The Tiger And The Wolf – Team Maniye

This was a hard book to summarize my feelings on. The Tiger and the Wolf, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is a weird novel built on the premise of shapeshifters. Set in a fantasy world where every human belongs to an animal tribe, individuals are all capable of shapeshifting into their peoples’ totem animal at will. It…

The Ballad Of Black Tom – Not Going To Dance Around This One

I’m certainly not a prolific reviewer - you can take a look at the history of the blog and see that without too much difficulty. At the same time, since joining The Quill to Live I’ve reviewed a decent amount of horror stories. I’ve come to some conclusions on what attributes great (or just my…

Noumenon Infinity – If Only There Was A Beyond

If Noumenon felt like the detached and cool but ultimately understanding older cousin, Noumenon: Infinity is your loving aunt who also happens to be a trained therapist. The first book took a more removed and neutral approach to its narrative style as well as the questions it posed about the nature of purpose and drive,…

The Goblin Emperor – A Short Reign

If you are engaged in the fantasy genre, chances are that you have heard of Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor before. This stand-alone novel about court intrigue is a popular recommendation from a number of respectable reviewers and is considered by many to be a modern classic. However, I don’t trust anything I haven’t read…

The Dreamers – A Wake Up Call

At least once a year, it feels like the news highlights an outbreak of some dangerous disease. Very often it’s contagious, with disastrous side effects and varying numbers of fatalities. I myself was quarantined to the University of Delaware campus during the outbreak of swine flu in 2009. The Center for Disease Control was brought…

A Bad Deal For The Whole Galaxy – But A Good One For Me

Alex White was really working overtime in 2018. Fresh off the release of his debut book, A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe (Big Ship), White has just released a sequel with an equally lengthy name, A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy (Bad Deal), in the same year. Big Ship was one…

An Excess Male – More Than Necessary Reading

It's a great time for readers and writers of dystopian fiction. Whatever world you want to imagine where something terrible is happening, it is out there for you. One can recede into the classics, finding new relevancies and warnings. Then there are the newer stories that draw inspiration from the past, with the emotional resonance…

The Gutter Prayer – Get Your Mind In This Gutter

This is pretty much the coolest post ever on the site, and I’ll tell you why. I’m writing from the future! Not only did we here at The Quill to Live receive an advanced reader’s copy of The Gutter Prayer (in exchange for an honest review), but I’m writing this from the back of a…