Hullo, lovely people! It’s time to do something I really mean to make a habit of – have meant to, for an entire year! It’s not gone well. Anyway: Trope Check returns for Eyes of the Void, following a year-long hiatus after the first book in The Final Architecture was released. I’ll do a list... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/7KUHU75NvP8 Published by: TORGenre: Science fiction, space operaSeries: The Final Architecture (#2 of many, hopefully)Pages: 593 pagesFormat: paperback The sequel to 2021’s Shards of the Earth was among my most-awaited sci-fi titles of this year. When I read Shards I fell in love with its characters, a mishmash of memorable scoundrels who made for one... Continue Reading →
Published by: OrbitGenre: Epic FantasyPages: 656Format: ebookReceived free arc copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review https://youtu.be/3-UcuXBPRiI All sequels should accomplish what John Gwynne’s Hunger of the Gods has. That’s to say, Gwynne’s latest expands the world and characters in such a way as to make The Shadow of the Gods appear a... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/B7nV20cD6ec This book has got me in a bind. It’s easy to relegate it to one of two neat classifications: either a straight-faced satire that takes the piss out of the military-industrial complex; or else, a fully realised celebration of the serving man’s fraternity, of the sacrifice of the individual for the collective’s greater good,... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4FZcNA62LQ Published by: Self-Published, recently acquired by TORGenre: Slice of Life FantasyPages: 318Format: ebookPurchased Copy for my Kindle from Amazon The blogosphere has been abuzz with talk of Travis Baldree’s debut, Legends & Lattes, and for good reason. Slice of life stories are character-driven to their core—no wonder, then, that Baldree’s novel is such a... Continue Reading →
Reading Norse sagas, in translation, isn’t nearly as engaging an affair as you might hope it would be. Old texts demand not only a deep fount of knowledge and focus rarely found in the twenty-first century, but also context that virtually no non-specialized reader can appreciate fully. They don’t necessarily have all that our minds... Continue Reading →
The classics, Dear Reader! They possess a foundational cultural force, are the prism through which we can understand much about a society at a certain point in time, and are often inextricably linked with imperial values (you can find more about this last point in Frank Kermode's book, The Classic, as David Damrosch points out... Continue Reading →
Previous || Next Last time, I spoke about the Dictator's capacity to inject emotional tension by unravelling other characters in horrific ways, either by mistake or by design. Giving the Dictator the stage in-between action sequences is even more rewarding than having them in the thick of it, bending allies to their will rather than... Continue Reading →
Attention, curmudgeonly octogenarians! Are you looking for a good way to spend your golden years? Whether you adore beautiful views, crave fields of gold, or are itching for that wasteland full of rotting orc carcasses, we at the Reliquary Tourist Agency have the best locales for you! Sit back, rest your weary bones--what's left of... Continue Reading →
There's something delectably fun about a villain that's perfectly defined by their name, especially when that name is a monosyllabic nouns like "Pride" or "Sin" or "Ruin". Everything's on the label - you can be comfortable in your expectations as to the goals they'll pursue but how they get there is anybody's guess! It's also... Continue Reading →
The Grimoire Reliquary 