Fantasy Book Reviews

The Armageddon Rag

by George RR Martin



Way before be became a household name with his Songs of Ice and Fire series, George RR Martin wrote a number of stand-out novels and Armageddon Rag is often seen as one the most off-the-wall if not his finest early works.

Nominated for the Locus and World Fantasy awards it failed to gain any notable sales when first released in 1983 and has been described by the author as both his most ambitious and experimental novel but commercially a "total disaster" and one which almost des...

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reviewed on Wednesday 23 May 2012

Unmarked Graves

by Shaun Hutson



Review by Arron Clegg. Shaun Hutson. For fans of horror he is the master of all that is gory in the world of horror novels and has been for some time now. His roots however give more than a passing nod to a compatriot of his Mr. Herbert. Unmarked Graves shows exactly what Shaun does well. He takes you on a roller coaster ride from the dark continent of Africa to the shores of England. He straps you into the cabin, spins you around, tips you upside down, hurtles you through a visceral tunnel a...

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reviewed on Tuesday 22 May 2012

Empire of the Saviours

by AJ Dalton



Empire of the Saviours is a very, very clever novel than manages to offer something different over the traditional fantasy fare, using tried and tested fantasy tropes - young boy from humble beginnings find he has incredible power - but then creating something quite different, fresh and unique that stands out from those around it.

Within this standard fantasy world that mixes a medieval level of technology with banned magic, civilized people live in fortified towns with walls g...

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reviewed on Wednesday 16 May 2012

The Spear

by James Herbert



Review by Arron Clegg. James Herbert has long been regarded by many people as Britain’s finest horror writer of the 20th century and with his 5th novel The Spear it is hard to argue against such claims. It is a horror novel that has it all, ghosts, the occult and Nazis.

The writing in this book is quintessentially British. The style and grammar so English, if it wasn’t for the dark content, it could sit quite easily on the syllabus up and down the country. However whether it was my ...

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reviewed on Thursday 10 May 2012

Asbury Park

by Robb Scott



Ten weeks ago Homicide Detective Sailor Doyle worked on his first ever solo case, a horrific double murder in a remote area of Virginia that almost finished him for good.

Now he's recuperating from the physical wounds and mental trauma, the near death experience acting as a focus to overcome his other issues and exercise his personal demons - an increasing dependency on prescription drugs and the re-building of a broken marriage after his extra marital affair - events that have...

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reviewed on Wednesday 09 May 2012

Dead Winter

by CL Werner



Dead Winter is the first novel in a new series that's set within the "Time of Legends" collection, itself set within Warhammer Fantasy with the aim to tell the stories of some of the greatest heroes of the Warhammer world.

A thousand years have passed since the Age of Sigmar and the Empire he created rests on the very edge of destruction, brought to that brink by the greedy and incompetent Emperor Boris Goldgather who has bled the Empire dry with his insatiable lust for money and po...

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reviewed on Monday 07 May 2012

Strangeness and Charm

by Mike Shevdon



It would be a bit of an understatement to say I've been eagerly anticipating this novel, ever since I was lucky enough to review Sixty One Nails I've been completely hooked by Mike Shevdon's rich, dynamic prose and unique, powerful voice that helps to create this astounding urban fantasy series.

I'm not alone either, the previous novel, The Road to Bedlam was voted the SFBook of the Year back in 2010 and even more incredible, my Dad - who hasn't read a fantasy book in his life - lov...

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reviewed on Friday 04 May 2012

The Eyes of the Dragon

by Stephen King



Reviewed by Arron Clegg. Stephen King’s first foray into the realms of fantasy couldn’t really have been written any better. He manages to keep his familiar style of writing, one that keeps us turning the pages, long after the sun has set in the sky, and yet has written in an olde-worlde style that fits in perfectly with the genre.

King wrote this story for his daughter Naomi after she complained to him that all he ever wrote was horror stories and that “wouldn’t it be good if ...

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reviewed on Tuesday 01 May 2012

Autumn - Purification

by David Moody



Carrying on right from where we left the survivors back in Autumn: The City, Purification takes us further down the Zombie survival road. Pretty much imprisoned within the underground Army base this small group sit and wait while on the surface the crowd of shuffling corpses is growing in size every day, drawn there by the heat and the noise of the people hiding beneath their rotting feet.

Soon the sheer mass of decaying flesh causes problems with the air supply of the base and...

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reviewed on Monday 30 April 2012

Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler



San Francisco Homicide detective Bryan Clauser thinks he may be losing his mind. What other explanation could there be for the dreams he keeps having, dreams where he witnesses some really gruesome murders that also happen to be actually carried out all over the city. As he and his partner Pookie Chang investigate these brutal crimes they begin to learn that things are much stranger than first appears.

The victims are all enemies of a seemingly ordinary young boy, a boy who is ...

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reviewed on Friday 27 April 2012

Find the latest Fantasy book reviews here. Fantasy as a genre can be very difficult to define but is usually said to encompass stories set in an alternative reality based on imagined fantastical elements like magic or the supernatural. This is the defining difference between science fiction and fantasy, science fiction deals with elements that are theoretically possible while fantasy deals with the improbable or impossible.

Fantasy can be most commonly associated with sword and sorcery stories however the genre can include contemporary (Harry Potter) and humorous (Tom Holt) tales. Fantasy, science fiction and horror can occasionally overlap and generally the term used to describe these novels is speculative fiction.

Fantasy fiction can trace it's roots all the way back to ancient mythology, especially Homer's Odyssey which was written in the 9th century BC. Homer's Odyssey chronicles the fictional adventures of a hero returning to Ithaca after the capture of Troy. The earliest surviving English text of fantasy origins is the poem Beowulf which dates back to 700 AD.

The most recognisable to modern audiences is perhaps the Legends of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. These stories have been told many times from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (around 1485 AD) to T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) and Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle (1987).

The series that could be said to bring fantasy into the mainstream has to be Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara series, written in 1977 it was one of the first modern fantasy books to become a new york times best seller. Since then this has been repeated by David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Terry Good Kind and Terry Pratchett.

Here you can find fantasy book reviews from the big name authors to the self published and independant, it's the story that's always the star here.