Tag Archives: Book review

Review: Ember and Steel, by Donna Morgan

Published Date – 2026-03-09
ISBN – 9781919396910
Page Count – 425
Publisher – Godrevy Publishing
Language – English

Author Website

Description

The gods are gone. Magic is lost. Vengeance is nigh.

There is death in the north; entire settlements slaughtered in the night by unknown hands. But dead things do not rest. Mages and scholars from across Breitho search for answers, to no avail.  

The church clings to a whispered prophecy to bring back the gods and end the horrors in the dark.

But none of them understands what is truly at stake.

In her tiny village, Sarah Brandt has her own problems. She has witnessed her friend’s murder and is now running for her life.

Her frantic escape takes her to a circle of Druid stones, where something ancient and powerful is waiting in the darkness. When she encounters the burning presence within the stones, Sarah’s world changes forever. 

Now it isn’t just justice she seeks, but salvation.

Not for herself, but for all humankind.

Order links – takes you to the Author’s website

My Review

Donna Morgan asked for ARC reviewers int he BFS Discord, so I filled in the form and a few days later got the ebook. That was in December, it’s been a busy year so far, and I’ve just got the book read in time for publication day tomorrow. I’ve just pre-ordered a paperback and I need to know what Sarah, Gwith, Taran and Cas do next.

Sarah is a neurodivergent, poor, although literate, outcast living in a small village at the beginning. At the end she’s the embodiment of the spark of life and magic, living in a castle, with a knight husband, and working for the local Duke as his Librarian’s Assistant. The journey she takes to get there include the murder of her only friend, surviving a witch hunt, learning to fight, becoming the Ember Bearer, meeting a goddess, fighting monsters, meeting her husband, dying, and returning from the dead, not necessarily in that order.

I enjoyed this book immensely. I mean, I bawled my eyes out twice, possibly three times, it was fantastic. Sarah’s struggles as a neurodivergent person mirrored some of my own; the rejection of most of society, wearing a mask and contorting yourself to fit into other people’s ideas of normal and still failing, the fear of rejection based on being rejected so often. Surviving despite everything. I adored the first person perspective of Sarah and the interspersed chapters with Moriga and Gwith’s chapter when Sarah dies. I actually felt close to the characters because of that perspective, although I usually prefer 3rd person close.

There’s Sarah’s story and in the background we learn about Gwith, Cas and Taran, the three men who rescue her and become her found family. Cas and Taran are adorable, and would probably drive me up the wall. They’re dancing around each other and it’s obvious, while Sarah is terribly conflicted by Gwith. Since both of them have some trauma related to relationships, it’s understandable. They get the push to sort themselves out after fighting for their lives, which was so very sweetly written, and not graphic.

In the background is a corrupt church that wants to destroy magic and is trying to take over the human duchies. It has succeeded in a couple, but won’t in Trewan; Sarah is there and her presence helps to start the pushback against them. They want her dead because their ‘Veiled Lady’ has told them Sarah, Ember Bearer, will bring about the end of the world. It’s a complex plot the unleash the emptiness from the beginning of the universe and directed by a mad god.

There’s druids, elves, dragons, knockers, gods, and all the fun stuff we expect in fantasy. There’s a darkness that’s relieved by the light moments and love. The world building is magnificent, and the seeding of details that make sense later is really well done. I do like that the god’s are still about in various forms, they just aren’t responding to humans. I enjoyed the insertion of quotes from ‘historical documents’ at the beginning of chapters and the autistic traits I resonate with. I loved the developments of the characters as they go through events and survive. Sarah finding a job in the library is brilliant, I’d totally be hiding in the library and struggling not to ask the sentient giant snake all about his species and homeland, between disappearing into old books for days at a time, too. I think it’s a ‘autistic book person’ thing.

Anyway, as I said, I have a physical copy of this book on the way and if you enjoy darker fantasy, I recommend it.

Review: Sentient, by Michael Nayak

Publisher: Angry Robot
Publication date: 24th February 2026
ISBN: 978-1-915998-44-6
Format: Paperback
Price: £9.99

Book Description

Extinction Horizon meets Contagion in this sequel to 2025’s sci-fi thriller Symbiote, where the biological threat has escaped the South Pole and is now wreaking havoc upon Antarctica. 

The survivors of the South Pole massacre will find that getting off the Antarctic continent may cost them their lives…

Months after the events of Symbiote, sunrise has come to the ice continent, bringing with it the beginning of the annual tourist season. where 1,500 summer visitors will soon call the coastal McMurdo Station home. With them are the architects of the classified CIA program that unleashed the deadly microbes, who are determined to uncover what happened with their experiment and harvest samples of the mutation to turn into a biological weapon.

However, when Ben Jacobs returns from an impossible journey to the Pole and is reunited with Penny – an asymptomatic carrier of the symbiotic microbes – all hell breaks loose. When the sea ice surrounding the station becomes a fertile breeding ground for a new and more dangerous infestation, Rajan Chariya and his friends will have to join forces with the CIA to fight the onslaught of infected “sea people” roving the streets. With tensions high and stakes even higher, the question becomes when will the group stop being useful, and start becoming targets who know too much?

Worse, there may be more than one asymptomatic carrier….

With a heart-stopping pace and twists that will leave readers breathless, Sentient is a thrilling sequel that brilliantly combines all the best horror tropes with real world scenarios.

Continue reading “Review: Sentient, by Michael Nayak”

Review: Nine Goblins, by T. Kingfisher

Book Description

No one knows exactly how the Goblin War began, but folks will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, henhouse-raiding, obnoxious, rude, and violent. Goblins would actually agree with all this, and might throw in “cowardly” and “lazy” too for good measure.

But goblins don’t go around killing people for fun, no matter what the propaganda posters say. And when a confrontation with an evil wizard lands a troop of nine goblins deep behind enemy lines, goblin sergeant Nessilka must figure out how to keep her hapless band together and get them home in one piece.

Unfortunately, between them and safety lies a forest full of elves, trolls, monsters, and that most terrifying of creatures…a human being.

My Review

I wasn’t planning to buy this book when I went into Waterstones Grimsby this afternoon. I was looking for the paperback edition of A Song of Legends Lost, by M. H. Ayinde. I have a lovely hardback and the paperback has just come out so I can start reading it at last. Anyway, this little gem was sat on the shelf and the cover made me pick it up. The blurb made me buy it.

I also found another dragon for my collection, a Charlie Bears Cuddle Cubs Collection one, its green with tired eyes and is currently sat with my blue and yellow Suki brand dragon that I got from Leeds Royal Armouries, and my ‘TY Original Beanie Babies’ dragon Scorch. The dragon shelf is full, so I’ve had to shift those three to a different part of the desk.

I need a bigger dragon shelf…

Back to talking about books and not my weird dragon stuffy collecting.

So, as I said I was initially attracted by the cover and then the description. I started reading while waiting for my bus home, then on the bus and I’ve just spent 2 hours on my settee finishing it. It’s a novella, obviously, and the first adult book the author wrote after writing best selling children’s books. It has too many dead bodies for a children’s book, although I’m pretty certain kids like goblins that are always picking their nose or ear, or running away and stripping off, or things blowing up. It’s funny, well-written and has a satisfying story arc and ending. I haven’t read any T. Kingfisher books, I don’t think, but I have Clockwork Boys on my TBR pile. I think I like the writing style of this book, so I’m hopeful that I’ll like a longer novel.

Review: Mushroom Blues, by Adrian M Gibson

Book Description

ENTER THE FUNGALVERSE. Blade Runner, True Detective, and District 9 meld with the weird worlds of Jeff VanderMeer, Philip K. Dick, and China Miéville in Adrian M. Gibson’s award-winning fungalpunk noir debut, now with a foreword from acclaimed author Nicholas Eames and six pieces of original interior artwork.

Two years after a devastating defeat in the decade-long Spore War, the island nation of Hōppon and its capital city of Neo Kinoko are occupied by invading Coprinian forces. Its fungal citizens are in dire straits, wracked by food shortages, poverty, and an influx of war refugees. Even worse, the corrupt occupiers exploit their power, hounding the native population.

As a winter storm looms over the metropolis, NKPD homicide detective Henrietta Hofmann begrudgingly partners up with mushroom-headed patrol officer Koji Nameko to investigate the mysterious murders of fungal and half-breed children. Their investigation drags them deep into the seedy underbelly of a war-torn city, one brimming with colonizers, criminal gangs, racial division, and moral decay.

In order to solve the case and unravel the truth, Hofmann must challenge her past and embrace fungal ways. What she and Nameko uncover in the midst of this frigid wasteland will chill them to the core, but will they make it through the storm alive?

SPFBO X 2nd place. Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer. Winner of the FanFiAddict Award for Best Indie Debut, the Literary Titan Gold Book Award, and the Next Generation Indie Book Award.

My Review

I picked this book up at World Fantasy Convention 2025 in Brighton, from the Broken Binding table in the dealers room. I got a lovely signed and illustrated hardback edition. Usually I’m uncomfortable with mushrooms – I saw that episode of Hannibal where a killer was using bodies to grow mushrooms and one of the victims was alive and sprouting, and I’ve had an issue ever since. It’s weird, anything with parasites also upsets me, but I managed to read Alien Clay, so I can manage to read Mushroom Blues.

This novel was originally self-published in 2024 and did well in a variety of awards. The edition produced with The Broken Binding is a hardback, signed and illustrated. It’s published by Kinoko Book Co. which is hard to find anything about, so I’m assuming it’s the name the author has chosen for his self-publishing venture. Gibson is, according to his bio, “an award-winning Canadian SFF author, podcaster, illustrator, and tattoo artist. He is the creator of the SFF Addicts podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow authors M.J. Kuhn and Greta Kelly. The three host in-depth interviews with an array of science fiction and fantasy authors, as well as writing masterclasses.”

This is his debut novel. And it’s really quite enjoyable. We follow Hofmann, a detective sent from the homeland to work for the NKPD, and she’s struggling. In a world of men, she’s a divorced older woman in recovery from alcoholism – caused by the job, worsened by the death of her daughter in a car crash Hofmann caused. She hates mushrooms. Not just the people of Hoppon, but mushrooms in general – she can’t see them or eat them without feeling sick. And she’s stuck in a place where humans are a minority, and the majority are fungal people who live in fungal architecture. It’s her worst nightmare. She’s been fed a load of manure in the form of propaganda and holds all sorts of prejudices about the Hopponese.

Children are going missing. Hipponese and ‘half-breeds’ – mixed human and Hipponese children. An Elder finds the dismembered body of one of the children on a sacred island. The NKPD assign the job to Hofmann, and the force’s only Hopponese officer, Koji Nameko, since he was the one to first arrive and to speak to the elder who found the body.

They uncover the fates of the missing children and race to prevent a disaster that involves Nameko’s own family at a major midwinter festival.

As the pair investigate, Hofmann finds herself overcoming her prejudices and learning to appreciate the culture of the people her own are occupying. She even eats mushrooms and doesn’t vomit, at one point.

It’s obviously based, in part at least, on conditions in Japan between 1945 and 1970. After the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the yanks imposed a military occupation on Japan. Japan had been the aggressors, attacking China and Russia from the 1930s, before joining the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, Japan) and attacking Hawaii in 1940. There are still people alive who were children at the time and had relatives who fought with British, Commonwealth/Imperial forces in the Pacific, and who have inherited hate for Japanese people. Australian forces were expecting a Japanese invasion, British colonies around the Pacific were invaded and occupied. We’ve all heard about the horrors of Singapore and the POW camps that murdered thousands.

After the war, the USian Americans felt particularly aggrieved, as though they were the only ones to lose people in horrible ways, to be traumatised. And they took it out on the ordinary people of Japan during their occupation. Soldiers and civilian occupiers had been fed a diet of dehumanising propaganda for years and as a result treated everyone as though they were personally responsible for the actions of prison camp guards and commanders.

No one gets out of this looking good, by the way. There were massacres of people protesting for equal treatment in their own home, soldiers killed with impunity, the General in charge was a nutter. Japanese survivors of the hydrogen bombs were stigmatised because of fears of mutations and genetic damage and the institution of the Japanese Emperor got out of everything without a stain. Blame bad advisors, for the throne is divine and can do no wrong. Where have we heard that before?

Anyway, I recommend learning a little post-war Japanese history, after reading this novel, because the context adds depth.

Of course, this book is about an imaginary world, an imaginary war, and imaginary species, an imaginary occupation…

The mystery is well-paced throughout and the climactic race to stop the murder of children and incite a riot at a temple is exciting and balanced by the post action resolution. The description of the city is a blend of cyberpunk futurism and early 20th century detective noir, gritty and flashy, destruction and growth. The main characters develop as people and we learn about their back grounds as they move through the story. It was a quick read, although it’s not a short book, and I really couldn’t put it down.

Recommended, can’t wait for the next one.

Review: Path to Power, by Charlotte Goodwin

PATH TO POWER
The Stolen Throne Trilogy, Book 1

A queen without a throne, a sorcerer without magic, a usurper bent on genocide…

Emma thought she was just an ordinary woman. She had no idea that she’d been abducted by aliens to save her life; until they returned her memories. The Zargons watch, they study, they don’t interfere, until one of them did. One of them saved Emma’s life when they shouldn’t have, and now they want her to save thousands more.

Emma’s stepmother is the mightiest sorcerer Dunia has ever seen. She used her power to steal Emma’s birthright, and now she’s using it for genocide. Only Emma can supplant Queen Lila, but she can’t do it alone. Her husband, Tom, has a potential he never knew; a potential to wield magic. Together, they must travel across the galaxy, find Tom’s magic, and save the homeland she never knew existed, until now.

About the Author

Charlotte Goodwin is an Army Reservist of twenty years with just another twenty-two to go!  She openly admits she is unable to ever leave through choice and will still be serving until they kick her out at sixty.  Around the Army, Charlotte somehow manages to fit in being a mum to two young children, a never ending renovation project, adventures in the great outdoors and an addiction to writing.

Continue reading “Review: Path to Power, by Charlotte Goodwin”

Review: The Night Ship, by Alex Woodroe

Genre – horror > supernatural
● ISBN hardback – 978-1-78758-918-6
● ISBN ebook – 978-1-78758-919-3
● Pricing [USD] $26.95 (HB) / $4.99 (EB)
● Pricing [GBP] £20 (HB) / £4.95 (EB)
● Releases January 20 2026
● Published by Flame Tree Press
● Distributed by Hachette UK / Simon & Schuster US

SYNOPSIS

Driving a logging truck through the Romanian mountains, smuggler Rosi and her crew come across a radio signal that hints at impending doom. As the world goes completely dark, their truck becomes a vessel sailing across a sea of nothingness.

But they’re not alone: transmissions trickle in through the radio from similar isolated islands across the country, from amateur radio hobbyists and police cars and customs facilities. Attempting to rescue survivors and find a way out, the group save more lives, but soon discover that something hungry lurks below, and it’s sending up agents – and transmissions – of its own.


Comparison Titles: Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson, Void 1680 AM by Ken Lowery, The Vast of Night (2019 film directed by Andrew Patterson)

Continue reading “Review: The Night Ship, by Alex Woodroe”

Review: Lives of Bitter Rain, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Format: 126 pages, Hardcover
Published: October 14, 2025 by Head of Zeus — an AdAstra Book
ISBN 9781035911448
Format: Audible Audio
Published: October 14, 2025 by Head of Zeus — an AdAstra Book

City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring ‘Perfection’ and ‘Correctness’ to an imperfect world. But before these ruthless Tyrant Philosophers send in their legions, they despatch Outreach – the rain before the storm.

Outreach is that part of the Pal machine responsible for diplomacy — converting enemies into friends, achieving through words what an army of five thousand could not, urging the oppressed to overthrow the bloody-handed priests, evil necromancers and greedy despots that subjugate them.

Angilly, twelve-years-old, a child of Pal soldiers stationed in occupied Jarokir, does not know it yet, but a sequence of accidents and questionable life choices will lead her to Outreach. As she travels from Jarrokir to Bracinta, Cazarkand, Lemas, The Holy Regalate of Stouk and finally, Usmai, she’ll learn that the price of her nation’s success is paid in compromise and lost chances, and that the falling rain will always be bitter.

LIVES OF BITTER RAIN is a novella in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s award-winning Tyrant Philosopher series. It is a prequel to the third novel in the sequence, DAYS OF SHATTERED FAITH.

My Review

I’ve listened to all of the books in this series, and have them all in hardback, so obviously I had to get this novella.

We follow the life of Angilly from the time her parents die in Jarokir to the day she fights a duel in Usmai. Each important moment of her life as she rises to the rank of Resident is catalogued.

If you’ve read Days of Shattered Faith this will give you some insight into the actions and character of Angilly and extra background to the events in that novel. If you haven’t, you should, and this novella will give you a taste of the style of writing and the worldbuilding.

The narration is excellent as ever and it is easy to listen to. At just over 4 hours, this novella can keep you company for half a work shift if you can’t get away with reading at work.

Review: Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, by Greer Stothers

ISBN: 9781835413807
Format: Paperback
Pages: 384
Published:
3 Feb 2026 (US)
3 Feb 2026 (UK)

Description

In Which Many Dangerous and Homosexual Things Happen.

All his life, Sir Cameron has stayed as far away from danger as possible. He is quite frankly too handsome to die a pointless death in battle. But then the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights: the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to survive: the mad sorcerer.

Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but transmogrifying him into a vulture is at least entertaining. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?

As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if that hobby is trying to kill God.

Even if it might get you killed, too.

Fall in love with this laugh-out loud, genre-bending romp full of concussed elves and queer romance like you’ve never seen before.

Continue reading “Review: Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die, by Greer Stothers”

Review: The Hope, by Paul E Hardisty

PUBLICATION DATE: 29 JANUARY 2026
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what’s left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.

But Boo has a secret of her own: an astonishing ability to memorise entire texts with perfect recall. When the library is discovered and destroyed, she’s forced to flee – armed with nothing but the stories she carries in her mind, and a growing understanding of her family’s true past.

Hunted and alone, and with the help of some unlikely allies, she must fight to save her loved ones – and bring hope to a broken world.

Continue reading “Review: The Hope, by Paul E Hardisty”

Review: Ballad of the Bone Road, by A.C. Wise

ISBN: 9781835413784
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Published: 27th Jan 2026

Description

Port Astor is a city of ghosts. Once home to the beautiful, brutal courts of the fae, forty years ago they vanished without explanation – and Port Astor decided to forget.

Brix and Bellefeather are paranormal investigators, working to keep Port Astor’s wraiths and spectres from consuming the city. Both have hauntings of their own: Belle shares her body with a demon, Belizial; Brix has trapped the soul of his dead fiancée in the world of the living, unwilling to let her go.

While investigating the glamorous and notoriously haunted Peony Hotel, Brix and Belle come across a young couple tangled up in one of the city’s most infamous tales. Jimmy Valentine, silver screen idol and one-time favorite of a fae queen, has returned to haunt the Peony. But Jimmy is no mere ghost, and Brix and Belle soon realize his return is more intimately tied to their own hauntings than they could ever have imagined.

The fae have not forgotten that Port Astor once belonged to them. And their Hollow Queen won’t give up her kingdom so easily.

My Review

Brix is dealing with losing his beloved Abby, Belle is dealing with her childhood trauma. They work together as investigators of the supernatural in a haunted city. One day they investigate a haunted hotel, and the next they’re dealing with the Hollow Queen, a powerful fae.

Brix discovers that a ghost has been called, a ghost so powerful that it’s drawing others to the hotel. He sets about rescuing the two young people who caused the problem, only to realise that the ghost, famed singer and actor, Jimmy Valentine, was once the amour of the Hollow Queen, and she’s never forgiven him for loving her.

Belle’s sister Dee comes to call, desperately looking for help. Her husband Clarence, a priest, has been behaving strangely: he’s cheating on her with a parishioner, he doesn’t go to church anymore, and he’s spending an awful lot of time in the old barn. When Dee takes herself back to the family farm, Belle, and her demon Beliziel, follow, because something is clearly not right.

It’s very not right. And the two cases are linked. Between them, Brix and Belle work on either end of the case, lay ghosts to rest, and banish the fae, while fighting their own internal wars. Belle and Beliziel have to find a way to live equally, while Brix has to find the courage to let Abby go. And they both have to rescue/protect the two young people, Virgil and Leonie, and Dee, from themselves, Clarence, and the Hollow Queen.

Wow, this was…

Overwhelming melancholy

Longing for a lost love

Demon sex

Ghost threesomes

Pyres and gallows

A bullet to the brain

Strangely enough, it ends with hope, and I can see this being the first in a series following Brix and Belle, as they mentor Virgil and Leonie, and Belle builds a new relationship with her sister, while they hunt down the rest of the doors, and work out why the fae retreated from Arcadia in the first place.

The story starts strong, and I was intrigued by the going’s on at the hotel. That strand was definitely the strongest of the novel, exploring Brix’s angst about losing Abby, and the strong connection of people to places. The young lovers, Virgil and Leonie, who carelessly summon the spirit of Jimmy Valentine, are bound up in each other. This is where the ghost threesomes come in. Yeah, that was weird, but fine I suppose. It makes sense in the plot.

Brix, with Virgil, and then Jimmy, unwind the bonds, discover the cause, and fight the Hollow Queen, in the confines of a hotel room that keeps disappearing. It’s beautifully described, and the four characters feel full, rounded, even the ghost.

There’s the echo of the Hollow Queen permeating the whole narrative, too, becoming solid when Jimmy leaves, helped by Brix and Virgil. The other haunting here is love and heartbreak. Jimmy was in love with everyone, and broke hearts, including his own every day, always seeking a home and never finding it. His love is so deep, he might even sate the Hollow Queen. And that’s a problem for her. Their complicated relationship drives the hauntings and the religious fervour, as the Hollow Queen hungers to devour everyone and everything, and Jimmy hungers for a place where he can stop running.

Belle’s strand was weaker, and there could have been more focus on her past with Clarence. Why does Clarence hate her? He’s a priest and he knows about Beliziel, but how? The reader knows Belle’s parents abused her – they were religious and delusional believing her to be possessed long before she actual met Beliziel, but she left home before Dee met Clarence. Did her parents tell him about their wicked, demonic daughter? Did Dee?

The relationship between Belle and Beliziel is complex, and it’s only after they accidentally kill Ada, Clarence’s mistress and the host to whatever is causing the blinding light in the barn, that there is a reckoning between them. Belle must face her pain, as must Beliziel, instead of holding it back and hurting each other. They also have sex a lot. I’m not sure why, other than as a bonding exercise? It wasn’t particularly explicit so I am not going to object.

I think if the author writes a sequel, focusing on Belle and Dee’s relationship will be an important strand, maybe answering some of the questions I have about their childhood and Clarence.

The setting is pseudo-1950s U.S. There’s cars and movies, industrialists and robber barons, a Gilded Age hotel past its prime, and Belle is clearly considered to be eccentric, someone out of time, but there’s an otherness to it. Some of the dialogue feels psuedo-working class English, not American. Arcadia could be anywhere, a floating place, unattached to any known map, and yet has a definite USian vibe.

Honestly, an enjoyable read that kept my attention and the way the two separate mysteries are brought together is clever. I found the ending a little abrupt, but I can see what they author was doing. I think it would make a good film. There’s a theatrical quality to the novel that would translate well.

It’s a bit gothic, with a dark undertone and terrifying highlights. Hardly anyone dies. There are no explosions.

Other than the lack of explosions (the hotel could definitely have blown up from the energy of fighting the Hollow Queen, surely? Or the barn?), I recommend this novel to lovers of gothic horror who wants to shake things up and read something lightly dark, and to the urban fantasy or paranormal romance lover looking for something slightly less romantic and slightly darker.