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OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Richard Nell concerned family and friends by quitting his real job in 2014 to 'write full-time'. He is a Canadian author of fantasy, living in one of the flattest, coldest places on earth with his begrudging wife, who makes sure he eats.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: Follow the long, bloody journey of Ruka, son of Beyla through the islands of Pyu and the frozen wastes of the Ascom; see the return home of Ratama Kale Alaku, the 'Sorcerer-Prince', and the terrifying rise of his 'miracles'. Before the end, a shocking history will unravel, ancient connections unfold, and all will learn the cost of unleashing the Kings of Ash...

FORMAT/INFO: Kings of Ash is 665 pages long divided over twenty-nine chapters. This is the second volume of the Ash and Sand series.

The book was self-published by the author on January 19th, 2019 and it's available as an e-book. Cover art and design is provided by  Michael Shinde.

OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Quenby Olson lives in Central Pennsylvania where she spends most of her time writing, glaring at baskets of unfolded laundry, and chasing the cat off the kitchen counters. She lives with her husband and two daughters, who do nothing to dampen her love of classical ballet, geeky crochet, and staying up late to watch old episodes of Doctor Who.

OFFICIAL BLURB: Dorothea Hawes has no wish to renew contact with what lies beyond the veil. After an attempt to take her own life, she has retired into seclusion, but as the wounds on her body heal, she is drawn back into a world she wants nothing more than to avoid.

She is sought out by Julian Chissick, a former man of God who wants her help in discovering who is behind the gruesome murder of a young woman. But the manner of death is all too familiar to Dorothea, and she begins to fear that something even more terrible is about to unleash itself on London.

And so Dorothea risks her life and her sanity in order to save people who are oblivious to the threat that hovers over them. It is a task that forces her into a confrontation with her own lurid past, and tests her ability to shape events frighteningly beyond her control.

FORMAT/INFO: The Half-Killed is 275 pages long divided over twenty-five chapters with a prologue, and is the first entry in the Sundered Veil series. The book was self-published through World Tree Publishing in 2015 and is currently available in e-book and print formats. Cover art and design by A.J. Navarre.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: It becomes apparent from the opening of The Half-Killed that Quenby Olson is a master of mimicking Victorian prose. I would wager that she is so good, so authentic, that she could fool the literati of the time. She sets up the prologue of The Half-Killed in second-person point of view, potentially the only clue that this isn’t a book written in the late 1800s, and it is an effective prologue in the sense that it introduces us to our protagonist, Dorothea Hawes, as a young girl witnessing the death of her family. It is a gorgeous and horrific scene, and sets a gripping tone that does not let up until the last page is turned - and only then can we again safely draw breath.

Olson’s prose never wanes, never dims, and is fluid and melodic throughout the entire novel. I have not read much, particularly in the fantasy realm, that matches it. It is poetry at times, so much so that it actually gets in the way of the story. In fact, one of my only real gripes with The Half-Killed is that its language is so descriptive and beautiful that it sometimes interrupts the pacing of the book. I found myself lost amidst passages, happily so, but then confused when the action of the plot regained its footing and needing to relocate my bearings. This is actually not a bad problem to have, but it does create problems for story.

That story revolves around a sweltering Victorian London, seized in an unnatural heat that dries up the Thames and causes even some of the stuffiest citizenry in the history of humanity to loosen a button or two. Thea, who had once used her talents as a supernatural medium to become a celebrity of London, has since fallen on typically hard times. In a period when the act of convening with the spiritual realm is both scandalous and popular, Thea stands out as one of the few practitioners who can actually do the deed. But it comes with a price - voices that constantly assail her and memories she wishes she could bury in her mental graveyard. It is only when Julian Chissick arrives on her doorstep, imploring her to help him find the killer of his recently murdered sister, that Thea is drawn back into a life and to people that she would rather forget. Naturally, this leads to a host of further problems and much more death.

Walking through Victorian London with Quenby Olson is a treat. This is an author who obviously loves this time period, cherishes it, but in loving it can also see its faults and point them out piece by piece to a reader. Victorian London is disgusting - particularly in unseasonable heat. There are no air conditioned parlors to escape to here, and the aforementioned moral stuffiness of the time means that one cannot simply throw on a pair of shorts instead of their proper gown or trousers. Olson turns this era, often depicted as glamorous and clean, into what it truly is - a dim horror. Candle wax seems to be on everything, the streets are lined with all manner of refuse and excretion, and the bodies of people, described in minute detail, verge on the grotesque. At the same time, The Half-Killed does manage to capture the romance of Victorian England. The interactions between the main characters, each genuine in their own way, is decidedly proper but yearning. And London is always London, no matter how dirty it gets. The attention to detail in The Half-Killed is extraordinary and exciting.

It’s amazing how much Olson gets right with this book. The humor is dry, like the parched bed of the Thames itself, but genuinely funny. “If she’s ever been in contact with a spirit,” Thea says of one character who fashions herself Britain’s Next Top Medium, “it’s never been more frightening than one she could mix into her afternoon tea.” Or, when speaking of a former suitor’s possibility of bearing children, Thea claims that, “he’s always been something of a child himself. For him to have a son or daughter of his own... I don’t think he’d relish the competition." The delivery here is pitch perfect, and it isn’t often that I take the time to write out quotes from books these days, but I found many of Olson’s one liners to be worthy of repeat. She also gets dialogue right, which is extremely hard to do, particularly when writing about a real-world time period. Characters talk in dialect, but there is no heavy-handed apostrophe work here. Rather, the author understands how speech patterns and word choice can invoke dialect better than any attempt at trying to out-muddle Irvine Welsh.

The only thing that keeps me from declaring The Half-Killed to be the perfect Victorian fantasy thriller is the ending. ***Spoilers to follow, so beware.*** There is a Fight Club-style ending to The Half-Killed that left me unsatisfied, and I wonder if that’s mostly on me for not really understanding this type of conclusion. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden is blasted out of the narrator’s head by a well-placed gun shot that leaves said narrator still alive. Something similar happens with The Half-Killed, but I couldn’t really figure out why, in either book, this left the protagonist alive. How does approaching death’s door drive out these dark passengers? Perhaps this is something Olson will explore in the next book, and she has plenty left yet to explain. A certain set of photographs and their larger implications is also left unresolved, and even the villain of The Half-Killed is never truly unveiled. Some of these are, again, good problems to have because it means an eventual sequel to this beautiful novel, and I am here for that.

OFFICIAL AUTHOR INFORMATION: Claire North is actually Catherine Webb, a Carnegie Medal-nominated young-adult novel author whose first book, Mirror Dreams, was written when she was just 14 years old. She went on to write seven more successful YA novels. 

It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost through chess, backgammon - every game under the sun.

But those whom fortune favors may be invited to compete in the higher league... a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on the scale of a continent.

Among those worthy of competing in the higher league, three unusually talented contestants play for the highest stakes of all...

FORMAT/INFO: This novel was originally published as three digital-only novellas: The Serpent, The Thief, and The Master. Trilogy, released on May 28th, 2019 counts 448 pages and is available in e-book, paperback and audiobook format.

THE SERPENT

THE THIEF

THE MASTER