Smorgasbord Fantasia

 So instead doing a single Waiting on Wednesday meme, I decided to tackle the whole of August month and do a sweep on all the great books lined up for this month. In no particular order, here they are :  1. In the Watchful City by S. Quioyi Lu In the Watchful City explores borders, power, diaspora, and transformation in an Asian-inspired mosaic novella that melds the futurism of Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station with the magical wonder of Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest. The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora's citizens. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from all harm. All that changes when a mysterious visitor enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around the world, with a story attached to each item....

 This was an unusual choice of a read for me as this is indeed a far-cry from the usual crop of SFF on my pile of TBR's. But I chose to listen to the audio-book version of the same as I was intrigued by the back-blurb and wanted to check out Bridget Collins ' work, that came highly recommended.  So The Betrayals is Bridget Collins' sophomore work in adult literature, after having successfully debuted with her previous work, The Binding . It's set in an indeterminate time-frame (around '30's or '40's) in an un-named country ( that perhaps resembles rural France or England or a mix of the two thrown in) ruled almost tyrannically by 'The Party'. Featuring three main protagonists, all three of them with their own connected web of lies and past secrets that enmesh together to form a twisty narrative set within this old residential school campus in a hilly town called Montverre. The story revolves around this 'game' called Grand Jieu, which is ...

 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...

This week on Waiting on Wednesday where we feature some of the most anticipated books in the SFF Genre to be released in the coming year/months, we have one of the most exciting sequels to a blockbuster fantasy novel from 2020 - The Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse ( This was one of the best books I read this year! a little late to the party but what a fabulous fabulous book! Here's my review of the same.) So super excited about the sequel, Fevered Star . Cover reveal happened a couple of days back on the Nerdist Here's what we know. There are no tides more treacherous than those of the heart. —Teek saying   The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God’s eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent.   The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded? ...

 This week on our Waiting on Wednesday meme, where we focus on some of the most awaited titles releasing in the SFF Genre for this year, we are featuring Cameron Johnston's The Maleficent Seven, from Angry Robot Books. This book sounds like SO.MUCH.FUN! ( snagged an early ARC and will get down to this one in July!)  When you are all out of heroes, all that's left are the villains. Black Herran was a dread demonologist, and the most ruthless general in all Essoran. She assembled the six most fearsome warriors to captain her armies: a necromancer, a vampire lord, a demigod, an orcish warleader, a pirate queen, and a twisted alchemist. Together they brought the whole continent to its knees... Until the day she abandoned her army, on the eve of total victory. 40 years later, she must bring her former captains back together for one final stand, in the small town of Tarnbrooke - the last bastion against a fanatical new enemy tearing through the land, intent on finishing the job Blac...

 Part of a new series called Ediburgh Nights, I just finished The Library of the Dead by T L Huchu (Audio book version from Harper Audio) - a refreshingly different YA-urban fantasy featuring a precocious sassy fourteen-year old up against malicious spirits, and evil ghosts.  I enjoyed this one, a breezy fast ghost-story, mystery set in the titular city of Edinburgh, focused on 14-year old Ropa Moya. A gifted teenager who is a "ghostalker" and who uses this talent to actually make some money on the sides - by being that clairvoyant, a messenger between the living and their beloved dead ones. But one of these sessions, Ropa gets contacted by a persistent mother Nichola who claims her son has been missing for a few days now and wants Ropa's help to find him. Ropa unwittingly gets drawn into something far more sinister plot that involves children missing off the streets, and ones who survive and come back from whatever ordeal they are plunged into, are too far "gone...

I had bought The Wall by John Lanchester a few months back, before the lockdown frenzy hit us. I finally picked it up last week, dusted it off my bookshelf and started reading it. Only to be sucked into this disquieting fable that kept me wondering and puzzling out a lot of the allegories and metaphorical references, not quite sure if I was even right.  Despite the lacklustre writing about one of the most 'uninteresting' protagonists ever (An entitled, misguided new adult conscripted into national duty to protect the boundaries of a island nation, UK from refugees and immigrants trying to climb up and over to get citizenship within this nation) I realised the novel could be about anything. Climactic changes? Human resilience ? Heroism? undaunted sense of patriotic duty? xenophobia? right-wing nationalism?  Despite all this, I actually enjoyed the book. A LOT.  I cannot exactly pinpoint the reasons for my enjoyment. Because this novel definitely stops a mile off the "lit...