Outcast is a direct sequel to Inscape. If you haven’t read the first book in this series, then what follows will contain minor spoilers. Consider yourself duly warned! TRUTH. LIES. IT CAN BE HARD TO TELL THEM APART. When a bomb goes off at InTech HQ, everything changes for Tanta’s corporation. Order becomes disorder. Safety becomes danger. Calm becomes chaos. Tanta is tasked with getting to the bottom of the attack before violence and unrest overtake the city. But even though the evidence points towards rival corporation Thoughtfront, Tanta can’t shake the feeling that she’s missing something. There’s a dark secret at the heart of the case, one that will reveal more about her own corporation than Tanta would like. And the closer Tanta gets to the mystery, the more she comes to realise something terrible: Sometimes facing the truth can be the hardest thing of all. Back in January 2021, I had the opportunity to read the rather wonderful science fiction thriller Inscape by Louise Carey. It was great, you should all read it. This week, the sequel, Outcast, is released. Guess what? It’s also great and you should all definitely read it as well. The action picks up…

A newly-fallen angel accused of murder, Cassiel must save an elven girl and face demons—both literal and personal. She knows she isn’t the best person for the job, but she’s the only one who can do it. The police are ill-equipped to handle demons, even with magic, and time is running out. Cassiel and her friends—a disabled human veteran, a reformed elven gangbanger, and an ex-marine orc—face the hardest fight of their lives.  Moving on from the creepy cosmic science fiction from earlier in the week today I’m taking a gander at the new urban fantasy novel Fallen by E. Prybylski. There is an interesting duality in the main character. As an ancient heavenly warrior, Cassiel is imbued with the arts of conflict. It is her purpose, the reason to exist. This is perfectly illustrated at one point when she is presented with a gun for the first time. She has never seen one before but she knows everything about how it works, how to maintain it and how to use it. The flipside to all this deadly knowledge is her innocence and naivety when it comes to absolutely anything else. Initially, Cassiel takes everything quite literally, which does lead…

The night the sky fell, Jack and Nora Abernathy’s daughter vanished in the woods. And Mia’s disappearance broke her parents’ already fragile marriage. Unable to solve her own daughter’s case, Nora lost herself in her work as a homicide detective. Jack became a shell of a man; his promising career as a biologist crumbling alongside the meteor strikes that altered weather patterns and caused a massive drought. It isn’t until five years later that the rains finally return to nourish Seattle. In this period of sudden growth, Jack uncovers evidence of a new parasitic fungus, while Nora investigates several brutal, ritualistic murders. Soon they will be drawn together by a horrifying connection between their discoveries—partnering to fight a deadly contagion as well as the government forces that know the truth about the fate of their daughter. Happy New Year, welcome to 2022 and what promises to be another epically good year for genre fiction. This week we are off to a flying start with The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy. Before we get down to it, I should point out that though this is the second book in the series. Knowledge of book one is not required* as references made…