Books tagged with: love

A Heist Too Far is a fantasy novel by Rob Knipe. Mallik is a skilled assassin who is very quick on his feet with an even quicker temper, he travels with Dick Swede (aka The Black Moustache) who is nearly famous as a highwayman and Jules Van Jives - a quickly bored elf with an unhealthy obession for...

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...

Phineas (Finn) Gramayare has an unusual occupation. He's a part-trained necromancer, returned to the mortal world after being exiled to the Fairy realm for 25 years for a crime he didn't commit. Along with his Necromancy ability, Finn has decided to use his connections to offer a match-making servic...

Blood and Chocolate’s protagonist Vivian Gandillon loves the change—the sweetly painful way her body moves from human to wolf. At 16, she’s stunningly beautiful and has all the men in her pack running after her. Her pack family, recently driven away from West Virginia where her father lost his life,...

Death Most Definite is an urban fantasy novel by Trent Jamieson. Steven de Selby has a most unusual career, he helps spirits pass to the underworld, and stops Zombies (stirrers) walking the earth. He and his parents are necromancers, also known as "pomps". This being the 21st century, these pomps ha...

Dracula Cha Cha Cha is the third novel in the Anno Dracula series, set in the alternative history of 1959 where Vampires are just another part of the population. This time we are in Rome as Vampires, intellectuals and other important people are gathering to witness the marriage of the count Dracul....

Pryan, the World of Fire, does not orbit a sun— at least, not in the normal manner. It is a giant stone sphere containing four suns (similar to a Dyson Sphere), and it is always daytime. The "ground" is not the ground at all, but rather moss and the leaves of huge, mile-high trees; most people don't...

Krysta the Dark Queen is a dark fantasy novel by the author Pat Castaldo. Justice or revenge? was Krysta a saintly spirit dealing out divine justice or was she an evil ghoul, a vampire who carved a bloodthirsty path for her own revengeful malevolence? The first part of the book is taken up with the...

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...

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...

ShadowBreed is the second book of David Ferring's Konrad trilogy, and it picks up the instant the first volume leaves off, ramping the violence and the strangeness up considerably. If you have not read Konrad , start there; this is not a series to come into halfway, whatever the occasional bursts of...

The Bookman is a steampunk-esq novel of victorian adventure meets history, technology and erm... books, written by the talented author Lavie Tidhar. If the British Library was a living entity and, on wanting to write a book was told ‘write what you know’ then this is the book it would write. The her...

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 Dragon in the Stone is a standalone novel by Allan Scott, published by Orbit in 1991, and one of the better and quieter pieces of mythologically grounded fantasy that came out of British genre publishing in the early nineties. Scott is the rarer of the two halves of his long collaboration with M...

Quick hit – "The Fire Song" is a great read. If that’s all you need to know, then my recommendation is to go buy, rent or borrow a copy and enjoy. If you’re looking for a little more, read on. First, a confession. I’m not your standard fantasy reader. I write crime fiction and like any writer, I rea...

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is fantasy at it's finest, it exemplifies and defines the genre in a way few others have. It won the first ever World Fantasy Award for best novel back in 1975, an achievement more remarkable when considering that it was only the authors third novel. For many who have rea...

The Last Mermaid is a historical fantasy drama by Shana Abe. In 531 on the island Kelmere of the Kingdom of Isles, Picts ambush the royal party as they near their keep. Prince Aedan, heir to the High King throne, is stabbed trying to save his younger sister. When Aedan next awakens he finds himself...

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....

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.” Celia Bow...

In the Labyrinth, Marit and Hugh venture out to try and find Alfred. He turns out to be the prisoner of a Labyrinth dragon, which are almost the equal of the dragon-snakes in cruelty and savagery. With the help of the Cursed Blade, they drive it off and rescue Alfred. On Abarrach, Haplo is dying. He...

As an author, reading a novel written by a seventeen year old is occasionally an experience of envious scrutiny. The merest mention of age by the publisher in the foreword and back cover blurb is an invocation to comparison. "Seventeen eh?" "Really? Well let’s just see if she’s any good… or worth of...

The Silent Land concerns the story of Jake and Zoe who find themselves cut off from civilisation after being trapped in an Avalanche while on a skiing holiday. Managing to claw and wriggle her way out of her snowbound tomb Zoe finds Jake has miraculously survived. On return to their hotel they find...

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...

Pew! I've been waiting for this book for a looong time, maybe too long. I didn't hesitate one moment when I found the trade paperback, regardless of the fact D.M. Grant mailed the hardcover version to me a month ago (I just haven't received it yet). The book starts of where DT3 ended – on Blain the...

Angela thinks she knows her boyfriend Vince pretty well, that is until he goes missing. She quickly learns he has a hidden employment, his boss the infamous London crime lord Frederick Meloy (known as Fat Frederick, but nerver, ever as Fat Freddy). His secret job? tracking down arcane relics succh a...

Readers and reviewers of dark fiction have certainly noticed, during the last years, that the number of Australian authors appearing in books published in the UK and in USA is constantly on the rise, and that the quality of their contributions is usually top notch. This Australian renaissance, reach...

Religion is a tricky thing, a lot of people think they have picked the right one. Some believe in one God, but many people have several. The Mayans had some deities you would not want to meet in a dark alley as they prey on humans from the underworld. Meeting one of these Gods would be scary, but if...

I picked this book up some time ago as I like tales of immortality and time and what not, and it seemed intriguing that the same author who wrote The boy in the striped pajamas  would write an historical fantasy. Of course it's one of those books that people who don't like fantasy will tell you it i...

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 the genre as a way...

I have always wondered how people can believe in some things but not others. If you have a world that has vampires roaming at night, what makes bloodsuckers so great that they get to be the only things that bump in the night? Ry Herman already introduced us to the idea of vampires, witches and a gli...

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...

Having grown up in a village, life there had its pros and its cons. There is a real sense of community, and everyone knows each other. Great, but also not so great. Any small incident can become gossip, no matter how benign, so I can only imagine what would happen should a fire break out and a body...

Most people love a good heist if they are not the ones being robbed. Be it in the movies, a documentary, or even a novel, a heist is all about planning and then it falling apart instantly. You can tell the story of a heist in different ways; do you go deeply into the plan or find out more about the...

I have read a lot of Fantasy fiction over the years and have picked up trends as time passes from the classic High Fantasy epics of the 80s to the gritty Low Fantasy of more recent times. A new trend is in town, and I see Travis Baldree at the vanguard of Cosy Fantasy. Legends & Lattes was a sfbook....

It feels like we take science for granted in the modern world; buildings that tower into the sky, above them flying machines made from metal. Stop and think for a moment at how wonderous all these advances have been, how we use the internet to communicate today, or how a simple invention like the LE...

What is Fantasy if it is not epic battles against elves and orcs? Fans of the genre know that it can be a lot of other things than just that. Some of the best modern fantasy that I have read have been smaller stories set in fantasy worlds. How about a Die Hard-like experience set in a castle where a...

I do not think of myself as a person of culture, but when I stop to think about it, I have likely been to more theatre productions, museums and Stately Homes than most people. I can thank my mother for this as being forced to go as a youth has made me appreciate them and want to go as an adult. One...