From the author of The Fog Diver comes a new epic fantasy series, delivering a thrilling combination of adventure and humor! Beast & Crown is a sweeping two-book series filled with goblins and ogres and magic, in which a daring group of friends must decide if it’s worth sacrificing a few to protect the many.
Sally is tough. Roz is smart. But thirteen-year-old bootboy Ji is sneaky.
And after years of scrubbing at muddy soles and untangling laces, Ji is done with being a servant. He doesn’t want to polish leather, he doesn’t want to bow and scrape. All he wants is freedom - for himself and his friends.
So he risks everything for a chance for them to accompany a young nobleman to the Diadem Rite, a magical ritual that chooses the heir to the Summer Crown. Ji doesn’t care about crowns or ceremonies; but he vows that this expedition will grant them all new lives, far away from stables and boots and servitude.
But Ji doesn’t know that he and his friends have a crucial part to play in the Diadem Rite. One that will change them forever.
Read more: Beast & Crown - Joel Ross
A review of Nina Allan's The Rift
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Nina Allan's The Rift was published by Titan Books in July 2017.
Information about Nina Allan:
Nina Allan's debut novel The Race was shortlisted for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the BSFA Award and the Kitschies Red Tentacle. She has won the BSFA Award for Short Fiction, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, and the Aeon Award. She has been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award four times and was a finalist for the 2014 Shirley Jackson Award.
Click here to visit her official website.
Information about The Rift:
Selena and Julie are sisters. As children they were closest companions, but as they grow towards maturity, a rift develops between them.
There are greater rifts, however. Julie goes missing at the age of seventeen. It will be twenty years before Selena sees her again. When Julie reappears, she tells Selena an incredible story about how she has spent time on another planet. Selena has an impossible choice to make: does she dismiss her sister as a damaged person, the victim of delusions, or believe her, and risk her own sanity in the process? Is Julie really who she says she is, and if she isn’t, what does she have to gain by claiming her sister’s identity?
The Rift is a novel about the illusion we call reality, the memories shared between people and the places where those memories diverge, a story about what might happen when the assumptions we make about the world and our place in it are called into question.
A REVIEW OF NINA ALLAN'S THE RIFT
Read more: A review of Nina Allan's The Rift
A review of Tarn Richardson's The Fallen
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Tarn Richardson's The Fallen was published in 2016.
Information about Tarn Richardson:
Tarn Richardson is the author of The Darkest Hand trilogy, published by Duckworth Overlook in Europe and Australia, and Overlook Press in the US and Canada.
Consisting of The Hunted (free prequel novella), The Damned (2015), The Fallen (2016) and The Risen (2017), The Darkest Hand trilogy unleashes the flawed but brilliant Inquisitor Poldek Tacit upon a Europe engulfed by the First World War. The Damned was one of the book depository's 'Books of 2015'.
Having grown up in Somerset, he now lives in Salisbury with his wife, the portraiture artist Caroline Richardson.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about The Fallen:
1915. As the second battle of the Isonzo Front rages on the Italian Austro-Hungarian border, war threatens to engulf the Inquisition as dark forces muster amongst the most fanatical servants of the Catholic Church.
Prior to his murder, a desperate priest sends a secret letter to his brother serving in the Italian Army. Now this young soldier, destined for the horrors of a frontline high above the clouds, carries with him a letter which holds the key as to why terrible satanic rituals are being committed and by whom.
Drawn into this conspiracy and hunted by agents of The Darkest Hand, old rivals must put aside their differences to discover the contents of the letter before it's too late. But unity comes at a price for this unholy alliance. While the war rages, old enemies return from the dead and conspiracies weave tighter and deeper still into the heart of the Vatican. Only Poldek Tacit, the most determined and unhinged inquisitor of them all, can hope to push back the forces of evil and unite those for good. But what happens when Tacit finds that the path he walks has already been prophesised and that where it leads threatens the very future of a world already on the edge of the abyss?
A REVIEW OF TARN RICHARDSON'S THE FALLEN
Read more: A review of Tarn Richardson's The Fallen
A review of Guy Adams' The Change (vol. 1-3)
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Guy Adams' The Change (vol. 1-3) was published by Solaris Books (Rebellion Publishing) in July 2017.
Information about Guy Adams:
Guy Adams is the author of The World House novels, the Deadbeat series and the weird westerns The Good, the Bad and the Infernal and Once Upon a Time in Hell. He has also written many other books.
To find out more information about him, please click here to visit his official website.
Information about The Change:
The Change 1: London - Orbital
One minute everything was fine and the next... they arrived. Those that saw them died instantly. The unlucky ones survived. Now unimaginable things straight out of nightmares roam the streets of our towns and cities. Nothing is impossible. Nowhere is safe. And no one can escape The Change...
Howard doesn't know where he is or how he got there. He's not even sure his name is Howard. But he knows he is in trouble. Alone on a stretch of motorway jammed with broken down cars full of corpses and strange creatures, Howard falls in with a motorbike gang living in a nearby service station. But even The Kingdom of the Welcome Break can't keep him safe. Something is moving between the rows of cars, something that used to be human but now clanks with metal, hisses with hydraulics, and is always on the lookout for new parts...
The Change 2: New York - The Queen of Coney Island
Grace just wants to find her brother, but she can't go anywhere without the Queen of Coney Island's permission to travel.
Now the Queen demands payment and Grace and her new friend, a man in a false beard who believes he is God, must journey into the nightmare world of Dreamland, a tourist park whose attractions are as lethal as they are bizarre.
The Change 3: Paris - A City of Fools
Loïc's friend Adrien is gone, kidnapped by the Impressionists, bizarre men made of paint who roam the Parisian catacombs.
Now, if Loïc wants to see Adrien again, he must travel to the Louvre and bring him back from the lair of the strange - and deadly - Impressionists.
But the paint-men are not the only threat lurking in Paris, and Loïc must face down the needle-fingered Tricoteuse, the blade-mouthed Madame Loisette, and the dark secrets that haunt the footlights of the Grand Guignol...
A REVIEW OF GUY ADAMS' THE CHANGE (VOL. 1-3)
Read more: A review of Guy Adams' The Change (vol. 1-3)
GUEST POST: The Fallacy of "Write What You Know"
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Guest Post
Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a guest post by Robert J. Duperre.
About Robert J. Duperre:
Robert J. Duperre is a really great guy. Actually, he's not. Though he is the author of eight novels that offer a mix of horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and co-wrote The Breaking World with David Dalglish an epic fantasy adventure series published by 47North. Robert lives in rural Connecticut with his wife, the artist Jessica Torrant.
Media links:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Robert-Duperre-120730494422/
Twitter - @robertduperre
Newsletter - http://eepurl.com/Mo8G5
Website - http://journalofalways.blogspot.com
About Soultaker: The Knights Eternal #1:
It's been a thousand years since the Rising.
Earth is a wasteland, and a holy order of knights is all that stands between what remains of civilization and the brigands and demons trying to bring it all down. When the oldest of these knights, Abe, isn't trying to keep his brothers in line, he's tirelessly attempting to decode the riddles that have guided the Knights Eternal for the past two centuries.
The visions Abe's been having aren't helping matters.
The latest riddle sends the Knights Eternal after a prophet and his band of Outriders. Or is it sending them to seek the Prophet's aid? It's a question Abe needs answered. With his sanity fleeing, more demons than ever rising from the Pit, and rumors circulating of an army of risen dead, failure for the knights might end the world this time once and for all.
Where else will reincarnated musicians become gun-slinging knights to patrol a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Only in Soultaker. This book by Robert J. Duperre takes a pound of Game of Thrones, a few cups of The Wild Bunch, a dash of Doom, and a sprinkle of Doctor Who, and mixes them all into a fun, horrific ride.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Soultaker-Knights-Eternal-Robert-Duperre/dp/1945528044/
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/soultaker-robert-j-duperre/1124896124
Powell’s City of Books: http://www.powells.com/book/soultaker-9781945528040/61-0
GUEST POST: THE FALLACY OF “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW” BY ROBERT J. DUPERRE
Read more: GUEST POST: The Fallacy of "Write What You Know"
A review of Neal Asher's Infinity Engine
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Neal Asher's Infinity Engine was published by Night Shade Books in the US in March 2017.
Information about Neal Asher:
Neal Asher was born 1961 in Billericay, Essex, the son of a school teacher and a lecturer in applied mathematics who were also SF aficionados.
Prior to 2000 the Asher had stories accepted by British small press SF and fantasy magazines but post 2000 his writing career took flight. Pan Macmillan offered him a three-book contract and have now published many more UK, America, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Japan Czechoslovakia and Romania. The majority of his novels are set within one future history, known as the Polity universe. The Polity encompasses many classic science fiction tropes including world-ruling artificial intelligences, androids, hive minds and aliens.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about Infinity Engine:
The rogue AI Penny Royal makes a final stand in the explosive conclusion to Neal Asher’s hard-hitting and high-tech Polity space opera trilogy.
In the outskirts of space, and the far corners of the Polity, complex dealings are in play.
Several forces continue to pursue the deadly and enigmatic Penny Royal, none more dangerous than the Brockle, a psychopathic forensics AI and criminal who has escaped the Polity’s confinements and is upgrading itself in anticipation of a deadly showdown, becoming ever more powerful and intelligent.
Aboard Factory Station Room 101, the behemoth war factory that birthed Penny Royal, groups of humans, alien prador, and AI war drones grapple for control. The stability of the ship is complicated by the arrival of a gabbleduck known as the Weaver, the last living member of the ancient and powerful Atheter alien race.
What would an Atheter want with the complicated dealings of Penny Royal? Are the Polity and prador forces playing right into the dark AI’s hand, or is it the other way around? Set pieces align in the final book of Neal Asher’s action-packed Transformation trilogy, pointing to a showdown on the cusp of the Layden’s Sink black hole, inside of which lies a powerful secret, one that could destroy the entire Polity.
A REVIEW OF NEAL ASHER'S INFINITY ENGINE
Read more: A review of Neal Asher's Infinity Engine