Please note this review contains minor spoilers if you haven’t read book one in the trilogy, The Sword of Albion.  Also you are missing a real treat. Alone and on the run, Elizabethan England’s greatest spy must defeat a dark and bloody plot. Or die… The Scar Crow Men by Mark Chadbourn is the second novel in the Swords of Albion series. It sees the return of Will Swyfte, gentleman spy, and his ongoing battle with the dark forces that threaten Great Britain during the reign of Elizabeth the First. Two years have passed since the events in the first novel and Swyfte is facing troubles both at home and abroad. Different factions vie for Elizabeth’s favour and in the midst of all this political maneuvering one of Will closest friends is killed. While members of the royal household continue to plot and scheme the Unseelie Court, the Fay, have begun to tear down the magical defenses that protect all humans from their evil. They have unleashed the Scar Crow Men to help bring about a shift in power that will allow them control everything. There are a couple of things that I think elevates Mark Chadbourn’s writing beyond the…

They came from the North, and the land fell. Kell’s resistance is driving the fiends from the land. But now a far greater power has come into play. Please note this review contains some minor spoilers if you have not read the first two parts of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. I have thought about this long and hard and I have come to a shocking conclusion – I hate Andy Remic.  Why? Because he is just such a supremely talented sod. He has proven that he can turn his hand to science fiction, horror and fantasy. As an aside – I have a sneaking suspicion that he is attempting to become the king of all genre fiction. Every time I think he can’t possibly top his last literary effort he goes ahead and does just that. Recently I read and reviewed Serial Killers Incorporated, and was impressed with its dark brutality. A scant few weeks has passed and he has yet another novel ready to assault the senses of an unsuspecting public. The latest addition to his ever-growing canon of work, Vampire Warlords, is the third book in The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. This novel picks up the story in the…

It’s Saturday. Going shopping? For a meal? To the movies? Everything nice and normal, right? By Sunday, civilization is in ruins. Adults have become murderously insane – literally. They’re infected with a crazed uncontrollable urge to kill the young. Including their own children. THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… Time again to raid my bookshelves and dig out another classic novel that I haven’t touched for many years. Blood Crazy by Simon Clark was originally published back in 1995 and as soon as I started reading it I knew it was something that was going to stay with me for a long time. Much like my fascination with zombies, I am both disturbed yet drawn to fiction that covers the end of the world. When we are first introduced to seventeen year old Nick Aten he is a bit of a slacker. He lives in a quiet suburb of Doncaster and having left school with no qualifications, he is really only interested in drinking beer, having a good time and getting into fights with his life-long nemesis, Tug Slater. With a flick of a mental switch, overnight everything changes. Every human over the age of 20 develops a psychopathic…

A dead hero opens his eyes. To his horror, he finds he has been raised to serve as the undead minion of a desperate necromancer called Mordius. Our hero’s body has been stolen from a battlefield contested by two kingdoms that have been at war for generations. No one knows why warfare is now the way of life, but what is apparent is that the dark forces vie for dominion over the entire realm. When it comes to fantasy my needs are simple – heroes and villains, kingdom versus kingdom, gods and monsters. I’m looking for groups of disparate characters thrown into a situation that they can’t control. Add in a quest to locate a magical macguffin that will solve all their problems and I’m sold and I’m pleased to say that this book covers all these bases. Necromancer’s Gambit by A J Dalton is the first book in the Flesh and Bone trilogy. In it the reader is introduced to the inhabitants of the warring kingdoms, Dur Memnos and Accritania.  The necromancer, Mordius, is searching for a mystical object that will help to end the war and bring about a much needed peace. Saltar, the hero raised from the dead, makes…

Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men. All will play the Game of Thrones. Summers span decades. Winters can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun. It will stretch from the south, where the heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the vast frozen north where a 700-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. The Game of Thrones. You win, or you die. I’m not adverse to a massive doorstop of a novel. Peter F Hamilton, Stephen King, Frank Herbert have all written huge books that I have not only read but re-read numerous times. When it comes to A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin things are just slightly different. I have been promising myself that I would read the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga for a long time. So long in fact that it became something of a personal Moby Dick, my literary equivalent of a great white whale. It got to the stage where I was a little intimidated by the whole thing and I never thought I would get around to reading…

Meet Callaghan, a hard-drinking, drug-fuelled, womanising no-good son-of-a-bitch. He’s the amoral hardcore photographer for Black & White, the tabloid rag that tells it as it is. Or at least, how it should be. Callaghan’s in way too deep with Mia, his Mexican stripper girlfriend… and even deeper with Sophie, estranged wife to Vladimir “Vodka” Katchevsy, infamous Romanian gun-runner and self-eulogising expert at human problem solving. People start to die. And Callaghan’s caught in the middle. A situation even his Porsche GT3, Canary Wharf Penthouse suite and corrupt politician contacts can’t solve. At the nadir of his downward spiral, Callaghan is approached by a man: a serial killer who brings him a very unique and dangerous proposition… Serial Killers Incorporated by Andy Remic is the first release from the new e-publisher Anarchy Books. Callaghan initially comes across as a self absorbed hedonist. He is all about number one. He is only really interested in something if he can ride it, drink it, screw it or stick it up his nose. When we first meet him he is the classic anti-hero. The rest of the world can go to hell as long as his appetites are sated. As the plot develops however, it…