Smorgasbord Fantasia

The Custodian of Marvels marks the end of the amazing series that was Rod Duncan 's successful foray into fantasy - with the Bullet Catcher's Daughter - bringing things to a satisfactory finish, tying up most threads introduced over the course of the last couple of books. In the Gas-Lit Empire, Rod has built one of the most fascinating alternate historical settings, a world teetering on the edge of technological innovations, running on steam-punk somewhere in an alternate nineteenth century world, where the lines are drawn between the Anglo-Scottish Republic and the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Into this setting, Rod gave us Elizabeth Barnabus - a child of a disbanded traveling circus, who grew up never compromising on her disgraced father's truths & principles, mastering the art of disguise and guile, hanging on to that desire to avenge the wrongs done to her. A clever, resolute and a very brave young woman who's learned to walk the tightrope o...

I'm a huge fan of Mr. Sanderson - he possibly is the most hard working author in this planet. And the release schedules of Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning speak for that. Plus he's got a brand new Mistborn Novella out as well this month. Add to that, Calamity (Reckoners # 3) coming out soon enough. Phew! Does this guy even take a break for breathing ? So Alloy of Law is a return to the wonderful world of Mistborn - albeit some hundreds of years later when technology has started to make its presence felt in the world. Steam-punk adventure clashes with the lawless wild west in setting drawn from Victorian sensibilities - throw in some underplayed romance, lots of 'bromance', an amazing magic system and a lot of non-stop action - guns fights and explosions galore - and then you realize how much fun this slim book packs in between its covers. Some people would pan the book for being lighthearted - for all the witty banter and shallow fun this book is - b...

Elizabeth Barnabus continues to plot the downfall of the Gas-Lit Empire, being a pivotal cog in that wheel of Revolution and  Unseemly Science , book two in the series by Rod Duncan transports us back to the wonderful Victorian-era England split into the Kingdom and the Republic. The first book, Bullet-Catcher's Daughter was a pretty fascinating and solid read - giving us Elizabeth a spunky heroine leading a double life back in the Republic having escaped the clutches of the  notorious Duke of Northampton ( Still to make an appearance, guessing Rod's going to bring him in the finale!) back in the Kingdom who's had an arrest warrant out for her. Now Elizabeth ( and her false identity twin brother, Edwin) poses as an intelligence gatherer - with quiet some reputation in closed circles. However the events of the first book forces her into days of seclusion, leading a quiet life on Betsy, her houseboat moored in the Canal. The second book opens with her witnessing t...

So the Angry Robot has been marching on dauntlessly and coming up with some pretty cool titles in the past few years. I am still catching up on my 2014 to-be-read books pile and so the beautiful cover for The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter from the Robots stable caught my eye. On a whim I started the first few pages and then without realizing it, I soon got around to reading it full-time – putting other books on hold. A good book does that to you. Immersive and real fun. That’s what the Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter was. Rod Duncan ’s entry into the speculative fiction/fantasy genre couldn’t have been better written. The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter (A pretty title huh?) is a fast-paced mystery/adventure novel set in an gorgeously detailed alternate steampunk London with a plucky heroine as the lead protagonist with plenty of harrowing twists and hoops through Victorian England. Add illusion, magic and some amounts of science to this nice little potboiler – that just about starts to ...

A richly woven tapestry of intoxicating Japanese Mythological elements (Iron Samurai with Chain-saw Katana? Golly yes! Thunder-Tigers? Never heard of those, but give me some more please!!) and elaborate Steampunk fantasy; featuring a precocious 16-year old coming into her own – Jay Kristoff's explosive much-talked about debut Stormdancer was well on its way to be a runaway success even before the book launched. The hype and explosive premise surrounding the book was higher than the lethal volcanic fumes from Mount Doom of Mordor. So imagine war and politics, love and magic colliding against a bewitchingly exotic backdrop of Japanese steam-punk where loyalties shift with the direction of the ever-howling winds and the reddish bloody skies are forever wreathed in clouds of betrayal. Stormdancer goes a step further than all of this. Love it or hate it, this book is in-your-face – World-building at a scale hitherto un-imagined. It’s perhaps YA – in its treatment of the heroine ...

Clay and Susan Griffith’s first book in a new series, Vampire Empire is now perhaps a couple of years old. I know that the third book has just come out recently and I had almost missed out on this delightful series because of my ever growing TBR pile.  But here I make amends and stand absolved of that mistake, I tore through the first book Greyfriar. An absolutely delightful read. Been long since I read a book that is so much fun. It’s not heavy on your senses and takes us on a flight of imagination through an alternate course of world history still thriving on Steampunk technology and cleaved into two halves, the human empire and that of the vampires.  In 1870, the year of the Great Killing, Vampires took over the Northern half of the world and laid to waste the entire human settlement who fled to the southern hemisphere. Now two great super powers exist in the human world – the Equatorial empire and the American republic. At the beginning of the story ...