"A fast-paced adventure combined with an engrossing mystery, all set in a unique and original fantasy world. I can't wait to find out what happens next!" - Martha Wells, Hugo Award-winning author on For the Killing of Kings
In this sequel to For the Killing of Kings, Howard Andrew Jones returns to the ring-sworn champions of the Altenerai in Upon the Flight of the Queen to continue this thrilling, imaginative and immersive epic fantasy trilogy.
While the savage Naor clans prepare to march on the heart of the Allied Realms, Rylin infiltrates the highest of the enemy ranks to learn their secrets and free hundreds of doomed prisoners. His ailing mentor Varama leads the ever-dwindling Altenerai corps in a series of desperate strikes to cripple the Naor occupiers, hoping for a relief force that may not come in time to save what's left of the city and her charges.
Elenai, Kyrkenall, and the kobalin Ortok ride through the storm-wracked Shifting Lands to rekindle an alliance with the ko'aye, the only possible counter to the terrible Naor dragons. Even if they survive the hazardous trek deep through kobalin territory to find the winged lizards, though, the three are unlikely to get a warm reception, for the queen of the five realms refused to aid the ko'aye when their homelands were attacked, and the creatures have long memories.
While the Altenerai fight impossible odds to save the realms, their queen delves further and deeper into the magic of the mysterious hearthstones in a frantic attempt to unlock secrets that might just destroy them all.
Praised for his skills in drafting modern epic fantasy that engrosses and entertains, Howard Andrew Jones delivers a sequel that expands the amazing world, relationships, and adventure introduced in the first book of this series.
Read more: Upon the Flight of the Queen - Howard Andrew Jones
GUEST POST: The Jötunn War: First Peek! by Ian Stuart Sharpe
- Written by Seregil of Rhiminee
- Category: Guest Post
Risingshadow has the honour of hosting a guest post in the form of an interview by Ian Stuart Sharpe.
Author Bio:
Ian Stuart Sharpe was born in London, UK, and now lives in British Columbia, Canada. Having worked for the BBC, IMG, Atari and Electronic Arts, he is now CEO of a tech start up. As a child he discovered his love of books, sci-fi and sagas: devouring the works of Douglas Adams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and George MacDonald Fraser alongside Snorri Sturluson and Sigvat the Skald. He once won a prize at school for Outstanding Progress and chose a dictionary as his reward, secretly wishing it had been an Old Norse phrasebook. The All Father Paradox is his first novel.
Website:
About The Jötunn War:
A war as old as time, where fate itself hangs in the balance. In the Vikingverse, the Norse rule the stars with restless fleets and an iron will. But when the thralls rebel, turning to the artifice of Norns to help them escape their bondage, the Natural order is thrown into chaos. The Jötunn War has been fought across the Nine Homeworlds to contain the threat, a battle against the stuff of ancient nightmares, red in tooth and claw, Jötunheim is the rebellion's last redoubt, an indignity the Empire plans to cleanse with flame and fury. The Jötunn War. Go big or go home in a body bag.
Kickstarter Link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vikingverse/the-jotunn-war
About the publisher:
Outland Entertainment was founded as a creative services company in 2008 by Jeremy Mohler. Since then, Outland has worked for a wide variety of clients across the world. Outland specializes in assembling creative teams and managing projects. Contact them via their site form or go to www.outlandentertainment.com.
GUEST POST: The Jötunn War: First Peek! by Ian Stuart Sharpe
Read more: GUEST POST: The Jötunn War: First Peek! by Ian Stuart Sharpe
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