Category Archives: Reviews

QUICK REVIEW: The Lives of Ferag Lion-Wolf – Barrington J. Bayley

First published in issue 14 of Black Library’s Inferno! Magazine way back in 1999, Barrington J. Bayley’s short story The Lives of Ferag Lion-Wolf is very much an ‘old 40k’ story – it’s still in keeping with the setting in tone, even if some of the details are a little out of place these days. Tzeentchian champion Ferag Lion-Wolf – traitor Space Marine, slayer of monsters, ruler of five worlds in the Eye of Terror – is on the cusp of ascending to daemonhood. As he greets a rival with honeyed words and false smiles he can’t help but boast of his prowess and god-given favour, but the Changer of Ways is a fickle master.

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The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – P. Djèlí Clark

Set in the same world as his short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P Djèlí Clark’s novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is another slice of alternate-world urban fantasy, full of characterful storytelling and vibrant world building. Agent Hamed Nasr of Cairo’s Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, along with his younger colleague Agent Onsi, are called to Ramses Station to investigate a haunting in one of the city’s trams. When it transpires that it’s the tram car itself which is haunted, what Hamed assumed was going to be a simple task becomes much more complicated, as the agents attempt to identify the spirit and coax it out of its mechanical host…to varying degrees of success.

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Last One at the Party – Bethany Clift

The debut novel from Bethany Clift, Last One at the Party takes a classic sci-fi trope – the sole survivor at the end of the world – and strips it back to its core, delivering a powerful, emotional story of a regular woman in a recognisable world gone wrong. In a very near future, even the lessons learned from the Coronavirus pandemic are no use when a new, horrifyingly virulent virus ravages first America and then the rest of the world. There’s no hope for a cure, yet in London one woman – the nameless protagonist here – finds herself still alive in the ruins of her life, with everyone she ever knew now dead and gone. At first she loses herself in drink, drugs, raids on Harrods and the lingering luxuries still on offer in the city, but it’s not long before loneliness compels her to seek out other survivors or, failing that, some remaining reason to keep going.

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The Night Parade of 100 Demons – Marie Brennan

Aconyte Books’ growing range of Legends of the Five Rings novels continues to impress with Marie Brennan’s fantastic The Night Parade of 100 Demons, a “supernatural investigation adventure” featuring a pair of mismatched samurai and a horde of creepy spirits. Dragon shugenja Ryōtora travels to the remote village of Seibo Mura, where rampaging yōkai have been causing havoc and killing villagers. There he meets Phoenix scholar Sekken and begrudgingly, albeit politely, agrees to accept the other man’s help in discovering what’s causing the disturbances, and how to prevent any further chaos. Despite their apparent differences the two samurai forge an effective partnership, but both men must find ways to deal with the secrets they carry if they’re to succeed in saving Seibo Mura.

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Inscape – Louise Carey

Louise Carey’s debut novel Inscape is a smart, modern sci-fi thriller, a dystopian tale exploring a worryingly realistic future in which corporations dominate every aspect of life, and London is held on a knife-edge between two all-powerful tech behemoths. Tanta is a Corporate Ward of InTech, raised to be utterly loyal to the company which has given her everything, and trained to be the consummate agent. When her first full mission ends in blood and loss, she throws herself into hunting down the source of leaked corporate data alongside a partner whose chequered history and weary worldview couldn’t be more different to her own. Tanta is desperate to succeed and prove her value to InTech, but as her investigation proceeds she’s forced to confront some difficult truths about the company and her life up to this point.

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Widow’s Welcome – D.K. Fields

Book one in the fantasy/crime trilogy Tales of Fenest by D.K. Fields – pen name of Katherine Stansfield and David Towsey – Widow’s Welcome introduces a vibrant, unconventional world in which stories hold great power. In the Union of Realms, a “collective of six different peoples with their own customs and traditions”, political control is determined in an election every five years by carefully-chosen storytellers and the popularity of their stories. The city is always hectic during an election year, as people from across the Union descend on the central city of Fenest to hear each realm’s story. When a Wayward man is found dead in an alley with his lips sewn shut, however, Detective Cora Gorderheim starts to realise that there’s more going on than general unrest.

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A Few Thoughts On: Servants of the Imperium

Black Library’s Warhammer 40,000 anthology Servants of the Imperium features a trio of novellas, all of which were first published as part of the ‘Black Library Novella Series 1’ back in 2018 – Auric Gods by Nick Kyme, Danie Ware’s The Bloodied Rose, and Steel Daemon by Ian St. Martin. As with its Age of Sigmar counterpart Champions of the Mortal Realms, this anthology has had a slightly strange release history, but it’s worth checking out for anyone interested in Imperium-focused stories a little different to the usual Space Marines fare. I’ll take a quick look at each novella and link out to my individual reviews, but before that I’ll talk a bit about the anthology as a whole and its unusual publication history.

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A Few Thoughts On: Champions of the Mortal Realms

Black Library’s Age of Sigmar anthology Champions of the Mortal Realms collects together four novellas originally published in 2018 as part of the ‘Black Library Novella Series 1’ – Warqueen by Darius Hinks, Heart of Winter by Nick Horth, The Red Hours by Evan Dicken and The Bone Desert by Robbie MacNiven. All four novellas are excellent, and as an anthology this offers great value for a collection of stories covering a wide variety of characters, locations and themes from across the Mortal Realms. It’s had a slightly strange publication history, however (as has its 40k companion Servants of the Imperium), so I’ll talk a bit about that as well as taking a quick look at each story and linking out to my individual reviews.

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Dogs of War – Adrian Tchaikovsky

With his novel Dogs of War, prolific SFF author Adrian Tchaikovsky explores questions of ethics, free will and what it means to be human, wrapped up in an enthralling story about genetically engineered animal soldiers. Seven feet tall and capable of astonishing feats of violence, Rex is a Bioform – a biotechnical hybrid of dog and man – engineered solely for war. He leads his pack (including Honey the bear, Dragon and Bees) into combat following the orders of his Master, his obedience rewarded by his feedback chip, and all he wants is to be a Good Dog. When faced with the freedom to follow his own path and make his own decisions, however, Rex learns that being a Good Dog isn’t always easy.

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Avenging Son – Guy Haley

Guy Haley’s novel Avenging Son kicks off the nine-part Dawn of Fire series, which promises to explore in detail the events of the Indomitus Crusade – the driving force behind the ‘current’ Warhammer 40,000 timeline. This first instalment features the first great battle of the Era Indomitus, as Fleetmistress VanLeskus leads Fleet Tertius against the Khornate Crusade of Slaughter for control of the Machorta Sound, determined to stop the forces of Chaos from claiming territory that would allow them to threaten Terra itself. Before the returned Primarch Roboute Guilliman can dispatch VanLeskus and Fleet Tertius, however, he has to navigate his way through the byzantine politics of an Imperium still reeling from the opening of the Great Rift, a task which even a Primarch can’t manage alone.

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