Category Archives: Reviews

Blood of the Everchosen – Richard Strachan

The debut Black Library novel from Richard Strachan, Blood of the Everchosen is labelled as a Warcry Catacombs story but in truth is simply a fantastic Age of Sigmar novel which offers the best depiction yet of life for the mortal followers of Chaos. In the benighted lands of the Eightpoints, a child is born beneath a savage storm, his destiny entwined with that of Archaon himself. As the boy’s father races for safety, powerful forces converge from across the Bloodwind Spoil. Some, like Burak the Bloodseer and his Untamed Beasts, or Lord Rakaros’ Scions of the Flame, seek to kill the child while others, like the Splintered Fang of Ashrath Silenthis, hope to protect him. All hope to gain Archaon’s favour through their actions, except for the hunters in gold who search out the child for their own mysterious purpose.

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QUICK REVIEW: Duty Unto Death – Marc Collins

Few things are as bleakly heroic as a desperate stand against overwhelming odds, and in his Warhammer 40,000 short story Duty Unto Death Marc Collins ramps the concept up to eleven with a tale of the Adeptus Custodes standing against the ravening tyranid hordes. Stranded on the burning surface of a volcanic death world, a handful of Custodians make what preparations they can before the numberless swarms of alien monstrosities crash down upon them. As they stand their ground, determined to protect their precious cargo, the battlefield comes to represent the distant fortress the Custodes were engineered to defend.

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Day Zero – James Swallow and Josh Reynolds

Veteran authors James Swallow and Josh Reynolds team up for modern, high-tech thriller Day Zero from Aconyte Books, a prequel novel to the Watchdogs: Legion video game. Trouble is brewing in an alternative but worryingly believable London, with organised crime rife, private military contractor Albion muscling in on the Met, and hacker collective DedSec leading an underground resistance. Tensions begin to escalate when a spate of shootings rock the East End, and players from all sides – local government, DedSec, Albion, the brutal Clan Kelley crime family – step up their efforts, as a deeper mystery starts to come to light in the battle for control of the city.

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QUICK REVIEW: Five Candles – Lora Gray

Lora Gray continues to explore the quiet, melancholic fringes of the Mortal Realms with their Warhammer Horror short story Five Candles, a tale of Aqshian fire and dark, troubling death magic. Having grown old when all her friends died young, Havisa now lives by herself, scorned by the youthful inhabitants of the nearby village. When disaster sees her humiliated even further, she unexpectedly finds the old fire of her Aqshian spirit burning once more, and alongside a kind but mysterious stranger she embarks on a mission to warn the village of dark tidings to come in the wake of Nagash’s necroquake.

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Legacy of Ash – Matthew Ward

Matthew Ward’s The Legacy Trilogy opens with Legacy of Ash, a 240k word behemoth of a novel which sets out Ward’s stall for the series and emphasises the epic in epic fantasy. Fifteen years after a failed Southshire rebellion, the Republic of Tressia is still mired in internecine conflict, its ruling Council divided on how to deal with their troublesome southern subjects. When the looming threat of the neighbouring Hadari Empire becomes too much to ignore, it falls to the Council’s champion Viktor Akadra to rally the Southshires in defence of the Republic, while siblings Josiri and Calenne Trelan – whose mother led the failed rebellion – face difficult choices as they confront both the lasting implications of their mother’s actions, and Viktor’s role in her death.

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The Key To Fear by Kristin Cast – Via Grimdark Magazine

The latest book I’ve reviewed for the fine folks over at Grimdark Magazine is Kristin Cast’s The Key To Fear, a surprisingly dark and bloody young adult novel set fifty years after a pandemic killed off the vast majority of the American population. Published in the UK by Head of Zeus, it’s out in hardback and ebook on the 5th November, and you can read my full review on the GdM website right now. As usual I’m putting down a few additional thoughts here in this article/review, so you can check out the GdM piece for my standard third person/objective review, and this one for some more subjective comments.

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QUICK REVIEW: Nightbleed – Peter Fehervari

The first of Peter Fehervari’s short stories officially released under the Warhammer Horror label, Nightbleed lives up to expectations as both a creepy, low-key horror story in its own right and an intriguing addition to The Dark Coil. In Carceri Hive, on the night-shrouded world of Sarastus, two souls find themselves bound together. Reduced to applying her skills for a dubious synth-protein supplier, ex-medicae Chel forces herself not to question where the raw materials come from, but suffers dark dreams nonetheless. In shadowed alleys, street prophet Skreech plans his next offering to the Night Below. As True Night approaches, the two spiral ever closer to a fateful meeting.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Hounds of Nagash – Guy Haley (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Five)

Guy Haley’s five-part Age of Sigmar serial At the Sign of the Brazen Claw comes to an end with The Hounds of Nagash, in which the tavern and those sheltering within it are assailed by implacable spectres. In the wake of Pludu Quasque’s revelation that his foolishness has incurred the wrath of Nagash, spectral glaivewraiths search for a way through the tavern’s magical defences. With the storm howling all around and a desperate fight for survival breaking out, the very structure of the tavern itself begins to come apart as the giant demigod upon which it’s built begins to wake.

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QUICK REVIEW: A Dead Djinn in Cairo – P. Djèlí Clark

When a djinn is found dead – exsanguinated, to be precise – it’s Fatma el-Sha’awari’s task, as an investigator for Egypt’s Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, to find out how and why, in P. Djèlí Clark’s intriguing urban fantasy A Dead Djinn in Cairo. What at first appears to be a simple case of suicide (however unlikely that may be among immortals) quickly develops into a mystery involving djinn mythology, mechanical angels and flesh-eating ghuls rising from Cairo’s slums. Whatever it is that’s stirring amongst the city’s supernatural denizens, it’s up to Fatma to put a stop to it.

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Tales From the Loop – Simon Stålenhag

The first of Simon Stålenhag’s ‘narrative art’ books, Tales From the Loop is a fascinating example of storytelling delivered across both prose and visual art, in which evocative images of stunning Swedish landscapes, populated by wildly imaginative sci-fi creatures and machines, are contextualised and expanded upon with episodes of text interspersed throughout. In this alternative history of 1980s and 90s Scandinavia, Stålenhag explores the realities of growing up amongst the fading grandeur of the Loop, a vast particle accelerator constructed in the 50s beneath the Swedish countryside. Despite having been largely decommissioned by the time these stories take place, the presence of this ambitious technological marvel is clearly felt on the landscape and in the lives of the locals.

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