Legend has it, The Living God will bring about the destruction of the world in order to rebuild it into a paradise. Some worship and welcome His coming, others fear Him and would do anything to stop it.
Kaytalin Platt's The Living God follows the internal struggle of two mages, Saran and Keleir, as they confront their fears and attempt to find meaning in the hand that life has dealt them. Saran seeks to overthrow her crazed father and salvage what is left of her country before it falls into complete ruin. Keleir is cursed with a Rauke's soul, an ancient creature who is only able to survive by merging with an unborn child upon entering our world. Saran and Keleir are touched by fate, gifted with the ability to sense each other, and destined for a future that neither care to know. When Saran's magic is stolen, she must confront a life without the ability to manipulate time, struggle to see the rebellion finished, and keep Keleir from becoming The Living God.
Read more: The Living God - Kaytalin Platt
Review: Humanagerie (edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley)
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Humanagerie (edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley) was published by Eibonvale Press in October 2018.
Information about the editors:
Allen Ashley is a British Fantasy Award winning editor and a prizewinning poet. He is the author or editor of fourteen published books including the novel The Planet Suite (Eibonvale Press, 2016) and the short story collection Once and Future Cities (Eibonvale Press, 2009). He works as a critical reader and also as a creative writing tutor with five groups currently running across north London, including the advanced science fiction and fantasy group, Clockhouse London Writers. He is a committee member for the British Fantasy Society.
Click here to visit his website.
Sarah Doyle is Poet-in-Residence to the Pre-Raphaelite Society, for whom she writes commissioned new work, and co-judges an annual poetry competition. She is (with Allen Ashley) co-author of Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System (PS Publishing, 2014). Sarah has been a guest reader at numerous poetry venues; has been published widely in magazines, journals and anthologies; and placed in many competitions. She was Highly Commended in the Best Single Poem category of the Forward Prizes for Poetry 2018. Sarah holds a Creative Writing MA from Royal Holloway College, University of London, and works as a freelance manuscript critique provider.
Click here to visit her website.
Information about Humanagerie:
Inspired by notions of the animalistic, Humanagerie is a vivid exploration of the nebulous intersection of human and beast. From cities to wilderness, buildings to burrows, and coastlines to fish-tanks, these thirty-two poems and thirteen short stories explore emergence and existence, survival and self-mythology, and the liminal hinterland between humanity and animality. This is an anthology featuring both poetry and prose.
REVIEW: HUMANAGERIE (EDITED BY SARAH DOYLE AND ALLEN ASHLEY)
Read more: Review: Humanagerie (edited by Sarah Doyle and Allen Ashley)
Review: The Bellboy by Rebecca Lloyd
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Rebecca Lloyd's The Bellboy was published by Zagava in 2018.
Information about Rebecca Lloyd:
Winning the 2008 Bristol Short Story Prize for her story 'The River', Rebecca Lloyd, a writer and editor from Bristol, UK, was shortlisted in the 2010 Dundee International Book Prize and was a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize for a short story collection in the same year. Her novel Halfling was published by Walker Books in 2011, and in the following year she was co-editor with Indira Chandrasekhar, of Pangea, an Anthology of Stories from Around the Globe, with Thames River Press. In 2014, her short story collection Whelp and Other Stories was shortlisted in the Paul Bowles Award for Short Fiction, and her collection The View From Endless Street was published by WiDo Publishing.
Click here to visit her official website.
Information about The Bellboy:
In 1932, young Walter Matthews finds life in Battersea with his sneering father and simpering mother close to unbearable. His only solace is his passion for all things Egyptian and his adoration for the manly figure of Howard Carter, whose splendid discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb is constantly in the news. When he starts work as a bellboy in the Maydor Superior Hotel in Central London, Walter’s life brightens, and when he befriends Lady Fergus Mantel-Jefferson, a recluse living on the top floor of the hotel, his life positively blossoms, for by the most wonderful good fortune, Lady F was friends with Mr. Carter in Egypt, and Walter is dizzy with excitement at the chance of knowing more about his hero’s life. Unable to tolerate his father any longer, Walter persuades Lady F to house him in her suite while he looks for a room, which he eventually finds. But, on the morning he tells the old lady his news while admiring an alabaster statuette once belonging to Howard Carter, his world changes abruptly and all that glittered before him, his bright future, his hopes and plans, disappear before his very eyes.
REVIEW: THE BELLBOY BY REBECCA LLOYD
Read more: Review: The Bellboy by Rebecca Lloyd
Review: The Ukinhan Wilds by Eldon Thompson
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Eldon Thompson's The Ukinhan Wilds was published by Cyndyn in August 2018.
Information about Eldon Thompson:
Eldon Thompson is the author of The Legend of Asahiel trilogy: The Crimson Sword, The Obsidian Key and The Divine Talisman.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about The Ukinhan Wilds:
Assassin. Rogue. Demon’s bane. Dragon-slayer. Kylac Kronus has been called many names, and earned every one of them. Months shy of his seventeenth spring, he is already the deadliest man alive. Nothing - be it man or beast - has been able to prove otherwise.
Uncomfortable with his newfound fame following the War of the Demon Queen, Kylac seeks fresh adventure overseas, recruited by a band of outlanders under royal commission to escort a kidnapped princess back to her father, King Kendarrion, ruler of the Sundered Isle. They warn him that, to do so, he will brave tempest seas full of raging leviathans while seeking to evade those responsible for the princess’s abduction - including a terrifying mutant left over from the days of the Mage Wars.
Kylac readily agrees.
But when the mutant proves as cunning as it is savage, the perilous voyage gives way to an even deadlier trek across a poisoned wilderness once home to the ancient Gorrethrehn - “Breeders” - a sect of magi known for their foul creation practices. Stalked by bestial denizens, treacherous companions, and horrors that his blades cannot touch, Kylac finds himself embattled as never before. For the mutant is relentless in its hunt, the island’s terrors do not rest, and not even the deadliest man alive can hope to emerge unscathed.
REVIEW: THE UKINHAN WILDS BY ELDON THOMPSON
Read more: Review: The Ukinhan Wilds by Eldon Thompson
Review: Fleet of Knives by Gareth L. Powell
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Gareth L. Powell's Fleet of Knives was published by Titan Books in February 2018.
Information about Gareth L. Powell:
Gareth is the author of five science-fiction novels and two short story collections. His third novel, Ack-Ack Macaque, book one in the Macaque Trilogy, was the winner of the 2013 BSFA novel award. He lives in Bristol, UK. Find him on Twitter @garethlpowell.
Click here to visit his official website.
Information about Fleet of Knives:
From award-winning author Gareth L. Powell, the second book in the critically acclaimed Embers of War space opera series.
The former warship Trouble Dog and her crew follow a distress call from the human starship Lucy’s Ghost, whose crew have sought refuge aboard an abandoned generation ship launched ten thousand years before by an alien race. However, the enormous vessel contains deadly secrets of its own.
The Marble Armada calls for recovered war criminal Ona Sudak to accompany its ships as it spreads itself across the Human Generality, enforcing the peace with overwhelming and implacable force. Then Sudak’s vessel intercepts messages from the House of Reclamation and decides the Trouble Dog has a capacity for violence which cannot be allowed to endure.
As the Trouble Dog and her crew fight to save the crew of the Lucy’s Ghost, the ship finds herself caught between chaotic alien monsters on one side, and on the other, destruction at the hands of the Marble Armada.
REVIEW: FLEET OF KNIVES BY GARETH L. POWELL
Read more: Review: Fleet of Knives by Gareth L. Powell
Review: Franchise by Peter Glassborow
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Reviews
Peter Glassborow's Franchise was published by Elsewhen Press in a digital format in September 2018 and in paperback in December 2018.
Information about Peter Glassborow:
Born in London Peter wrote his first short story when he was thirteen. His father told him it was rubbish, which it was. However the writing bug had seized him and he wanted to be a published writer. Roll on fifty years or so and now he is living in New Zealand after his family emigrated there. He has had many jobs including twenty years in the NZ army, and writing stories is his main hobby.
Taking a correspondence course in creative writing his first assignments showed him how bad he was at spelling, punctuation and general self-editing, but his tutor’s help gave him the confidence to finally send out submissions. One was accepted, and his teenage ambition to be a published author was finally realised. Now retired he writes in several genres and has become ambitious enough to write and self-publish a historical trilogy. Franchise, the first book in the Cornucopia Logs series, is Peter’s first foray into space opera.
Information about Franchise:
The first of the Cornucopia logs
Navigating an asteroid field was just the start of the hazards…
When Pam Rakai convinces her husband Jack to write an article for the ‘My Job’ section of The Modern Earth Woman’s Weekly, he starts to keep a record of their day to day life. A franchise holder from the Inter-Galactic Vending Machine Company, Jack’s daily routine is not usually glamorous or exciting. He and Pam, along with their three children and sundry alien pets, travel to various spaceports and refuelling stations to service and restock the company’s massive vending machines. In the process, they encounter aliens from many of the 739 species of intelligent civilised life who make up the Conglomerate that Earth joined 114 years earlier.
Their next call is to the Afgfun Seven spaceport to deliver supplies that the company hope will defuse a miners’ sit-in. It’s a trip Jack is dreading as he’s not confident that he can safely navigate their new spaceship through the asteroid field that surrounds the spaceport. The perilous journey is just the first of the unexpected hazards that lie in store as he and his family get caught up in a dangerously escalating situation. Jack and Pam must protect their family, keep their employer happy, deal with some very unsavoury characters (alien and human alike) - and remember to keep a log for the readers back home.
REVIEW: FRANCHISE BY PETER GLASSBOROW
Read more: Review: Franchise by Peter Glassborow