I know it's terrible, but I like puns in my titles. Anthony Ryan caught a lot of flack for Queen of Fire, his final book of The Raven’s Shadow. In the days since I started and finished his new book, The Waking Fire, I have had an alarming number of people come up to me…
Continue reading ➞ The Waking Fire – Hotter Than A Sleeping Ember
This year I am spending a little more time trying to read new and upcoming authors. As such, I have identified a few books that I am keeping an eye on as they come out. I like to think of them as ‘Dark Horses’, or books that I know little about, have fairly unknown authors,…
Right off the bat I am going to say The Winter King, by Bernard Cornwell, is probably a bit too long and could use a thorough editing. Why am I starting with this point you ask? Well funny story, The Winter King is my book club's book this month, and I had an eight hour…
Continue reading ➞ The Winter King – Sometimes You Need The Audiobook
I had a strange experience recently as I finished Dust, the last of Hugh Howey's Silo trilogy. I was about 60% of the way through the book when I realized that there was absolutely no way the book could end that would leave me happy or satisfied. Unsurprisingly, I finished the book and one of…
Continue reading ➞ The Fastidious Reader – Is An Author Responsible For His Plot?
Michael J. Sullivan is one of my favorite authors. Not only is he generally a great guy, but he also wrote one of my top series, The Riyria Revelations. The books are about as middle the road fantasy as they come, containing elves, magic, swords, dragons, sorcerers, and everything else you need for your generic…
Todd Lockwood is an incredibly talented artist, known both for his fantasy book covers and art in other areas such as Magic The Gathering. After decades of drawing covers for other fantasy books, he has tried his hand at writing his own; The Summer Dragon. The Summer Dragon is one of the most beautiful books…
It’s starting to warm up here in Chicagoland. The birds are chirping, the grass is growing, the sun is occasionally showing its face, and the scent of thawing dog shit is filling the air. You can understand why this is my absolute favorite time of the year. Now that we have that out of the…
Mark Lawrence and I have an interesting relationship. As I talked about in my review of Prince of Fools, when I finished his first trilogy, The Broken Empire, I was immensely disappointed with how he chose to close out the story. The final book, Emperor of Thorns, put him on my blacklist and it was…
Continue reading ➞ The Wheel of Osheim – A Different Kind Of Hero
