The Shadow King by Alec Hutson
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: The Raveling (Book #3 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Pages: 506 pages
Published: 21st November 2019 by Alec Hutson (Indie)
A thoroughly wonderful classic fantasy story with a modern narrative. …
ARC provided by the publisher—Orbit—in exchange for an honest review.
The Light of All That Falls by James Islington
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Series: The Licanius Trilogy (Book #3 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic fantasy
Pages: 864 pages
Published: 12th December 2019 by Orbit (UK) & 10th December 2019 by Orbit (US)
The Light of All That Falls is an absolute marvel, a prodigious finishing touch to an ingeniously plotted series.
Here’s a little statistic to give you an idea of how much I loved this book and series. If you look at my Goodreads profile, you can take a look at my list of favorite authors. Inside this list are authors who have written three or more books—that I’ve read, of course—to be included in my “favorites” shelf. Before today—out of approximately four hundred books I’ve read—there were eight authors on this list. With one trilogy, and without a shadow of a doubt, I’m going to include James Islington as the ninth author to join my list of favorite authors. Binge reading this trilogy for the first time blew me away, and I’m already looking forward to rereading it in the future. If you stumbled upon this review without having read the previous books in the trilogy, rest assured that this review will be spoiler-free; no details regarding the plot will be mentioned. There is, however, a better option for you, pick up The Shadow of What Was Lost and begin binge-reading this astounding series. Now. …
The Silver Sorceress by Alec Hutson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Series: The Raveling (Book #2 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Pages: 499 pages
Published: 2nd October 2018 by Alec Hutson (Indie)
A remarkable sequel, I really can’t get enough of reading Hutson’s writing.
“No matter where you go in the world, those with a little authority—but no real power—are all the same.”
An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington
Petrik’s rating: 5 of 5 stars
TS’s rating: 5 of 5 stars
Series: The Licanius Trilogy (Book #2 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic fantasy
Pages: 752 pages
Published: 24th August 2017 by Orbit (UK) & 22nd August 2017 by Orbit (US) …
The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington
Petrik’s rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
TS’s rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: The Licanius Trilogy (Book #1 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic fantasy
Pages: 736 pages
Published: 3rd August 2014 (self-published). 8th November 2016 by Orbit (US) & 10th November 2016 by Orbit (UK). …
The Crimson Queen by Alec Hutson
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: The Raveling (Book #1 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy
Pages: 423 pages
Published: 28th November 2016 by Alec Hutson (Indie)
This book should’ve earned more fame and praise. A familiar and utterly well-written start to an epic fantasy series with prose redolent of Brian Staveley’s writing style; I loved it.
Back in 2017-2018, when I was still a reviewer for Booknest, I was one of the judges for SPFBO 3 held by Mark Lawrence. In that year’s SPFBO, The Crimson Queen by Alec Hutson won the joint runner-up spot together with Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe. My ex-blog chose this novel as their pick for the best book of the competition. Admittedly, I didn’t get assigned to reading The Crimson Queen, I didn’t know how good it was, but Celeste, one of my co-blogger from back then (and now) did read it, and she occasionally reminded me to give this book a go because she loved it very much. Two years since SPFBO 3 has ended, here I am finally getting around to reading this book, and I will say this: my ex-blog made the right choice. I would’ve personally chosen The Crimson Queen as the top book for SPFBO 3 myself if I had read it back then.
“The arrogance of writing comes not from the finished creation, but from the very act itself. What hubris is required for a single mind to believe that its thoughts should populate the world? What unbridled arrogance is it to disperse ideas like the petals of a dandelion in the wind, allowing them to float free, to germinate in the minds of others like an invasive weed?”
ARC provided by the publisher—Orbit—in exchange for an honest review.
Ravencaller by David Dalglish
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: The Keepers (Book #2 of 3)
Genre: Fantasy, High Fantasy
Pages: 576 pages (UK paperback edition)
Published: 19th March 2020 by Orbit (UK) & 17th March 2020 by Orbit (US)
There is no lull moment in Ravencaller, this action-packed sequel brings well-written morally grey characters and bloody macabre into one package.
First of all, I’m usually not a fan of sudden cover changes in the middle of a series, but this is, in my opinion, one of those rare cases where the new cover artist did a better job than the previous artist. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the cover art of Soulkeeper, but I LOVE the cover art of Ravencaller that’s done by Paul Scott Canavan; it looked spectacular, and it’s more fitting for the series. Second, look at the Ravencaller in the cover art, it reflects what’s written in the text of this book and—this is very important—it reminded me of Eileen the Crow from one of my favorite games: Bloodborne! Lastly, I know I mentioned last year in my Soulkeeper review that I’m going to read more of Dalglish’s books, especially his Shadowdance series, I’m ashamed to say that I wasn’t able to achieve this yet. After reading Ravencaller, it’s even more evident that I HAVE to read Dalglish’s Shadowdancer series because this sequel was even better than the first book which I already highly praised.
“Humans have always been reactionary creatures obsessed with the present, ignorant of the past, and fearful of the future.”
ARC provided by the author and publisher—Gollancz—in exchange for an honest review.
Stormblood by Jeremy Szal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Series: The Common (Book #1)
Genre: Sci-fi, Military sci-fi
Pages: 432 pages
Published: 4th June 2020 by Gollancz
Milestone achieved: This is my 400th review!
A captivating military sci-fi debut. Stormblood tells a splendid story about two brothers divided by war that is full of comradeship, actions, and conflict.
Here’s an ugly truth, I haven’t been reading a lot of sci-fi lately. I was able to read 115 books in 2019, and only eight of those books were sci-fi novels. For this year’s priority sci-fi TBR pile, I have only ten sci-fi books on my list; nine of them belong to the entirety of The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, the other one is Stormblood, Jeremy Szal’s debut. I came to know about this book because the author—same as me—is a huge fan of Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown and Mass Effect video game franchise, and after reading this book, I can say that both inspirations are evident in his novel. I definitely would suggest anyone who’s a fan of either one of them, even better if both, to check this debut out.
“People compare overcoming addiction to climbing a mountain, but that assumes there’s a peak to climb towards. Stormtech was more like swimming in an endless, churning sea. You never truly beat it. You just found temporary ways not to drown.”
Underlord by Will Wight
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: Cradle (Book #6 of 12)
Genre: Fantasy, Progression Fantasy, Xianxia
Pages: 308 pages
Published: 1st March 2019 by Hidden Gnome Publishing (Indie)
The release of Underlord last year marked the exact moment I decided I have to read Cradle this year, and I can agree that this is the best of the series so far.
To elaborate upon what sparked my curiosity further, Underlord has a consistent and insanely high rating ever since its publication day. During the time of posting this review, the average rating of Underlord on Goodreads sits at 4.69 out of 6,450 ratings; on Amazon (US) it has an average rating 4.9 out of 1,049 ratings, and no one rated it below 3 stars on Amazon. These numbers and the barrage of personal recommendations from other readers were the two sole reasons why I ended up giving this series a go earlier than planned. What made Underlord even more awesome? A lot, but if I were to narrow it down to one main feature, it’s the significant characterizations and development given to the main characters.
“The baby squirrel had finally left the nest and grown into a…well, squirrels never turned into anything scary. Call it an ancient sacred squirrel.”
ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
Blight Marked by Josh Erikson
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: Ethereal Earth (Book #3)
Genre: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Pages: 390 pages
Published: 11th March 2020 by Josh Erikson (Indie)
This series is pure entertainment, get on this as soon as you can!
“Deep down we all believe we’re frauds. But it’s only when we stop believing that it actually becomes true.”
Hero Forged was good, Fate Lashed was incredible, and thankfully the second book wasn’t a fluke. Blight Marked, the third book in the ongoing Ethereal Earth series by Josh Erikson, retained the overall quality displayed in Fate Lashed. At the same time, Erikson also managed to include more of the fun and entertaining dialogues from Hero Forged into this book. Several readers have said that Fate Lashed was relatively more serious in tone, although I grew to loved the series because Erikson did that, there were times where I missed the fun and, at times, hilarious dialogues in the first book. One out of many examples, you can’t say that you don’t like good banter with a pun like this right? RIGHT?
“I feel like you’re setting yourself up for some kind of elevation pun, and I’m not really—“
“Though I suppose it’s more of a ladderal move,” he cut in.”
She nodded sadly and bent to start down the hole. “Yep. Good lord.”
Ehem. …