Fiction – Page 23 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

The BFS Awards 2020: My reviews of the books in the Best Anthology category

I’ve been keeping fairly quiet about this, even after the British Fantasy Society announced the shortlist and jurors; I’m one of the jurors for the Best Anthology category. The Awards ceremony was yesterday (Monday 22nd February 2021) and was streamed on YouTube and Facebook.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsAgzty3SeNzHV3canzycwA

Originally the following were the shortlist:

· New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction for People of Colour, ed. Nisi Shawl

· Once Upon a Parsec: The Book of Alien Fairy Tales, ed. David Gullen

· Wonderland, ed. Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane

· The Woods, ed. Phil Sloman

Other jurors added:

A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods, ed. by Jennifer Brozek

The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, ed. Jeff and Anne VanderMeer

You can find the short lists for the other categories here.

Now that the winners (add link to winners list)have been announced, I can safely share my thoughts on the books I read for the awards.

Review: Holes In The Veil, by Beth Overmyer

Fiction: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic
Product format: Paperback
Price: £9.95; $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-78758-582-9
Pages: 256 pp

Having killed his lifelong enemy, Aidan Ingledark finds himself in possession of a map to the Questing Goblet, one of the Goblets Immortal that gives the drinker luck beyond measure. Meraude seeks this Goblet to wipe out magickind. Aidan and his traveling companion are determined to find it first but they must battle through illusion and doubt.

Jinn’s a Sightful seeking the Summoner. She wants to kill her mother, but her foresight ends in darkness. Can she enlist Aidan’s help and change her fate?

The threat of Meraude and her dominion are imminent in this sequel to The
Goblets Immortal.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing.
Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Review: Fatal Isles, by Maria Adolfsson

54842594. sy475 — ISBN: 9781785768378
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Imprint: Zaffre
Pub date: 18 Feb 2021
Edition: Paperback original

A remote island. A brutal murder. A secret hidden in the past . . .

In the middle of the North Sea, between the UK and Denmark, lies the beautiful and rugged island nation of Doggerland.
Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby has returned to the main island, Heimö, after many years in London and has worked hard to become one of the few female police officers in Doggerland.

So, when she wakes up in a hotel room next to her boss, Jounas Smeed, she knows she’s made a big mistake. But things are about to get worse: later that day, Jounas’s ex-wife is found brutally murdered. And Karen is the only one who can give him an alibi.

The news sends shockwaves through the tight-knit island community, and with no leads and no obvious motive for the murder, Karen struggles to find the killer in a race against time.

Soon she starts to suspect that the truth might lie in Doggerland’s history. And the deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes that even small islands can hide deadly secrets . . .

Promo and Giveaway!: Last Star Standing, by Spaulding Taylor

PAPERBACK
978-1-78965-097-6
198 × 129 mm
4 February 2021
£10.99 / $14.99 / C$19.99 /€11.66
EBOOK
978-1-78965-098-3
ePub
4 February 2021
£5.99 / $7.99 / C$10.99 /€6.66

Dystopian/speculative fiction for readers of sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers and
dystopian fiction. Aimed at readers of novels by Neil Gaiman, J.G. Ballard (or
Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go)

It is the 23rd century. Aiden, imprisoned, stares up into a tiny square of sky. A prominent member of the rebellion, he expects to be executed. Aiden is
battling the Xirfell rulers, whose King oppresses many planets, the Earth
included.
But the Xirfell have executed their king and installed a new ruler. The populace riots. Amid the tumult, Aiden is sworn in, the leader he’s always longed to be.
Never one to fit in, he must re-discover himself, as an indigenous Australian, as a fighter, as a lover – and as a leader.

Giveaway!

https://widget.gleamjs.io/e.js

AUTHOR DETAILS

Alice McVeigh (writing as Spaulding Taylor) was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Southeast Asia. After surviving her teenage years in McLean,
Virginia, and achieving an undergraduate degree in cello performance at the internationally renowned Jacobs School of Music, she came to London to study cello with William Pleeth. There she worked for over a decade with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique. Alice was first published in the late 1990s when her two contemporary novels (While the Music Lasts and Ghost Music) were published by Orion to critical acclaim.

Review: The Crow Folk, by Mark Stay

04 February 2021 | Paperback Original | £8.99

Faye Bright always felt a little bit different. And today she’s found out why. She’s just stumbled across her late mother’s diary which includes not only a spiffing recipe for jam roly-poly, but spells, incantations, runes and recitations… a witch’s notebook.

And Faye has inherited her mother’s abilities.

Just in time, too. The Crow Folk are coming. Led by the charismatic
Pumpkinhead, their strange magic threatens Faye and the villagers. Armed with little more than her mum’s words, her trusty bicycle, the grudging help of two bickering old ladies, and some aggressive church bellringing, Faye will find herself on the front lines of a war nobody expected.

Fall in love with the extraordinary world of Faye Bright – it’s Maisie Dobbs meets The Magicians.

Review: Smoke Screen, by Thomas Enger & Jorn Lier Horst

SMOKE SCREEN
by Thomas Enger & Jørn Lier Horst
translated by Megan Turney
PUBLICATION DATE: 18 FEBRUARY 2021 | ORENDA BOOKS | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99

Oslo, New Year’s Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion and the city is put on terrorist alert.

Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, she is identified as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Semplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten ten years earlier … and never found.

Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case, as public interest heightens, the terror threat is raised, and it becomes clear that Patricia’s disappearance is not all that it seems…

The second in the hard-boiled and furiously compelling Blix & Ramm series, created by Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst, two of the biggest names in Nordic Noir.

Review: The Invitation, by Katie Webster

·        Publisher : The Conrad Press (31 July 2020)
·        Language: : English
·        Paperback : 272 pages
·        ISBN-10 : 1913567273
·        ISBN-13 : 978-1913567279

**Amazon:**
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invitation-Lucys-Crypt-Katie-Webster/dp/19135672731

BLURB

On the island kingdom of Meta Emery, a young queen, Abigail, wakes in the middle of the night to a terrifying realisation; hostile wizards from the rival kingdom of Archmond have finally done what they’ve been threatening to do: bring a girl, Lucy, into this world to destroy the queen and all she has worked for.

Hundreds of miles west, in Archmond itself, a great feast unfolds in the castle to celebrate Lucy’s arrival. Soleman, one of the wizards and a co-ruler of Archmond, has spread the news to his people that Lucy is the heroine an ancient prophecy predicted; he promises that the discord throughout their world will soon be over. But his fellow ruler Ronald remains dubious that this apparently meek and troubled girl could really overthrow Abigail, or whether she is ever likely to want to.

This highly imaginative and original novel is the first in an exciting new fantasy series, ‘Lucy’s Crypt’.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Webster is an Australian lawyer, born in Queensland’s Daintree Rainforest. She has worked in both criminal and international law. She has published academically, but this is her debut novel.

Review: Circles of Deceit, by Paul CW Beatty

Circles of Deceit

Murder, conspiracy, radicalism, poverty, riot, violence, capitalism, technology: everything is up for grabs in the early part of Victoria’s reign.

Radical politicians, constitutional activists and trade unionists are being professionally assassinated. When Josiah Ainscough of the Stockport Police thwarts an attempt on the life of the Chartist leader, Feargus O’Connor, he receives public praise, but earns the enmity of the assassin, who vows to kill him.

‘Circles of Deceit’, the second of Paul CW Beatty’s Constable Josiah Ainscough’s historical murder mysteries, gives a superb and electric picture of what it was to live in 1840s England. The novel is set in one of the most turbulent political periods in British history, 1842-1843, when liberties and constitutional change were at the top of the political agenda, pursued using methods fair or foul.

Purchase Links

TBR Pile Review: The Empress of Salt and Fortune, by Nghi Vo

49882356. sy475 — Paperback, 128 pages
Published March 24th 2020 by Tor.com
ISBN:125075030X (ISBN13: 9781250750303)
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle #1

With the heart of an Atwood tale and the visuals of a classic Asian period drama, Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune is a tightly and lushly written narrative about empire, storytelling, and the anger of women.

A young royal from the far north, is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.

Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor’s lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.

At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She’s a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

Audiobook Review: The Lost Sentinel, by Suzanne Rogerson

The Lost Sentinel Book 1 – Silent Sea Chronicles

The magical island of Kalaya is dying, along with its Sentinel.

The Assembly controls Kalaya. Originally set up to govern, they now persecute those with magic and exile them to the Turrak Mountains.

Tei, a tailor’s daughter, has always hidden her magic, but when her father’s old friend visits and warns them to flee to the mountains, she must leave her old life behind. On the journey, an attack leaves her father mortally wounded. He entrusts her into the care of the exiles and on his deathbed makes a shocking confession.

Struggling with self-doubt, Tei joins the exiles search for their new Sentinel who is the only person capable of restoring the fading magic. But mysterious Masked Riders are hunting the Sentinel too, and time, as well as hope, is running out.

Against mounting odds it will take friendship, heartache, and sacrifice for the exiles to succeed, but is Tei willing to risk everything to save the island magic?

If you like character-based fantasy, then you’ll love The Lost Sentinel – book one in the Silent Sea Chronicles trilogy.

Purchase Links

Audible

Amazon Audiobook