I am going to try and avoid the endless skeleton puns that are rattling my bo-... as I review The Bone Orchard, by Sara A. Mueller. This stand-alone science-fantasy necromantic who-dun-it has a great premise, compelling writing, and a fantastic world. The only thing that kept it from being one of my top picks of…
Continue reading ➞ The Bone Orchard – Ghosts, Ghouls, And Whores
Congratulations to Josiah Bancroft for completing what must have felt like a Herculean task. For those that do not know, The Book of Babel began as a self-published series that slowly gained a cult following until it was picked up by a major publisher. With the fourth and final book, The Fall of Babel, coming…
Continue reading ➞ The Fall of Babel – Some Assembly Required
The Ring-Sworn Trilogy, by Howard Andrew Jones, is an excellent series that is flying under the radar. When The Goddess Wakes is the third and final installment of the series. I have reviewed the two previous books, For the Killing of Kings (which was a top pick the year it came out) and Upon the…
Continue reading ➞ When The Goddess Wakes – Stop Sleeping On This Series
The Helm of Midnight, by Marina J. Lostetter, is a book with a lot of ideas. The first entry in The Five Penalties series, I find myself at a loss as to whether to recommend it or not. On the one hand, Lostetter has built a world just brimming with interesting rules and magic. On…
Continue reading ➞ The Helm Of Midnight – A Steep Hike With A View
Orbit was wonderful enough to send me a review copy of Dead Man In A Ditch by Luke Arnold. It is the second book in the Fetch Phillips Archives, and you can find my review of book one in my fantasy cop throwdown here. I was going to hold off on reading Ditch because I…
The Obsidian Tower, by Melissa Caruso, is the first in a new spinoff series set in the Tethered Mage world. Normally, I am not one for spinoff series; I enjoy jumping into new worlds rather than returning to ones I know for what is often a B-list version of the original series I liked. However,…
So it’s basically Dresden, but British. That might seem reductive and lazy to say, but honestly, if you like the very popular and well known The Dresden Files, and you like British stuff, you will love this. That is not to say that Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch, is in any way a rip-off…
Continue reading ➞ Rivers Of London – Fine, I Will Read The Rest
I never really intended to read this book. In fact, I didn't even know it existed until Andrew handed it to me in a parking lot, with all the subtlety of a kid’s first drug deal. All I needed was the book’s cover and tag line “the moon’s first murder is just the beginning.” And…
Jeff Noon’s A Man of Shadows practically bursts with promise, from the intriguing cover design to a captivating back-cover summary (despite the latter being plagued by a typo...more on that later). The distinct story elements scream off the page like a paperboy shouting headlines on a 1930s street corner: “It’s got noir! It’s got murder!…
If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s horror stories. If there’s one more thing I like, it’s murder mysteries. If there’s one last thing I like, it’s dirigibles. You can imagine my excitement when I first discovered that the second book in the Johannes Cabal series was titled Johannes Cabal the Detective, the increase in…
