Fiction – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror, by Stephen Cox

The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror (The Crooked Medium 2)

True terror is a murderer you can’t stop.

London 1882. A carpenter is killed by a train – an eerie, brutal crime. Flamboyant medium Mrs Ashton and her sapphic partner Braddie seek justice for the widow.

A charismatic new medium takes London by storm. Dock-lass Maisie sees her frightening prophesy of vengeance. A noble family is devastated, but worse is to come.

Outgunned and bewildered, the three confront a deadly conspiracy. They risk losing everything.

A reckoning from beyond the grave.

Giveaway

Win 4 x Signed Books by Stephen Cox (Open to UK Only)

Prize includes – Our Child of the Stars, Our Child of Two Worlds, The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder and the Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror.

*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

Purchase Links

THe crooked medium’s guide to TERROR

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-crooked-medium-s-guide-to-terror

Review: The Last Tenant, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Description

When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on
a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried
years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing
discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the
past hidden.

In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles
in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an
eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she
meets the boy next door.

But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas
must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could
place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the
case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a
killer’s motive, while struggling to hold together her increasingly
troubled relationship with Sævar.

Review: Knit One, Heist One, by Donna Moore

Description

An outrageous blend of cosy crime and biting social satire for fans of Richard Osman, Mick Herron, and Marina Lewycka.

Janus Lodge isn’t your typical retirement community. Sylvia Abercrombie and her knitting-obsessed gang of octogenarians are feisty, foul- mouthed, and fiercely protective of their home. So when a shady developer plots to evict them and build a ‘gentlemen’s club’, they hatch an audacious plan to save their sanctuary – by starting a secret knitwear empire with a scandalous twist. As sales skyrocket, secrets unravel, and Sylvia’s ex-husband lurks in the shadows, the gang must pull off the ultimate heist to protect their beloved Lodge.

Hilarious and heartfelt, Knit One, Heist One is a riotous romp proving that age is no barrier to action.

Review: Platform Decay, by Martha Wells

Format: 244 pages, Hardcover
Published: May 5, 2026 by Tor Books
ISBN: 9781250827005

Description

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

After volunteering to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realizes that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn’t know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for… eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

My Review

Now I’m settled in to my new home, I’m working through my currently reading pile and this was the first one I’ve finished. I still have an entire library to unpack, but there are a few books that I’ve fished out and I’m working through them and the books I was sent over the summer.

I enjoy The Murderbot Diaries a lot and have all of them. I find Murderbot’s cynical response to events entertaining. The development of its relationships with the humans in its orbit and the continuing development and expansion of the world really gives depth to the story. Martha Wells is a skilled writer and every development is well paced.

The plot is gripping, packed with action and emotion as Murderbot tries to deal with its own emotions, understand the emotions of people around it, and keep everyone alive. It actually makes decisions based on whether or not the humans will be traumatised and barely kills anyone in this instalment.

If you’ve not read the other Murderbot Diaries, this book might be a bit confusing, so I’d recommend definitely reading the other 7 books before this one.

Now, I need to go and dig out the other books so that I can shelve them.

Review: The Driftborn, by Simon Bullock

Genre: Space Opera
Age Category: Adult
Number of Pages: 480 Pages
Publication Date: July 28, 2026 (digital edition) May 26, 2026 (hardcover edition)

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252725186-the-driftborn
Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ff1dc076-433f-409f-9cbb-b3857e9998c8
Amazon: https://a.co/d/0aZs34GH (Canada) https://a.co/d/0iyRG1df (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/04mwepeF (UK)

Blurb

A forgotten wreck. A forbidden map. A gate that should never have been opened. On the salvage moon of Veyra’s Fall, Kade Renn only wants one thing: a working air filter for his sick sister, Lira.

Instead, he finds a buried courier ship older than the official history books. Inside it is a dying Driftborn pilot, a forbidden star map, and a message from Kade’s mother, Elian, who supposedly died nine years ago.
The Directorate says the gates saved civilisation. It says the Driftborn are criminals, free-route smugglers and a threat to every recognised human world.

The Directorate is lying.

Forced to flee with Lira, their strange scrap-mech Nix, and a half-illegal ship called The Moth, Kade is pulled into a hidden war over the true origin of the gates. The deeper they travel beyond authorised space, the more dangerous the truth becomes.

The first crossing was not what humanity was taught.

The gates were not built by us.

And something has been waiting for us to understand what we woke.
For readers who enjoy grounded space opera, ancient alien mysteries, damaged ships, found family, dry humour and human stakes beneath the scale of the stars.

The Driftborn is a tense, character-driven science fiction novel about control, memory, survival and the danger of mistaking every door for an invitation.

Review: Thorns, by Gregory Bastianelli

Description

A deadly contagion spreads throughout the world, while scientists grapple to find a cure before it’s too late…

Dr. Monica Cucinotta works on the front lines of a hospital in Cassino, Italy,
dealing with a deadly contagion that causes thorns to erupt along the surface of the body. When Monica becomes infected with the virus and must leave the hospital, she begins ajourney across the dark landscape of a pandemic world where she meets the best and worst of humanity that tests her belief in science and faith as she struggles to return home to her loved ones.

Review: A Fugitive’s History of the Known Universe, by Nadia Afifi

Price: £20.00
Fiction: FICTION / Science Fiction /
Genetic Engineering
Product format: Hardback
iSBN: 978-1-78758-948-3
Pages: 288 pp

Description

Hardcover with sprayed edges. In the sequel to A Rebel’s History of Mars, Azad and his fellow time-traveling historians must contend with the consequences of the dark secrets they’ve exposed…

After exposing the dark origins of his world on the distant planet of Nabatea, Azad is a fugitive, hunted across the galaxy by the fearsome Vitruvian Authorities. But to lead a passive society into revolution, Azad and his crew must enlist the unlikely help of a space pirate with an agenda all her own. Their adventures once again draw them into the past, into the early days of settlement on Nabatea, where a death continues to haunt the fledgling community and a mother must contend with her son’s monstrous vision for their new home.

Review: First Mage on the Moon, by Cameron Johnston

Description

Book Review: Artificial Wisdom, by Thomas R. Weaver

Book Description

The year is 2050. In the teeth of a climate catastrophe, the world is left with a drastic solution: one global leader to steer it through the coming apocalypse.

The final two candidates are ex-US President Lockwood, and Solomon, the world’s first political artificial intelligence. As whispers of a global conspiracy emerge, investigative journalist Marcus Tully find himself at the centre of it – when Solomon’s creator turns up murdered.

Overnight, one investigation becomes two, and it’s not just the result of the election that’s at stake but the future of the species. Suddenly humanity must make an impossible choice – between salvation, or freedom.

Review: Fresh Start, by Johnny Wortham

Price: £20.00
Fiction: FICTION / Science Fiction /
General
Product format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-78758-963-6
Pages: 336 pp

Description

A ship, a gun, and a nice teal robe to find one killer on a planet of
criminals: will Qays Mendoza get the answers he is looking for?
Qays Mendoza get the answers he is looking for?

On the edges of mankind’s domain there is a penal planet called Fresh Start
where a sentence is at best exile to five generations, but more likely death
in its harsh unforgiving wastes. It is to this planet the empire sends the
worst of the worst and it is on this planet that Qays Mendoza searches for
his old captain.

The galactic empire is falling, civilization contracts. Fresh Start is
abandoned. Without oversight, the planet is wild, without guards; the
Oubliette, the supermax prison on the supermax planet, lies open, and the
Butcher of Raznak, a killer worse than the one Qays seeks, is on the loose.
With the help of a street waif called Patience, Qays seeks answers. His soul
is stained with guilt and his spirit broken by complicity. Religion did not
have the answer; duty did not explain it. Birthright and station were not
enough. His answers lie somewhere on Fresh Start.