When lorry driver Dougie Alport carries out a deadly attack on his employer’s head office, the reverberations of his actions unleash a grief in his wife Maureen that threatens to reveal the secret she has spent years hiding from their son, Boyd. Moving north to start again is Maureen’s best response. But as the walls begin to throb with mould and his mother slips from his grasp, Boyd decides to flee, finding solace with a new friend at the landfill site on the edge of town. Here, a startling discovery upends Boyd’s new life and forces him into a reckoning with his mother, her past, and his future. Something a bit different this week. In the aftermath of a family tragedy, Lamb by Matt Hill explores the breakdown of the relationship between a mother and son. The book covers two distinct time periods. Firstly there is Boyd’s life immediately after his father’s attack and then a flashback to Maureen’s formative years. Boyd is on the cusp of his journey into manhood. Like many teenagers, he is consumed by thoughts of his future, of the person he could become. When his life is ripped away, Boyd suddenly finds himself adrift from…

From one of the most original voices in fantasy comes a twisted tale of murder, betrayal, and battlefield salvage. There’s no formal training for battlefield salvage. You just have to pick things up as you go along. Swords, armour, arrows – and the bodies, of course. Over the years, Saevus Corax has picked up a lot of things. Some of them have made him decent money, others have brought nothing but trouble. But it’s a living, and somebody has to deal with the dead. This week, I’m taking a look at the recently released Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead by K J Parker. The story really couldn’t be simpler*. Saevus Corax has an uncanny knack for rubbing people up the wrong way. Cleaning up after battles should be a straightforward business, everyone who could cause a problem is usually dead, but after managing to irritate the two largest militant banking orders on the entire continent Saevus is forced to go on the run. Stumbling from one potentially lethal incident to the next, this joyfully chaotic series of ever-escalating events is a great deal of fun**. More through luck than judgment, Saevus finds himself at the epicentre of everything. He’d…

Leven has no memory of her life before she was a soldier. The process of turning her into a Herald – a magical killing machine – was traumatic enough that it wiped her mind clean. Now, with the war won and the Imperium satisfied, she finds herself unemployed and facing a bleak future. Her fellow Heralds are disappearing, and her own mind seems to be coming apart at the seams. Strange visions, memories she shouldn’t have, are resurfacing, and none of them make any sense. They show her Brittletain, the ancient and mysterious island that the Imperium was never able to tame. Leven resolves to go to this place of magic and warring queens, with the hope of finding who she really is. Envoy Kaeto has done a number of important little jobs for the Imperium, most of them nasty, all of them in the shadows. His newest assignment is to escort the bone-crafter Gynid Tyleigh as she travels across the Imperium – as the woman responsible for creating the Heralds, his employers owe her a great deal. But Tyleigh’s ambition alarms even Kaeto, and her conviction that she has found a new source of Titan bones, buried deep in…

Please note, that House of Odysseus is a direct sequel to Ithaca. It is highly likely that if you’ve not read the first book what follows might contain something akin to spoilers. Dont say I didnt warn you! In the palace of Odysseus, a queen lies dreaming . . . On the isle of Ithaca, queen Penelope maintains a delicate balance of power. Many years ago, her husband Odysseus sailed to war with Troy and never came home. In his absence, Penelope uses all her cunning to keep the peace—a peace that is shattered by the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra. Orestes’ hands are stained with his mother’s blood. Not so long ago, the son of Agamemnon took Queen Clytemnestra’s life on Ithaca’s sands. Now, wracked with guilt, he grows ever more unhinged. But a king cannot be seen to be weak, and Elektra has brought him to Ithaca to keep him safe from the ambitious men of Mycenae. Penelope knows destruction will follow in his wake as surely as the furies circle him. His uncle Menelaus, the blood-soaked king of Sparta, hungers for Orestes’ throne—and if he can seize it, no one will be…

Cahan du Nahare is known as the forester – a humble man who can nonetheless navigate the dangerous Deepforest like no-one else. But once he was more. Once he was a warrior. Udinny serves the goddess of the lost, a goddess of the small and helpless. When she ventures into the Deepforest to find a missing child, Cahan will be her guide. But in a land at war, in a forest full of monsters – Cahan will need to choose between his past life and the one he leads now – and his choice will have consequences for his entire world. I loved both The Wounded Kingdom and The Tide Child trilogies, so I was excited when Gods of the Wyrdwood dropped through my letterbox with a satisfyingly solid thump. R J Barker’s latest is released this week and I’m pleased to confirm it is everything I have come to expect from the author, and more.  It’s clear that Cahan du Nahare is a man haunted by the ghosts of his past. Every action he takes is an attempt to run further away from who he once was. Cahan wants to live peacefully, under the radar of the authorities, but…

An immortal Knight of the Round Table faces his greatest challenge yet—saving the politically polarized, rapidly warming world from itself—in this slyly funny contemporary take on Arthurian legend. Legends don’t always live up to reality. Being reborn as an immortal defender of the realm gets awfully tiring over the years—or at least that’s what Sir Kay’s thinking as he claws his way up from beneath the earth yet again. Kay once rode alongside his brother, King Arthur, as a Knight of the Round Table. Since then, he has fought at Hastings and at Waterloo and in both World Wars. But now he finds himself in a strange new world where oceans have risen, the army’s been privatized, and half of Britain’s been sold to foreign powers. The dragon that’s running amok—that he can handle. The rest? He’s not so sure. Mariam’s spent her life fighting what’s wrong with her country. But she’s just one ordinary person, up against a hopelessly broken system. So when she meets Kay, she dares to hope that the world has finally found the savior it needs. Yet as the two travel through this bizarre and dangerous land, they discover that a magical plot of apocalyptic…

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise. Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die. It’s been a few months since we last indulged in some old-school…

Please note, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath is a direct sequel to The Left Handed Booksellers of London. With that in mind it is entirely possible, if you’ve not read book one in this series, what follows might contain the odd spoiler or two. Consider yourself duly warned! There is often trouble of a mythical sort in Bath. The booksellers who police the Old World keep a careful watch there, particularly on the entity who inhabits the ancient hot spring. Yet this time it is not from Sulis Minerva that trouble starts. It comes from the discovery of a sorcerous map, leading left-handed bookseller Merlin into great danger. A desperate rescue is attempted by his sister the right-handed bookseller Vivien and their friend, art student Susan Arkshaw, who is still struggling to deal with her own recently discovered magical heritage. The map takes the trio to a place separated from this world, maintained by deadly sorcery performed by an Ancient Sovereign and guarded by monstrous living statues of Purbeck marble. But this is only the beginning, as the booksellers investigate centuries of disappearances and deaths and try to unravel the secrets of the murderous Lady of Stone, a serial killer…

Please note The Tyranny of Faith is the second book in The Empire of the Wolf trilogy. If you haven’t read The Justice of Kings then what follows will likely contain minor spoilers. Consider yourselves duly warned! A Justice’s work is never done. The Battle of Galen’s Vale is over, but the war for the Empire’s future has just begun. Concerned by rumors that the Magistratum’s authority is waning, Sir Konrad Vonvalt returns to Sova to find the capital city gripped by intrigue and whispers of rebellion. In the Senate, patricians speak openly against the Emperor, while fanatics preach holy vengeance on the streets. Yet facing down these threats to the throne will have to wait, for the Emperor’s grandson has been kidnapped – and Vonvalt is charged with rescuing the missing prince. His quest will lead him – and his allies Helena, Bressinger and Sir Radomir – to the southern frontier, where they will once again face the puritanical fury of Bartholomew Claver and his templar knights – and a dark power far more terrifying than they could have imagined. The Justice of Kings was a first-rate fantasy thriller and one of my favourite novels from 2022. Its sequel…

You are not welcome here, godkiller Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour. Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it. Some fantasy for you all this week, the first book in a new series from a new author. Godkiller by Hannah Kaner is a tale of secrets, lies and troubled souls. Due to a traumatic childhood event, and the hard years that have followed, Kissen has closed herself off from the outside world. She has crafted a brittle, abrasive exterior.  She has been let down so many times before and steadfastly refuses…

Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door. No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus’ empty throne—not yet. But everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, and Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. Only through cunning, wit, and her trusted circle of maids, can she maintain the tenuous peace needed for the kingdom to survive. This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses— that will change the course of the world. Something a little bit different today. This week’s book is…

Please note Priest of Crowns is the fourth book and final book in The War for the Rose Throne series. If you have not read books one, two and three, what follows is likely to contain more than a few spoilers. Consider yourself duly warned! ‘Praise be to Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and blessed be the Ascended Martyr.’ Those were the words on lips of the faithful: Blessed be the Ascended Martyr, and woe betide you if you thought otherwise. The word Unbeliever had become a death sentence on the streets in those days. Gangster, soldier, priest. Governor, knight, and above all, Queen’s Man. Once, Tomas Piety looked after his men, body and soul, as best he could. Then those who ran his country decided his dark talents would better serve in the corridors of power. Crushed by the power of the Queen’s Men and with the Skanian menace rising once more on the streets of Ellinburg, Tomas Piety is forced to turn to old friends, old debts and untrustworthy alliances. Meanwhile in the capital city of Dannsburg, Dieter Vogel is beginning to wonder if the horror he has unleashed in the Martyr’s Disciples might be getting out of…

A hundred years ago, a man with a secret could travel a few hundred miles and give himself a new name and life story. No one would be any the wiser, as long as he didn’t give anyone a reason to start asking questions. These days, that’s not so easy, with everyone on social media, and CCTV on every street corner. So Daniel Mackmain keeps his head down and keeps himself to himself. But now a girl has been murdered and the Derbyshire police are taking a closer look at a loner who travels from place to place, picking up work as he goes. Worse, Dan realises the murder involves the hidden world he was born into. When no one else can see the truth, who will see justice done? One of my many obsessions is the folklore and mythology of the British Isles. I’ve always been utterly fascinated by all the stories. I grew up reading books like Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock and Watership Down by Richard Adams. On television, I was entranced by The Box of Delights, while musically albums like Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull were always near the top of my playlist*. Heck,…