Book Review Alert: The Verderer by D K Girl

Reviewed: October 29th, 2023
Released: June 30th, 2021
Genre: Historical MM Fantasy
Format: ebook (KU)

Silas Mercer is a dead man walking.

And the mysterious Order of the Golden Dawn have big plans for their newest ankou and his deathly bandalore.

Life as a servant of death has its challenges. But the biggest one of all is Silas’s daemonic guardian, Pitch. He may look like heaven, but he’s making Silas’s life all kinds of hell.

The daemon is arrogant, egotistical and his appetite for violence and tea cakes is fast outgrowing the small village where they have been recuperating since their run-in with Black Annis.

Now, the increasingly unstable Blight is causing new havoc, and fresh monstrosities are emerging. Pitch and Sickle are back in the saddle, and on their way to the haunted Forest of Dean. But can Silas rely on his guardian’s protection? Or will Pitch prove to be the most dangerous encounter of all? Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Dacia Wolf and the Prophecy by Mandi Oyster

Reviewed: October 22nd, 2023
Released: May 24th, 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: ebook (KU)

She doesn’t want to stand out. Too bad the fate of the planet rests on her shoulders…

Dacia Wolf longs to be normal. After accidentally killing her brother years ago when her awakening powers set fire to their house, the now-college freshman just wants to fit in. But when another unintended blaze results in a trip to the dean’s office, the distraught young woman learns she is the subject of an ancient prophecy.

Destined to battle a demon bent on annihilation, Dacia struggles to develop her magic into a controllable weapon. And now plagued by damaging dreams, a nosy roommate, and a haunted bully, the would-be heroine fears she’ll be responsible for the deaths of everyone she loves.

Can an unprepared sorceress conquer evil without going up in flames? Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: The Necromancer’s Daughter by D. Wallace Peach

Reviewed: October 5th, 2023
Released: August 25th, 2022
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Format: ebook

A healer with the talent to unravel death. A stillborn child brought to life. A father lusting for vengeance. And a son torn between justice, faith, and love. Caught in a chase spanning kingdoms, each must decide the nature of good and evil, the lengths they will go to survive, and what they are willing to lose.

A healer and dabbler in the dark arts of life and death, Barus is as gnarled as an ancient tree. Forgotten in the chaos of the dying queen’s chamber, he spirits away her stillborn infant and in a hovel at the meadow’s edge, breathes life into the wisp of a child. He names her Aster for the lea’s white flowers. Raised as his daughter, she, too, learns to heal death.

Denied a living heir, the widowed king spies from a distance. But he heeds the claims of the fiery Vicar of the Red Order—in the eyes of the Blessed One, Aster is an abomination, and to embrace the evil of resurrection will doom his rule.

As the king’s life nears its end, he defies the vicar’s warning and summons the necromancer’s daughter. For his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade. Armed with righteousness and iron-clad conviction, the Order’s brothers ride into the leas to cleanse the land of evil.

To save her father’s life, Aster leads them beyond Verdane’s wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a wilderness of dragons and barbarian tribes. Unprepared for a world rife with danger and unchecked power, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Star Sick by Amy Marie Myers

Reviewed: October 1st, 2023
Released: April 20th, 2023
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: ebook

Introversion is illegal in 2084.

But the lovely people at Friendlee.Face.s, a front for the SUPER.V1S.1ON corporation, insist this is for the betterment of Earth.
All those deemed introverted are lazier and less productive than the most recent incarnation of artificial intelligence.
And with the latest wave of brainwashing, most have accepted this reality.

But Luccee Winterscott refuses to comply. Her only hope is to escape Earth on her terms and find a planet with different rules. Or even better, a distant, uncharted star with no rules at all. She will find such a place.

And with the help of the alien race Coodaura, and a group of forgotten misfits, she will find her tribe. She will find love. She will take on the SUPER.V1S.1ON. Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: A Song of Mange and Poison by Caroline Noe

Reviewed: September 22nd, 2023
Released: September 19th, 2023
Genre: Humourous Fantasy
Format: Paperback

It was all going so well…
But I might have guessed a dark side sequel was on the horizon.

No sooner had this Menopausal Madam nabbed her Mangy Wolf, and the jumbled pack of wolves, bears, snakes and an eagle howled their way to a Happy Ever After, than up pops the Messenger of the Alpha of Alphas, announcing the imminent arrival of the stinky Southern Pack.

A shed load of furry trouble descends, chief of whom being Curt’s Auntie Yelena, known as Yellfire to her enemies.
I’m one of them, apparently.
Before you can say ruffle my fur, we’re paw deep in backstabbing, arson, poison and attempted murder.
Everyone’s heart is in danger, especially mine.

Don’t turn your back. Don’t turn tail. Read my thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Dragon’s Fear by Sloane McClain

Reviewed: September 17th, 2023
Released: June 29th, 2023
Genre: Arthurian Fantasy
Format: ebook

When the man who raised Roane Pendragon as a son sends a woman in need of protection, what is Roane to do? Well, one thing he shouldn’t do is sleep with her.

Caitlin McGregor is the latest in a long line of Sword Maidens. As the latest Keeper of Roane’s sword, it means both she and Roane are now targets on the radar of the evil sorceress, Morgause.

Morgause needs to stop Roane from using his sword to turn his key. The easiest way is to stop Cait from giving it to him in the first place. If Morgause can get her hands on it before Roane, not only will her lover, Mordred be released, but so will a creature powerful enough to subjugate multiple universes.

Will Cait give Roane the sword before Morgause stops her? Will Roane be able to use it to do his part to lock away the evil creature? Will Cait and Roane have any chance for a happy-ever-after? Read My Thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Reviewed: September 12th, 2023
Released: May 2nd, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Format: Hardcover

Welcome to the brutal and elite world of Basgiath War College, where everyone has an agenda, and every night could be your last . . .

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general – also known as her tough-as-talons mother – has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away . . . because dragons don’t bond to ‘fragile’ humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter – like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Alliances will be forged. Lives will be lost. Traitors will become allies . . . or even lovers. But sleep with one eye open because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die. Read my thoughts…

Book Review Alert:

Christmas on Outcast Station by Jeanne Adams and Nancy Northcott

Reviewed: September 1st, 2023
Released: December 23rd, 2018
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: eARC

The Princess Problem
by Jeanne Adams

It’s Christmas on Outcast Station and Chief Station Marshal Brad Carruthers has a princess problem. It seems one of orphans from the station’s accidental plague is a princess––soon to be queen––and several people want to kill her. Brad isn’t about to let that happen on his watch. Outcast Station already has enough of a bad reputation without losing princesses. However, when she’s kidnapped, the station springs to action. In the end, can a motley assortment of crew and orphans help Brad find the lost princess before Christmas?

Scorpions for Christmas
by Nancy Northcott

For Federated Colonies Deputy Marshal Hank Tremaine, the only bright spot in his posting to the back end of beyond is its proximity to the Drachan Empire. Fascinated by the scorpioid Drachans, he’s eager to learn more about them. He should’ve been careful what he wished for. A Drachan has been murdered at the local spaceport and a priceless religious artifact stolen. As diplomatic tensions mount, Hank and his comrades race to find the killer and the missing relic before interstellar war breaks out. Read my thoughts…

Book Review Alert: A Wolf So Grim and Mangy by Caroline Noe

Reviewed: September 3rd, 2023
Released: September 20th, 2022
Genre: Humourous Fantasy
Format: Paperback

A Land of Darkness drowns in despair.
It’s called My Office.

When I’m not typing manifests, I churn out fantasy books no-one reads.
Less Young Adult, more MAD: Middle Aged Disappointment.
So, when I’m gifted a magic book for Secret Santa, I can’t believe my luck.

One miserable ‘Once Upon a Time’ later and I’m marooned on a frozen mountain, heaving with weirdos, biting each other’s throats.

The Snake’s oily,
The Eagle’s bald,
The Bear’s accident prone,
My ‘Handsome Prince’ is more cheesed off Wolf, busy scratching, and I’ve no idea who the Villain is (unless it’s me).

Worst of all…
I’ve no way home and the Mangy Wolf’s got the hots for me.

Growing old is no fairytale. Read my thoughts…

Book Review Alert: Mosiac by R.A Harrison

Reviewed: August 31st, 2023
Released: September 1st, 2023 (Launch day!!)
Genre: Science Fantasy
Format: ARC- Paperback

Declared a renegade
The life you knew in shatters
How do you pick up the pieces?

Bekah and Lan are young professionals, at the beginnings of their careers, but have fallen foul of the Consortium, the huge mining and industrial conglomeration with its stranglehold on the colonies. Into their lives comes the enigmatic Zandra, with a secret so well hidden not even she knows of it, but which will change all of their lives. But an invitation from Captain Pendryl, to join him aboard the Caladrius, may provide the solution they are all searching for.

Crewed almost entirely by the Gifted, the Caladrius will be the flagship of a taskforce protecting telepaths and telekinetics in the colonies. But the mission is not without danger … too many of the colonies have become isolationist and regressive, and see the Gift as witchcraft.

Read my thoughts…