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Shadows of Hell by Duncan Thompson | Blog Tour Review
Sometimes, just sometimes, you know instantly when a series is going to become a favourite. The Shadows series by Duncan Thompson is just that. Shadows in Hell is the sequel to the brilliant Shadows in the Woods novel. Features Dante’s Divine Comedy – Check A battle of good vs evil – Check Hard hitting themes such as grief and forgiveness – Check Thompson once again utilizes the short sharp shock in delivering at times a hilarious but dark installment. One event changed several people’s worlds, but one person’s actions saved the world. It paints a vivid picture of how the strands of connection between characters is unbreakable, even when in…
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Tome by Ross Jeffery | Book Review
Tome – its clarity was never more focused and established from the very first page. Dark and depraved. The story is multi-faceted as it strips the layers back of the human condition. Boy does it show the human condition for what it truly is, hungry for power and destruction. Tome is a story that examines many prejudices rife in not only America’s penial system. Racial abuse, misogyny and homophobia feature strongly, and Jeffery has tackled the sensitive themes with both class and tenderness without skipping on the reality. This novel is a highly intelligent and brutal story on multiple levels. Jeffery has birthed a new sub-genre of horror; he mixes…
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A Song of Steel by J.C. Duncan | Book Review
A song of Steel is a debut novel that heralds epic fantasy in its rawest form. The story can envelop you like a long lost relative after spending months apart. Every interconnecting aspect of it just feels right. From its brutally accurate characterization and its dramatic historic landscape, it’s the kind of story that leaves you grappling for cognitive cohesion. The immersion and the compulsiveness has you addicted within a few pages. Duncan’s spellbinding narrative took me hostage and posted my ransom…although, truth be told, I didn’t want anyone to pay it! A Song of Steel is just another book that shows that Indie Fantasy is where its at right…
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All The Little Things by Sarah Lawton | Blog Tour Review
All The Little Things is just my kind of read…messed up, screwed up and slowly, slowly injecting the creeping dread into my brain until it develops into an itch I just can’t reach. When you have read as much crime fiction as I have over the last few years it really takes something to kick you on the arse, to make you pay attention. All The Little Things did just that. It had the added element, a calling card left in a deserted room. It left clues for me to discover, to strip layer after layer until I had been exposed to its dark secrets. The writing style, the narrative,…
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Fanged Dandelion by Eric LaRocca | Book Review
Fanged Dandelion is a horrifying collection of 20 poems that will not hesitate to put chills down your spine and search for hidden meaning. It is seeping in a creeping sense of dread and dismay and the influence of characters through-out LaRocca’s career is a strong marker through-out. The imagery and pulsating emotion are a siren call, it bleeds between pages, and the short snappy prose is hard hitting and uncompromising. It’s a dismembered hand crawling out from its haunted pages, its successful in grabbing you by the throat and not letting go until the final story is committed to memory. Eric LaRocca is an author who puts his heart…
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Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie | Book Review
“we should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.” Before they Hanged is another masterpiece in storytelling and exemplary characterization. The first half the book felt like a continuation of the Blade Itself – a set up story…a massive prologue, if you like. Again, Abercrombie sets up the story with the consummate skill of masterful bard. It’s a story of epic proportions, vivid worldbuilding and terrible treachery. You are immediately catapulted into the world once more, carrying on from where The Blade Itself left off. Not a beat dropped, a breath wasted, or a thought discarded. The Blade Itself really was a set up book, introducing us to…
