Books tagged with: redemption

Dan Shaper is a wreck, a private "fixer" who takes on jobs for those people who won't or can't go to the police. Constantly haunted by an event in his past life while working as a violent underworld enforcer the only way he can keep those crippling memories at bay is by a growing cocktail of drugs....

Ten weeks ago Homicide Detective Sailor Doyle worked on his first ever solo case, a horrific double murder in a remote area of Virginia that almost finished him for good. Now he's recuperating from the physical wounds and mental trauma, the near death experience acting as a focus to overcome his oth...

Blackbirds follows the life of Miriam Black who has a singular gift (or curse) that means each time she touches someone she knows when and how they will die - vividly reliving their final moments. Still in her early twenties she's seen sights most people couldn't even imagine along with countless he...

Breaking the Devil's Heart continues the ideas presented in the previous novel Logic of Demons . This time we follow the young couple Stewart and Layla as they spy on the Devil and try and figure out how to beat "the formula", bankrupt Satan's underground Company and save Heaven from civil war. The...

I’m going to start by saying that this isn’t usually a book I’d consider reading, my usual reads being Sci-Fi and Fantasy (usually humorous), or history books, but I was very surprised and really, really enjoyed it. The book is seen through the eyes of a Collector, Sam Thornton, who collects the sou...

I meant to read this festive novella last year however time got the better of me (as it often does). God rest ye merry Gentlepig is a festive tale featuring the angel Bobby Dollar who acts as an advocate for souls sitting in judgement after death. And so on Christmas Eve night he is summoned to act...

Unclean Spirits is the first in a new shared-universe series called Gods and Monsters. Gods (and Monsters) are real. In the past this Pantheon were content to keep the world at arms length, sucking up the belief and devotion of mortals to provide them with the power to wage war against each other. B...

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...

Pretty Little Dead Things is a urban horror novel by the author Gary McMahon. Thomas Usher used to be a fairly normal guy, a family man with a wife and child, all this changed when a tragic accident took his family away from him. He began to see the dead, and they him, all the lost and lonely souls...

Soul Stealers is the sequel to the Andy Remic Epic novel - Kell's Legend, and the second volume in the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles. The indomniable Kell is still being hunted by the evil clockwork vampires and to make matters worse, he is now being tracked by two beautiful but deadly female vampire...

The world is a terrible place to live after the zombie apocalypse, but probably for none more so than a vampire.  Without humans, the blood supply is all dried up, unless you find a random animal.  The buildings are decayed and in ruin, with gaping holes the sunlight streams through and providing ea...

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 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 Last Guardian is the second volume in David Gemmell's Jon Shannow trilogy, picking up the story of the Jerusalem Man, and it is a worthy and ambitious successor to the magnificent Wolf in Shadow . If you have not read the first book, begin there; while Gemmell takes care to make this accessible,...

The Return man is a post-apocalyptic Zombie novel that manages to offer a few surprises and original ideas in this rapidly expanded sub-genre. The story goes that a mass "outbreak" divides America in two, on the east the untouched survivors remain safe while the west has become truly wild - a ravage...

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...

The Vagrant was an unexpected delight, showing up totally out of the blue with a mature, confident writing style and a deliciously dark and twisted world. The flawed protagonist known only as "The Vagrant" is a masterstroke — here we have a figure who doesn't give much away. He doesn't speak, but he...

For ten years Thomas Covenant has done his best to move on with his life and get back on top of his illness. While a decade may have passed in Covenant's world, in the Land it's been over three thousand years since he freed the people and defeated the evil Lord Foul. In this time Foul has not been i...

Tomorrow the Killing returns to that hive of villainy that is Low Town and to our guide through these mean streets, the Warden. Following on from The Straight Razor Cure and the Warden is back to his usual tricks, that is until he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a missing persons case that opens up...

White Gold Wielder is the last book in the second of Stephen Donaldson's trilogies about the Leper Thomas Covenant and his journeys to the parallel reality known as "The Land". Regular visitors to the site may recall that I didn't think that much of the previous volume - "The One Tree" and I almost...

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...

Zoo City is an Urban fantasy novel by the South African author Lauren Beukes. Zinzi December is a woman with a gift, and perhaps a curse - over ten years ago a remarkable and disturbing event changed the lives of many, and the world in general. Those who have committed the crime of murder, or otherw...

I picked this book up as I was looking for more urban fantasy to try. I love the Dresden files and given that new books in that series only seem to appear infrequently, I was getting an urban fantasy itch. This book stood out as it was recommended by talented and under-appreciated author Dave Hutchi...

Crowfall is the third novel in Ed McDonald's Raven's Mark series, following on from Blackwing and Ravencry . If you haven't read the previous two books I recommend you do so before reading this book, or indeed this review.   Some time has passed since the events of Ravencry , and the world is change...

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...

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 and Vampires. What type of ev...

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...

Keeping it in the family sounds like a wonderful idea. Surround yourself with people you can trust, blood is thicker than water, but do family businesses work? Why do so many fail by the third generation? The first generation build the company from nothing, the second grow it further, the third – sq...

The tie in novel can have a bad press, a book churned out to steal some of the glory from a popular TV show or film, but I have a soft spot for them. When done well they can expand the universe; tie in novels for the likes of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars (twice) and many others have given fans c...

After more than a decade of box office hits and TV shows even the more casual Marvel fan is starting to realise that there is a vast and rich world of lore that the comics have built up over the decades. The comics of Thor and Loki bring with them their own history, not only that written for the com...

The fantasy genre has the reputation of producing books big enough that you could use as a casual seat, trilogies that you could line up, throw some cushions on top and make into a settee. It does not have to be this way and T Kingfisher has certainly bucked the trend with Clockwork Boys, which come...

Fantasy has a rich history of heroes who fight against the odds to ensure that good triumphs over evil, but what about the cowards? What about the people who would rather live in peace and quiet faraway from the front and have no truck with prophecies, even if they are the centre of them? In Greer S...

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 survive the...