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
Today I am going to talk about something a little different. As I have mentioned before on this blog, I read a lot of books each year. Last year I read about 90 books (40 new releases and 50 older ones). Due to this, it actually matters a lot to my reading stamina to be…
Continue reading ➞ The Reserve – 6 Authors You Can Always Depend On
The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley, is a book that has been on my watch list for a long time. I originally came across it while looking for titles to add a little variety into my reading, and a lot of people I trusted told me to check it out. I held off for a long…
I really liked The Emperor’s Blades, by Brian Staveley. The novel debuted in 2013 as the start of the epic Unhewn Throne trilogy, and is a good part of the reason I consider 2013 one of the best years for new debuts I have experienced. Now, three years later, the finale to the trilogy has…
Reviewing a Guy Gavriel Kay book is a tricky thing. The reason for this is when I review a Kay book, I am not assessing whether or not it is good, but more how it stands in comparison to the rest of his work. If you want to know if Children of Earth and Sky…
Continue reading ➞ Children of Earth and Sky – A Quiet and Ponderous Story
This month I had the opportunity to go to a lovely event by the Aspen Institute in NYC on fantasy worldbuilding. At the event, three impressive authors (Hannah Tinti, Mark Tompkins, and Lev Grossman) all talked about how they go about world building and what works best for their method. While there, I managed to…
A little while ago I was contacted by the relatively new author, Jeff Salyards. He has seen some of the reviews I had done, including my post about The Black Company, and wanted to know if I was interested in reading his debut trilogy, the Bloodsounder’s Arc. Salyards described it as a modern Black Company,…
Continue reading ➞ The Bloodsounder’s Arc – One Scribe’s Journey
Recently I had the pleasure to read the fantastic novel City of Blades by Robert J Bennett. The review can be found here but the short story is that the book managed to surpass expectations and live up to the quality established by the first novel in the trilogy, City of Stairs. In the wake…
Continue reading ➞ The Divine Cities – An Interview With Robert J Bennett
Gigantic fantasy series are amazing experiences, but tend to also be gigantic time sinks. As such, each year I pick one large and famous fantasy series to work though for the sake of reading diversity. This year I decided to read David Gemmell’s pivotal Drenai Saga. While reading through this 11 book series, I am…
I had the privilege to trap one of fantasy's most underrated authors, Sebastien de Castell, in a conversation the other day. In it he revealed some interesting tid bits on both his Greatcoats series as well as his new upcoming novel, Spellslinger. For those of you who have read the novels, hopefully this gives you some…
Continue reading ➞ The Greatcoats – An Interview With Sebastien de Castell
