Aching God by Mike Shel – SPFBO #4 Finals Review
Geoff Matthews
* Disclaimer * Writing and reading are subjective arts. What some folks will absolutely love, others will dislike. It is a bit like Marmite in the UK—normal people dislike it…
epic fantasy
The Blackest Heart by Brian Lee Durfee
S. H. Paulus
Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers for The Forgetting Moon and The Blackest Heart. “It is what we do with our own selves that defines us. Not where we came from. Or…
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Pippa
A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens. The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must…
Cold Iron by Miles Cameron
Richard Marpole
Cold Iron follows the exploits of Aranthur Timos, a poor but conscientious student, at a university called The Academy, which can be found in a city called the City. The…
Masters of Deception by J. C. Kang
Rakib Ahmad Khan
I would like to start with a confession, I haven’t read any of J.C. Kang’s previous novels and know nothing about the world in which this story takes place. I…
Blood of the Gods by David Mealing
Blood of the Gods is the second book in the epic fantasy trilogy, The Ascension Cycle. It follows closely after the events of the first book, Soul of the World.…
Brian Lee Durfee Interview – The Blackest Heart
I’d like to start-off this interview by not asking a question but, stating how incredibly excited I am to interview an author whose work (The Forgetting Moon, book one of…
Wrath of Empire by Brian McClellan
This is the second instalment of the Gods of Blood and Powder series and follows the events of the first book, Sins of Empire, with the same three perspectives. The…
The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French
JC Kang
In my review of Phil Tucker’s The Siege of Abythos, I felt like that guy at a sports stadium, trying to start the wave, in my attempt to make the…
An Echo of Thing to Come by James Islington
An Echo of Thing to Come is the second book in The Licanius Trilogy, the first being The Shadow of What Was Lost. The trilogy is an epic fantasy set…
Blood of the Four by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
Charlie Hopkins
In the great kingdom of Quandis, everyone is a slave. Some are slaves to the gods. Most are slaves to everyone else. Blessed by the gods with lives of comfort…
The Crimson Queen by Alec Hutson – SPFBO Review
Long ago the world fell into twilight, when the great empires of old consumed each other in sorcerous cataclysms. In the south the Star Towers fell, swallowed by the sea,…