it against a crime/noir thriller not to forget the superheroes? Cool huh! So – Empire State is set in two worlds. New York during the times of prohibition and another bleaker paler washed out version of New York, called Empire State that exists in vacuum. And most of the story is viewed from the POV of Rad Bradley, a forty-something, down on his luck private investigator who is uncovering the mysteries behind a sordid murder of ...

Peacemaker is a brand new series by acclaimed Australian author Marianne De Pierres, her first partnership with the Angry Robots publishing house. I was super revved up with the initial press release and excitement that surrounded this announcement as this promised to be the beginning of a new wonderful series giving us iconic epic characters, a no-nonsense tough as nails sharp-shooting heroine Virgin Jackson and an American cowboy “Marshall”, Nate Sixkiller. The book is set in a futuristic Australia – where Virgin is a senior park ranger at the last natural reserve in this world, Birrimun Park – a tourist attraction and the center of ecological preservation inside a huge coastal city overrun by urbanization and exploitation of nature.  When Virgin is paired with a new “marshall” – fresh from the rodeo drives of texas, a handsome hulk who looks like he’s stepped out of male underwear billboard advertisement – but with his clothes on and a pair of shiny six-guns holstered by ...

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...