Cover Reveal: It Happened One Doomsday – Laurence MacNaughton
I recently received an ARC of this book from Pyr Books, but it’s only today that the final cover has been revealed! It looks like an interesting, quirky book, so I’m very keen to read it. It Happened One Doomsday will be published on July 12th, 2016. About the Book Magic is real. Only a handful of specially-trained individuals can wield its arcane power to protect the world from demons, foul creatures, and the forces of darkness. These powerful sorcerers are descendants of an elite order. The best in the world at what they do. Unfortunately, Dru isn’t one of them. Sure, she’s got a little magic potential. She can…
Masks and Shadows – Stephanie Burgis
Release date: April 12th, 2016 Publisher: Pyr Age Group: Adult Pages: 300 Format: ARC Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review The year is 1779, and Carlo Morelli, the most renowned castrato singer in Europe, has been invited as an honored guest to Eszterháza Palace. With Carlo in Prince Nikolaus Esterházy’s carriage, ride a Prussian spy and one of the most notorious alchemists in the Habsburg Empire. Already at Eszterháza is Charlotte von Steinbeck, the very proper sister of Prince Nikolaus’s mistress. Charlotte has retreated to the countryside to mourn her husband’s death. Now, she must overcome the ingrained rules of her society in order to uncover the dangerous secrets lurking…
Hexed: The Sisters of Witchdown – Michael Alan Nelson
Release date: May 5th, 2015 Publisher: Pyr Books Age Group: Young Adult Pages: 281 Format: ARC Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review THE FIRST NOVEL BASED ON THE HEXED COMIC! Luci Jenifer Inacio das Neves, Lucifer for short, isn’t your typical teenaged girl. She’s a thief who survives by stealing bad things from bad people in the magical and mystical underworld hidden beneath our own. So when a policeman’s daughter, Gina, is kidnapped by a force he can’t explain, Lucifer is the only one who has a chance at getting his daughter back. With the unsolicited help of Gina’s friends, including Gina’s boyfriend David, Lucifer’s investigation leads to the unfortunate truth of…
The Silk Map – Gaunt and Bone #2 – Chris Willrich
Release date: May 6th, 2014 Publisher: Pyr Books Age Group: Adult Pages: 445 Format: Paperback Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review At the end of The Scroll of Years, the poet Persimmon Gaunt and her husband, the thief Imago Bone, had saved their child from evil forces at the price of trapping him within a pocket dimension. Now they will attempt what seems impossible; they will seek a way to recover their son. Allied with Snow Pine, a scrappy bandit who’s also lost her child to the Scroll of Years, Gaunt and Bone awaken the Great Sage, a monkeylike demigod of the East, currently trapped by vaster powers beneath a mountain. The…
The Leopard & The Lady – Marakand – K.V. Johansen
The Leopard Release date: June 10th, 2014 Publisher: Pyr Books Age Group: Adult Pages: 432 Format: Paperback Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review In the days of the first kings in the North, there were seven devils… Ahjvar, the assassin known as the Leopard, wants only to die, to end the curse that binds him to a life of horror. Although he has no reason to trust the goddess Catairanach or her messenger Deyandara, fugitive heir to a murdered tribal queen, desperation leads him to accept her bargain: if he kills the mad prophet known as the Voice of Marakand, Catairanach will free him of his curse. Accompanying him on his…
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…
Interview – K.V. Johansen
To celebrate the release of ‘The Lady’ today, I had a chat with the author K.V. Johansen about the previous two books in this world, ‘Blackdog’ and ‘The Leopard’ and much more. About the author K. V. Johansen was born in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where she developed her lifelong fascination with fantasy literature after reading The Lord of the Rings at the age of eight. Her interest in the history and languages of the Middle Ages led her to take a Master’s Degree in Medieval Studies at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and a second M.A. in English Literature at McMaster University, where she wrote…
Blood and Iron – The Book of the Black Earth #1 – Jon Sprunk
Release date: March 11th, 2014 Publisher: Pyr Age Group: Adult Pages: 428 Format: Paperback Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review Set in a richly-imagined world, this action-heavy fantasy epic and series opener is like a sword-and-sorcery Spartacus. It starts with a shipwreck following a magical storm at sea. Horace, a soldier from the west, had joined the Great Crusade against the heathens of Akeshia after the deaths of his wife and son from plague. When he washes ashore, he finds himself at the mercy of the very people he was sent to kill, who speak a language and have a culture and customs he doesn’t even begin to understand. Not long…
The Scroll of Years – Gaunt and Bone #1 – Chris Willrich
Release date: September 24th, 2013 Publisher: Pyr Age Group: Adult Pages: 270 Format: Paperback Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It’s Brent Weeks meets China Mieville in this wildly imaginative fantasy debut featuring high action, elegant writing, and sword and sorcery with a Chinese flare. Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are a romantic couple and partners in crime. Persimmon is a poet from a well-to-do family, who found herself looking for adventure, while Imago is a thief in his ninth decade who is double-cursed, and his body has not aged in nearly seventy years. Together, their services and wanderlust have taken them into places better left unseen, and against odds best…