This coming weekend, 13—15 April, From the Grave of the Gods will once again be discounted for the mega sale hosted by Tessa Hastjarjanto of Narratess. Even though there will just be the one of my books on the sale page, rest assured that you’ll be able to get all three of my currently published works, including my SFINCS finalist novella, The Re-Emergence, for 0.99 in both the UK and US as part of a Kindle Countdown Deal.

I loved Witch in the Lighthouse when I read it last year. For me it really captured the cosy vibes and whimsy of a classic Studio Ghibli movie (you can read the full review here). So I jumped at the chance when Azalea asked for book bloggers to help share a couple of new announcements for this lovely book! First and foremost we have this really nice-looking cover refresh for the book!

When I picked up Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I wasn’t expecting the tale to remind me of the Shadeward Saga. But with its high fantasy setting amid a hard sci-fi backdrop, I was pleasantly surprised. This was a pretty quick read for me and I’m finding that novellas give me a rather satisfying feeling of progress for a normally slow reader such as I am. The cover art for Elder Race is absolutely gorgeous and depicts the Tower featured within beautifully.

A Necromancer Called Gam Gam is a semi-finalist in the first annual Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS), and it’s been on my TBR for a little while. But, as a fellow SFINCTER (lol), I couldn’t help but be curious about some of the other books in the contest. So I moved this one up, and I have to say, as someone who lost a parent at a young age, it made me cry.

I didn’t expect to blast through Wishhobbler in a single day, but from the first page I was hooked. It’s weird, darkly funny and a little sinister. It certainly put me in mind of some of the books my eldest has been bringing home from school, and it has some really fantastic stylised illustrations throughout to match!

I thoroughly enjoyed my previous read by Azalea Forrest, Witch in the Lighthouse, but after reading A Bitter Drink, I think this one is my new favourite of the two. Less Ghibli, and dialing back on the coziness a little, to instead bring us great character work and higher stakes in an imaginative fantasy world. So, let’s have a deeper look.

This isn’t a first for me. I have fond memories of my dad reading The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story when I was a child, and it’s remarkable how much the book stuck with me over the years. Now I’m older and I have children of my own, it has given me a wonderful opportunity to read the book to them as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a copy of the book!

An excellent eclectic short story collection from J. Dianne Dotson. After finishing the Questrison Saga, I knew I’d be forever picking up J. Dianne Dotson’s books, because they’re a great lot of fun. I think there’s only one more book out that’s under the J. Dianne Dotson pen name: The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, and from there on, her works will be published under the pseudonym Jendia Gammon.

Similarly to The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge is a videogame I have no personal experience with. At least with the first game, I’d played a little of the Android remake by Chris Wild. Not so with its sequel. Mike Singleton’s Doomdark’s Revenge was originally released the same year as its predecessor, again for the ZX Spectrum system, and significantly expanded the first game’s scope. There were now hundreds of characters, and a brand new realm to explore. The Icemark also had a much larger map than that of the land of Midnight in the previous game, and many more routes to success. Understandably, making such a novelisation sounds like a monumental challenge.

Brandon Sanderson is one of the most successful and prolific fantasy authors of recent years. I’m sure we’re all astounded at the blistering pace he puts out these ungodly huge tomes. As such, I’ve been really curious to see what his writing is actually like, and why it’s been so well-received. Taking advice from various Booktubers and other commentators, I decided to start with his first Mistborn trilogy, which is said to be a good entry point to his work. And, you know what? I get it.

We are now halfway through 2023, and The Oath & Blood Price: Part One is my fourteenth book review of the year, most of which have, like this one, been indie or self-published books. I said before that this year I wanted to focus more heavily on indie books and support the indie writing community, and I had a really great time with Peter Shaun-Tyrell’s debut fantasy novel. It’s on the shorter side, so I was able to read through it quite quickly, but I will definitely be picking up Part Two sometime in the near future. Let’s talk about Part One.

Ever since university, I’ve kept in the back of my mind the idea of reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. Why university? Because one of my lecturers was a Barsoom super-fan. One time, I wrote an essay for his class which was about writing the preamble to a constitution for a new human settlement on Mars under John Carter. The trouble was, it needed to be 500 words. Most preambles to constitutions are 150 - 200 words long. So, using my imagination, I came up with an entire story to fill out the word-count of how these people escaped the tyranny of Earth and established a settlement on Mars.

I love Studio Ghibli movies. I could endlessly rewatch almost all of them (sorry, Tales From Earthsea, you don’t quite cut the mustard). I know Azalea Forrest is a Ghibli fan as well. So, when I kept seeing Witch in the Lighthouse being described as “Ghibli-esque”, I knew I had to pick it up. You may recognise Azalea Forrest as being the first author to have an interview on this blog, so check it out here to learn more about her and her books.

I’ve seen Legends & Lattes going around the writing community for a long time and heard a great many good things about it. I had it sitting in my wishlist on Amazon for ages, waiting for a good moment to buy, and then when that time came along, the author had the audacity to get a trad publishing deal and for the book to be republished by Tor, which meant it disappeared and I “had” to wait for it to become available again…

The Shield Road was my final read of 2022. I blasted through it during that nebulous span of days between Christmas and New Year where time has no meaning and the human body subsists on the excess snacky bits we over-bought before the festive season. I’ve seen snippets of Dewi’s work before on Twitter, and - seeing the sheer quality of his prose - I knew I would have to pick up The Shield Road as soon as possible.

It’s been a while since I last dipped my toes into the Earthsea Cycle. The Farthest Shore was the end of an internal trilogy, and it felt like it brought things to a close, but the story didn’t end there. In Tehanu, we revisit Tenar, twenty-five years on from her escape from The Tombs of Atuan, and we watch Ged wrestle with the consequences of his sacrifice in The Farthest Shore…

The Lords of Midnight is an adventure strategy game that was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, written and created by Mike Singleton. This 2018 novel - the first in the Midnight Chronicles - by Drew Wagar is the official novelisation of that classic game. The story behind the creation of this book is a fascinating tale all on its own, but one I’ll leave to Drew (contained within the book’s Author’s Note). Now, I need to be clear here: I never played the game - it came out four years before I was born - in fact I hadn’t heard of it until relatively recently.

Time for another review for an indie book I encountered from the ever-wonderful Twitter Writing Community. This time it’s Aerth’s Aetheric Aegis: The White Mantle by Velora Venn. I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while, and I finally started it in December, finishing it in the last day or so, which makes it my first review of 2022! Hooray! Now, they say not to judge a book by its cover, but when I first saw this book, I was immediately entranced by its fantastic artwork (and come on, admit it, we’re all suckers for great cover art to varying degrees). In short, I think it’s a stunning looking book and the author should be rightly proud of the incredible work she’s done illustrating this.

After having been asked by absolutely no-one, I thought I’d share a list of all the books I’ve got on my TBR. And because I have taken it upon myself to post up a review for every book I read, you can consider this a kind of sneak-peek at the reviews you can look forward to in the future on this blog, plus get an idea of the kind of books that have captured my interest…

A beautifully-written fantasy adventure with steampunk elements from SJ Hull. I have to admit I was very excited when I learned that SJ Hull had released his debut novel. We went to university together, and though that was over ten years ago now, even back then I knew he was very interested in the fantasy genre, and it didn’t surprise me in the slightest that he’d written his own…