-
Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire #1) by Mark Lawrence – REVIEW
TRIGGER WARNING – RAPE/MURDER Prince of Thorns is the first book in the Broken Empire series by Mark Lawrence. After reading his Book of Ice series I quickly realised his brand of storytelling is one that I love immensely. There is action aplenty but at the core of the story is a pulsing heart that bleeds with every injustice. He made me remember why I fell in love with Fantasy, in particular Grimdark. Prince of Thorns follows fourteen-year-old Jorg Ancrath. I’m kind of torn between loving and loathing Jorg. In his defence (if there is any) he was a boy that lost his mother and brother in the worst circumstances.…
-
BLOG TOUR: The Box by Dan Malakin
The Box is a one-of-a-kind novel that can only be described as INSTANT BUY. When this beauty dropped through my letterbox, I was instantly excited. A missing daughter. A strange box structure imprisoning her. A handsome man with more than an air of danger. I haven’t read the author’s previous work, so I had no idea what I was in store for – boy was I in for the surprise of my life. So, what does The Box offer? A hard and sharp look at society. Ed Truman on the surface has it all. His law firm is thriving, he supports the victims of domestic abuse and does a lot…
-
REVIEW: No Less The Devil by Stuart MacBride
No Less the Devil is most definitely a tale of two parts. The first 80% is a taut, twisty detective novel with wit and sarcasm aplenty…the norm for a Stuart MacBride novel. The last 20% however, had me flummoxed. I uttered the words WTF a lot and found myself physically scratching my head. If this was the plot all along it felt incredibly rushed and didn’t make much sense. I can’t give much more away without big spoilers, trust me, you’ll just have to read it for yourself. No Less the Devil opens with the Bloodsmith still being at large. Seventeen months have passed and the officers conducting Operation Maypole…
-
REVIEW- Shackled Fates (The Hanged God #2) by Thilde Kold Holdt
Bend me over and call me Sally. Shackled Fates was somehow better than Northern Wrath and I LOVED it. Close your eyes and imagine waking up in another time, a time for brutality, a time for pain, a time of the gods. Holdt as always transports me into the rugged Norse landscape and has me instantly picking up a shield ready to defend both honour and family. You are walking through the blood-soaked plains, weapons are discarded, the ravens are flying overhead and the sound of metal upon metal can be heard in the distance. That’s why Holdt’s books are a special kind of magic. Shackled Fates is a story…
-
The Long Walk by Stephen King – REVIEW
In my crazy attempt to read all of Stephen King’s back catalogue, I chose The Long Walk at random. Written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman you can instantly recognise King’s cutthroat style. The story has no build-up other than for a few pages, you are instantly catapulted into this dystopian America, you have no reference to why The Long Walk takes place or how the boys ended up there. It’s a story that has a mental and physical assault upon you. Your legs feel like they will cramp up the further along you read. Never has a story pulled me in so quickly and left me with so many more…
-
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley – REVIEW
The Loney was on my shelf for about four or five years and maybe subconsciously something was keeping me from reading it. Perhaps I should have listened to myself. It’s been shelved numerous times as horror, but I didn’t feel any elements of horror to the storyline apart from the atmospheric edge that The Loney held. Was the storyline slow, yes. Was I frustrated with the plot, also yes. Anyone that knows me well knows that struggle with religious storylines and had I known how heavily this story focusses on it I would probably have left well alone. I think possibly my expectations were way too high going into this…
