Please note A Clash of Kings is the second novel in an on-going series and may therefore contain potential spoilers for anyone who has not read book one of the series, A Game of Thrones. Proceed at your own peril.  The price of glory From the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns as pretenders to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms prepare to stake their claims. As a prophecy of doom cuts across the sky – a comet the colour of blood and flame – five factions struggle for control of a divided land. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, the price of glory is measured in blood. Almost a year ago I finally got around to reading the first novel in the saga A Song of Ice and Fire. I had actively avoided A Game of Thrones for a long time because, if I’m being honest, I was a little intimidated by the hugeness of it all. By the time I started reading there were already four novels available and the fifth was on the horizon. After completing, and enjoying, the first book I had significantly revised my…

From the undead vampire in the Romanian mausoleum, Boris Dragosani tries to draw an evil force so powerful he will gain supremacy in the ultra-secret paranormal agency he works for in Russia. His official job is as a necroscope – his speciality is tearing secrets from the souls of newly-dead traitors. And England too has her necroscope – her communicator with the dead. When Harry Keogh is recruited by the British Secret Service to take on the paranormal menace from behind the Iron curtain, the stage is set for the most horrifying, violent supernatural confrontation ever…. I first read Necroscope by Brian Lumley way back in the early nineties after stumbling across and then swiftly devouring Lumley’s other series, the Psychomech trilogy. I was keen to read more of his work and Necroscope was already on book three or four when I started so I knew there would be plenty to continue reading if I enjoyed the first book. The novel begins with a brief prologue outlining the business of E-Branch, the United Kingdom’s most secretive agency. Set during the Cold War era seventies and eighties, E-Branch recruits those people with ‘special gifts’. Using these abilities, like telepathy or far-seeing,…