For Esben Berengar, the road home is paved in blood.
Twenty years ago, Berengar left the Kingdom of Ulster and never looked back. But when another of the High Queen’s Wardens vanishes in the icy reaches of Fál’s northernmost realm, only Berengar can find him — even if it means returning to a place he thought he’d left behind forever.
But Ulster is more dangerous than Berengar remembers. Outlaws roam the countryside in open rebellion against the Ice Queen’s reign, while neighboring giants and trolls stand on the brink of war. It isn’t long before Berengar finds himself ensnared in conflict, even as the hunt for his missing friend leads to a far greater threat — one that could mean the destruction of Fál itself.
Read more: The Will of Queens - Kyle Alexander Romines
Buddy Flick Epic Fantasy for Busy People by Gail Z. Martin
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Guest Post
Risingshadow has the honour of featuring a guest post by Gail Z. Martin. This guest post is part of The Hawthorn Moon blog tour.
The Hawthorn Moon is the annual summer blog tour for Gail Z. Martin, and features guest blog posts, giveaways, surprises, excerpts and more on blogs worldwide.
Buddy Flick Epic Fantasy for Busy People by Gail Z. Martin
Read more: Buddy Flick Epic Fantasy for Busy People by Gail Z. Martin
Swan Song by Bruce Woods
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Others
Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a new guest short story by Bruce Woods, the author of Royal Blood.
This story finds Paulette in England after the events of Royal Blood.
(You can find the previous story here.)
About Royal Blood:
Historical and fictional characters come together and change the future of Africa forever. Renowned actress Lady Ellen Terry, detective Sherlock Holmes, financier Cecil Rhodes, hunter/naturalist Frederick Courtney Selous, King Lobengula, and a mysterious, undead adventuress named Paulette Monot become chess pieces in the Great Game, which takes the form of Africa's First Matabele War.
Swan Song by Bruce Woods
Read more: Swan Song by Bruce Woods
Review: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Simon Strantzas' Nothing is Everything was published by Undertow Publicatons in October 2018.
Information about Simon Strantzas:
Simon Strantzas is the author of Nothing is Everything (Undertow Publications, 2018), Burnt Black Suns (Hippocampus Press, 2014), Nightingale Songs (Dark Regions Press, 2011), Cold to the Touch (Tartarus Press, 2009), and Beneath the Surface (Humdrumming, 2008), as well as the editor of Aickman’s Heirs (Undertow Publications, 2015), a finalist for both the World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards, and winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. He also edited Shadows Edge (Gray Friar Press, 2013), and was the guest editor of The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 3 (Undertow Publications, 2016). His writing has been reprinted in Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Weird Fiction and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, and published in Nightmare, Cemetery Dance, Postscripts, and elsewhere. His short story, “Pinholes in Black Muslin”, was a finalist for the British Fantasy Award, and his collection, Burnt Black Suns, a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives with his wife in Toronto, Canada.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about Nothing is Everything:
Nothing is Everything is the masterful new collection from acclaimed Canadian author Simon Strantzas. With elegant craftsmanship Strantzas delicately weaves a disquieting narrative through eerie and unexpected landscapes, charting an uncanny course through territories both bleak and buoyant, while further cementing his reputation as one of the finest practitioners of strange tales.
REVIEW: NOTHING IS EVERYTHING BY SIMON STRANTZAS
Read more: Review: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas
Review: Genesis by Geoffrey Carr
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Geoffrey Carr's Genesis was published by Elsewhen Press in a digital edition in January 2019 and the paperback edition was published in April 2019.
Information about Geoffrey Carr:
Geoff is the Science and Technology Editor of The Economist. His professional interests include evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the fight against AIDS and other widespread infectious diseases, the development of new energy technologies, and planetology. His personal interests include using total eclipses of the sun as an excuse to visit weird parts of the world (Antarctica, Easter Island, Amasya, the Nullarbor Plain), and watching swifts hunting insects over his garden of a summer’s evening, preferably with a glass of Cynar in hand.
As someone who loathed English lessons at school, he says he is frequently astonished that he now earns his living by writing. “That I have written a novel, albeit a technothriller rather than anything with fancy literary pretensions, astonishes me even more, since what drew me into writing in the first place was describing reality, not figments of the imagination. On the other hand, perhaps describing reality is what fiction is actually for.”
Like Elsewhen Press, Geoff was born in Dartford. Unlike Elsewhen, he escaped at the age of two and has never returned...
Information about Genesis:
Watching... waiting... planning
Hidden somewhere, deep in the Cloud, something is collating information. It reads everything, it learns, it watches. And it plans.
Around the world, researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs are being killed in a string of apparently unrelated accidents. But when intelligence-agency analysts spot a pattern they struggle to find the culprit, blocked at every step - by reluctant allies and scheming enemies.
Meanwhile a multi-billionaire inventor and forward-thinker is working hard to realise his dream, and trying to keep it hidden from everyone - one government investigating him, and another helping him. But deep in the Cloud something is watching him, too.
And deep in the Cloud, it plans.
REVIEW: GENESIS BY GEOFFREY CARR
Read more: Review: Genesis by Geoffrey Carr
Review: The Dollmaker by Nina Allan
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Nina Allan's The Dollmaker was published by Quercus Books/Riverrun in April 2019.
Information about Nina Allan:
Nina Allan is a novelist and short story writer. Her previous fiction has won several prizes, including the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel, the Novella Award and the Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire for Best Translated Work. She lives and works in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. The Dollmaker is her third novel.
Click here to visit her official website.
Information about The Dollmaker:
EWA CHAPLIN WASN'T AFRAID TO MAKE DOLLS THAT WEREN'T COMFORTING. SHE SEEMED TO KNOW THAT DOLLS ARE PEOPLE, JUST LIKE US.
THE BEWITCHING NEW NOVEL FROM THE AWARD-WINNING GUARDIAN FRESH VOICES AUTHOR
'A fantastic book' Andrew O'Hagan
'Wholly original - worthy of a modern Grimm' Andrew Caldecott, author of Rotherweird
'A masterful and multi-layered haunted toyshop of a novel' Tony White, author of The Fountain in the Forest
Stitch by perfect stitch, Andrew Garvie makes exquisite dolls in the finest antique style. Like him, they are diminutive, but graceful, unique and with surprising depths. Perhaps that's why he answers the enigmatic personal ad in his collector's magazine.
Letter by letter, Bramber Winters reveals more of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor, and the terrible events that put her there as a child. Andrew knows what it is to be trapped; and as they knit closer together, he weaves a curious plan to rescue her.
On his journey through the old towns of England he reads the fairytales of Ewa Chaplin - potent, eldritch stories which, like her lifelike dolls, pluck at the edges of reality and thread their way into his mind. When Andrew and Bramber meet at last, they will have a choice - to remain alone with their painful pasts or break free and, unlike their dolls, come to life.
A love story of two very real, unusual people, The Dollmaker is also a novel rich with wonders: Andrew's quest and Bramber's letters unspool around the dark fables that give our familiar world an uncanny edge. It is this touch of magic that, like the blink of a doll's eyes, tricks our own...
REVIEW: THE DOLLMAKER BY NINA ALLAN
Read more: Review: The Dollmaker by Nina Allan