On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past… while a world goes to war with itself. In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin. As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war, a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress. Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself. In the end, one world will rise – and many will perish. I have to begin with a terrible admission. Initially (at least for the first fifty odd pages or so) The Mirror Empire had me regularly exclaiming “WWWWHHHHHHHAAAAAT!!!!” in a Moe Szyslak-esque fashion. I had little clue what was going on and I was beginning to…

In the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it – from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do. In the boat the drunk governor of the territories and his sons and daughters make merry. They believe that their status makes them untouchable. They are wrong. And with them is a mysterious, beautiful young woman, who is the key to peace between warring nations and survival for the Empire. When a callow mercenary saves the life of the Governor on an ill-fated hunting party, the two groups are thrown together. For Fisk and Shoe – two tough, honourable mercenaries surrounded by corruption, who know they can always and only rely on each other – their young companion appears to be playing with fire. The nobles have the power, and crossing them is always risky. And although love is a wonderful thing, sometimes the best decision is to walk away. Because no matter how untouchable…

In a small village, miles from the great cities of the Twin Kingdoms, a young boy called Errol tries to find his way in the world. He’s an outsider – he looks different from other children and has never known his father. No one, not even himself, has any knowledge of his true lineage. Deep in the forest, Benfro, the young male dragon begins his training in the subtle arts. Like his mother, Morgwm the Green, he is destined to be a great Mage. No one could imagine that the future of all life in the Twin Kingdoms rests in the hands of these two unlikely heroes. But it is a destiny that will change the lives of boy and dragon forever … James Oswald may already be known to some of you good folks out there in reader land. He writes crime fiction and I’ve heard enough good things to ensure I will be checking some of it out very soon. In the meantime however, under the pen name J D Oswald, he is embarking on his first foray into the realms of fantasy. Time to check out the opening book in The Ballad of Sir Benfro, Dreamwalker. Born…

Irregularity is a collaboration between the National Maritime Museum and award-winning publisher Jurassic London: a collection of fourteen original stories from some of the most exciting voices in contemporary fiction. Using the Longitude Act as the jumping off point, Irregularity is inspired by the great thinkers of the Age of Reason – those courageous men and women who set out to map, chart, name and classify the world around them. The great minds who brought order and discipline to the universe. Except where they didn’t. Irregularity contains new stories from Nick Harkaway, Claire North, Adam Roberts, E. J. Swift, Tiffani Angus, Rose Biggin, Kim Curran, Richard de Nooy, Archie Black, Simon Guerrier, Roger Luckhurst, Henrietta Rose-Innes, James Smythe, M. Suddain and Adam Roberts. The anthology includes an afterword from Sophie Waring and Richard Dunn, Head of Science and Technology and Royal Museums Greenwich. The stories are illustrated by Gary Northfield, based on imagery from the archives of the National Maritime Museum. The cover shows “Resolution”, a work by Howard Hardiman. It’s been a while since I’ve read an anthology and when Irregularity dropped through my letterbox it appeared that the book gods were indeed smiling on me. Fourteen new works…

Please note Kill Baxter is a direct sequel to last years Apocalypse Now Now. It is entirely possible if you haven’t read that then this review may contain some mild spoilers. As ever, don’t say I didn’t warn you. AND HE THOUGHT THE HARD PART WAS OVER. The world has been massively unappreciative of sixteen-year-old Baxter Zevcenko. His bloodline may be a combination of ancient Boer mystic and giant shape-shifting crow, and he may have won an inter-dimensional battle and saved the world, but does anyone care? No. Instead he’s packed off to Hexpoort, a magical training school that’s part reformatory, part military school, and just like Hogwarts (except with sex, drugs, and better internet access). The problem is that Baxter sucks at magic. He’s also desperately attempting to control his new ability to dreamwalk, all the while being singled out by the school’s resident bully, who just so happens to be the Chosen One. But when the school comes under attack, Baxter needs to forget all that and step into action. The only way is joining forces with his favourite recovering alcoholic of a supernatural bounty hunter, Ronin, to try and save the world from the apocalypse. Again. Last…

Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain his throne. First he must survive cruelty, chains and even drowning. And he must do it all with only one good hand. The deceived will become the deceiver. Born a weakling in the eyes of the world, Yarvi cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge. The betrayed will become the betrayer. Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast, he finds they can help him more than any noble could. Will the usurped become the usurper? Even with loyal friends at this side, Yarvi’s path may end as it began – in twists, and traps and tragedy… I have to start with an apology. After about an hour of reading Half a King, I had already re-christened this book as Game of Throne in my head. I couldn’t help it, but I’d like to stress that I do mean this as the highest form of compliment. Abercrombie’s latest has a distinct flavour of George R R Martin about it. Not only is there plenty of adventure and fighting, it also deftly explores the same sort of political power plays, skull-duggery and manoeuvrings that Martin…

Matt Danmor thinks he’s lucky. Not many people survive a near death accident with nothing more than a bout of amnesia, a touch of clumsiness and the conviction that the technician who did the MRI had grey skin and hooves. Still, it takes time to recover from trauma like that, especially when the girl who was in the accident with you disappears into thin air. Especially when the shrinks keep telling you she’s just a figment of your imagination.  So when the girl turns up months later looking ravishing, and wanting to carry on where they left off, Matt’s troubled life starts looking up.  But he hasn’t bargained for the baggage that comes with Silvy, like the fact she isn’t really an English language student, or even a girl. Underneath her traffic stopping exterior is something else altogether, something involving raving fanatics bent on human sacrifice, dimensionally challenged baked bean tins, a vulture with a penchant for profanity, and a security agent for the Dept of Fimmigration (that’s Fae immigration for those of you not in the know) called Kylah with the most amazing gold-flecked eyes.   It’s been ages since I’ve read any urban fantasy, not since the wonderful…

The Electric… A crumbling shrine to the art of film, the abandoned cinema lies empty in the outskirts of town. Abandoned, but not deserted… For The Electric is a cinema like no other. The spirits of Hollywood’s greatest stars enjoy their final turn on celluloid, watched eagerly by an audience of ghosts. When Sam Crowhurst stumbles across this terrible and beautiful secret, his life will be irrevocably changed. As the friendly and the dangerous among the dead gather around him, the last days of summer will see him discovering more about life – and the afterlife – than he ever expected. You probably wouldn’t suspect it to look at me, but I’m actually a raging, unabashed sentimentalist at heart. If you walked passed me in the street the perma-scowl on my hairy Neanderthal-esque face would give you absolutely no inkling of the huge, soft pussycat of a man that hides within. Why the self-deprecating admission to begin this review? A couple of reasons really. Firstly, to confirm that looks can be deceptive, and secondly, and probably more importantly in this case, that my sentimental nature makes me the perfect audience for the debut novel from Andrew David Barker. Things get…

The Red Queen is old but the kings of the Broken Empire fear her as they fear no other. Her grandson Jalan Kendeth is a coward, a cheat and a womaniser; and tenth in line to the throne. While his grandmother shapes the destiny of millions, Prince Jalan pursues his debauched pleasures. Until he gets entangled with Snorri ver Snagason, a huge Norse axe man, and dragged against his will to the icy north. In a journey across half the Broken Empire, Jalan flees minions of the Dead King, agrees to duel an upstart prince named Jorg Ancrath, and meets the ice witch, Skilfar, all the time seeking a way to part company with Snorri before the Norseman’s quest leads them to face his enemies in the black fort on the edge of the Bitter Ice. Jalan Kendeth follows that finest of literary traditions, that of the scoundrel. You know the type, those platinum rogues who you should despise due to their looser than loose morals, but who manage to raise a smile every time they appear. I can’t help but cheer whenever I find a new name to add to that list. What of Prince Jalan then? Why does he…

Please note The White Towers is a direct sequel to The Iron Wolves so it is entirely possible that this review may contain something akin to spoilers. Read on at your own peril… Vagandrak is broken, and a new threat has arisen that threatens to defeat even the mighty Iron Wolves. The twisted, deviant Elf Rats have gathered in the toxic realm beyond the White Lion Mountains… swiftly they invade the troubled land of Vagandrak, killing for profit and pleasure. The now-disgraced Iron Wolves are the realm’s only hope, but there’s a problem: they’ve been sentenced to death by the insane King Yoon for the dark sorcery in their blood. In the mountains of Zalazar lie the White Towers, pillars of legend said to contain the Heart of the Elves. The Iron Wolves must journey north to steal the Heart, and purify the evil in the land, but the land belongs to the Elves – and they won’t give it up without a fight! It’s a universal truth that when one evil falls, another will rise to take its place. Orlana the Changer is gone. The Iron Wolves have dealt with her and her army of mud orcs in their…

Lucien de Fontein has grown up different. One of the mysterious and misshapen Orfano who appear around the Kingdom of Landfall, he is a talented fighter yet constantly lonely, tormented by his deformity, and well aware that he is a mere pawn in a political game. Ruled by an insane King and the venomous Majordomo, it is a world where corruption and decay are deeply rooted – but to a degree Lucien never dreams possible when he first discovers the plight of the ‘insane’ women kept in the haunting Sanatoria. Told in a continuous narrative interspersed with flashbacks we see Lucien grow up under the care of his tutors. We watch him forced through rigorous Testings, and fall in love, set against his yearning to discover where he comes from, and how his fate is tied to that of every one of the deformed Orfano in the Kingdom, and of the eerie Sanatoria itself.  The main narrative follows Lucien as he finally confronts enemies who have been hounding him for his entire life. Lucien’s journey from early childhood to adulthood has been fraught with danger. The Orfano, orphans, live a privileged existence, but there are those who would gladly see Lucien and the rest of his…

There’s just no way of getting around it. This is the fourth (second half of book three?) book in an on-going series and there will likely be something akin to mild spoilers beyond this point. At least I expect there will be, what with George R.R. Martin’s penchant for killing characters off and whatnot. As ever, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Fear cuts deeper than swords.  The Starks are scattered. Robb Stark may be King in the North, but he must bend to the will of the old tyrant Walder Frey if he is to hold his crown. And while his youngest sister, Ayra, has escaped the clutches of the depraved Cersei Lannister and her son, the capricious boy-king Joffrey, Sansa Stark remains their captive, trapped in marriage with Joffrey’s deformed uncle, the embittered dwarf Tyrion. Meanwhile, across the ocean, Daenerys Stormborn, last heir of the Dragin King, delivers death to the slave-trading cities of Astapor and Yunaki as she approaches Westeros with vengeance in her heart. Wow, time flies when you’re having fun. Has it really been a year already? For those that don’t know, I am attempting to read each book from A Song of Ice and Fire just…

Loki, that’s me. Loki, the Light-bringer, the misunderstood. The elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies.  Take it with a pinch of salt, but it’s at least as true as the official version, and, dare I say it, more entertaining. So far, history, such as it is, has cast me in a rather unflattering role. Now it’s my turn to take the stage. When it comes to a good yarn there is little more entertaining when there is a platinum rogue at the heart of it all. There is nothing better than that moment when you discover that most elusive of creations, the literary scoundrel. You know what I mean, one of those rare characters that by rights you should hate, but you can’t help but love. When it comes to reprobates Loki, the trickster god, is the grand-daddy of them all. Mad, bad and just a little bit dangerous to know. He’s the poster child for the self-absorbed. In fact, that doesn’t even come close to describing Loki’s attitude to, well, just about everything honestly. Harris casts her version of Loki as not only the main protagonist, but also the narrator of his own…