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Blog Archive
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2024
(147)
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October
(12)
- COVER REVEAL: Wild Skies (Yeehaw Dragons #1) by K....
- Book review: Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yar...
- The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso (Re...
- Book review: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
- Book review: The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman
- Review: Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim, Tra...
- Book review: Evil in Me by Brom
- Review: On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs
- Review: Blood Price by Nicole Evans
- Exclusive Cover Reveal with Q&A: Before The End by...
- Hell Of A Witch by Rachel Aaron (reviewed by Mihir...
- Q&A with Michael R. Fletcher about The Storm Benea...
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September
(11)
- New York Minute by Stephen Aryan (reviewed by Mihi...
- Chapter Excerpt: World Walkers by Neal Asher
- Book review: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
- The Sword of Kaigen & Where Loyalties Lie - Specia...
- The Sword of Kaigen & Where Loyalties Lie - Specia...
- Book review: Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
- Review: QUEEN OF DREAMS by Kit Rocha
- Review: The Ending Fire by Saara El-Arifi
- Book review: Fool's Promise by Angela Boord (Etere...
- Author Interview: Yaroslav Barsukov, the Author of...
- SPFBO X Finalist Announcement: Here's our Champion
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August
(11)
- Cover Reveal & Kickstarter Announcement: Legend of...
- COVER REVEAL: Supplicant by Delilah Waan
- Book review: The Day of the Door by Laurel Hightower
- Book review: Incidents Around The House by Josh Ma...
- Review: Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright
- Review: The Phoenix Keeper by S.A. MacLean
- SPFBO X - the Fifth Diminution & Semi-finalist Upd...
- SPFBO X - the Fourth Diminution & Semi-finalist Up...
- Review: Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis
- SPFBO X: The Third Diminution & Semifinalist Updat...
- COVER REVEAL: Drown Deep By Phil Williams
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July
(18)
- Review: The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
- Interview: Adam Weller chats with Mike Shackle Abo...
- Review: The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by
- Book review: Murder on Hunter’s Eve (The Lamplight...
- Echo of Worlds by M. R. Carey (Reviewed by Shazzie)
- Review: The Hunter's Gambit by Ciel Pierlot
- Book review: Between Dragons and Their Wrath by D...
- FBC's Critically Underrated Reads
- The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst (Reviewed by Sha...
- SPFBO X Interview: Ciara Hartford, the Author of T...
- Review: The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter
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October
(12)
Book Review: The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso
Kembral is shown to be an extremely competent Hound on maternity leave. There are people who want her back at work to do some challenging things, and she’s just trying to get them to understand that she’s not back at work yet. What a Hound (or a Cat, as you shall see if you read the book) does I think I’ve understood, but I couldn’t explain satisfactorily with a gun to my head, or worse. She’s like a magical investigator. You’ll just have to read the book and see for yourself.
You know those movies, where there’s a party or social gathering, and that’s used to introduce the viewer to different characters who may or may not matter to the story? The first two chapters are that, and it’s a bit dizzying in how much information is given to the reader at the get go. Quite a lot of it is useful, but I just couldn’t hold it in my head as the story progressed, and I just relied on the author’s competence to remind me of something important if it mattered. It did work out, and I really enjoyed watching the main character put things together and make her alliances. Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I am not sure if this makes the book friendly to newbies of the genre.
As for the magic, I really enjoyed how the different layers of echoes added awe but also stakes to the adventure, and loved watching things go more and more insane as Kembral got deeper in. The setting is what got me to pay attention to this book, and while it can be a wholly of information initially, I don’t think there was a way to smoothen it out, and get the impression that the author did the best she could. Beyond that point though, there’s a steady drip of the setting given throughout the book, and that was done very impressively.
A prominent theme of in book that gives it a niche target audience would be motherhood. Like I said, new mom away from baby for a night, and while we have seen it before in TV shows or movies or even books (I haven’t so if you know any that do this, feel free to drop a recommendation in the comments), but I liked how every other action taken by the main character was colored by her new responsibility or concern for the world that her baby Emmi would inherit, as well as her conflicting emotions in taking time away for herself, or trying to decide how she would balance what she wanted in her career/job and with her daughter. I do wish the resolution wasn’t abrupt here. When I mean abrupt, there’s a drastic change in like three paragraphs, and this needed to be done better, and more convincingly. As for repetition, you know how much I loathe it in books. There were a lot of the same phrases or words used (we could’ve done with one or more less mentions of her insides being rearranged during pregnancy etc), and I think the concentration on some aspects of motherhood was overly done in pockets, and there had to be stronger editing to spread it across the book in a less making-a-point-in-your-face way. I realize I’m not in a position to critique the content, but it’s the delivery here that I’ve an issue with. Just copyedit better next time?
Extending on my feelings about the motherhood theme, I enjoyed how the romance and pining (if you like a book with pining) worked its way into it and her need to be able to ask for help when needed. Now, the miscommunication, it wasn’t bad here. There is some. But you get to watch it being worked out by the end. So just keep that in mind.
CONCLUSION: I said a lot and have trouble pinning down my feelings for this book, but just know, I do recommend it. If you review, it’s definitely worth a request, and if you don’t, worth a purchase. Or talk to your library. I think a lot of you will enjoy this one.
Buy Blood of the Old Kings
Official Author Website
Buy Blood Price
Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: EMILY TESH, a two-time Astounding Award finalist, is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning Greenhollow Duology, which begins with the novella Silver in the Wood and concludes with Drowned Country.
Publisher: Length: 448 pages Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardcover, paperback
The Sword of Kaigen & Where Loyalties Lie - Special Editions Interview with Shawn T. King & Tom Jilesen (interviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)
The Sword of Kaigen & Where Loyalties Lie - Special Editions Interview with Bryce O'Connor (interviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)
Book links: Amazon, Goodreads
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: PAOLO BACIGALUPI is the author of The Water Knife and The Windup Girl, as well as the YA novel Ship Breaker, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has won a Hugo and a Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and he is a three-time winner of the Locus Award. He lives in Colorado.
Publisher: Knopf (Jul 09, 2024) Length: 576 pages (hardcover) Formats: audiobook, ebook, hardcover
Their favorite stories are about messy worlds, strong women, and falling in love with the people who love you just the way you are. When they’re not writing, you can find them making handmade jewelry, caring too much about video games, or freaking out about their favorite books, all of which are chronicled on their various social media accounts.
Buy The Ending Fire
Read a review The Final Strife (Book 1)
After a decade of working in marketing and communications, she returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in African studies alongside her writing career. El-Arifi knew she was a storyteller from the moment she told her first lie. Over the years, she has perfected her tall tales into epic ones. She currently resides in London as a full-time procrastinator.
FORMAT/INFO: The Ending Fire was published by Del Rey on September 10th, 2024. It is 512 pages long and told in third person from multiple POVs, including Hassa, Sylah, and Anoor. It is available in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: After weeks and months of simmering tension, war is breaking out across the land. The Wardens face a rebellion within their capital city, but what neither side realizes is that a much deadlier force is preparing to march on them. The Zalaam have found their Child of Fire, and with their arrival, are ready to launch an assault to wipe their enemies from the map. It will take an alliance of nations to stand against the Zalaam and their god-forged creations - but even that might not be enough.
The Ending Fire takes a while to rev up, but when the final battle arrives, it's a heart pounding conclusion. This is one of those books where I'm going to recommend you have a fairly solid grasp of the factions and characters going into the finale, because I certainly struggled to lift the fog from my memory during the early pages of the book. There are a plethora of factions and types of magic at this stage of the game, and they are all crashing together in this finale. The first third of the book is an absolute whirlwind tour around the map, checking in at various locations; my struggles to remember who was who definitely hampered my ability to connect with characters, making the early parts of the book a bit slower for me.
I found Anoor's storyline the most compelling, as she struggles to find meaning and purpose in her new situation (to say more would be more spoilers than I care to share). Suffice to say, I empathized with her situation, as she is thrown into an unfamiliar land and wants to believe that those who surround her truly want the best for her and for the world. It's not easy to watch, but given the specific circumstances Anoor is in, I can buy the justification machine that she turns on in her head to give a pass to things that make her uneasy.
Hassa also has a good arc, finally hitting the point where she is no longer content to pretend to be a meek servant, but ready to stand up in open defiance of the world. She is the true heart of the story, trying to lift her people out of oppression without losing sight of the fact that they have to have a moral code at the center, or they risk becoming just as bad as their oppressors.
What really made me struggle with The Ending Fire, however, were the various romantic relationships. There was a lot of eleventh hour drama that felt manufactured and drawn out; when characters did finally get together, there were incredibly rushed scenes of spice that were over in a page. It made the culmination of the relationship feel perfunctory, a check box marked instead of a beautiful union. I don't mind spice in the slightest, but I honestly think in this case that a fade-to-black would have been the better move here. It ironically would have made the beat feel longer and more heartfelt by leaving it to the reader to fill in what happened, rather than throwing a few paragraphs on the page and calling it a day.
On the bright side, however, I do think the final battle itself is well done. After limiting the POV to our three main characters (Sylah, Hassa, and Anoor), the story opens up and jumps around to multiple side characters, letting us see pivotal moments across the battlefield, full of both heartbreak and joyous success. It's hard to put those final chapters down as multiple factions wage war for the fate of the world.
CONCLUSION: The Ending Fire had a lot to wrangle in this final book, and it definitely shows. There's a lot of rush to get pieces into place, an effort that can make the story feel both rushed and meandering at the same time. That perhaps isn't surprising given the expansiveness of the world-building, but it does make this last installment feel a bit uneven. There are definitely moments when the book shines, but it's not as well-executed a landing as I hoped.
Author Interview: Yaroslav Barsukov, the Author of Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory
TODAY IS THE DAY!
We have chosen our champion, and we’re excited to announce the winner and runners-up.
Cover Reveal & Kickstarter Announcement: Legend of Tal book II: A Queen's Command by J.D.L. Rosell
Official Author Website
Buy Mistress of Lies
Official Author Website
Buy The Phoenix Keeper
SPFBO X - the Fifth Diminution & Semi-finalist Update (by Shazzie)
Official Author Website
Buy Full Speed to a Crash Landing
Buy The Mercy of Gods
FORMAT/INFO: The Mercy of Gods will be published by Orbit Books on August 6th, 2024. It is 432 pages and is told in third person through multiple POVs. It is available in hardcover and ebook formats.
Interview: Adam Weller chats with Mike Shackle About His Fantasy Horror Serial The Witchfinder Chronicles
Mike Shackle’s What Evil Lurks is the first entry of the fantasy horror serial “The Witchfinder Chronicles” and is set during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Lord Jon Willem Legray, Witchfinder General under the Queen, is a veteran of decades of monster slaying throughout 16th century England.
Official Author Website
Buy The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King
Book review: Murder on Hunter’s Eve (The Lamplight Murder Mysteries #3) by Morgan Stang
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Morgan Stang lives in the humid part of Texas. He graduated from the University of Houston with a BBA. By day he works in accounting and by night he sleeps, and sometime in between he writes in a wide variety of fantasy genres, ranging from dark fantasy (The Bartram's Maw series) to gaslamp murder mystery (The Lamplight Murder Mysteries) to cozy fantasy (The Bookshop and the Barbarian). He is a fan of all things nerdy, and lives with an immortal ball python.
Publisher: Morgan Stang Length: 398 pages Formats: ebook, paperback
Echo of Worlds by M. R. Carey
Buy Echo of Worlds here - U.S. | U.K.
FORMAT/INFO: This title was published by Orbit Books in June 2024, in hardback, ebook, and audio formats. This is the concluding book in the Pandominium Duology.
Buy The Hunter's Gambit
FORMAT/INFO: The Hunter's Gambit was published on June 25th, 2024 by Angry Robot. It is 400 pages long and told in third person from Kazan's point of view. It is available in paperback and ebook formats.
Book review: Between Dragons and Their Wrath by Devin Madson (reviewed by Adam Weller)
Book Review: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Official Author Website
Buy The Spellshop here - U.S. | U.K.
FORMAT/INFO: This title was published by Pan Macmillan in the U.K. in July 2024, and by Bramble in the U.S. in July 2024.
Official Author Website
Buy The Price of Redemption
FORMAT/INFO: The Price of Redemption was published by Saga Press on July 9th, 2024. It is 368 pages long and told in third person from multiple POVs including Enid. It is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: Fleeing a homeland gripped by revolution, sorceress Marquese Enid d'Tancreville fears all is lost when her ship is captured by another bearing the flag of a Theocratic Confessor. But a third ship under the command of the Albion navy saves her, giving Enid a surprising opportunity: she can join their crew and fight back against the revolutionary forces that have killed everyone she cares about. Enid's never sailed before, but she'll have to learn quickly if she's to use her magic to aid the ship on a dangerous mission in enemy waters.
The Price of Redemption is a fantasy book in the vein of Master and Commander that fails to do anything interesting with its fantasy elements. I'm perplexed why the author didn't simply make this a historical fantasy novel; as it is, he instead simply took the map of Europe and slapped new names on all the countries. But in doing so, the author didn't create anything new out of these countries. I can't tell you anything about their history or culture that distinguishes them from their English or French counterparts. Even the Theocratic Revolution is just the French Revolution by a different name.
By going to the effort of creating fictitious countries, the author has set the expectation that this world operates differently than our own, and that magic is integral to how it functions. Instead, were I to remove every element of magic from the book, 90% of the story would carry on as if nothing were missing. If this had been a historical fantasy set in Europe during the 1800s, my expectation for world-building would have been considerably lower, and the low magic setting would have fit right in. Instead, the author spends more time talking ABOUT magic than in actually USING the magic.
Much of this could be forgiven if the nautical side of things had held my attention. I came to this story ready to love an old-fashioned adventure; I was raised on Horatio Hornblower TV movies and have read my fair share of 18th and 19th century authors. Unfortunately, I found the overall story itself to be incredibly slow, more interested in explaining how ships work and the hierarchy of naval ranks than in actually moving the story forward. There are a few naval actions which are engaging in and of themselves, and I did like the overall atmosphere of the story. This is a rare occasion where I can say that if this novel had been trimmed down to a novella, I may have ended up liking it considerably more.
I do want to applaud the author for making this a gender equal society, where women serve on ships alongside men without any comment at all. But again, the author strangely undercuts himself with how his male characters react to the female lead character. For the first half of the book, not a single man can have an interaction with the female lead without ogling her or making a remark about her elegant neck or having internal thoughts about her scent. This constant objectification was off-putting to say the least.
CONCLUSION: Those who have a strong love for 18th and 19th century naval traditions may find themselves liking The Price of Redemption considerably more than me. While I did appreciate the atmosphere and tone it was trying to recreate, it ultimately muddied the waters by adding fantasy elements to the world that just didn't aid in the story the author was trying to tell. The result is that The Price of Redemption is an unfortunate miss for me in every way, making it a hard book to recommend.