The first book, The Stone Knife, immediately became one of my favourite fantasy reads. But then I'm biased - Mesoamerican fantasy is absolutely my jam and it's so rare to find. The series is criminally unsung. It straddles the line perfectly between grimdark/brutal tragedy and hope/love/goodness. While the second book, The Jaguar Path, didn't blow me away as much as the first - quite normal for follow-ups, when we're already attuned to the world and now have Expectations and Frustrations - it's still a fantastic story and world with deeply compelling plotlines. There are harrowing, bewildering mysteries and cliffhangers in this book - and I really need the answers to them!
Book Two of the new epic fantasy trilogy by the acclaimed author of GODBLIND.
The Empire of Songs reigns supreme.
Across all the lands of Ixachipan, its hypnotic, magical music sounds. Those who battled against the Empire have been enslaved and dispersed, taken far from their friends and their homes.
In the Singing City, Xessa must fight for the entertainment of her captors. Lilla and thousands of warriors are trained to serve as weapons for their enemies. And Tayan is trapped at the heart of the Empire's power and magic, where the ruthless Enet's ambition is ever growing.
Well this looks like it'll be a very happy series where the protagonist has a good life and everything goes his way.
I'd initially skipped the Fitz trilogy, jumping straight to the Liveship Traders - which was fantastic - but decided to go back and start the Realm of the Elderlings from the beginning. What a brilliant start, rich with emotion and characterisation like only Robin Hobb can do. I look forward to continuing and reading the entire saga.
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of Assassin's Apprentice, the first book in the critically acclaimed Farseer Trilogy.
In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if…
From the outset the book provides a vividly horrible, dark, and atmospheric setting. I was all for following a zombie POV in the beginnings of an undead revolution on a city-sized ship designated to hunt giant sea monsters on another planet. The best moments are when the story really engages with the pulpy nightmare of the undead experience, or of the thalassophobia inherent to the setting.
Despite the setting, this isn't a depressing or sombre work - there's a sense of humour and irreverence throughout here, lightening the tone. It's full of fascinating and creative and fucked-up worldbuilding - the worldbuilding is where this whole book shines. It's not surprising to me that the author went on to write (very good) Warhammer 40k stories. It's full of strangeness and mystery and adventure and dread and total weirdness (e.g. sharks and manta rays with hydraulic legs, kept on leashes like attack dogs). The downside is that there's so much potential for the worldbuilding, so much scope to it - and all the things it doesn't tell us - that this really needed to be a series, or a bigger book. There's so much left unknown at the end, and it feels like the story told here was simply too small and confined for the universe imagined around it. I wanted more! I hope Nate Crowley goes back to this universe, one day, and continues to flesh out his uniquely astonishing creation.
Until he wasn't. Convicted of a crime he's almost completely sure he didn't commit, executed, reanimated, then pressed into service aboard a vast trawler on the terrible world of Ocean, he was set to spend his afterlife working until his mindless corpse fell apart. But now he's woken up, trapped in a rotting body, arm-deep in the stinking meat and blubber of a sea monster, and he's not happy. It's time for the dead to rise up. From the stench and brine of Ocean to the fetid jungle of Grand Amazon, Schneider's career as a revolutionary…
After a night of misadventure, a roguish street lad from Mexico Island wakes up aboard a legendary ship crewed by skeletons. In search of the father he’s never met — a great mound of treasure would be nice, too — India sails the fantastical Caribbean on the Ship of the Dead, exploring the colonial outpost of Kingston, revelling in the pirate island of Tortugal, and meeting colourful characters, friend and foe alike. But his adventures take a turn when he makes an enemy of the son of the Kingston governor, Lancer Main: the vengeful villain would much rather see India and his new friends swinging from the gallows...
INDIA MUERTE AND THE SHIP OF THE DEAD is the first book in a pirate fantasy adventure series, featuring the thrilling exploits of India Muerte in an exotic yet dangerous world.
