Category Archives: Reviews

QUICK REVIEW: Oracle – Liane Merciel

Liane Merciel’s Age of Sigmar short story Oracle, part of the wider Broken Realms narrative and a sequel of sorts to Red Claw and Ruin (from Covens of Blood), starts with an investigation and ends with an invasion. Posted to the city of Anvilguard to support the Anvils of the Heldenhammer, most of whom have been redeployed elsewhere, Etanios of the Hammers of Sigmar finds himself in the unusual position of assisting with a murder investigation, after several deaths among the city’s prominent citizens. When he’s contacted by an old ally with a dire warning of Morathi’s duplicity, however, he finds himself pulled in different directions trying to do his duty.

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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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QUICK REVIEW: Roadwarden – Liane Merciel

Liane Merciel turns her attention to the harsh landscape of Aqshy with the short story Roadwarden, available in the Inferno! Volume 6 anthology. When strangers approach roadwarden Fereyne wanting to hire her as a guide through the Reaver Wastes, at first she balks at aiding anyone once claimed by the Blood God, but her scepticism is soon outweighed by the truth of their situation…and the high price they’re offering for her services. As she leads the motley party through the wastes in search of a magical artefact with the power to bring life to arid Aqshy, Fereyne and her companions find themselves faced with the stark reality of Chaos’ influence on the Mortal Realms.

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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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