Books tagged with: curses

From a Watery Grave is the 6th novel in the Jason Dark series of dime novels by Guido Henkel. A quaint seaside town seems the ideal place for an English summer holiday. Little do its inhabitants suspect, that a century-old curse is about to throw their idyllic existence into turmoil and terror. Wrai...

Hunt for Valamon is a fast paced epic fantasy tale that manages to portray a number of genre tropes in a fresh and exciting way. The strong authorial voice of the writing quickly draws the reader in, the almost conversational tone of delivery actually put me in mind of Terry Pratchett. The language...

Illustration ©2019 Tim McDonagh from The Folio Society edition of Ray Bradbury’s  Something Wicked This Way Comes The bright yellow cover of this Folio Society edition of Bradbury’s classic fantasy novel is inset with a cartoon-like carnival poster, clearly telegraphing what the reader might expect...

The Blood Witch is the 8th volume in the Jason Dark: Ghost Hunter series of Novellas by Guido Henkel. An ancient curse re-surfaces and from deep within England's dark forests comes a hideous terror, stronger than ever and stalking the fog wrapped streets of Victorian London. Young girls are disappea...

In the small, sleepy town of Appleton, Billy Brahm’s life goes from clumsy to cursed. After following a cat into the road, he’s hit by a car, his leg shattered, and his summer is ruined. A mysterious cat begins to visit him at his bedside, and Billy is haunted by strange dreams. According to the cre...

The Jack of Souls starts off slow—almost painfully slow. But as the novel unfolds, I was thrilled to discover that the slowness allowed for really great character development. The novel begins with our hero (of sorts) Harric, a bastard and a trickster, who must break his mother’s curse or die. He wi...

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is a previously unknown work written by the late JRR Tolkien over 80 years ago. Edited by his son Christopher, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun tells the story of the Norse legend Sigurd the dragon slayer, the revenge of his wife, Gudrun, and the Fall of the Nibelungs....

Aislinn has always seen faeries. They are powerful, cruel, and dangerous. She and her grandmother have avoided them all of their lives—don’t stare, don’t speak, don’t attract their attention. But now, faeries have started to stalk her, including Keenan, the Summer King. Keenan has searched high and...

Hallowdene is the second book in the Wychwood series, a crime thriller that weaves into the story supernatural elements. Elspeth Reeves is making a new life for herself in a quiet, sleepy village near Oxford, having escaped the hectic life of London. As a journalist for the local paper, she is often...

It sometimes feels that if you have read one fantasy novel, you have read them all. The same tropes crop up again and again. This may be comforting to fans of the genre, but people that dabble may soon become bored. Those of us in the know realise that there is a wealth of variation if you are willi...

Have you ever sat down and read some Fairy Tales to your children? Not the  sanitised  versions that we read today, but the  originals.  If you have, you  gave  the kids nightmares a s  these are stories  not about happiness and magic but o f creatures  and  consequences . If you do something naught...

Secrets are powerful. They can make or break someone. In the alternative Edwardian England of Freya Marske’s  A Marvellous Light  there is a magical society of people who hide their powers. This is a big secret to keep, but there are others. Both Robin Blyth and Edwin Courcey have another secret, th...

Sometimes it is hard to see that something is not quite right as it has always been that way. Why in children’s cartoons does there always seem to be a misbalance between the male and female characters? Will boys not watch girls on screen? Will men not read about women in books? Fantasy has more tha...

I have read many genre books and I see trends in what is currently popular or going through a period of high quality. The dark gothic fairy tale is having a moment in the sun as I have recently read some excellent stories that hark back to a feel of past fables but are their own modern take. T Kingf...

Are villains made or are they born? I believe more in nurture over nature, that someone is not born inherently evil but is made so by their experiences. Alyce is not a bad person, but her heritage as half-Vila makes her a pariah in the Kingdom of Briar. The people hate her, but her elixirs are usefu...

Everyone knows the story of Sleeping Beauty, or do they? Malice by Heather Walter retold the story leading up to Aurora falling asleep, but with far more detail on Aurora and her relationship with Alyce, the person responsible for her curse. Misrule opens 100 years later and tells the second part of...

There is something about Low Fantasy that makes it such a good genre. It is not the violence, swearing or muckraking, it is the people. Reading a fantasy book where the heroes are not in white and the villains in black. In J. L Worrad’s The Keep Within the nominal hero is one Sir Harrance 'Harry' La...

One of the many lessons that I have learned in life is that you do not mess with Mummies. Either kind. Annoying a new mother who is trying to get their child onto the bus if dangerous and only equalled by an antient Egyptian Mummy rising from the dead. The Mummies in Lisa Tuttle’s The Curious Case o...

In some books there is more one thing that a reader can focus on. It could be the characters that draw the reader in, or the narrative, or the world building. As a long-term fantasy fan, one element that I often end up focussing on is magical systems. How magic works in a fantasy world can change ev...