Please note, though not a direct sequel, Bloody Rose is set in the same shared universe as Kings of the Wyld. If you haven’t read that first there may well be minor spoilers in the review below. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! Live fast, die young. Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown. When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It’s adventure she wants – and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death. It’s time to take a walk on the wyld side. Kings of the Wyld was my pick for “Debut of the Year” for 2017, so you’ll not be stunned when I tell you I have been barely able to contain my patience when it comes to waiting for Nicholas Eames next novel. The good news is that the wait is finally over, the support act have finished…

The city of Tevanne runs on scrivings, industrialised magical inscriptions that make inanimate objects sentient; they power everything, from walls to wheels and weapons. Scrivings have brought enormous progress and enormous wealth – but only to the four merchant Houses who control them. Everyone else is a servant or a slave, or they eke out a precarious living in the hellhole known as the Commons. There’s not much in the way of work for an escaped slave like Sancia Grado, but she has an unnatural talent that makes her one of the best thieves in the city. When she’s offered a lucrative job to steal an ancient artefact from a heavily guarded warehouse, Sancia agrees, dreaming of leaving the Commons – but instead, she finds herself the target of a murderous conspiracy. Someone powerful in Tevanne wants the artefact and wants Sancia dead – and whoever it is already wields power beyond imagining. Sancia will need every ally, and every ounce of wits at her disposal, if she is to survive – because if her enemy gets the artefact and unlocks its secrets, thousands will die, and, even worse, it will allow ancient evils back into the world and turn…

I was seven years old the first time my uncle poisoned me… Only a handful of people in Silasta know Jovan’s real purpose in life. To most, he is just another son of the ruling class. The quiet, forgettable friend of the Chancellor’s charming, irresponsible heir. In reality, Jovan has been trained for most of his life to detect, concoct and withstand poisons in order to protect the ruling family. His ister Kalina is too frail to share in their secret family duty. While other women of the city hold positions of power and responsibility, her path is full of secrets and lies – some hidden even from her own brother. Until now, peace has reigned in Silasta for hundreds of years. But when the Chancellor succumbs to an unknown poison and an army storms the gates, the so-called Bright City is completely unprepared. It falls to Jovan and Kalina to protect the heir and save their homeland – but first they must make their way through a new world of unexpected treachery, a world where ancient spirits are rising… and angry. August 2018 has been a bumper month for first rate fantasy fiction. Last week I read King of…

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists-Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a PhD in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. Occasionally I get lucky and my two main hobbies intersect. It will come as…

Please note, King of Assassins is the final part of a trilogy and should be treated as such. If you have not read this novel’s predecessors then this review will contain minor spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING . . . Many years of peace have passed in Maniyadoc, years of relative calm for the assassin Girton Club-Foot. Even the Forgetting Plague, which ravaged the rest of the kingdoms, seemed to pass them by. But now Rufra ap Vthyr eyes the vacant High-King’s throne and will take his court to the capital, a rat’s nest of intrigue and murder, where every enemy he has ever made will gather and the endgame of twenty years of politics and murder will be played out in his bid to become the King of all Kings. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends and the god of death, Xus the Unseen, stands closer than ever – casting his shadow over everything most dear to Girton. The last book of The Wounded Kingdom trilogy has arrived, and the good news is that our assassin’s story ends with a bang not a whimper. Strap yourselves in, things are…

In the ultimate battle between evil and evil…only one can win. Four hundred years ago, Benjamin Harwood butchered whoever he saw fit to kill, knowing that sacrificing his murder victims to a demon would keep him safe from eternal punishment. But now, their agreement has been torn in half and the demon is coming for Harwood’s soul, coming to set him to burn.   Preparing for war, Harwood gathers the worst of the worst, the monsters and murderers he calls friends. With this group of damned killers, Harwood must return to the crimes of his past and seek help from his most recent prey: a teenage girl whose family he destroyed, a girl with more reason to loathe him than anyone in his life or death. Only then he can try for a redemption that may be impossible or face a universe of suffering.   But Harwood doesn’t know there is a hole in the floor of the world. And something much worse than the dead is down there… Last year I read Ascent by Luke Walker and really enjoyed his Dante-esque tale of terror in a hellish, trans-dimensional office block. Recently a copy of his latest novel, The Unredeemed…