Books tagged with: faith

A Taste of Blood Wine is romantic. It’s chock full of smoldering description, intrigue and mystery, dark love, and all sorts of gossip and twists and turns. The novel follows Charlotte, the daughter and lab partner of a scientist, as she rapidly falls for the vampire Karl. But then the plot thickens...

As a science fiction fan it has to be said that we are becoming increasingly lucky. Film and TV companies seem to have finally grasped that the genre is a gold mine for stories, and that when done right, these stories can attract a big audience. American Gods is one of the more recent stories to bec...

The first Pratchett book that I've read in a long time. I kind of overdosed on Pratchett a few years ago and haven't read anything of his for a while. As it often is with Pratchett's books, they are rather hard to describe or even retell – it's very easy to fail miserably to convey just what really...

Lamentation is the debut novel of Ken Scholes, published by Tor in February 2009, and the first volume of what is announced as a five-book sequence called The Psalms of Isaak. Scholes has been a name in the American short-fiction scene for some years, with a Writers of the Future win and a sheaf of...

The wolves are howling outside the city of Constantinople and mysterious sorcery plagues its citizens. On a field of battle littered with the dead and dying stumbles a ragged figure dressed in wolfskin and wreaking of death. Slipping past the guards he enters the tent of the Emperor and draws his sw...

Second Sight follows on from the events of the Riddler's Gift and is the second novel in the Lifesong series by Greg Hamerton. Tabitha Serannon has not only survived the horrors brought by the shadowcasters led by the Darkmaster, but has become a miracle healer and a fledgling wizard, but already he...

Shadows of Self, the fifth in the Mistborn series and the sequel to Alloy of Law, shows Mistborn’s society evolving as technology and magic mix, the economy grows, and religion becomes a growing cultural force. The bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society that came out of the first Mistborn tri...

The Bands of Mourning, part of the second series of Mistborn books, taking place hundreds of years after the original Mistborn trilogy, follows the adventures of Wax, Wayne, Marasi, and Steris once more. The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metalminds owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone...

The Cathedral of Known Things is the sequel to the fantasy novel The Relic Guild by Edward Cox. The ongoing story of the agents of The Relic Guild as they seek to oppose their enemies, the Genii. The Guild is trying to prevent them from achieving what they started in the previous war, the destructio...

The Guns of Ivrea is a seafaring fantasy adventure that immediately establishes its author, Clifford Beal as eminently knowledgeable in his chosen subject area and a strong storyteller to boot. Our plot revolves around the fortunes of Nicolo Danamis, a pirate in the same vein as Sir Francis Drake, i...

All over the World, Miracles are taking place, on a wintery highway in Quebec a man crashes his car and survives, in New York a homeless person is run over by a bus and lives. In Tokyo, a teenager jumps off a high rise building and fails in taking her own life. While many see these marvels as a posi...

I will put my cards on the table at once: Wolf in Shadow is one of the finest novels I have had the pleasure of reading, and I would argue it contains some of David Gemmell's very best writing. Gemmell is rightly celebrated as a master of heroic fantasy, but here, in the first full Jon Shannow novel...

Dreams of Chaos, the first in a trilogy by Allen Stroud, is a companion piece to the computer game Chaos Reborn from Snapshot Games. Set in the 14 th Century, it explores an alternative history of our world mainly set between Europe and the Far East with copious amounts of wizardry and religious ord...

My second review of the Newcon Press Novella series released in Autumn 2017. This is a set of four stories. The Wind by Jay Caselberg, Cottingley by Alison Littlewood, Body in the Woods by Sarah Lotz and Case of the Bedeviled Poet A Sherlock Holmes Enigma , by Simon Clark. Cottingley by Alison Littl...

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 novel and tak...

Heroic Fantasy doesn't always get the credit it deserves, but when done well can be powerful, energetic and immersive fiction.  Sky in the Deep is one of the best examples of recent times and an equal to Gemmell's past stories. The story follows Eelyn, a member of the Aska clan. She's been raised as...

Jo Walton is a multi-award winning, talented and often under-appreciated author. A number of her novels examine philosophy, religion, divinity and humanity.  Lent continues some of these themes along with her knack for creating irresistible, thoughtful and engaging fiction. Girolamo Savanarola has l...

Power is an interesting dynamic; some people want it, whilst others have no interest at all. Joan of Arc had a lot of power for a while but then it went (being burned at the stake will do that to you).  Was  she a heretic and a witch that craved this power , o r was she someone caught up in  events?...

People like to read for differing reasons. Some like to be entertained, whilst others like to be challenged, if you are lucky, you will get a book that will do both. Taking on an alternative history of the New Testament is challenging enough, but making the main protagonist a woman who says that the...

History is facinating, but we often focus on the big characters, the big battles. Whilst King’s were being beheaded and bombs dropped, people kept on peopleling. The history of the normal person can be forgotten, but we exist too. What happened to the normal person on the street when organised relig...