The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch came out over ten years ago, and ever since the massively popular Gentleman Bastard series ground to a standstill, there have been any number of debut heist books that generate tons of excitement as something to fill the gap. This comparison is almost always deeply unfair to debuts…
Continue reading ➞ The Silverblood Promise – He’s Just So Dumb
I am back with a report about another Darkwater Legacy book. For those unfamiliar, The Darkwater Legacy is an epic fantasy series by Chris Wooding that currently comprises two gigantic volumes: The Ember Blade and The Shadow Casket. The Ember Blade came out all the way back in 2018 and followed the story of an…
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to another year of The Quill to Live. Our first review of the year is of a fabulous book I read over the holidays that greatly impressed me. Empire of Exiles, by Erin M. Evans, is a hit-the-ground-running mystery about four POVs in a giant society locked in a…
Continue reading ➞ Empire of Exiles – Shapeshifting Salty Mysteries
There is a very confusing forward to Sidewinders, the second book of The Fire Sacraments by Robert V.S. Redick. In it, Redick very helpfully recaps the major events of book one (which I would have been lost without) and then goes on to say that he sees Sidewinders as something between a sequel and a…
If I was going to say only one thing about Speaking Bones, the final book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty quartet, it would be that it is certainly its own thing. I know all of that sounds inelegant, but I got into a heated Reddit argument about this series earlier today, and arguing on an…
Picking up any epic fantasy series can be an intensely intimidating experience. With their huge page counts, multiple volumes, expansive worldbuilding, and intricate magic systems, fantasy epics can easily overwhelm readers. These enormous series are often recommended by fantasy fans as “must-reads,” but how can you tell if you will like something that big before…
Continue reading ➞ Seven Epic Fantasy Series Worth The Time Investment
Sometimes a book comes along with such a powerful blurb that you can’t help but be drawn to it. The Starless Crown, by James Rollins, is one such novel. A kind editor at Tor sent me the elevator pitch for this book back in the middle of last year and I was immediately entranced. A…
“If I needed to describe Empire of the Vampire, by Jay Kristoff, in one word, that word would be ‘extra.’ This gigantic epic fantasy, that reads like a cross between Interview with a Vampire and The Name of the Wind, does everything in its power to be edgier than the sharpest knife, louder than a…
And so commences my final review of The Song of the Shattered Sands. Here we are again with another gigantic book by Bradley P. Beaulieu - filled with wonderful prose and thrilling worldbuilding set in an original Arabian-inspired world. This is my final plea for you to go check it out. But, now there is…
The Blacktongue Thief, by Christopher Buehlman, is the first book in the Blacktongue series and a book that left me with a profound sense of deja vu. It is a book that I both felt I had read before, yet is bursting to the seams with originality and authorial flare. It's crammed full of some…
Continue reading ➞ The Blacktongue Thief – The Magic Of Student Loans
