Category Archives: Reviews

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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Short and Sweet – December 2022

Hello and welcome to the third instalment of Short and Sweet, my ongoing series of short review roundups. I’m using these roundups to gather together a few brief thoughts on books that I’ve been reading recently but haven’t been able to write full reviews for, concentrating as always on my usual SFF fare. If you’re a Black Library reader, it’s worth pointing out that this is where you’re likely to find most of my BL content in future! In this instalment I’m going to talk about a pair of Black Library books – an Age of Sigmar novel (sort of) and a 40k short story anthology – and a science fiction novella that’s a sequel to something I read and loved in 2019. I could have included more books in this roundup, but I’m going to try and stick to three each time as a nice balanced amount to write about (and for each one I’ve included buy-now links – I’ll receive a small affilliate fee for anything ordered via these links).

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QUICK REVIEW: Aria Arcana – Peter Fehervari

The 17th instalment (short story number 12) in Peter Fehervari’s incredible Warhammer 40,000 Dark Coil series, Aria Arcana takes place during the finale of Requiem Infernal, offering a little insight into what the Angels Resplendent of the Ninth Rhapsody were doing as the city of Sophia Argentum burned. In the midst of the madness, Epistolary Ignacio Verlaine and a squad of Angels Resplendent patrol the storm-wracked skies waiting for revelation. When their gunship is destroyed, Verlaine falls from the sky only to find himself on an unexpected path that leads him inexorably towards the light of the Candelabrum, the great cathedral of the Koronatus Ring, and the destiny it heralds.

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A Few Thoughts On: Everybody Wins by James Wallis

Before I talk about James Wallis’ excellent board game retrospective Everybody Wins, out now from Aconyte Books, I have a confession to make: I enjoy a good board game now and then, but I’m really not what you’d call an aficionado. I’ve never played Catan, I have in fact only played three of the games featured here (Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Camel Up), and these days most of my involvement with any kind of games comes from reading IP fiction and enjoying the background rather than the games themselves. When Aconyte very kindly sent me a review copy of Everybody Wins I honestly thought I’d dip in and out of this very nicely-presented coffee table book, but right from the first page it had me hooked and wanting to keep reading, and what’s more it’s got me thinking about actually playing games again for the first time in…well, in ages.

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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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QUICK REVIEW: Snow White, Green Mantle – Jude Reid

Available in issue 32 of Grimdark Magazine, Jude Reid’s short story Snow White, Green Mantle is a sharp, bloody tale of desperation and survival in a world turned upside down. In a gloomy, run-down village on the edge of the woods, hunter Fionn is hired to do what the headman can’t, to take his daughter into the forest and slit her throat. She doesn’t relish the job but in a life always lived on the move, the prospect of earning a warm bed for the night is enough to get her to agree to it. Once in the woods, however, she soon learns that there’s more to the headman’s daughter than she realised, and the creatures who live away from the feeble light of humanity – the Othermen, who have reclaimed the world for themselves – want the girl for their own reasons.

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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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QUICK REVIEW: The Bahrain Underground Bazaar – Nadia Afifi

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and most recently included in the Lavie Tidhar-edited anthology The Best of World SF Volume 2, Nadia Afifi’s fascinating short story The Bahrain Underground Bazaar is a powerful tale of an elderly woman coming to terms with a terminal illness in the modern, digital world. Understandably scared, and worried about being a burden on her family, Zahra visits the ‘virtual immersion chambers’ of the Underground Bazaar where she practices for her own passing by virtually experiencing the deaths of others. When one particular visit raises more questions than it answers, Zahra finds herself compelled to try and understand the life of the woman whose end she experienced, hoping to find some clarity in what remains of her own life.

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Short and Sweet: November 2022

Hello and welcome to this instalment of Short and Sweet, my series of mini review roundups where I look back at SFF books I’ve recently read but haven’t had the time and/or headspace to review individually. Last time (back in October 2022) I kicked this series off with a hefty six books to talk about, but this time I’m going with a slightly more manageable four (well, more like three and a half really). These include a reread of a fantastic Murderbot book, a Warhammer Crime novel I’d been meaning to read for ages, the latest Horus Heresy Primarchs novel, and the next book in a series I’m gradually making my way through.

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