Anytime I read the first book in a new series that follows one I love as much as Red Rising, I approach with both a huge dose of excitement but also a touch of apprehension that it won’t live up to the previous series. I am so excited that Iron Gold lived up to every expectation I had and maybe even set some new ones for the rest of the series. It has all the traits that Ioved in the Red Rising series, but the current story stays fresh and exciting. Iron Gold is set about 10 years after the last one left off and the peace that Darrow and Mustang worked to achieve is beginning to show signs of serious strain. There is the threat from the Ash Lord, but internally there is also politcal strife as groups try to jockey for power. Darrow is faced with some incredibly hard choices and some of his decisions, quite frankly, just don’t go over well. It is interesting seeing him go from being the favored son of the land, a living superhero of his time, to, well … you’ll have to read to find out, I don’t want to go into…
Here’s a rundown of the books we think you should look out for in coming in the week. See any that you are really looking forward to? Find any you had not heard of yet? Know of books we missed? We know we don’t have everything and would love to hear what you feel we may have overlooked. FANTASY SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY SCIENCE FICTION
One of the perks I’ve found with working with several bloggers is that we can cover more books than we have time to read on our own. So, when it came time to make our Best of 2015 list, I decided to ask each of the contributors to submit a ranked list of their favorite books (yep, I’m mean like that. Choosing favorites can be hard, ranking is even harder). I then used a scaled points system to calculate an over all list. So, the end result features a variety of books that either several of us agreed belong in the top 10, or books that perhaps just one reviewer read, but placed in their high on their ranked choices of the year. With so many great choices we had to expand our collaborative list past just 10 books to 25. Since our blog started late in the year, many of these books do not currently have reviews here. But we do plan on adding them, so keep your eye out. So here it is, Speculative Herald’s list of our absolute favorite books from 2015! And because I like to get straight to the good stuff, I am listing them in order starting with…