13 Minutes – Sarah Pinborough
Release date: February 18th, 2016 Publisher: Gollancz Age Group: Young Adult Pages: 320 Format: e-galley Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review I was dead for 13 minutes. I don’t remember how I ended up in the icy water but I do know this – it wasn’t an accident and I wasn’t suicidal. They say you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but when you’re a teenage girl, it’s hard to tell them apart. My friends love me, I’m sure of it. Review: Sarah Pinborough has quickly become one of my favourite authors. I love the way she writes and the way she seems to be able to…
Spotlight: Spinning Thorns – Anna Sheehan
About The Book Sleeping Beauty has woken. The world has been renewed. Everyone is living happily ever after . . . Almost. Sharp, blood-seeking thorns still surround the castle. A feud remains between those who wield magic and those who were subjected to it. And while the kingdom is divided against itself, nothing can thrive. A rebellion may be needed – and that’s where Sleeping Beauty’s daughter comes in . . . Publication date: December 10th, 2015 (Gollancz) About The Author To tell of myself: As Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes!” The epigraph of every writer, really. I was conceived in northern Alaska, and was…
The Incorruptibles – John Horner Jacobs
Release date: August 1st, 2014 Publisher: Gollancz Age Group: Adult Pages: 320 Format: Paperback Source: Gift In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it—from raiders, bandits, and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do. In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who…
Spotlight: Foreign Devils – John Horner Jacobs
About The Book The world is on the brink of war. Fisk and Shoe – mercenaries, very much not wanting to get caught in the middle of a political whirlwind – must deliver a very important message, and find a very dangerous man. They have caught the eye of the powerful men of the world, and now the stakes are higher than they like. And the Emperor has decreed that Livia Cornelius, pregnant with Fisk’s child, must travel to the far lands of the Autumn Lords on a diplomatic mission. It will mean crossing half the world, and facing new dangers. And in the end, she will uncover the shocking…
Spotlight: Twelve Kings – Bradley Beaulieu
About the book In the cramped west end of Sharakhai, the Amber Jewel of the Desert, Çeda fights in the pits to scrape a living. She, like so many in the city, pray for the downfall of the cruel, immortal Kings of Sharakhai, but she’s never been able to do anything about it. This all changes when she goes out on the night of Beht Zha’ir, the holy night when all are forbidden from walking the streets. It’s the night that the asirim, the powerful yet wretched creatures that protect the Kings from all who would stand against them, wander the city and take tribute. It is then that one…
New books in 2015 – Part I
Pyr Originator – Joel Sheperd (06/01/2015) Hope for the future in the hands of an enemy from the past… Cassandra Kresnov must find the answers that could free her people-or doom her family. A quarter of a million people die in the destruction of the moon Cresta. The League civil war is accelerating out of control, but projections indicate that as their technologically induced sociological dysfunction continues, all of humanity may face a similar fate. In the aftermath of Cresta’s destruction, Sandy Kresnov discovers the alien Talee operative Cai in Tanusha, there to learn just how far the technologically-induced insanity has gone. The Talee have seen this before, and they…
The Boy with the Porcelain Blade – Erebus Sequence #1 – Den Patrick
Release date: March 20th, 2014 Publisher: Gollancz Age Group: Adult Pages: 336 Format: Hardcover Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. An ornate yet dark fantasy, with echoes of Mervyn Peake, Robin Hobb and Jon Courtenay Grimwood. An original and beautifully imagined world, populated by unforgettable characters. Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game. Ruled by an insane King and the venomous Majordomo, it is a world where corruption and decay are deeply rooted –…