Smorgasbord Fantasia

I finally hauled myself back to the world of Jean and Locke, the Gentlemen Bastard series. I read their first adventure back in 2009 and was completely blown away by heist artists. A Sword and Heist (I would prefer to call it thus as opposed to sword and sorcery as magic while an underlying theme, never really gets its full due till now) story that gave us two of the best protagonists ever in the fantasy worlds in Locke & Jean, and well, a fantastically memorable setting in the city of Cammorr where the events of the first book play out. There has been much uproar over the delay in the third book in the Gentlemen Bastards series – After the spectacular epic fantasy debut, Locks of Lie Lamora, established Scott Lynch as one of the brightest shining stars in this genre ; he churned out the second blockbuster adventure in that series by the next year with a promise to keep it coming once a year. Now that the third book, Republic of Thieves is out (Oh well, if you im...

With the deluge of grim dark fantasy tales today [ Joe Abercrombie perhaps claims to rule the roost here and I love this guy to bits, Others like Mark Lawrence, Luke Scull, R Scott Bakker all pitching in their huge tents this side of the camp ] I am hard pressed to read a simple old fashioned fantasy tale. That talks brotherhood, friendship [not the back-stabbing variety] action adventure and a story that is uncomplicated but still retains its epic flavour. And that is when I chanced upon the Ryria Revelations. A hugely successful self-published franchise – six books long - that has now been snapped up by Orbit, Michael J Sullivan’s journey is the dream that a lot of struggling authors today aspire for. Anyways, much has been said about the phenomenal success of Michael and Robin’s ventures. I will stick to the opening chapter of this action/adventure romp- The Crown Tide; which introduces us to the protagonists, a duo of thief/assassin and thief/soldier: Royce and Hadria...

Revenge is a dish we are all very familiar with – We have seen this in movies made immortal by Lee Marvin ( Point Blank ) and Quentin Tarantino ( Kill Bill ) – With a name such as “ Best Served Cold ”, Abercrombie makes no bones about what this book is going to be about. But heck, this is Joe Abercrombie we are talking about.  The lord of grim dark , an entirely new sub-genre that he has breathed life into and carved himself a bloody throne out of. So when news comes out that Abercrombie is penning a revenge novel set in the cruel grim world as that of the First Law trilogy, you can’t help feel the goose-bumps break out all over your arms and you wait on a bed of nails until you can dive back into the gore-spattered, crazy dark world slick with blood, sweat and grime, where seasons may change but the only constant thing is death and treachery.  While First Law was mostly Abercrombie’s attempt at skewering the standard fantasy tropes and introducing us to som...