The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces – talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine. When eccentric explorer, Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon, offers him employment, he sees an easy way out. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, the prospect of facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts is preferable to the abomination he left behind. But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure’lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall… Last week I read Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames. Its great fun fantasy, lots of axes, fighting and what-not. You get the gist. This week I’m reading more fantasy, it’s also brilliant but in an entirely different way. The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams is a far more cerebral affair, and…

Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best — the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld. Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk – or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay’s door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for. It’s time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld. I made a decision earlier this year that I was going to try and read all the debut authors who are being published by Orbit in 2017. I’ve done a bit of research, and their books all sound right up my street. The first freshman author out of the gate is Nicholas Eames with his inaugural effort – Kings of the Wyld. Saga were the best of the best, a group of mercenaries without peer. After years on the road they have all gone…

Dr Alexander Potter, disgraced Civil War surgeon, now snake-oil salesman, travels the Pacific Northwest with a disheartened company of strongmen, fortune-tellers, and musical whores. Under their mysterious and murderous leader they entertain the masses while hawking the Chock-a-saw Sagwa Tonic, a vital elixir touted to cure all ills both physical and spiritual. For a few unfortunate customers, however, the Sagwa offers something much, much worse. At first glance, the plot of this novel appears to be relatively straight-forward. Alexander Potter is a charlatan, little more than a con man. He travels from town to town with his medicine show, separating the locals from their hard-earned cash. The Sagwa tonic he is peddling is nothing but a sham, it has no medicinal properties at all. Of course, looks can be deceptive, there is far more to the story than that. It turns out that one form of the tonic is utterly fake, but there is another variant that has the potential to be something miraculous. Dr Potter is a fascinating fellow. It’s quickly established that he has been ground down by his time in the world. A series of ill-advised decisions has left him in a situation he can’t get out…

It has been 14 years since the Martians invaded England. The world has moved on, always watching the skies but content that we know how to defeat the Martian menace. Machinery looted from the abandoned capsules and war-machines has led to technological leaps forward. The Martians are vulnerable to earth germs. The Army is prepared. So when the signs of launches on Mars are seen, there seems little reason to worry. Unless you listen to one man, Walter Jenkins, the narrator of Wells’ book. He is sure that the Martians have learned, adapted, understood their defeat. He is right. Thrust into the chaos of a new invasion, a journalist – sister-in-law to Walter Jenkins – must survive, escape and report on the war. The Massacre of Mankind has begun No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty first century that a reviewer would read a book created by an intelligence far greater than his own. The reviewer would scrutinise and study the text as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. The reviewer even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet,…