Smorgasbord Fantasia

A weird western zombie? I was definitely intrigued when I heard about David Towsey 's daring debut, Your Brother's Blood that promised to be a fun mashup but what I wasn't expecting was the emotionally draining narrative and a deftly executed story that never loses its tight personal focus till the surprising climax. Yes - I'm late to this party and I discovered David Towsey's excellent debut pretty late ( this book was released in 2013 by Jo Fletcher Books ) but I'm glad I did and I really am jazzed up now that I've finished the intriguing story. Are there more books set in this universe? ( Edit: The trilogy is now complete - with Your Servants and Your People (2014) and Your Resting Place (2015) ) So at the heart of this story is unflinching faith - gone a bit too extreme in it's interpretation. The biblical references are very strong - be it the character names like Thomas, Mary, Sarah, Samuel or the very cool transcriptions from 'Counc...

Bradley is one of the genre's finest talents pushing the boundaries and scope of fantasy. And he proves it again in fantastic style with the Twelve Kings in Sharakhai , first book in the Song of the Shattered Sands series. His first series,  Lays of Anuskaya introduced us to a russo-mythology inspired world with a touch of the forgotten Ottoman culture in lush detail. The Twelve Kings takes a step further and takes us right into the heart of a captivating and wondrous world of a desert civilization where Gods grant power to mortals, the undead walk the sands at night and subterfuge and intrigue rule the day. So Twelve Kings is set in the bustling desert metropolis of Sharakhai , a trading city in the middle of the great sprawling desert. A city that has slums, fighting pits, sprawling mansions, sheesha-denns and tea houses, communal baths and palaces on the hills jostling for the attention of the citizens. The fighting pits sees brutal competitions between champions of ...

So Barry Allen ( Flash , the fastest superhero in town) and his nerdy gang of friends & family have made their definitive mark on us. Season One is over and boy! What a rousing tale, safe to say that the speedster has zipped through our hearts, huh. So Flash started out strong building up on the basic foundation we grew to love from Arrow (fellow superhero from the DC Comics world!) and then as the season moved beyond the mid-season finale with the introduction of ‘reverse-flash’, things really started to zing up. Going on to really hit it out of the park by the season finale, thus setting our expectations pretty high for the oncoming season two. You know when I saw the premiere, I wasn't impressed. How would this skinny youngish looking fella carry the weight of the world on those frail shoulders ? And zip around at express speed saving the world from Apocalypse? But hey, Grant Gustin went on to blow past me doubting dorothy. In fact, the whole series showcases no...

Serial fiction isn't new. It's been around for centuries now - but what Serial Box is bringing to this way of storytelling is a super fine collaboration that might just be the next big thing after the Particle Accelerator Explosion. Missing the grit of Daredevil or need that fix of Breaking Bad or are you biting your nails down to bits waiting for the next season of GoT? Well, here's good news for you! Serial Box is bringing to your reading device a pulsating new series that is a combination of supernatural horror and police procedural, sixteen episodes of monster hunting, magic and non stop fun. Officially launched on Sept 16th, I got a chance to read the first episode of the series, Bookburners - Badge, Book & Candle. Written by a team of authors including Margaret Dunlap (Eureka), Mur Lafferty (The Shambling Guide to New York City) and Brian Francis Slattery (Lost Everything), the group is lead by rising genre star Max Gladstone (Three Parts Dead and t...

Retellings of classics have the potential to be spectacular or disastrous. Alice in Wonderland has been tried before - though I confess I haven't read the written form of such retelling but having watched a few adaptations on TV I came away sorely disappointed. Like the big screen never could justify that mad gleam in the Hatter's eyes - as matched perhaps by the twisty imagination of one such as Lewis Caroll. And with this book, Alice - Christina Henry takes a swan dive into that deep dark rabbit-hole and definitely emerges a winner! A book that is dark as sin and racy as hell on jet-fire, Alice is a masterful and disturbing retelling of the classic laced over with many layers of darkness and intrigue. Magic is unexplained as in a fairy tale - but one for kids, this is not. It's a fairy tale gone horribly wrong - more a fantastical thriller set in a madman's darkest nightmarish setting called the Old City, a far cry from the Wonderland. The story starts in a ...

Dawnbreaker , the third book in the Legends of the Duskwalker series by Jay Posey  from Angry Robot was a much awaited book, personally at least. Marking an end to this intense and satisfying series where the world is quivering in the shadow of an unknown apocalypse, reduced to broken buildings and grey concrete ash and pockets of humanity huddled in fear of the dark. I was blown away by the imaginative and new world that Jay (Posey) had built up in Three – a desolate landscape scarred by some unseen apocalypse where people live on the edge of danger on a daily basis, huddled within modest cityscapes surrounded by concrete desert-lands and hunted at night by cyborg-zombies. Jay draws up an exceptionally well thought out digital communication systems in place and then goes on populate this barren world with some hard-hitting realistic protagonists, flawed and vulnerable to a fault and living truly on the edge. The underlying human emotions that drive the characters to...

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...