The Family Plot by Cherie Priest is a wonderfully atmospheric and chillingly gothic ghost story populated with well rounded characters, a particularly malevolent ghost and a house with a character all of its own. I loved this. It seriously gave me the goosebumps and, frankly (although I could be something of a wuss) scared me into not reading alone late at night, I admit that this book just really worked for me. I probably can’t put my finger on exactly why but I just liked it as soon as I started to read. We start the story with a deal being struck between a salvage operator and a property owner in the process of having her mansion demolished. Augusta Withrow inherited the family mansion. Not wishing to live there she is selling anything and everything that can be removed in order to benefit from the process. Chuck Dutton is the owner of a salvage company that has hit a crisis. The books are in the red and the promise of all the bounty sitting in the Withrow home is too good an offer to miss, even if it means going further into debt, this could be the golden egg that…

Ah, the final chapter in a trilogy. It is always bittersweet when pick up that last book in series, excited to find out what comes next, yet wondering how the final chapters will go for characters you have grown to love during the series, sad to think that your journey with them is almost at a close. I have really enjoyed the books in the Bloodbound series, so I definitely felt this going in. There’s almost a sense of nervousness if I will be satisfied the end of series. No one wants to depart on a bad note, and it is hard know that even if you love it, there’s no guarantee you will get to read more about the characters. But, excitement to read overshadows all of that, and so I dove into The Bloodsworn without hesitation. The Bloodsworn takes off immediately, with our beloved characters facing situations more dire than ever before as they face the prospect of the complete loss of their land and people. The threat is very real and quite dire. With King Erik, well, let’s just call him “indisposed“, due to the bloodbinder from the last book,  Alix and Liam face new challenges of running the land, while trying to not…

The Hike is one of those reads that quite unexpectedly takes you by storm.  I had no idea what the book was about and in fact confess I felt a little anxious before picking it up but as it happens this story grabbed my attention completely from the start and held me captivated for the duration.  I think my biggest dilemma now is how to actually write an effective review that gives nothing away at the same time as making you want to pick a copy up. I can say that this book has something of a surreal feel, well, that’s how I  felt reading it.  It’s a strange journey of discovery following in the tracks of a hapless man, Ben, who seems to have stumbled onto the strangest path, a path on which, having witnessed a murder and being forced to flee for his life deep into the wilderness, is nothing like you could ever imagine unless in your wildest dreams. So, being unable to really say too much more about the plot, because this really is a journey that you have to make on your own, I’ll make this review simply about why this worked for me. I…

The Fifth Season was one of my top ten books of 2015, and so I was beyond excited to start reading the second book in the series, The Obelisk Gate. I’m happy to say it was a more than worthy follow-up and I enjoyed it immensely. I have to admit I enjoyed The Fifth Season just a touch more, due to the slower pace of The Obelisk Gate and a slightly more confusing story structure. But overall this is a wonderfully intricate story with multilayered characters, a story that demands you pay attention and savor every new revelation. As she did in the first book, Jemisin treats her readers as intelligent beings and forces you to make many of the connections without spelling everything out. Be warned: this is a series you must read in order. Do not attempt to read The Obelisk Gate without reading The Fifth Season first. You will be lost, I guarantee. Also, there are some mild spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the first book. Jemisin’s story alternates between two main points of view, with a third (and even a fourth, if you count the “interludes”) thrown in at times just to shake things up….

As its title implies, this novel is a bit of an oddball. Even the style of it reminds me a little of a children’s storybook, complete with its own whimsical fairy tale message: Your eyes only see what your mind wants to see, so sometimes all it takes is a change of perspective. Or, if you’d like: Magic is real, if you just look for it. The book starts with an introduction to the saddest protagonist ever. Wil Morgan is literally the kind of guy who has dreams about coming in second in a World’s Biggest Failure competition. He’s crotchety, cynical and unimaginative—but that didn’t used to be the case. His childhood was filled with hopes and dreams, and his mother the brilliant jet propulsion scientist Melinda Morgan always encouraged him to reach for the stars and believe in the possibility of magic. But the year he turned ten, Melinda died in a laboratory accident, leaving young Wil in the sole care of his father who is as different from his mother as can be. Barry Morgan, who was never an outside-of-the-box kind of man to begin with, became even more paranoid and set in his ways after the death…

Fix is the final instalment of Ferrett Steinmetz’s Mancer series and brings to a conclusion a story that I’ve found totally absorbing and unique. I think for this particular review I’m not really going to delve too much into the story.  I don’t want to give anything away and I’m going to make the assumption that you’ve read the previous two books in the series.  If not, well then, I strongly suggest, nay implore, you to do so.   I also recommend not reading further in case there are spoilers for the first two books lurking below. This is a very entertaining series that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.  If you love gaming and movies and all sorts of culture references, huge splashes of fun and a world that brings to you a new form of magic with oodles of action then I think you’re going to love this series. At the end of the last book I remember wondering how this family unit, that I’d come to enjoy reading about so much, would actually get on or even survive.  Let me say from the outset that this book puts you through the wringer a little bit in that respect and in fact…

This is my first Sarah Pinborough book, and ironically it’s not the type of story she usually writes. But it demonstrates just how good a writer she is, so no matter what the subject matter, I know I’ll be picking up her other books in the future. The Language of Dying is a short novella, but within these pages is a very powerful story about loss in all its many forms. I knew going into it that it was about a woman caring for her dying father, but this story turned out to be about so much more. The narrator, an unnamed woman who is about to turn forty, cares for her father who has been living with her for the past year, slowly dying of cancer. The story focuses on his last days, as his doctors have told her the end is near. She reluctantly contacts her four siblings and asks them to visit, and as they arrive one by one, we get to know the fraught and volatile family relationships among this group of brothers and sisters. Peter, the eldest, has led a life of womanizing and has had many ups and downs in his high-powered career. Elder…

For those of you too busy to read this whole post the ‘in brief’ version of this review is that I loved Nevernight. Its a book that I’ve been highly anticipating and we all know how wrong that can sometimes go and yet it lived up to my expectations completely. I really had a good time reading this. It’s a very entertaining and well thought out story with a very readable main protagonist and her sidekick set at it’s heart. A story of assassins with a murderer running amok in their midst. I’m going to set this review on it’s head in terms of my usual style by beginning with a few thoughts or maybe even criticisms. I’ve seen, comparisons being made of this book to the Harry Potter series and I can see where those comparisons are coming from. A sizeable chunk of this story is set in a school, the protagonists are teenagers and there are all sorts of fantasy elements blended into the school ranging from bookworms in the library to a labyrinth of tunnels and staircases that never seem to stay in the same place for very long. However, I would point out that Nevernight is…

Serving as a prequel to Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, the first book of The Song of Shattered Sands, Of Sand and Malice Made is a thoroughly entertaining story that adds another layer to the world that Bradley P. Beaulieu has created. Consisting of three interlinked tales, this is a book that goes beyond mere setting and culture to put a true Arabian Nights spin on epic fantasy. That fact surprised me almost as much as it delighted me, for it seems rather fitting that Çeda’s first chapter should have such a familiar, classic sort of feel to it. These aren’t quite fables or folk tales, but all of the elements are there, right from supernatural deities to charms and curses. Freed of the pacing issues and narrative flashbacks that were something of a challenge in Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, this is a story that all but races along as it gets the heart racing. What really excited me about it is that there is a feeling of genuine risk involved, which is hard to pull off in a prequel where you already know the fates of the main characters. In fact, there was several points where I had to glance…

Necessity is the final book in the Thessaly trilogy by Jo Walton. As the story continues generations from the start of the series, we find the citizens doing very well, integrating themselves into the interstellar world. There are alien residents and traders visiting the planet. The individual cities seem to be thriving, and people are free to move wherever they feel best fits their personal ideology. It is utopia, finally (or at least much closer than they had achieved previously). But there are complications caused by a sudden death and then a nearing spaceship that will be their first interactions with space humans which kick our story for this final chapter in the series. I have to say, my reading experience with this one was a little different than the first two. Both The Just City and Philosopher Kings seemed to create a more philosophical undertone to them that I just didn’t find in Necessity. The Just City really showed how rigid structure, even when it is with the best intentions, creates a new set of problems. It also explored what constitutes a thinking being, at what point does artificial intelligence become independent and an individual. Philosopher Kings took a strong look at forgiveness versus vengeance,…