PUBLICATION DATE: 15th AUGUST 2024 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
On her first day back from maternity leave, Detective Sam Shephard is thrown straight into a cold-case investigation – the unsolved murder of a highly respected Anglican Priest in Dunedin.
The case has been a thorn in the side of the Police hierarchy, and for her boss it’s personal. With all the witness testimony painting a picture of a dedicated church and family man, what possible motive could there have been for his murder?
But when Sam starts digging deeper into the case, it becomes apparent that someone wants the sins of the past to remain hidden. And when a new potential witness to the crime is found brutally murdered, there is pressure from all quarters to solve the case before anyone else falls prey.
Format: 384 pages, Hardcover Published: June 20, 2024 by W&N ISBN: 9781399607537
It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.
It is the end of the 19th Century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.
Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans-Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands.
On to the platform steps a curious cast of characters: a grieving woman with a borrowed name, a famous child born on the train and a disgraced naturalist, all heading for the Great Exhibition in Moscow.
But the old rules are changing, and there are whispers that the train isn’t safe. As secrets and stories begin to unravel the passengers and crew must survive their journey through the Wastelands together, even as something uncontrollable seems to be breaking in . . .
My Review
I picked this book up at the ‘It’s Strange Up North’ event in June. Sarah Brooks is delightful, and signed this book for me. Actually, I think the books sold at that event were officially sold before publication date.
We have here a tale of a train that runs through the Siberian landscape from Beijing to Moscow, but a landscape transformed by some magical power. The land is utterly strange and bizarre creatures live there. It’s dangerous for humans to travel across the ‘Wasteland’, but trade demands that they must, so ‘the Company’ built a railway track and sends one train back and forth across it.
But the landscape is changing, it’s mimicking the the world that is intruding on it and eventually things go very wrong.
In this novel, set in 1899, we follow Marya, a young woman grieving the deaths of her parents, out to find the truth of the last crossing, and Weiwei, the child of the train – born on the train and raised by the crew – who also wants to know what happened. In the process of their separate investigations, they rouse the suspicions of the Company consultants, known as ‘Crows’.
As they seek answers they are changed, and the choices they, and their allies make – the Wasteland Girl, Elena, Alexei the engineer, Suzuki the Cartographer, and The Professor – bring changes to the whole world.
The action builds up as the train travels, there’s tension as they struggle with water shortages and mad English naturalists running off to get samples, while a Russian priest screams about blasphemy, and French aristocrats laze about. Someone has clearly been reading Agatha Christie.
This was something like Murder On The Orient Express, in that there’s a mystery to be solved – what happened on the last crossing? It’s also a historical fantasy of the late nineteenth century, with luxury carriages for the wealthy, crowded third class accommodation, steam trains, fantastical technology, and a landscape that is utterly strange but entrancing. The transformation of the train from a mechanical wonder to another kind of wonder, a terrifying, moving forest, luxuriant and free, a travelling Eden, is the central narrative, around which everything else is built, everything else is just the humans trying to understand it, understand their places in this new reality, and decide if they want to be a part of it or not.
It reminds me a bit of the magic used by Priya in Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdoms series. Except the magic isn’t controlled by anyone, the train and the landscape decides where it’s going.
The train and the landscape are intertwined, and the people realise they are intertwined with the landscape too, and the Walls are false promises of strength holding up ultimately weak Empires and greedy corporations.
How lovely! What a wonderous thought, a wonderous world it would be, if the old empires fell because a magical forest rose, rather than because we started murdering each other by the millions.
‘The Company’ is clearly modelled after the East India Companies of the 17th to 19th centuries (Dutch and British – both equally greedy and murderous, with their own armies), with a Victorian railway company thrown into the mix. If the East India Company hadn’t fallen apart by the 1850s, they might have got into trans-continental railways, I suppose, and the trans-Siberian train route has been around for about 100 years. It’s actually three or four connected routes, that started when the Russian Empire decided it would quite like to get to it’s furthest eastern reaches, near China, more easily. You can travel all the way from Moscow to Beijing, which would be fun, if you didn’t have to go to multiple dictatorships to do so. The train network made it easy for Russian troops to support China during the Japanese invasion in the 1940s, but also meant the Chinese and Russians could kill each other easily over bits of territory they both claimed in the 1910s.
I would call them silly buggers, but come on, we didn’t do much better. Empires are bad for everyone.
Anyway, I was quite enthralled by this book. I loved the lavish descriptions of the Wastelands and the way the train transformed. I found Marya and Weiwei, two very different people, to be sympathetic and engaging characters, and the narrative tightly constructed.
Enjoyable historical fantasy. Especially if you like trains. And magical, murderous landscapes.
Release Date 2024-08-13 Formats Ebook, Paperback EBook ISBN 13th August 2024 | 9781915998132 | epub & mobi | £4.99/$7.99/$8.99 Paperback ISBN 13th August 2024 | 9781915998125 | Paperback | £9.99/$17.99/$23.99
Blurb
An alien invasion hits the town of Muddy Gap, but a disgruntled pie aficionado is the only one who seems to remember it…
Denver Bryant’s passion for pie has sent him across Wyoming in search of the best slices. Though he dutifully posts reviews on his blog, he’s never been able to recreate his brief moment of viral popularity, and its trickling income isn’t enough to pay his rent next month.
Driving home from a roadside diner, Denver witnesses a UFO explode directly over his tiny town of Muddy Gap. When he questions his neighbors, it appears that Denver is the only person to have seen anything – or to care that the residents’ strange behavior, as well as a shower of seashell hail, might be evidence of something extraterrestrial. Being both non-binary and autistic, he’s convinced his reputation as the town eccentric is impeding his quest for answers. Frustrated, he documents the bizarre incidents on his failing pie blog, and his online popularity skyrockets. His readers want the truth, spurring him to get to the bottom of things.
The only person in town who takes him seriously is handsome bartender, Ezra. As the two investigate over pie and the possibility of romance, the alien presence does more than change the weather. People start disappearing. When Denver and Ezra make a run for it, the town refuses to let them leave. Reality is folding in on itself. It’s suddenly a race against time to find the extraterrestrial source and destroy it before it consumes not only Muddy Gap but everything beyond. Denver’s always been more outsider than hero, but he’s determined to ensure that a world with Ezra – and with pie – still exists tomorrow.
Key Lime Sky is the second book from AL Hess at Angry Robot – check out his previous work, World Running Down.
By Julie Cook Imprint: Pen & Sword History Pages: 184 Illustrations: 32 black and white illustrations ISBN: 9781399003414 Published: 10th October 2022 £14.00
Description
A History of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts: Brownies, Rainbows and WAGGGS charts the evolution of the Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from its early days as a movement started before WW1 right through to the modern day. With real life interviews with Girl Guides and Girl Scouts from their 90s down to young children, this book looks at what being a Girl Guide has meant through the ages up to the present day. With dramatic and often emotional stories of what it was like to be an evacuated Brownie in the Second World War, a disabled Girl Guide and with tales of girls’ heroism throughout the two great wars both in the UK and the United States, this book extols the Guiding and Scouting movement as one that has evolved with women and girls’ rights and its hopes for the future.
My Review
Thanks to Rosie Crofts at Pen & Sword for sending me a copy of this book, way back in 2022. I was sent it in return for an honest review.
I wanted to review this book because I was in Brownies and Guides, and have some really good memories of being part of the Guiding movement. I got me through most of my teens and gave me something to do on a Wednesday evening for 7 years, and trips away. I still see my Brownie leader. I was also her Young Leader in a different Guide group when I was 17/18 after I left my original Guide group just before I turned 16. I managed a whole year out of Guides. When I went to university, I joined the Guides and Scouts association there, but didn’t do anything with them. There were so many people and they were not as welcoming as you would expect.
Reading this book brought back memories. I’d completely forgotten about the toadstool and mirror we used as a pool in Brownies to do our Promise. I can’t remember what Six I was in, but I think my sister made it to Seconder in her Six. I must have joined in 1990, or 1991, because I had the ‘new uniform’, a pair of trousers and a jumper, while my sister had the old brown dress and she joined a year before me. You had to wait until there was space before you could join. The leaders, Brownie Owl and Tawny Owl, were school teachers at my cousins’ primary school. We used to play games and make things. My best friend also went to that Brownies, but didn’t stay long because a lot of our games were floor based and she couldn’t take part, and I can’t remember her from then; we met in secondary school in 1994 and we’ve been friends ever since she talked at me until I finally responded. I did a few badges, mostly the walking and camping related ones. I think I tired to do some of the more domestic ones, but I wasn’t very good at the.
I went up to Guides in 1993 when I turned 10. My Guide leader was the vicar’s wife and a Marie Curie nurse. Our Guides, and the Brownies, were attached to the local C of E church. We did a lot of stuff in and around the church and the vicarage, because they had a huge garden, and knew a lot of people. We went camping, to adventure centres, did flower arranging, candle making and jam making, we went to The Body Shop for a special visit about make-up for beauty related stuff, followed by a trip to McDonalds, we went ice skating and to Cleethorpes swimming pool for a special treat. We went to Poacher 96, a big international camp help every four years at Lincolnshire Show Ground. We learnt about child safety and care. I got badges in walking, camping and other random stuff. We got new neckers around 1998, in Royal Stuart Tartan. Before that, I can’t remember what colour we had, or if we even had one.
There was one camp where I wanted to try climbing and abseiling, but I only just managed to climb the climbing wall and had to be helped down the internal stairs of the climbing tower, because I was too scared to abseil once I got to the top. I wet the sleeping bag every night of that camp. I was still bed wetting at that point. Luckily I was sleeping in my own tent, although I shared it with one other Guide who was as anxious as I was. I’d have preferred to have my own tent to myself. That was the camp where the leader went to buy ‘Seventeen’ magazine for a group of fifteen year old Guides (so I must have been 12 or 13) and was scandalised when she realised what was in Seventeen magazine. Some of those girls seemed impossibly more mature and sophisticated than me, even though they weren’t much older really.
At another camp, we stayed in dorms (I had adult nappies for this occasion) at an adventure centre and I fell in a river while canoeing. I don’t mind falling in rivers, that’s fun. We also went climbing on that trip too. I got sunburnt and hid under a rock after doing the easiest climb and abseil.
On one weekend trip to a local water sports centre, my sister and I had a dome tent and we played ‘how many guides can you get in a 2-person dome tent’.
The answer is 12. Twelve teenage Guides full of sugar, who’d just spent the day canoeing around an old clay pit.
I’m sure my experience in a Guide group in the 1990s in a small town in northern Lincolnshire will be different from a Guide in 1990s London or a coastal town in Cornwall.
This book isn’t a deep archival research based book, it outlines the story of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting in Britain and the US in 1910, and shares the stories of Guides, Scouts, and Brownies from the last 80 years. It was written during the pandemic lockdowns, so the interviews were performed over video calls. Some of the quotes come from previously published memoirs to illustrate the experiences of other Guides.
The book shows there’s a rich social history to be found in the stories of Guides and Girl Scouts, ready to be mined. There are bits and pieces of information in this book that every Guide and Girl Scout should know – like who founded them (Agnes Baden-Powell in the UK, Juliette Gordon-Low in the US) and when, the origins of the names and uniforms, that sort of thing. It also looks to the future and the current needs of girls. GirlGuiding UK regularly surveys members in about the things that are currently important to them and has found some disturbing things about the way girls feel about their bodies and abilities.
Guides and Girl Scouts did consider opening to boys when I was a member, just after Scouting UK and Boy Scouts of American opened up to girls, but they decided that girls need a place away from boys, to develop their identities away from the influence of social expectations of the way children and teenagers of different genders should interact. The GirlGuiding UK website makes it clear that men can volunteer to help units in some capacities, but it is a girls-only organisation and the leaders are all women, for instance, had my grandad still been alive while I was a Guide, he could have taught us knots for a badge and been a tester, but he couldn’t have been a leader, although he’d been a Scout Leader in South Shields while my Dad and Uncle were in the Cub Scouts.
This book was fascinating and reminded me of the fun and adventures I had in my Guiding days. A great addition to any Guide’s library.
By Debbie Blake Imprint: Pen & Sword History Pages: 232 Illustrations: 25 mono ISBN: 9781399094511 Published: 11th November 2022
Description
The Victorian belief that women were the ‘weaker sex’ who were expected to devote themselves entirely to family life, made it almost inconceivable that they could ever be capable of committing murder. What drove a woman to murder her husband, lover or even her own child? Were they tragic, mad or just plain evil?
Using various sources including court records, newspaper accounts and letters, this book explores some of the most notorious murder cases committed by seven women in nineteenth century Britain and America. It delves into each of the women’s lives, the circumstances that led to their crimes, their committal and trial and the various reasons why they resorted to murder: the fear of destitution led Mary Ann Brough to murder her own children; desperation to keep her job drove Sarah Drake to her crime. Money was the motive in the case of Mary Ann Cotton, who is believed to have poisoned as many as twenty-one people. Kate Bender lured her unsuspecting victims to their death in ‘The Slaughter Pen’ before stripping them of their valuables; Kate Webster’s temper got the better of her when she brutally murdered and decapitated her employer; nurse Jane Toppan admitted she derived sexual pleasure from watching her victims die slowly and Lizzie Borden was suspected of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe, so that she could live on the affluent area known as ‘the hill’ in Fall River, Massachusetts.
My Review
Thanks to Rosie Crofts at Pen & Sword for sending me this book almost two years ago now. I’ve been busy and I’ve finally got around to reading my Pen & Sword books. I still have a couple of hundred to work through, but I’ll get there eventually. My TBR pile continues to grow, as always.
This book covers the lives of seven well-known women who committed murder in the 19th century. I’ve heard of all of the women, and I’ve even written reviews of books about some of them.
The book is very competently written, covering the lives, murders and deaths of these women. There is little to no sensationalism and the writer draws on sources from the time, especially newspaper articles.
There is little exploration of the social rules and cultural beliefs surrounding each of the women. Why were some of the women found not guilty but socially punished, while some were found guilty and hanged? Why did some feel the need to kill their children? What prevented them from making other choices? Social class and cultural beliefs about a woman’s place and ‘natural character’ are barely mentioned and not explored.
This book is a good, basic introduction to these women and their crimes. You need to start somewhere, and this book has a good bibliography if you find yourself interested in one or other of the women and want to delve further.
About Debbie Blake
Debbie Blake is a freelance writer whose historical articles have been published in various publications in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. She has written articles for the internet and runs two blogs Women’s History Bites and The Wee History Blog. She is the author of Daughters of Ireland: Pioneering Irish Women and The Little Book of Tipperary, published by The History Press.
When Varg Veum reads the newspaper headline ‘YOUNG MAN MISSING’, he realises he’s seen the youth just a few days earlier – at a crossroads in the countryside, with his two friends. It turns out that the three were on their way to a demonstration against a commercial fish-farming facility in the tiny village of Solvik, north of Bergen.
Varg heads to Solvik, initially out of curiosity, but when he chances upon a dead body in the sea, he’s pulled into a dark and complex web of secrets, feuds and jealousies.
Is the body he’s found connected to the death of a journalist who was digging into the fish farm’s operations two years earlier? And does either incident have something to do with the competition between the two powerful families that dominate Solvik’s salmon-farming industry? Or are the deaths the actions of the ‘Village Beast’ – the brutal small-town justice meted out by rural communities in this part of the world.
Shocking, timely and full of breath-taking twists and turns, Pursued by Death reaffirms Gunnar Staalesen as one of the world’s greatest crime writers.
Format: 416 pages, Paperback Published: July 23, 2024 by Titan Books ISBN:9781803362984 (ISBN10: 1803362987)
After forty years of wreaking havoc across the galaxy, the outlaw Nine Lives – AKA Former General Gabriella Ortiz – has finally run out of lives. Shot down into a backwater at the system’s edge, she is rescued by Deputy Air Marshall Havemercy Grey.
Hav is a true soul, trying to uphold what is right in the heedless wastes. Hav is determined to see justice done. And Hav could sure use that 20-million bounty…
But escorting the most dangerous fugitive in the system across the stars is no easy task, especially when decades of fire and destruction are catching up with her, and every gutspill with a pistol wants that payday. So when Ortiz offers a deal – to keep them both alive, as long as Hav listens to the stories of her lives – Hav can’t refuse.
There’s just one catch: everywhere they go, during every brawl and gunfight and explosive escape, people say the same thing – don’t let her talk…
My Review
Fabulous final instalment of the Factus trilogy, following Gabi, the former General, and Factan faction leader. We read of Gabi’s, now known as Nine Lives, deaths from before she crashed on Factus (see Hel’s Eight) to her final adventure with Hel, originally Ten ‘Doc’ Low (see Ten Low), as told by Hav and a future archivist, Idrisi Blake, who has been tasked with chronicling the life of Gabrielle Ortiz.
A riveting adventure through space, full of action and tension. The narrative moves between Blake’s increasingly disordered search for information and Hav’s recollections of their adventures with Gabi and the tale Gabi told Hav, supplemented by information Blake manages to retrieve from Accord sources to include in his report, such as interview transcripts and newspaper reports. It’s layered and each layer builds on the readers’ knowledge.
If you’ve read the other books in this series, then this will be a satisfying end to the trilogy, but if you haven’t it might be a bit confusing. The entire series covers a century of life on and off Factus, as the little community on the dessert moon fights for something resembling independence from the Accord and the greed of industrial tycoon, Xoon, while living with the Edge and the Ifs. The Seekers and the G’hals make an appearance, fighting their way across the Dead Line to keep the Factans supplied and take their tithe of the living and the dead.
These books are delightfully reminiscent of Westerns and pulp fiction. The characters are a mix of sandblasted marshals, scavenging frontiers people, pirates in neon ships and tie-dyed overalls, and death incarnate. The world of Factan, the mining asteroid of JP-V and the many other planets, moons, space stations and ships visited are each unique and quite, quite terrifying in their own ways.
The ideas explored in the series are fascinating; this is a literary exploration of Schrodinger’s Cat, but with life and death, the potential of events, choices made and paths not taken. The Seekers have an interesting philosophy. If people are going to die anyway, they may as well be useful in death, by saving lives. It’s very pragmatic and practical, but in these novels the basic principle of organ donation is elevated to a religion, led by a medic named after the Goddess of Death. From the outside the Ifs and The Seekers appear to be a terrifying death cult, but for those on the inside, they are life savers. The interplay of these ideas builds a complex world that I found riveting, while the story is brutal and gripping. I couldn’t put it down.
Extra kudos for the continued introduction of non-binary and Queer characters with complex lives and interests.
PUBLICATION DATE: 18TH JULY 2024 HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 20.00 | OPEN BORDERS PRESS
Blurb
Ten years on from the annexation of Crimea, two years on from Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people continue to fight back. In the second volume of his war diaries, Andrey Kurkov gives a fresh perspective on a people for whom resistance and solidarity have become a matter of survival.
Our Daily War is a chronological record of the heterogeneous mix that comprises Ukrainian life and thought in the teeth of Russian aggression, from the constant stress of air raids, the deportation of citizens from the occupied regions and the whispers of governmental corruption to Christmas celebrations, crowdfunding and the recipe for a “trench candle”.
Kurkov’s human’s-eye view on the war in Ukraine is by turn bitingly satirical, tragic, humorous and heartfelt. It is also, in the manner of Pepys, an invaluable insight into the history, politics and culture of Ukraine.
Our Daily War is the ideal primer for anyone who would like to know what life is like in that country today.
Format: 416 pages, Paperback Published: May 27, 2021 by Orion Publishing ISBN: 9781473231160 (ISBN10: 1473231167)
Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path.
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.
Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva’s. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.
My Review
I appear to be late to the party on this one. I only realised this book existed in June because The Broken Binding sent me an email about a special edition set they’re doing of The Blacktongue Thief and The Daughters’ War, the first book’s stand-alone prequal about Galva. I didn’t order them in the end because I’m trying to save money for FantasyCon in October, but I did like the sound of the books, so I ordered a paperback copy of this book, and I have a paperback of The Daughters’ War on pre-order. It’ll be out next March.
Kinch is a thief who owes his Guild money, so they send him on a mission. With a blind cat. Who has swallowed an assassin. Don’t ask, it makes sense in context. Galva is a veteran of the goblin wars and is heading west to find her king’s niece, heir to the throne, lost in the giant-ravaged capital of her husband’s kingdom. Galva needs help, and Kinch has no choice, so off they go. Along the way they pick up a witchlet, who turns out to be more than anyone expected; an old neighbour of Kinch’s who resents Kinch for going to be a thief instead of a soldier; and Galva’s old sword master, who is faster than lightning.
They also fight a kraken, goblins, and giants, meet the powerful magician who created the war ravens that won the goblin wars, (and who might be Kinch’s father), after which Kinch may or may not have lost a bet with a criminal boss that resulted in him going to bed with said criminal boss in the city of Hrava (Kinch isn’t into men, but needs must when a queen needs rescuing).
In the mountains they find their answers, and more questions, before Galva and her queen leads an army riding the only stallion in the world, and Kinch heads further west, running from his Guild with the weapons that could potentially defeat them for good.
Other stuff happens, but I’ve summarised the salient points. Hopefully, I haven’t given away too much.
I enjoyed this book, Kinch is a funny narrator, and as the story is told from his perspective he has to be to keep things interesting. First -person limited and be quite a difficult point of view, but Buehlman does it well. the story is told in chronological order, but Kinch gives us the important bits of his memories and his reactions, missing the dull days of traveling where nothing happens. He includes the odd ballad or piece of history to locate us in the world he’s traveling through and add depth.
Kinch falls in love with Norrigal, a witchlet, great niece of Deadlegs, a famous witch who has to cut off the legs of the dead because her own have died. The relationship is short but intense and I was quite lost at the end of the book. I want to know what happens to them, even changed as they are. Norrigal utterly entrances Kinch and his falling in love is described delightfully, although not graphically.
The other characters, seen from Kinch’s perspective, aren’t as solid, but then that’s one of the difficulties of writing 1st person limited. We don’t get the interiority of other characters, only what they do and say in the view of the narrator and the narrator’s thoughts about them. Kinch develops a lot of respect for Galva and his shock at certain aspects of her character and physicality helps flesh her out. I definitely want to know what happens next for Galva, and also how she came to be a warrior of the Death Goddess. So, I need to read The Daughters’ War, and hopefully there will be a follow up, with events after The Blacktongue Thief as well.
I hope the giants find out they were tricked by the Takers too, and help bring down the Guild. We only really get to know one giant, Misfa, at the end, who tells the humans what happened, and helps them defeat the assassin in the cat (again, it makes sense in context) but Kinch hints, when he first encounters giants in the city of Hrava, that he knows more about giants at the time he’s writing his narrative than he did at that time, so presumably, at a later date, after the narrative in the novel, he spends time around Misfa’s people and learns about their culture? I want to know what they do with all those horses tattooed on to her.
The magical systems were really well thought out, clearly drawing on folk traditions, like the power of iron to break a spell, or with rules found in ttrpg (like you can only use a spell once and it only lasts a certain amount of time) but were also original enough to be entertaining. The hand tattooed on Kinch’s cheek which can only be seen in firelight, but allows someone to slap him without retaliation in return for an alcoholic drink, made me laugh. Especially when Norrigal made some alterations of her own.
The descriptions of places and people are very memorable, from the upside down tower of Deadlegs, to the cities they travel through and the creatures they meet, to the fights with other humans, goblins and giants. They’re all very vivid.
The underlying conspiracy is slowly revealed, with some dropped hints and interesting consequences, and sets the main characters on their future paths. It leaves the story open ended, the author could leave the novel where it is, as a stand-alone work, but I hope he doesn’t. I want to see how Kinch and Deadlegs reveal the conspiracy to the world and the fall out for everyone, what the giants do after conquering Oustrim, and how Galva and her queen fight the false king in Ispanthia.
This is clearly a world based on a pseudo-Renaissance Europe, and written by someone who’s played a bit of D&D or other fantasy table-top role-playing games (ttrpg). It has the structure you’d expect, with magical artifacts appearing that might or might not be useful later, random unexpected events that throw off the expected narrative, and traps everywhere.
Criticisms: The pseudo-Irish got a bit much at times, almost parodying Irish accents and turns of phrase. The same with Galva and the Spanth – they’re patterned on the people of the Italian or Greek regions of the Mediterranean – black hair, fanatic cleanliness, wine, olive oil, and garlic. I get that the author is using real world inspirations to people his secondary world, but it was a bit much. Felt like he was taking the piss, at times, honestly, or was working from caricatures rather than reality.
A fun bit of fantasy and an enjoyable world I’d happily come back to for more adventures.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 