https://youtu.be/7o2fMKCEk6k Anthony Ryan's follow-up to The Pariah does everything I wanted it to do. Yes, folks, The Martyr is a quicker-paced, more action-heavy novel than its predecessor. Ryan continues to pepper compelling drama in this world of knights and outlaws, at the core of which is the fiery blaze that is the relationship between the... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/bSIleN01sCc Series: Book of the Ancestor (#2)Length: 407 pagesGenre: Dark fantasy How I've longed to return to Nona's story in the year and several months since I read Red Sister. Time and opportunity conspired against me--until this summer, when I read through the second Book of the Ancestor in two sittings. A return to Sweet... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/MwsyGpzHJJ4 What is a trope but a key to genre conventions, a shorthand for the various concepts by which the genres we love become instantly recognizable? Today, I take another look at The Pariah by Anthony Ryan, which I reviewed earlier this week. Prepare yourselves, for these are a post and video most Spoilery! If... Continue Reading →
Watch and Like this review on YouTube (It helps!): https://youtu.be/tpTXjbyMSfs It's such a joy to click with a novel. Those initial pages which plunge you into the world and characters, the expectations you build of who the central cast might be… to then see those expectations continually undermined by the changing circumstances of Anthony Ryan's... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/3c7STc-n_lU You know what I like? Birds. Nature is not kind to birds. It is not fair. It is not just. Why? Because nature never gave birds the one thing they need, the one thing they could use to fulfil their feathered potential: opposable thumbs. This is where Death's Door comes in. If there was... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/LctHJbtqSJg My history with the Yarnsworld is one of deep adoration and what some might describe as moral insanity. Yes, reader, I have completely and pitilessly butchered the chronological/publication order of Benedict Patrick's wonderful Yarnsworld books. I read the first, then followed it with the fourth, which was just about to come out when I... Continue Reading →
Series: The Redwinter Chronicles #1Genre: Dark fantasyLength: 327 pages https://youtu.be/C1y7-mbZTXI My first Ed McDonald novel did not disappoint. Daughter of Redwinter follows the story of Raine, a young girl who can see the spirits of the dead. This talent has brought her danger throughout her life--to have the grave sight is to live always in... Continue Reading →
Previous | Next I love short stories. I rarely find the time to read short stories. This daily series of blog posts is my attempt to read and examine at least one piece of shorter fiction per day. This is the first piece of original fiction in Apex Magazine #136. The pastel was growing in my house... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/ClaEXVuFo4Y Eskara Helsene has been many things: an angry teenager, the victim of brainwashing and abuse, queen and villain and an enemy to the gods themselves. In Death's Beating Heart, she aims for the stars by trying to save the world from Sevorai's nightmarish hunger, Norvet Meruun. The issues with that are numerous: first among... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/ybwU401U3VI Years after closing the book on the Darkest Dungeon, I was thrilled to discover that the latest Steam Next Fest offered a demo of the soon to be released Darkest Dungeon 2; I finished my--predictably bloody--first sojourn into what is promising to be as massive a game as the first one. This is once... Continue Reading →
The Grimoire Reliquary 