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…

Please note, Priest of Gallows is the third novel in the War of the Rose Throne series. If you haven’t read Priest of Bones and Priest of Lies then what follows will likely contain some spoilery type stuff.  Gangster, soldier, priest. Queen’s Man. Governor. Tomas Piety has everything he ever wanted. In public he’s a wealthy, highly respected businessman, happily married to a beautiful woman and Governor of his home city of Ellinburg. In private, he’s no longer a gang lord but one of the Queen’s Men, invisible and officially non-existent, working in secret to protect his country. But when the queen’s sudden death sees him summoned him back to the capital, he discovers his boss, Dieter Vogel, Provost Marshal of the Queen’s Men, is busy tightening his stranglehold on the country. Just as he once fought for his Pious Men, he must now bend all his wit and hard-won wisdom to protect his queen – but now he can’t always tell if he’s on the right side. Tomas has started to ask himself, what is the price of power? And more importantly, is it one he is willing to pay? I’ve been waiting for ages for this title to…

Please note, Priest of Lies is the second book in an on-going series. If you haven’t read the first book in the War for the Rose Throne, Priest of Bones, then what follows will likely contain some minor spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t want to have to send the Pious Men round to sort you out! People are weak, and the poorer and more oppressed they are, the weaker they become–until they can’t take it anymore. And when they rise up…may the gods help their oppressors. When Tomas Piety returned from the war, he just wanted to rebuild his empire of crime with his gang of Pious Men. But his past as a spy for the Queen’s Men drew him back in and brought him more power than he ever imagined. Now, with half of his city in ashes and the Queen’s Men at his back, the webs of political intrigue stretch out from the capital to pull Tomas in. Dannsburg is calling. In Dannsburg the nobility fight with words, not blades, but the results are every bit as bloody. In this pit of beasts, Tomas must decide once and for all whether he is truly…

It’s a dangerous thing, to choose the lesser of two evils. The war is over, and army priest Tomas Piety finally heads home with Lieutenant Bloody Anne at his side. When he arrives in the Stink, Tomas finds that his empire of crime has been stolen from him while at war. With his gang of Pious Men, Tomas will do whatever it takes to reclaim his businesses. But when he finds himself dragged into a web of political intrigue once again, and is forced to work in secret for the sinister Queen’s Men, everything gets more complicated. When loyalties stretch to the breaking point and violence only leads to violence, when people have run out of food, and hope, and places to hide, do not be surprised if they have also run out of mercy. As the Pious Men fight shadowy foreign infiltrators in the backstreet taverns and gambling dens of Tomas’ old life it becomes clear; the war is not over. It is only just beginning. What with the main character of this book being a priest, I figure I should probably begin with a confession. I’ve been binge watching the first three seasons on Peaky Blinders while on…

Please note that Damnation is the third book in The Burned Man series and if you haven’t read books one and two then this review is highly likely to contain spoilers… I’m not kidding… seriously there is one in the first paragraph. Ok, consider yourself warned. Shambolic demon-hunting hitman Don Drake is teetering on the edge of madness in this smart, witty urban fantasy novel. Don Drake is living rough in a sink estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh, doing cheap spells for even cheaper customers while fending off the local lowlifes. Six months ago, Don fled from London to Glasgow to track down his old girlfriend Debbie the alchemist. With the Burned Man gradually driving him mad, Don meets with an ancient and mysterious tramp-slash-magician, with disastrous consequences. Now his old accomplices must step into save Don from himself, before he damns himself for good this time. The thing I like most about this book, and by extension this series, is Don Drake himself. You would think that someone who had the ability to control magic would be a bit more together. Not in this case. You can almost guarantee that if there is a wrong thing to say,…

Before we begin a word of dire warning. Dominion is a direct sequel to Drake. If you haven’t read book one in this series then there is a good chance that this review may continue something akin to minor spoiler. Don’t say I didn’t warn you… In the tunnels deep under London, the Earth elementals are dying. Hunted by something they know only as the Rotman, the elementals have no one trustworthy they can turn to. Enter Don Drake, diabolist and semi-reformed hitman, and an almost-fallen angel called Trixie. When the Matriarch tells Don that Rotman is actually the archdemon Bianakith, he knows this is going to be a tough job. Bianakith is the foretold spirit of disease and decay whose aura corrupts everything it comes near, and even the ancient foundations of London will crumble eventually. Now Don, Trixie and the Burned Man have to hatch a plan to keep Bianakith from wiping out the elementals and bringing down the city. But the Burned Man has other plans, and those may have dire consequences for everyone. The past never stays buried, and old sins must be atoned for. Judgement is coming, and its name is Dominion. At the beginning…

Hitman Don Drake owes a gambling debt to a demon. Forced to carry out one more assassination to clear his debt, Don unwittingly kills an innocent child and brings the Furies of Greek myth down upon himself. Rescued by an almost-fallen angel called Trixie, Don and his magical accomplice The Burned Man, an imprisoned archdemon, are forced to deal with Lucifer himself whilst battling a powerful evil magician. Now Don must foil Lucifer’s plan to complete Trixie’s fall and save her soul whilst preventing the Burned Man from breaking free from captivity and wreaking havoc on the entire world. Magic is a tricky beast, what with all the subtle intricacies and specifics that have to be just so. It’s hardly a surprise then that the powers the magic can offer are open to a certain amount of abuse. For every good miraculous thing that can come from magic, there is an evil, violent opposite. The key lesson? Practitioners of the arcane arts needs to be wary, what goes around comes around. Don Drake, the magically imbued hitman, is going to learn that the hard way. He is about to have what can at best be described as “an exceptionally bad…