Smorgasbord Fantasia

 Brian Staveley 's new trilogy - based on the Annurian Empire ( From his Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne ) released this week in the US and is slated to release in Aug 1st week in the UK. It was always going to be a tough act to measure up to - especially given how realistically the different threads of that first mind-blowing trilogy came to a satisfying end and then how Brian hits one out of the park, with a back story to Pyrre ( Skull-Sworn ) , one of the most enigmatic characters to surface in the Unhewn Thrones trilogy.  Brian Staveley is my go-to-author when it comes to delightfully grim-dark fantasy stories bursting with fresh ideas, intricate and effortlessly smooth world-building - headlined by foul-mouthed, fallible characters who are real, flawed and intense, fighting to stay alive, not just against backstabbing treacherous enemies but also hitherto unimagined hell-spawned monsters.  Not to forget the white-knuckle, crazy-ass action sequences and the thou...

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. ...

Cold Counsel by Chris Sharp was a book, that sold itself to me just by that badass cover. It's as wickedly cool as they come - and of course the back-blurb promised me a ripping yarn of Trolls, Elves, Goblins, Witches and their evil magic altering the world engaged in brutal battles. Now these creatures bring in a sense of yearning for the old style of fantasy-writing - where it was truly 'fantastical' and we willingly took frequent leaps of faith, into boiling cauldrons of frothing magic and myth, enjoying the ride, as unbelievable and fanciful as they are. It's the same with Chris Sharp's first book in this series, that follows the adventures of Slud ('Bringer of Trouble'), the last troll left this side of the world, going about a war to reclaim his birthright and perhaps, more. A familiar sense of yearning, a straight-forward classic tale of sword-and-sorcery but wrapped up in newer sensibilities that appeal and exhilarate at the same time, for us ...

Tor.com publishing schedule has this frequent habit of derailing me from my reading schedule. And they did it yet again – forcing me to pick up Cold Forged Flame by Marie Brennan. Marie Brennan is a name that should be familiar to me, but sadly I haven’t jumped onto the bandwagon of readers, who are enamored by her series, A Natural History of Dragons and the subsequent sequels, detailing the adventures of Lady Trent and co. So Cold Forged Flame was a book I went in, without any preconceived biases – and damn, it helped. The book is a relatively straightforward, fast-paced scorching tale of self-discovery and also, survival. Written in first person, with an unreliable narrator who suffers from amnesia, thus setting up the intrigue and mystery right from get go. Old trick in the book, executed so well by a writer of master-class. Marie really hooks us into this tricky and dangerous quest of the un-named narrator who wakes up to the clarion call of a war-horn summoned against...

The second novella from tor.com that I'm reading and hot damn, is it good! Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is a heart-wrenching densely layered beautiful novella - in the style of sword-and-sorcery fantasy novel but one that remains truly literary in its execution. Kai Ashante should be writing a full fledged novel now and I will be jumping on board for sure. At a little over two hundred pages, Kai builds a world that is deep and profoundly interesting in its construct. Is this Earth a few hundred years in the future or a world altogether new? I couldn't figure. Angels and Demi Gods have left for their heavenly abodes. Demane and Isa , the two central characters of the book are the only ones left, behind great grand-children to the older gods, trying to learn the ways of normal human civilizations, bickering and learning to negotiate the worth of yellow colored metal coins and such useless trivial pursuits. Eking out life as a mercenary band of soldiers protecting rich merc...

With this novella from Tor.com, Daniel Polansky has become my all-time favorite grim-dark author. Builders packs in quite a lot of punch in this small novella, just over hundred and ninety pages that is a unique mix of spaghetti western by way of blood-soaked revenge story featuring fantastical furry intelligent animals banding together for one final "job". This is my introduction to Polansky's works - having missed out the Low Town series of books - and what an introduction! Bullets flying fast, furry feathers exploding everywhere, sparse and stark dark humor filling up the silence left in the narrative when this anthropomorphic fantasy gets rolling. It's sheer genius to have got this right. And Daniel does a bang-up job of investing us in the bleak future of this group of animals - getting ready Kill-Bill style to avenge an old slight against a powerful enemy who had split them up once before. A band of friends, getting together for that one last job is s...

Confessions, I haven’t played the Deadlands RPG before nor did I have any clue as to what the game is about. So was a greenhorn thrust headlong into this fantastic world – a weird western landscape where the discovery of “ghost-rock” has accelerated technological innovations and at the same time, thinned the veil between worlds to allow for other-worldly ‘souls’ to invade the human realm. And man, did I love this pulpy adventure or what. This unlikely juxtaposition of two to three different genres makes for a crackling hotbed of stories and ideas ripe for more. And Jonathan Maberry , the best-selling author of the Joe Ledger series, digs right in and comes up with pure gold in this opener to this franchise-based novels. A highly entertaining story that is a mix of action, horror and comedy. This is not any high-brow literature but an all-out over-the-top mix of tropes done right, served as a heady concoction of blazing gun fights, zombies, necromancers, the untamed wei...

September looks to be dishy month in terms of some great books coming out in SFF Genre. I've listed a few on my most-wanted list, top of the TBR pile. Twelve Kings of Sharakhai by Bradley P Beaulieu   Sharakhai, the great city of the desert, center of commerce and culture, has been ruled from time immemorial by twelve kings—cruel, ruthless, powerful, and immortal. With their army of Silver Spears, their elite company of Blade Maidens, and their holy defenders, the terrifying asirim, the Kings uphold their positions as undisputed, invincible lords of the desert. There is no hope of freedom for any under their rule. Or so it seems, until Çeda, a brave young woman from the west end slums, defies the Kings’ laws by going outside on the holy night of Beht Zha’ir. What she learns that night sets her on a path that winds through both the terrible truths of the Kings’ mysterious history and the hidden riddles of her own heritage. Together, these secrets could finally break the iro...

One of the latest release from the consistently impressive Tor books stable, Unwrapped Sky is stunningly realized fantasy novel – written in lush, evocative prose, Rjurik’s debut pushes the boundaries of this genre purely on the basis of his vivid fecund imagination that knows no bounds and has translated into this weird city of Caeli-Amur.  Possibly a worthy successor to the New Weird champions in China Mievelle or Jeff Vendermeer, Rjurik’s imagined city of Caeli-Amur sparkles and entices, apparently running on steampunk technology (Local trams for conveyance?) mixed with ancient magic (the unexplained forces that thrive on the Other Side, the brilliantly wrought up magic system of Thaumaturgy that combines mathematical equations with ideogram puzzles) universities vying for space with weirdly shaped palaces and most of all, the myriad mix of different races that populate this city. The ancients called Elo-Taverns with their immortality and weirdly long spider-like...