Francesca Flores' Shadow City is the stunning action-packed conclusion to The City of Diamond and Steel duology.
Aina Solís has fought her way to the top of criminal ranks in the city of Kosín by wresting control of an assassin empire owned by her old boss, Kohl. She never has to fear losing her home and returning to life on the streets again ― except Kohl, the man who tried to ruin her life, will do anything to get his empire back. Aina sets out to kill him before he can kill her.
But Alsane Bautix, the old army general who was banned from his seat in the government after Aina revealed his corruption, is working to take back power by destroying anyone who stands in his way. With a new civil war on the horizon and all their lives at risk, the only way for Aina to protect her home is to join up with the only other criminal more notorious than her: Kohl himself.
As Bautix’s attacks increase, Aina and Kohl work together to stop his incoming weapons shipments and his plans to take back the Tower of Steel. To defeat them both, Aina will resort to betrayal, poison, and a deadly type of magic that hasn’t been used in years.
Through narrow alleys, across train rooftops, and deep in the city’s tunnels, Aina and Kohl will test each other’s strengths and limits, each of them knowing that once Bautix is dead, they’ll still have to face each other. If she manages to kill him, she’ll finally have the freedom she wants ― but it might forever mark her as his shadow in a city where only the strongest survive.
Read more: Shadow City - Francesca Flores
An interview with H. M. Long
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Interviews
Risingshadow has had an opportunity to interview H. M. Long about her epic debut fantasy novel, Hall of Smoke.
About the author:
Hannah M. Long is a Canadian writer who loves history, hiking, and exploring the world. She lives in Ontario, but can often be spotted snooping about European museums or wandering the Alps with her German husband.
About Hall of Smoke:
Epic fantasy featuring warrior priestesses, and fickle gods at war, for readers of Brian Staveley's Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne.
In a world of hostile clans loyal to meddling gods, Hessa is an Eangi: priestesses of the Goddess of War with the power to boil a man's brain and turn his bones to dust with a scream. Banished for disobeying her Goddess's command to murder a traveller, Hessa prays for forgiveness alone on a mountainside.
Until raiders burn her village to the ground, leaving nothing of her future but ash. Without her Goddess's favor, Hessa has no place beside her family in the High Halls of the afterlife. She is the last of the Eangi.
Warriors from the cities to the south plow through her homelands, slaughtering everyone in their path. With legionaries, deceitful gods, and newly-awakened demons at every turn, Hessa burns through her enemies with the Eangi Fire in her soul. But her journey reveals a harrowing truth: the gods are dying. The High Halls of the afterlife are fading. And Hessa's trust in her Goddess weakens with every unheeded prayer.
Thrust into a battle between her Goddess and the old gods she imprisoned, Hessa realizes there is far more on the line than earning her place in the afterlife. Bigger, older powers slumber beneath the surface of her world. And they're about to wake up.
AN INTERVIEW WITH HANNAH LONG
Read more: An interview with H. M. Long
Review: The Once and Future Moon (edited by Allen Ashley)
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
The Once and Future Moon (edited by Allen Ashley) was publishe
d by Eibonvale Press in October 2019.
About Allen Ashley:
Allen Ashley is a British Fantasy Award winner. His short stories, poems, flash fiction and articles have been widely published in anthologies, magazines and online venues in the UK, USA, Canada and Spain. His books include the novel “The Planet Suite” (TTA Press 1997; reprinted Eibonvale Press 2016) and the anthology “Humanagerie” (Eibonvale Press, 2018, co-edited with Sarah Doyle). He works as a critical reader and creative writing tutor and is the founder of the advanced science fiction and fantasy group Clockhouse London Writers.
Click here to visit his official website.
About The Once and Future Moon:
The Moon.
It has been there throughout human history: accompanying, guiding, inspiring and influencing us. Without it there might be no philosophy, literature, mathematics, religion, astronomy or exploration.
We might think we can conquer the Moon but perhaps the truth is that the Moon controls us.
This anthology will take you from the Stone Age to the near-future via alternate history.
Eighteen brand new science fiction and science fantasy tales by some of today’s top writers.
Edited by British Fantasy Award winner Allen Ashley.
Your lunar cycle starts here.
REVIEW: THE ONCE AND FUTURE MOON (EDITED BY ALLEN ASHLEY)
Read more: Review: The Once and Future Moon (edited by Allen Ashley)
Review: King of the Asphodels by David Jordan
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
David Jordan's King of the Asphodels was published in August/September 2020.
About David Jordan:
David Jordan writes out of Cork, Ireland, where he was born and bred. He has been writing all his life, but it wasn’t until 2016, with the Chronicles of Dan Lee O’Brien, that his talent for stories really kicked in.
As a writer, he believes in work and discipline – these are the means by which we attract the muse.
He also believes in the power of story, a power that is harnessed through ingenuity and imagination.
He is a big fan of mythology as it is a rich source of symbolism and association that allows him to play. Indeed, work and play are the two ethics that mean anything to him as a writer. He likes to stir up mythology, which gives his writing an energy that will delight the reader.
He also draws inspiration from the early work of WB Yeats, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as contemporary writers such as Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Stephen King.
He writes poetry and has had a book of verse published entitled, The End.
Click here to visit his official website.
About King of the Asphodels:
John Thomond has made a deal with the mage, Jack Foster. In return for directions to the Underworld, and the means to bring back his dead wife, he must become the magician’s apprentice. In the Underworld, Thomond is guided by the spirit of the great Bluesman, Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the Devil to become the ‘King of the Delta Blues Singers’. As they travel through Hades, Johnson shows Thomond some of the sights the Underworld has to offer and Thomond also learns the principles of magic. Eventually, newly empowered, he makes it his business to free the soul of the Bluesman, but there are hazardous consequences, in both the Underworld and the world above...
King of the Asphodels is a novel concerned with many things: power, music, magic, myth. But at its heart it is a book about friendship and freedom.
REVIEW: KING OF THE ASPHODELS BY DAVID JORDAN
Read more: Review: King of the Asphodels by David Jordan
Review: The Call by Rab Ferguson
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Rab Ferguson's The Call was published in Cyber Smut in September 2020 by Guts Publishing, which is an independent publisher in London.
About Rab Ferguson:
Rab Ferguson is a York based writer of fiction and poetry. He's been published in several journals including Litro Magazine, Storgy, Voice-In Journal, Under the Fable and The City Fox. He's also a performing storyteller, and has been known to wear a woollen cape.
Click here to visit his official website.
REVIEW: THE CALL BY RAB FERGUSON
Read more: Review: The Call by Rab Ferguson
Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons by James Lovegrove
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
James Lovegrove's Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons was published by Titan Books in October 2020.
About James Lovegrove:
James Lovegrove is the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Odin. He was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998 and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 2004, and reviews fiction for the Financial Times. He is the author of Firefly: Big Damn Hero with Nancy Holder, Firefly: The Magnificent Nine, and Firefly: The Ghost Machine, along with several Sherlock Holmes novels. He lives in south-east England.
Click here to visit his official website.
About Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons:
New York Times bestselling author James Lovegrove's continues the story of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles, as five years later, another monstrous creature stalks across Dartmoor...
1894. The monstrous Hound of the Baskervilles has been dead for five years, along with its no less monstrous owner, the naturalist Jack Stapleton. Sir Henry Baskerville is living contentedly at Baskerville Hall with his new wife Audrey and their three-year-old son Harry.
Until, that is, Audrey's lifeless body is found on the moors, drained of blood. It would appear some fiendish creature is once more at large on Dartmoor and has, like its predecessor, targeted the unfortunate Baskerville family.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are summoned to Sir Henry's aid, and our heroes must face a marauding beast that is the very stuff of nightmares. It seems that Stapleton may not have perished in the Great Grimpen Mire after all, as Holmes believed, and is hell-bent on revenge...
REVIEW: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE BEAST OF THE STAPLETONS BY JAMES LOVEGROVE
Read more: Review: Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons by James Lovegrove