Books tagged with: city-state

Autumn - The City is the follow up to the sensational zombie novel Autumn, promising the same power and subtle horror of the first. It takes a lot of guts to start a story again right from the beginning but told from a different perspective - a brave move that could have gone horribly wrong. Instea...

City of Dreams & Nightmare is the debut novel from Ian Whates and published by Angry Robot Books. The first in a new series of novels, the story is set against the vertical city of Thaiburley. Thaiburley, known as the "City of a Hundred Rows" is an incredible creation of towering majestic heights a...

City of Stairs is a masterpiece of world-building. Mr Bennett is clearly a gifted writer and his greatest talents lie in creating a vibrant, rich, detailed world. It's also a masterclass on how the dogmatic, blind following of religious doctrines can lead to very real problems. In City of Stairs t...

At the basic level, Marc Turner’s Dragon Hunters is about three things: huge water-dragons, awesome sword-fights, and Machiavellian politics. The second book in Turner’s Chronicles of the Exiles trilogy - although not strictly a sequel to the first When The Heavens Fall - also has a similarly comple...

I must admit that prior to the announcement than Brandon Sanderson would finish that little known series known as "The Wheel of Time" I hadn't heard of the author, I know he already had a big following but I think this was more US based prior to the WOT announcement. Now though he has clearly gained...

Empire in Black and Gold is the first novel in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt sequence, published in July 2008, and the book that gets the whole insect-people experiment off the ground. It is also, for the record, Tchaikovsky's debut. There is something faintly unfair about a writer arrivin...

Empress is the first volume of the Godspeaker trilogy, by Australian author Karen Miller, and a book that does something unusual enough to be worth describing carefully. Most fantasy novels with a slave-girl protagonist follow a fairly well-marked road: the heroine is mistreated, escapes, gathers al...

One of the newer books in the (never-ending) Discworld saga. I'm finding it extremely hard to say anything interesting about this book – not because it's bad, but it's a Discworld novel and …well that's it. It's no worse and no better than all the other Discworld novels. Pratchett is funny, as alway...

Meet Thaddeus Blaklok, mercenary, demonist and down right violent thug-for-hire who uses his fists the way most people use punctuation. He is dragged out of semi-retirement to "retreive" a very mysterious key for his equally mysterious benefactors. He isn't the only one after the artefact however an...

Nekropolis is the first volume in a new series of fantasy horror, written by Tim Waggoner and is based on his novella Necropolis. Matt Richter is a former cop now a private eye with a big difference, he is a zombie (could happen to anyone really). A zombie private detective does have it's advantage...

Return to Canifis is the sequel to Betrayal at Falador, set within the Runescape Universe and written by T S Church. Varrock is considered to be one of the greatest cities in the known world, but even here danger lurks - people have been dissapearing, or their bodies discovered ripped apart. Some a...

In the holy city of Othir treachery and corruption are rife, the ideal breeding ground for any freelance assassins with no scruples. Caim is one of the best, living on the edge of a blade he has carved out an impeccable reputation but when he reluctantly takes on a job at very short notice he finds...

Review by author Luis Villazon. This is a detective novel, with a fantasy setting. The city of Winter Moon is surrounded on three sides by impenetrable mountains and on the fourth by an impassable frozen sea. Its only connection to the outside world is via the magical floating city of Crystalline, w...

This is Stella Gemmell's first solo book, after writing with her late (great) husband for a number of years. I must admit that I am a huge fan of David Gemmell, I've read and re-read most of his works and the majority are still hugely memorable; for me he defined the Heroic Fantasy genre. I don't th...

The Emperor's Edge is a speculative fiction novel by Lindsay Buroker. Amaranthe Lokdon is one of the first ever female watch officers in the city, she works harder than anyone else and yet is overlooked for promotion while others rise in the ranks around her. When ravaged bodies begin to show up o...

The Grey city of Dorminia, surrounded by granite walls thrice the height of a man and at least three feet thick at it's weakest point. These walls provide a barrier for those without as they do those within, patrolled by the harsh Crimson watch and observed from the skies by the Mindhawks - magical...

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first volume in the The Inheritance Trilogy and the debut of N. K. Jemisin. This review has been written for the David Gemmell Morningstar award. Yeine Darr, ruler of her people is still mourning the untimely death of her mother when she is summoned to the magni...

Review by Ed Prior. Homeless young orphan Locke Lamora is deemed not "circumspect" enough to make it as a thief. Narrowly escaping a swift death he is packed off to be a disciple at the temple of the Crooked Warden, the god of Fate and Fortune - patron of thieves and rogues. Locke soon learns the te...

The Scar returns us to the wonderful world of Bas Lag, first encountered in the award winning novel Perdido Street Station. This time however we are far removed from the dirty, winding streets of New Crobuzon and thrust into the wider world, adrift on strange tides and weird seas. The floating metr...

Establishing a new fantasy story of weight and significance is difficult these days. The genre is crowded with epic quests, adventures, villains and heroes. The Sons of Thestian by M.E. Vaughan is fantasy tale by a talented writer that attempts to draw our attention. The opening action sequences ar...

Ceda fights in the pits of Sharakhai, scraping a living like so many in the city known as "the amber jewel of the desert". She, like most, pray for an end to the tyrannical and cruel rule of the city by it's immortal Kings. She has, until now never been in a position to do anything about it. That a...

He-Dog and Balless are mad, brutal, unpredictable mercenaries, and those are their good points. The remains of this ragtag group also includes the suicidal, one-eyed ex-champion archer Borus and the disfigured but deadly Chop . When they accept a mission that no-one else would touch, they travel the...

Last year one of the most impressive debut's I read was Ed McDonald's Blackwing. It's dark, confident and bold fiction with some exceptional world-building and even finer characters, Ravencry is the sequel and does everything a sequel should, building on the best elements of the first...

Blackmore is a vastly under-appreciated author. His Mountain Man novels are a superb example of a post-apocalyptic / zombie series. 131 days does for heroic, gladiatorial fantasy what Mountain Man did for Zombies, a charged, fast-paced story that has confidence, style and plenty of GrimDark. Ever...

The Ruin of Kings is the debut of Jenn Lyons, it's an impressive way to make an entrance. The beginning of epic fantasy series A Chorus of Dragons, the book has just been optioned to be turned into a TV series. Growing up in the slums of the city Suur, Kihrin learns to entertain with music while al...

Fantasy is known as an epic genre; stories can span generations and civilisations rise and fall. As a fan of the genre, you also notice some regular tropes that occur, similar races and similar storylines. Within the pages of Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage&nbs...

I have read a lot of speculative fiction that shows humans going crazy if a major event happens; a pandemic has rioting in the street or the voice of God echoing from the heavens leads to a rise in suicides. Perhaps it is a British thing, but I think that we would just shrug our shoulders and get on...

The life of a fantasy hero is never easy. They are often thrust into an adventure not of their choosing, losing those that they love on the way towards an objective that seems impossible to meet. In C L Clark’s Unbroken, one of the protagonists is Touraine, a sold...

Life in a Fantasy novel is often epic. A grand journey to destroy a ring or a fight to the death against an invading force. Our heroes rush from one end of the land on a mission, but if you look behind them you may see some of the normal people pass in a blur. The shopkeepers, the local police, the&...

Fantasy does not have to be one set thing and as the years progress, I find fantasy books that have moved away from just being magical creatures going out on a quest far more interesting. The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia has the lightest of fantasy touches and uses...

What is Comfy Fantasy? It is a new name for the type of fantasy that does not have you on edge all the time. As a genre fantasy can often feel epic, but also stressful. The heroes on the run from a darkness they cannot fathom, or a fellowship were hardly anyone can be trusted. Sometimes you just wan...

I have read more than my fair share of fantasy novels and I love them. As a rule, they fall into a couple of camps on how they are narrated – from a single point of view, or through the eyes of several people, normally 3-7. Leaping from one character and back again works in the genre as it giv...

You are probably a fantasy fan if you are reading a review of this fantasy book. As fans we love the genre, but even we can admit that plenty of the tropes are well trodden and to standout a new fantasy series is going to have to be something different. Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare opens with a...

You should be careful what you wish for, but also careful what you promise. Are you going to be able to live up to the hype? Arcadia Books are pretty pumped with James Logan’s The Silverblood Promise stating that it is the best fantasy debut of the year. Let me be the judge of that and having...

What is the fantasy genre? It is not just one thing. You can have elves and orcs battling against the backdrop of high wizardry, but you can also write something simpler. Low fantasy is getting so low that it starts to feel like alternative medieval history. Like why write about real history when yo...

I adore the fantasy genre and as someone who reads it a lot, I have seen the ebbs and flows in the genre over the years. There have always been outliers, but there is a certain style of fantasy that dominated for each of the decades. Until recently, I have read a lot of Low Fantasy, a genre low on m...

How do you push a story forward? One method used in movies is known as a MacGuffin, a meaningless plot device that someone must find that will drive all their intentions. It does not happen as often in literature, but in the case of The Blackfire Blade by James Logan it has one of the most Macguggin...

A large part of fantasy novels is not really the destination, but the journey. The camaraderie that builds among a troop of characters as they travel to their destination, but what happens once they have arrived? In T Kingfisher’s Clockwork Boys four mismatched social pariahs set out to surviv...

A lot can happen during a siege, enough so that you do not have to have a book full of battles, you could have just one about the siege itself. This is the setting of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest in the The Tyrant Philosophers series, Pretenders to the Throne of God. We will meet new friends an...