Today’s post is from guest reviewer @SamaelTB. Just like to take the opportunity to thank him for letting me publish his review. Okay, let’s get one thing clear right now. Pattern Recognition is damned good book. The prose is stunning and the protagonist is at once hardcore and sympathetic. Prior to this I’ve only read one Gibson and while Neuromancer is a bit dated now it’s still an astonishing read. I’m p...
Please note this review contains minor spoilers if you haven’t read book one in the trilogy, The Sword of Albion. Also you are missing a real treat. Alone and on the run, Elizabethan England’s greatest spy must defeat a dark and bloody plot. Or die… The Scar Crow Men by Mark Chadbourn is the second novel in the Swords of Albion series. It sees the return of Will Swyfte, gentleman spy, and his ongoing battle with the dark...
They came from the North, and the land fell. Kell’s resistance is driving the fiends from the land. But now a far greater power has come into play. Please note this review contains some minor spoilers if you have not read the first two parts of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. I have thought about this long and hard and I have come to a shocking conclusion – I hate Andy Remic. Why? Because he is just such a supremely tale...
It’s Saturday. Going shopping? For a meal? To the movies? Everything nice and normal, right? By Sunday, civilization is in ruins. Adults have become murderously insane – literally. They’re infected with a crazed uncontrollable urge to kill the young. Including their own children. THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS… Time again to raid my bookshelves and dig out another classic novel that I haven’t touched for ma...
A dead hero opens his eyes. To his horror, he finds he has been raised to serve as the undead minion of a desperate necromancer called Mordius. Our hero’s body has been stolen from a battlefield contested by two kingdoms that have been at war for generations. No one knows why warfare is now the way of life, but what is apparent is that the dark forces vie for dominion over the entire realm. When it comes to fantasy my needs are simple...
Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men. All will play the Game of Thrones. Summers span decades. Winters can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun. It will stretch from the south, where the heat breeds plot, lusts and intrigues; to the vast frozen north where a 700-foot wall of ice protects the kingdom from the dark forces that lie beyond. The Game of Thrones. You win, or you die. ...
Meet Callaghan, a hard-drinking, drug-fuelled, womanising no-good son-of-a-bitch. He’s the amoral hardcore photographer for Black & White, the tabloid rag that tells it as it is. Or at least, how it should be. Callaghan’s in way too deep with Mia, his Mexican stripper girlfriend… and even deeper with Sophie, estranged wife to Vladimir “Vodka” Katchevsy, infamous Romanian gun-runner and self-eulogising e...
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 Serv...
Please note that this review contains some minor spoilers if you haven’t read Arrowhead and Broken Arrow, the first two novels in this sequence. Robert, The Hooded Man, leads the Rangers, who keep the peace in the ravaged wastelands of Britain, foiling the ambitions of warlords and petty tyrants who would take the country for themselves. Even the spirits of his beloved Sherwood Forest aid him, sending him dreams to guide his path. Arr...
Strange anomalies are ripping holes in the fabric of time, allowing creatures from the distant past and far future to roam the modern world. Evolutionary zoologist Nick Cutter and his team must track down and capture these creatures and try to put them back where they belong. Primeval: Extinction Event by Dan Abnett is based on the popular UK television show of the same name. Nick, Abby and Connor are busy trying to deal with the...
An ancient prophecy. An evil older than mankind. It is the beginning of the end. I was about three or four pages into The Mayan Prophecy by Steve Alten when I had a niggling suspicion that everything seemed awfully familiar. After bit of hunting around at the front of the book I discovered that the novel was originally published under the title Domain back in 2001. Though I had read it before, I decided to re-read and refresh my opinion...
They thought space was the final frontier – they were wrong. Recently I spent a bit of time examining the phenomenon that is the mash-up novel. I reviewed the zombie/Jane Austen trilogy that begins with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Overall, the experience was a lot of fun and it was nice to read various authors attempts to bring two dramatically different genres together in such a full on way. For my next foray into the world ...
One of the great things about running your own book review website is that you can write about whatever books you want. I have written reviews for a fair number of new releases so far this year so I decided, for a bit of a change of pace, that I would revisit some of the novels that I read as a teenager. Over the coming months, I plan to do a few of these types of posts. I’m keen to cast my jaded adult eyes over some titles to see...