Category Archives: Reviews

A Few Thoughts On: What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

I’ve been reading and loving Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series ever since I picked up the first book in a London Waterstones back in 2011, but his 2021 novella What Abigail Did That Summer might just be the most fun I’ve ever had with this series! It’s set at the same time as Foxglove Summer, and explores what young Abigail Kamara – not yet a trainee wizard herself, but getting there – is doing while Peter Grant is up in Herefordshire searching for missing girls. What Abigail is doing, it turns out, is engaging in an unofficial investigation of her own to work out why teenagers are going briefly missing on Hampstead Heath only to reappear, somewhat confused, back with their families. Along the way she meets and befriends a slightly strange boy called Simon, does her very best to avoid as much adult involvement as possible, and makes good use of a small army of talking foxes.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Carbis Incident – Victoria Hayward

Released as part of Black Library’s digital-only ‘Inquisition Week’ in January 2021, The Carbis Incident marks the BL debut of Victoria Hayward with a tale of the Ordo Xenos and a world recently surfaced from a warp storm. The venerable Inquisitor Venicii and his small retinue land on Carbis and begin to hack their way through its jungles, following in the unreliable footsteps of the last man to escape before the world was swallowed by the warp storm. While Venicii remains tight-lipped as to the purpose of their search, Interrogator Esme Mzinga grows increasingly concerned over the erratic behaviour of her mentor and the unsettling nature of the world upon which they walk.

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First Team – Robbie MacNiven

Robbie MacNiven’s First Team is the second instalment of Aconyte Books’ Marvel: Xavier’s Institute series of X-Men prose novels, and it perfectly blends the powerful darkness of a world in which young mutants are surrounded by hate and oppression, with a warm sense of friendship and family. Compared with many of his peers at the Xavier Institute, Anole – otherwise known as Victor Borkowski – knows that he’s had a remarkably comfortable life for a mutant. When his parents are threatened by the anti-mutant extremist group known as the Purifiers, however, he gets first-hand experience of the hatred that many mutants suffer under, and finds himself relying upon his found family at the Institute – particularly close friends Cipher and Greymalkin – for support in his mission to track down and stop the Purifiers.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Perfect Assassin – Gary Kloster

Gary Kloster joins the illustrious ranks of Black Library authors who have written about Gotrek Gurnisson in Age of Sigmar with The Perfect Assassin, a tale that focuses not on the surly Slayer but on his companion, the aelf Maleneth. The unlikely pair find themselves in the city of Losten in grim Ulgu, but while Gotrek happily drinks a tavern dry of beer, Maleneth relieves her boredom in bloodier fashion. When she’s tasked by one of the city’s nobles with finding and killing a mysterious assassin stalking the streets, at first she’s barely interested, until a sighting of the assassin’s unusual powers piques her curiosity.

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Iron Truth – S.A. Tholin

Book one in S.A. Tholin’s Primaterre series, Iron Truth is a bold, expansive science fiction adventure packed full of strong characters, breathless action and looming cosmic horror, all within a beautifully crafted and believable setting. Botanist Joy Somerset leaves Mars on a colony ship bound for a new life on a quiet, unpolluted planet, only to wake from cryo-sleep to find herself in a bleak future, trapped on dust-shrouded Cato. Meanwhile Commander Cassimer of the Primaterre banneretcy leads his squad to Cato in search of a missing ship, their mission quickly complicated by the planet’s inimical weather. In Joy’s eyes, the Primaterre soldiers offer hope of a way off-planet, but she has a lot to learn about the new world she finds herself in. To distant, closed-off Cassimer, Joy is just a means to an end, until over time she becomes more than that – a source of strength, and something to hold onto when his world is turned upside down.

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A Few Thoughts On: The Magos by Dan Abnett

The (unexpected) fourth book in Dan Abnett’s classic Eisenhorn trilogy, The Magos is an unusual book for a few reasons. Firstly, while it’s a (relatively short) novel in its own right it’s presented in a hefty volume with the full title of The Magos & the Definitive Casebook of Gregor Eisenhorn, alongside a dozen of Dan Abnett’s short stories which sit alongside his Eisenhorn, Ravenor and Bequin trilogies. More on these later. Secondly, it’s definitely part of the Eisenhorn series yet it’s a very different kind of story to Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus, told as it is in third person from the viewpoint of magos biologis Valentin Drusher, rather than in Eisenhorn’s own first person perspective. Thirdly, while it was published after Pariah, it works as an effective prequel to that novel, providing a natural evolution of Eisenhorn’s character between the end of Hereticus and the start of the Bequin trilogy.

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A Few Thoughts On: The Archive of the Forgotten by A.J. Hackwith

A.J. Hackwith’s The Library of the Unwritten was a pacy, darkly funny and deeply satisfying take on the interdimensional/time travelling librarian trope, and I loved it to bits. Its sequel, The Archive of the Forgotten, tries hard to dig into the relationships between the key characters, picking up the story as they’re still adjusting to the changes forced upon them, with Brevity now the new Librarian and Claire relegated to stewardship of the titular Archive. It’s a smaller-scale story in which the safety of both the Library and the Archive is at risk even as Brevity and Claire are at odds with each other, their friendship strained to breaking point. Sadly, while the world in which it’s set continues to be engaging, the story itself doesn’t live up to expectations.

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QUICK REVIEW: Salvation’s Crucible – Denny Flowers

Currently only available in the Black Library Events Anthology 2019/20, Denny Flowers’ Necromunda short story Salvation’s Crucible is a brief but fiery tale of the Promethium Guild, or Mercator Pyros. Lord Silas Pureburn has sworn to bring the light of the God-Emperor to the settlement of Under Pipe, and has contracted a gang of hive scum as guides and protectors. Not all of the Underhive’s denizens are fans of the guilds though, and standing in Lord Pureburn’s way are the Waylanders gang, who run their own operation providing light and power to Under Pipe, and don’t intend to relinquish their territory without a fight.

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These Lifeless Things – Premee Mohamed

The first title released as part of Solaris Satellites – Rebellion Publishing’s new direct-to-reader range of novellas – Premee Mohamed’s These Lifeless Things is a strange, unsettling, ambiguous tale of the costs of survival and the difficulty of piecing history back together. One of a handful of survivors from when They invaded, Eva ekes out a rough living in the city, avoiding the terrifying sentinels and all the other new dangers, and keeping a journal of her days. Decades later, young Emerson finds Eva’s journal on a research trip to the city, recognising it as a rare opportunity to gain an insight into what actually happened in the years following the invasion.

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QUICK REVIEW: Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels – Lavie Tidhar

The second of Lavie Tidhar’s supernatural, Golden Age-esque mystery stories for Tor.com, Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels is another tale of feuding vampires and the implacable justice of the titular Judge Dee. While travelling through the Alps with his put-upon human assistant Jonathan, Judge Dee is summoned to the Duchy of Bavaria to investigate the murder of a vampire. When they arrive at Castle Werdenfels, the Judge and Jonathan find no fewer than three potential culprits, each one claiming to have murdered the Count and proclaiming themselves the inheritors of the castle as a result.

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