The Last Stormlord by Glenda Larke

If the name didn’t clue you in, this is a Big Fat Fantasy of the intrigue, subterfuge and sabotage variety. There aren’t any countless marauding hordes, just some peculiar and very restricted magic, politics with a kinship to Byzantium, and a society who’s stratified system is unraveling. I love the ( Read more... )

I really enjoyed all three of these books, and each is different from the other. Two were my introductions to the writing of the authors, one was a second trip into a twisty mind.

First up was The Demons Lexicon this is a YA by Sarah Rees Brennan set in the UK. The main character is a 15 year old boy who's family is being hunted by some rather ( Read more... )

I've been reading a ton of client work lately, and hope to find time to get back to other submissions soon.

Two things I have read are:
The Dragon Nimbus Volume 2. I'd read the first half when it was published solo some time ago, but never managed to hold onto a copy of The Last Battlemage long enough to read it. I did, it was fun and very much in ( Read more... )

The four books I read this time are all interesting, and from just two publishers.

K. E. Mills' The Accidental Sorcerer is a fantasy, set in a world that has an early electric age feel with a lot of magic. Gerald Dunwoody is our title character who has all the good fortune of a plague victim without the blessed death at the end. We start off the ( Read more... )

This one has exactly two entries because between slush of both varieties, and other aspects of real life, I haven't done much reading.

Wolfsbane and Mistletoe. Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner

Excellent. I'm not much of a fan of short fiction, and most anthologies I pick up I end up reading two pages of about a third of the stories ( Read more... )

First up was Amsterdam by the redoubtable Elizabeth Bear. I really liked this one, it has an episodic feel with each chapter leading into the next, but semi distinct. The first chapter feels like The Orient Express which I suspect is as accidental as pulling your own teeth. The main characters are fun, and the settings, dialogue and language ( Read more... )

The following people owe me sleep and should make reparations quickly.

First up is the delightful Carrie Vaughn. I got to meet her in the lobby of one of the three hundred hotels attendees of Denvetion were spread across. I'm possibly the last person on the planet to read Kitty And the Midnight Hour, but if I'm not, and you're among those who hasn' ( Read more... )

Since the last ASR I've read a lot of slush, some client work, way to many traffic signs and license plates. I've also managed
to read, or in one case reread three things with cover art that I liked.

First up is a reread of Mercedes Lackey's Magic's Pawn. I haven't had the time to reread this is a few years. Partly because my last copy died after ( Read more... )

I've been reading a lot lately. I've blazed through months of slush. Some of which got rejected in the first three or four pages, some which held me until the end but didn't quite tip the scale to being something I'd pick up. Some of the common problems have been; redundancy, black and white universes, and sloppy language use. Fortunately for me ( Read more... )