The Bitter Twins is the second instalment of Jen Williams’ Winnowing Flame Trilogy and is an excellent second in series that demonstrates William’s ability to create a richly woven world, full of history and religion and characters that are a delight to read and fall in love with. Before reviewing The Bitter Twins I would point out that it is necessary to read the Ninth Rain first.  The story picks up immediately after the conclusion of No.1 and there is no recap of previous events so if you haven’t read the first book then I strongly recommend you stop right here, don’t read this review, simply go and pick up the first book.  The other thing that I would mention is that this is a book that is a little difficult to review without giving away spoilers for the first book or indeed for the content of The Bitter Twins so I’m really going to avoid discussion of the plot and limit my review to the writing, characters and world building. Once again the story brings our favourite characters to the table.  Lady Vincenza, or Vintage, again plays a key role.  Not to be deterred by her lack of either…

For a debut novel Nick Clark Windo has come up with an impressive and thought provoking story with a post-apocalyptic world that comes scarily close to believable. Set in a possible near future Windo brings to us a world where people are so obsessed with their ‘feeds’ that they’re practically incapable of functioning when everything comes crashing down. Many of us live our lives pretty much glued to the internet with mobile phones becoming an absolute necessity.  You pretty much can’t leave home without your phone, it has maps, the internet, books, twitter, facebook, goodness knows how many apps and even your camera and ability to pay for goods, oh, and I almost forgot – sometimes people try to call or text you.  Now take this information and instead of carrying a phone around all day implant a chip directly into the human brain and provide people with a constant stream of information.  Your family can message you directly, send emotions and memories, information about anything can be relayed immediately to your brain, the need to study or read has become defunct and even the way you perceive others can be altered.  To be honest, it doesn’t read as a…

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          HORROR          OTHER   FANTASY           HORROR OTHER         FANTASY          HORROR          OTHER   Dancer’s Lament Ian C. Esslemont 5/31/2016 Tor Books Leviathan’s Blood Ben Peek 5/31/2016 Thomas Dunne The Geek Feminist Revolution Hurley, Kameron 5/31/2016 Tor Books The Lazarus War: Legion Jamie Sawyer 5/31/2016 Orbit The Sleeping Prince Melinda Salisbury 5/31/2016 Scholastic Press Savage Thomas E. Sniegoski 5/31/2016 Simon Pulse Lord of Ashes Richard Ford 5/31/2016 Headline

Just finished reading The Silver Tide by Jen Williams.  This series is so good that it makes me want to cry because it’s now come to an end.  Literally, I could cry right now!  Enough about me though, to the book with a small cautionary note about spoilers for the first two books in the series. This book is so good, I absolutely loved it.  It’s jam packed with so many goodies that I’m sure I developed an ache in my jaw from just gaping ridiculously whilst reading.  Not only do we get to return to this fantastic world and spend time with, frankly, three of my most favourite characters from fantasy at the moment, but we go on some totally crazy adventures. At the start of the story the Black Feather Three are going to be enlisted by none other than Devinia the Red.  Their mission: to delve, boldly I might say, into the heart of the cursed Island of Euriale (otherwise known as the Island of the Gods) where hopefully heaps of treasure lies waiting for their little grabby hands.  Why, you may ask, is this treasure left lying around?  Well, nobody who wandered into the jungles of…

  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…