Category Archives: Books

Last Resort – Josh Reynolds

Aconyte Books’ range of novels based on the board game Zombicide begins with Josh Reynolds’ Last Resort, an entertaining and action-packed tale of survival against the odds after a zombie apocalypse. Westlake is a career thief, determined to brave the dangers of the zombie-infested Adirondack Mountains in search of ‘the Villa’, a semi-mythical sanctuary controlled by a vicious mafia kingpin. When he’s saved from serious trouble by a ragtag group of survivors led by an ex-FBI agent of his acquaintance, he sees the opportunity to find a crew of sorts to help him reach and access the Villa, if only he can persuade them to help. Luckily for Westlake, the survivors are growing increasingly desperate, and are willing to risk much for the chance to find a safe haven from the zombies.

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The Dying Squad – Adam Simcox

Part detective drama and part urban fantasy – or maybe rural fantasy, as much of it is set in the quiet Lincolnshire landscape – Adam Simcox’s The Dying Squad is fun, easy to read and full to the brim with big ideas. He doesn’t want to admit it, despite having seen his own bullet-ridden body, but DI Joe Lazarus is dead. When he finally accepts the truth, Joe finds himself in the Pen – essentially purgatory – where he’s given the task of heading back to the mortal plane to investigate his own murder. With the cheeky, also-dead Daisy-May as his partner he sets out on the trail of the drug gang he was tracking before his death, but it’s hard being an undead detective when, beyond a core awareness of who he was, he can barely remember anything about his life or the people in it. At least he can walk through walls though, and Daisy-May seems to know what she’s doing in this strange afterlife.

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The Fractured Void – Tim Pratt

Tim Pratt kicks off Aconyte Books’ range of Twilight Imperium novels with The Fractured Void, a tale of space pirates, covert operatives, and an infuriating but potentially very important scientist. Captain Felix Duval dreams of one day sitting at the Mentak Coalition’s Table of Captains, but for now he’s relegated to piloting his ship The Temerarious in a dull posting out on the fringes of the Coalition where nothing exciting ever happens. When they foil the attempted kidnapping of a scientist named Thales, however, Felix and his small crew face all the excitement they could ever want, as they attempt to keep the deeply aggravating Thales safe while he perfects a technology that he claims will change the face of the galaxy forever.

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Target: Kree – Stuart Moore

Based on the all-guns-blazing, anything goes setting of the Marvel: Crisis Protocol game, Stuart Moore’s Target: Kree takes some of the biggest names from Marvel’s hero roster and throws them together into an action-packed tale of intergalactic danger, exploring themes of immigration and everyday prejudice along the way. When the planet Praeterus is destroyed, the Guardians of the Galaxy help evacuate as many Kree from the surface as they can, the survivors making their way to Earth and employment with Stark Industries. Worried that the person responsible for Praeterus’ destruction is now among the surviving Kree, the Guardians head to Earth to track them down, and quickly clash with Tony Stark and the Avengers. Amid accusations of exploitation and conflicting motivations, the Guardians and Avengers have to find a way of working together in order to stave off further disaster.

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Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh! – Nate Crowley

Nate Crowley puts his wild imagination to darkly hilarious use with the fantastic Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, effortlessly elevating Warhammer 40,000 orks into compelling, thought-provoking characters. Relatively short but wide-ranging, it’s structured around the central conceit of a radical Ordo Xenos inquisitor interrogating a captured grot claiming to be Makari, the banner bearer of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. As Inquisitor Falx and her unusual retinue question Makari – via a somewhat suspicious interpreter – they’re gradually presented with both an origin story for Ghazghkull and a jaw-dropping exploration of greenskin culture and the orkish mindset. Orks not being known for their trustworthiness though, the Imperials have to wonder how much they can trust and what the implications might be if Makari’s story is actually true.

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Subject Twenty One – A.E. Warren

Originally self-published as The Museum of Second Chances before being re-released by Del Rey, A.E. Warren’s debut novel Subject Twenty One – book one in the Tomorrow’s Ancestors series – is a post-apocalyptic tale of repopulation, genetic engineering and tightly controlled societal structures. Elise is a Sapien, one of the lowest class of humans, condemned to forever be paying reparations for the actions of previous generations in devastating the Earth. Keen to escape a life of tedium, she takes a job at the Museum of Evolution as the companion to Twenty One (otherwise known as Kit), one of a handful of Neanderthals returned from extinction through the marvels of genetic engineering. With her own secrets to keep, Elise has to be careful how she goes, however the more she gets to know Kit, the more she learns about the real history of her world and her place within it.

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This Eden – Ed O’Loughlin

A vintage spy drama updated for the modern world, Ed O’Loughlin’s This Eden blends pacy, globe-trotting adventures with old-school suspense and misdirection to form a gripping tale of industrial espionage, subtle social manipulation and an insidious threat. Michael Atarian is a quiet, unexceptional student who just wants to become an engineer, to have a simple life building roads and bridges. He tries to steer clear of his girlfriend Alice’s politics, doesn’t understand the strange digital landscape she inhabits, but when Alice mysteriously disappears he finds himself unwillingly drawn into her world. Out of his depth in Silicon Valley, he meets the willfully cryptic war-gamer Towse and persuasive, manipulative spy Aoife, who drag him further out of his comfort zone, into a dangerous mission to avert a strangely ambiguous technological disaster.

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The Devourer Below: an Arkham Horror Anthology – edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells

Edited by Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells, The Devourer Below is part of Aconyte Books’ growing range of Arkham Horror fiction and features eight short stories from seven different authors all exploring a sinister presence rising in Arkham. Dangerous deals are being made, threats issued, lives devastated and plots hatched, monsters emerging and reluctant heroes standing up, all in the name of or in defiance of a darkness that few truly understand. From local landmarks to the dark countryside that borders the city, detectives and grieving widows to bootleggers and vagrant children, these stories explore Arkham and its inhabitants in dark, unsettling detail, united by a common theme – sometimes overt, other times implied – of a monstrous, corrupting power and the sinister servants it can call upon.

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The Black Hawks – David Wragg

Book one of the two-part Articles of Faith series, David Wragg’s action packed and foul-mouthed The Black Hawks gleefully tramples over genre norms to deliver a fun new perspective on the fantasy quest story. Vedren Chel is neither heroic nor especially capable, and he would much rather be back home than in Denirnas, fetching and carrying for his step-uncle. When the city is attacked, however, he finds himself in the accidental service of the young, somewhat pitiful Prince Tarfel, and in the disreputable company of a band of mercenaries calling themselves the Black Hawks. If he can keep Tarfel alive long enough to deliver him safely into the hands of the mercenaries’ suspiciously vague employers, Chel might just be able to go home, but in order to do that he has to evade vengeful agents of the church and survive wolves, cannibals and all manner of other dangers.

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Death’s Kiss – Josh Reynolds

After 2020’s fantastic Legend of the Five Rings novel Poison River, Josh Reynolds returns with the second ‘Daidoji Shin Mystery’ – Death’s Kiss, from Aconyte Books. Set a few months after the events of the first book, it finds Shin busy overseeing the renovation of the Foxfire Theatre, having purchased it for himself apparently out of boredom. When a friend in the Unicorn clan asks him to look into a murder in the mountain city of Hisatu-Kesu, Shin puts aside the work of managing the theatre’s finances and, accompanied as always by the long-suffering Kisami, sets out to investigate. The closer Shin looks into what seems on the surface to be a straightforward case, the more he comes to understand the political tensions in Hisatu-Kesu, and what the consequences could be if proceedings aren’t handled with care.

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