Category Archives: Reviews

The Whitechapel Demon – Josh Reynolds

There’s a saying that if you want something doing you should ask a busy person to do it; well Josh Reynolds should be considered at the top of any shortlist of candidates. His published output so far in 2014 comes to 12 short stories, 3 novellas, 5 novels and 1 audio drama, with a further 18 pieces of work listed on his website with publication dates still to come. His work spans many publishers, and characters both well-known and less so, including his own Adventures of the Royal Occultist series, the first novel of which is 2013’s The Whitechapel Demon. Set in 1920s London this follows the adventures of Charles St. Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass as they tackle the kind of jobs that the police aren’t qualified for, such as dealing with a blood-hungry mummy and trying to stop the reincarnated Jack the Ripper from continuing on his bloody rampage through the East End of London.

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The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss

After the jaw-dropping, life-devouring debut novel that is The Name of the Wind, comes The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. At 600+ pages the first in the series was a proper, epic fantasy-length novel, but it pales in comparison with The Wise Man’s Fear which runs to 992 pages in hardback (paperback is 1000+). Make no mistake, this book is huge. It’s not only its physical size either, but also its scope; the increased wordcount allows Rothfuss to broaden the horizons of his story, exploring more of his world and starting to fill in some more of the blank spaces on the map.

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The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Once in a while a story comes along that demonstrates why the fantasy series is such a wonderful thing, a story which justifies every single word written, and so far, two books in, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles is one of those stories. Unlike the great series like the Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time, this forgoes the fellowship-style cast of characters and viewpoints for a single narrative, following a single character through his journey. That character is Kvothe, called Kingkiller, Bloodless, Lightfinger, Sixstring, and the first volume in the series is The Name of the Wind.

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Japanese Poems Steal Brains – Haiku Salut

For a band who describe themselves as “Baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other”, releasing a book of haiku probably isn’t too much of a stretch, creatively. Especially when that band is Haiku Salut, the Derbyshire three-piece who tour their aforementioned mixture of musical styles around the UK in an old postal van, playing songs like ‘Sounds like there’s a Pacman crunching away at your heart’ to an ever-growing fanbase. Illustrated by Katrine Brosnan, ‘Japanese poems steal brains’ is a collection of 100 haiku written by the band whilst on tour over the last three years.

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Death and Defiance – Black Library Anthology

As Black Library’s Horus Heresy series rolls inexorably onwards, reaching thirty novels with the release this year of The Damnation of Pythos, the authors’ output seems matched only by the appetite of the fans for new stories. The latest release in the series is Death and Defiance, a collection of five short stories from Nick Kyme, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Guy Haley, Andy Smillie and James Swallow. It’s a novella-sized collection, of a similar length to Sedition’s Gate, but unlike that and The Imperial Truth, which were limited-edition event-only releases, this is in the same ‘Collector’s Edition’ hardback as the novels are now initially released in.

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A Slip of the Keyboard – Terry Pratchett

According to Neil Gaiman’s foreword, behind the ‘jolly old elf’ veneer that many people see from meeting him at signings, conventions or interviews, Terry Pratchett is in fact filled with and driven by fury. Fury at injustices from the casual disinterest of unimpressed teachers to the baffling legal structure that doesn’t let a terminally ill patient choose the time and place of their death. When you look at his work in this light, you realise that Gaiman has a point. A Slip of the Keyboard collects together essays, articles and speech notes from across Pratchett’s whole career, from wet behind the ears journalist to Knight of the Realm, and while the topics vary wildly it’s a collection that showcases pretty much everything that makes him such a wonderful and well-loved writer.

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Fearsome Magics – edited by Jonathan Strahan

Magic can mean a great many things, and take endless forms; from legerdemain to magic rings, from hidden worlds to hiding in plain sight, a system of magic is a stock tool for many a writer, fantasy or otherwise. In Fearsome Magics, the latest Solaris Book of Fantasy, Jonathan Strahan collects together stories from fourteen authors, each dealing with magic in their own way. Given free reign to incorporate the theme into their stories however they wish, the authors involved here have contributed tales ranging right across the spectrum of styles and settings, showcasing breathtaking variety in the resulting collection.

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True Name – David Annandale (audio drama)

The fifth and final audio drama of Black Library’s Echoes of War collection, David Annandale’s True Name brings us back to the forces of good, in this case the Grey Knights of Titan. Picking up immediately after the events of Maledictus, Annandale’s Sanctus Reach novella, we follow Epistolary Gared as he struggles against an insidious psychic attack from the daemon Ku’gath Plaguefather. Caught between the daemon and an inbound ork fleet, still bloodied and reeling from their last battle, the Grey Knights face a challenge that will test both their strength and their faith.

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Ahriman: The First Prince – John French (audio drama)

Originally released as part of Black Library’s Echoes of War collection, John French’s The First Prince is part of the wider Ahriman series and has since been released in prose as well. Running to 45 minutes, it’s set some time after the events of the novel Ahriman: Exile, and like most of the other shorter stories within that arc it’s not told from the perspective of Ahriman himself. Instead it focuses on Ctesias, another Thousand Sons sorcerer, who’s balanced precariously on death’s threshold. An unwise choice in the past has led him to a dangerous place, but Ahriman is determined not to see him fall.

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Accept No Failure – Gav Thorpe (audio drama)

Veteran Black Library author Gav Thorpe enters the fray on the third day of Echoes of War, the new collection of five Black Library audio dramas released over the course of this week. Accept No Failure continues his work on the Dark Angels and ties in with the Space Marine Battles novel The Purging of Kadillus, following Captain Belial as he returns to Piscina IV, a planet where once before he fought the orks of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. Shamed by his failure to stop Ghazghkull when they met in combat, he now petitions Chapter Master Azrael to wipe Piscina IV clean of orks (and at the same time everything else) with Exterminatus in order to free the Chapter to seek out the warlord and stop him for good. As he does so he looks back on his confrontation with Ghazghkull and considers the actions of his younger, more headstrong self.

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