Books tagged with: necromancy

A Festival of Skeletons is a dark comedic fantasy novel by RJ Astruc. At such rare times of self-doubt, Sink usually fell back on his old adage: What I see I cannot change. But in the aftermath of the massacre it sounded somehow hollow. The merkind hadn’t been right but she hadn’t been far wrong....

Abhorsen is a young adult fantast novel by Garth Nix and is the third volume in the Old Kingdom Series, following on from the events in Sabriel and Lirael. Prince Sameth and the Abhorsen in waiting Lirael are contemplating their next move at the Abhorsens house in the old Kingdom. Surrounded on all...

Anno Frankenstein is a novel in the Pax Britannia series featuring the intrepid adventurer Ulysses Quicksilver. In this alternative universe, Magna Britannia is the undisputed superpower of the world whereas since the second great European war, Hitler’s Nazi party has been reduced to the status of...

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...

The Word of Kemmler, a book of potentially catastrophic power should it fall into the wrong hands. Mortiferous forces have gathered in Chicago and it would seem the windy city may be the resting place of the ancient tome. Of course that means it's up to Harry to prevent the book falling into the wr...

Dead Things was one of the few books I bought with post-christmas vouchers, after first seeing the author on twitter where he regularly trades jokes with Chuck Wendig. It's an urban fantasy adventure that follows the life of Eric Carter. Eric's a necromancer, an angry young necromancer who finds th...

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 h...

Erekos is a fantasy novel by A M Tuomala. The nations Erekos and Weigenland have fought against each other for over three hundred years, a war that has seen both sides struggle to hold the borderland between them. As the flood season begins the King of the Erekoi thinks he has discovered a powerful...

Abarrach, the World of Stone is just that: lava, stone, poisonous fumes, and precious little food that can be grown. The peoples of Abarrach rely on giant rune-inscribed stone pillars called colossi to provide warmth and breathable atmosphere, but the colossi have been failing slowly for many years....

On Abarrach, Xar is attempting to learn the secret of necromancy, but he needs a corpse to test it on. He interrogates the lazar Kleitus about the location of any living Sartan, and Kleitus reveals that Haplo lied to Xar about all the Sartan dying at the hands of the dead; Balthazar and his group re...

So here we have the return of Johannes Cabal, a little older, maybe a little wiser; at the very least more "complete" than he was, this time he's attempting to steal a rare book in his continued quest to understand how to defeat death. Captured in the act and awaiting execution Cabal is forced to re...

So here we reach the third novel featuring that acerbic anti hero Johannes Cabal who this time get's recruited by the mysterious Fear Institute to lead an expedition into the Dreamlands - an alternative reality created by peoples dreams. There they must hunt and destroy the dread Phobic Animus - the...

Another book found at random during one of my frequent book hunts which usually end up with more books on my shelf that I don't have the time to read. This time however I have been sent the third novel in the series by those wonderful people at Headline so I thought it a good idea to read the first...

There are writers you admire, and then there are writers who rearrange something in your head, and Clark Ashton Smith belongs firmly in the second category for me. I came to Lost Worlds more or less by accident, knowing Smith only as a name that hovered at the edge of the Lovecraft circle, and I was...

Sabriel is a young adult fantasy novel written by Garth Nix and is the first volume in the Old Kingdom series. The Old Kingdom is a land where magic is common and spirits roam freely (a fact denied by the government). Outside of the Old Kingdom lies Ancelstierre, which has a technology level and so...

The Aylesford Skull is the fourth novel in the Narbondo series, following the adventures of the brilliant but eccentric Professor Langdon St. Ives and written by one of the founding fathers of the Steampunk genre - James P Blaylock. Not only has Blaylock won a number of awards, he's also been recom...

On the bloody battlefield littered with the dead and dying, two figures step cautiously through the viscera, the blood, guts and many feasting crows. These two appear ill-matched; one a slight and nimble figure, the other a hulking brute. You may be forgiven for thinking that perhaps they are there...

The Desert of Souls is a sweeping tale that is firmly rooted in the traditional sword and sorcery genre and yet flows with a steady, refreshing grace. Set in 8th Century Baghdad the novel is full of an eastern style that sets it apart from the majority of the genre. It's a refreshing environment and...

Robert Rankin is pretty unique amongst the literary world, in many ways he's like a grown up version of Spike Milligan who perhaps has been influenced by Pratchett in a "funny mood". His books are always very easy to read and yet have hidden depths for those who wish to look for them, I've yet to me...

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....

One the greatest advantages of this ever shrinking world is being able to read stories that break out of the "western" mindset. Initially The Throne of the Crescent Moon may seem like a traditional sword & sorcery that was a stable of fantasy in the 80's however look a little deeper and you will fin...

An epic fantasy story that begins The Chronicles of the Exile, there is a lot to like about Turner’s first book in this series. The beginning requires some perseverance. We are introduced to Luker Essendar and his former associate Gill. What follows is a very long exposition as discussion between t...

Brains, Brains, BRAINS!, you just have to love those lurching, decaying animated corpses. The living dead make a great enemy and here we have wall-to-wall flesh eating monsters, ghouls and things that go bite in the night, brought to (un)life by some of the best horror and fantasy writers in the wor...

To the ill-informed all fantasy books must look the same. They are about elves and dwarves, just retelling The Lord of the Rings repeatedly, aren’t they? Fans of the genre know that this is anything but the truth. Fantasy is an evolving genre that encompasses high and low, fantastical and the...

As you grow older you start to realise that people are not black and white, but shades of grey. The nicest people can do terrible things and even bad people can sometimes be good. This argument is hard to use with the likes of Demonologists, Necromancers, Mad Scientists&nbsp...

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 sfb...

There are authors that you love because you can pick up one of their books and know what you are going to get, like putting on your favourite pair of comfortable slippers again. There is also that rarer breed of author that you love, maybe even a little bit more. Those authors that will not be pigeo...

I have read a lot of magical books in recent years and the genre is not rigid. There are books that are steeped in magic, the reader unsure what is real and what is fake. Other books like A. G. Slatter’s The Briar Book of the Dead have a sense of magical realism to them. Yes, the witches can c...

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...

Conan was a character that had a rich and long life. You may be a fan of the films and only imagine the man as a loincloth wearing barbarian, cleaving the heads of various cult leaders. That is a large part of his appeal, but he was also a bandit leader, pirate and eventually a King. In fact, he was...

My partner and I have differing opinions on ghosts. I like to read about them but am incredibly cynical that they exist. My partner is more of a believer. I just refuse to believe that ghoulies can exist without more evidence, we live in a surveillance society at this point. However, even I would st...

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...