Reviewed by Gayle Williams It’s rare for me to reach for a fantasy novel, but I’ve always had a soft spot for stories centred on witches. That was the initial lure of Christy Anne Jones’s debut novel, Theodora’s Tea Shop. Despite its cozy-sounding title, Jones threads darker, more atmospheric elements through her story. The reader
Reviewed by Ian Lipke One should be warned by the title and general appearance of the title On Wings of Blood that this book is not for the fainthearted. Until now I have steered clear of the blood-and-guts variety of fantasy novel. More accurately, I have avoided the fantasy genre almost entirely. On Wings of
Reviewed by Ian Lipke The novel Iron Flame about Violet Sorrengail and her boyfriend Xaden continues on from Rebecca Karros’s story called Fourth Wing published in 2022. This novel was a raging success. It was anticipated that Iron Flame would be just as successful. However, with a different premise, and a different focus, a story
Reviewed by Rod McLary Artificial Intelligence [or AI] seems to be everywhere these days. Its applications include web searches, understanding speech [as per Siri or Alexa], self-driving cars and creative tools such as ChatGPT. A concern for the future is whether, if a machine has a mind and subjective experience, it may also have sentience
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Violet Sorrengail, who has never been completely well all her life, had planned to join Basgiath War College as a member of Scribe Quadrant, where she would have had a better than even chance of surviving her training period. However, her mother, a commanding general, has ordered her daughter to enter
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Alison Ferguson must have had a lot of fun writing Grey Nomad. Obviously, no reader is supposed to take seriously the story of a seventy-year-old woman mixing on equal terms with an intergalactic crew who have problems of their own. The story is meant to ‘take the mickey’ out of us
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Sue Lynn Tan writes fantasy stories inspired by the myths and legends she fell in love with during her childhood. Born in Malaysia, she studied in London and France, before settling in Hong Kong with her family. Her romantic duology about the daughter of the Moon Goddess melds ancient Chinese mythology
Reviewed by Margaret Elizabeth ‘Right is Right’ proclaims the political slogan of the Delegation, forever associated with the image of sixteen-year-old Sonya Kantor. Suddenly, a revolution turns fame to infamy and Sonya is imprisoned in the Aperture for life, transformed from feted Poster Girl to the living symbol of the evils of the old regime.
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Another story by Stephen King – a tale of an ordinary boy who is an average student academically but something of a legend at sport. It is his misfortune that his mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and his father attempted to drown his grief in
Reviewed by Ian Lipke If you prefer an easy read, I suggest you look elsewhere than R.F. Kuang’s Babel or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. This multi-barreled title is more than sufficient to persuade me to return the book to the shelves. The subtitle offers only confusion, yet
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Victoria Aveyard was born and raised in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts but moved to Los Angeles to earn a BFA in screenwriting at the University of Southern California. She writes both books and sheet music. Aveyard’s Blade Breaker shows that she has the breadth of vision to imagine and produce a hefty
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Sea of Tranquility is the first work of Canadian novelist and essayist, Emily St. John Mandel, that I have read, and I found it to be quite an unusual experience. The book is set out with a Table of Contents showing eight segments indicating that their contents cover events or storylines
Reviewed by Ian Lipke If there is no difference between a fantasy novel and a fantastical one, there should be. Richard Swan’s novel The Justice of Kings is a vastly different enterprise from Ken Follett’s Never, which is an epic tale of the fanciful. Richard Swan’s book is epic in size but certainly not in
Reviewed by Wendy Lipke Angela Slatter, the author of All The Murmuring Bones, specialises in writing about dark fantasy and horror. This is her first novel set in the same world as her mosaic collections Sourdough and Other Stories and The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, as well as the novella Of Sorrow and Such. This story will be followed
Reviewed by Ian Lipke Ms Roberts’s foray into a new trilogy is to be commended, given the high quality of her earlier works. The Awakening maintains the high standard we have come to expect. In this book, her command as the puppeteer is more evident than usual but in no way diminishes the quality. She