Category Archives: Books

In the Coils of the Labyrinth – David Annandale

With his first Arkham Horror novel, In the Coils of the Labyrinth, David Annandale delivers a slow-burn tale of physical illness and mental torment that ably demonstrates why this is such a perfect author/setting combination. Worn down by what she’s long suspected is tuberculosis, Professor Miranda Ventham reluctantly checks herself into the Stroud Institute, Arkham’s newly-opened sanatorium. While the care she receives there seems genuinely beneficial to begin with, something about the Institute feels unsettling, and Miranda’s plagued by troubling, confusing dreams. Determined to understand what’s happening, and helped on the outside by her friend, parapsychologist Agatha Crane, Miranda sets out to learn what she can about the Institute and its director, Donovan Stroud. As dreams and reality become harder to tell apart though, the darkness at the heart of the Institute threatens to drag her down and never let her go.

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Godkiller – Hannah Kaner

Hannah Kaner blasts onto the epic fantasy scene with her debut novel Godkiller, an impressively tight and thrilling tale of vengeance, honour, murdered (and murderous) gods and sundered families. With civil war looming and enemies closing in, four disparate characters make their way to a ruined city in search of answers from the old gods – mercenary godkiller Kissen, troubled knight-turned-baker Elogast, and the bound-together duo of runaway young noble Inara and tiny god of white lies Skediceth. Despite their differences, and a conspicuous lack of trust, they find themselves travelling together, forced to rely on each other to survive the curses, demons, gods and men that bar their way to the war-ravaged city and the truths they hope to find there.

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The Mimicking of Known Successes – Malka Older

Set on a colony encircling Jupiter in a distant future, Malka Older’s genre-blending novella The Mimicking of Known Successes opens with Investigator Mossa looking into the disappearance of a university scholar assumed to have jumped or been pushed from a remote transit platform, thereafter presumably perishing in the gas giant’s freezing, punishing atmosphere. Back at the university she recruits her once-girlfriend Pleiti, also a scholar, to assist with her investigation, the two of them attempting to understand what might have prompted an almost universally disliked man to disappear. The deeper they dig the more the mystery thickens, becoming more dangerous than they could have expected, while their unexpected reunion inevitably stirs up old memories and emotions once thought laid to rest.

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Witchbringer – Steven B Fischer

After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.

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The Keeper’s Six – Kate Elliott

Coming in January 2023 from Tordotcom Publishing, Kate Elliott’s portal fantasy novella The Keeper’s Six explores a fascinating world of secretive dragons and realm-travelling magic through the eyes of a weary but ruthlessly determined mother. Esther is one sixth of a Hex, a magically-empowered group of disparate characters whose talents allow them to cross the Beyond and move between worlds, although not without risk. When her son Daniel is kidnapped – apparently by a dragon – Esther calls on the other members of her Hex to help her find the culprit and retrieve her son, despite the fact that their licence has been suspended by the Concilium – a sort of inter-realm bureaucracy. As they brave the dangers of the Beyond, their mission delves into Esther’s work and family history, and the strange politics and power plays of dragons, the Concilium, and a world of many realms spanning infinite possibilities.

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Firewall – James Swallow

Not content to delight readers with just his own original thrillers like Airside and the fantastic Marc Dane series, James Swallow continues to demonstrate his prowess with this genre in the tense, action-packed, utterly un-put-downable Firewall, his first Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell novel from Aconyte Books. Taking place in 2015, it sees Sam Fisher – black-ops expert and veteran of the secretive ‘Fourth Echelon’ anti-terrorist group – tasked with hunting down a deadly assassin, a fearsome opponent from Sam’s past long thought to be dead. An added complication is that Sam’s partner for the mission is his daughter Sarah, newly accepted into Fourth Echelon, father and daughter each trying to come to terms with the other’s role. Before long though, they’re caught up in a broader mystery involving a terrifying digital weapon named Gordian Sword, created by billionaire tech entrepreneur Brody Teague, with a potential impact beyond any trouble a single assassin could make.

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Lazarus – Sarah Cawkwell

Set in the alternative 19th century American Old West of the Wild West Exodus tabletop game, Sarah Cawkwell’s Lazarus is an action-packed tale of gunslinging lawmen, soldiers, spirit magic and horrifying technological experimentation. In this Dystopian Age blending steam power and hyper-advanced technology, Major Willa Shaw of the Union of Federated States is dispatched to the arid lands of Arizona to investigate the destruction of a young mining town named Provenance. Along the way she’s unhappily reunited with a figure from her past in the shape of Deputy Doc Holliday, the two of them forced together by circumstance as they piece together a puzzle involving questions over Provenance’s fate, horrifying human/machine constructs, and a dangerous new narcotic called Lazarus. The trail of death and destruction they follow leads inevitably to the threat of newfound conflict, and the unhinged genius of Lady Annabelle Hamilton.

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Witches Unleashed – Carrie Harris

Ghost Rider teams up with a coven of witches to take on Lucifer himself in Carrie Harris’ Marvel prose novel Witches Unleashed, part of Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Untold range. When he escaped from Hell, Johnny Blaze – the Ghost Rider – unintentionally freed Lucifer’s soul too, broken into 666 fragments, and ever since he’s been hunting them down and returning them to Hell. With only a few fragments remaining, Johnny seeks out the LeFay sisters – not actually sisters, but rather sorceress Jennifer Kale, mystic Topaz and half-demon Satana Hellstrom – for help, as one of the final fragments has possessed the body of another Kale. With the powers of a witch at his disposal, Johnny and the witches have no choice but to work together to stop Lucifer before he can complete whatever evil plan he’s concocting.

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The Immortality Thief – Taran Hunt

A sinister, thousand year-old abandoned spaceship hides a world-shaking secret in Taran Hunt’s action-packed adventure novel The Immortality Thief. Forced into joining a mission he doesn’t want to take part in, small-time thief Sean Wren finds himself part of a rag-tag team of ‘volunteers’ forced to retrieve a mysterious prize from the aforementioned ancient spaceship before it’s destroyed in an imminent supernova. With few useful skills under the circumstances other than a knack for languages, Sean is instantly out of his depth but determined to see the mission through and keep his promise to look out for his friend/fellow survivor Benny. When things quickly go wrong however, and the ship proves to be full of horrifying monsters, Sean finds himself caught between a half-starved Republic soldier and an unstoppable alien warrior, not able to trust either but forced to rely on them simply in order to survive.

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Leech – Hiron Ennes

Hiron Ennes’ Leech is eerily good, an unsettling tale of parasites, shared consciousness and collective history that’s quietly creepy and endlessly compelling. In a bleak, ravaged world, the Interprovincial Medical Institute has cornered the market in medical personnel…by possessing the body of every living doctor, sharing its gestalt awareness across countless physical forms. When one of its number dies in a remote snow-shrouded château, it simply sends another to take its place. When the replacement arrives however, it finds that its predecessor’s death was far from natural, with a horrifying parasite having taken root in that body. As a bitter winter closes in and the presence of its distant bodies fades, the château’s doctor is soon trapped inside with the fractious residents, few real resources, and an insidious, unseen but utterly deadly enemy.

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