Reviews of Fantasy and Science Fiction books
An interesting premise with certain aspects of it letting it down. Set on a space station where humanity is building the worlds first generational ship, the story is basically a thriller/murder mystery. The space station is advertised as almost a utopia, there’s never been a murder, where everybody is happy to work to help humanity …
Continue reading “Places in the Darkness by Christopher Brookmyre”
A good if somewhat strange book. It’s basically a straight forward detective story apart from its location. It’s set in the twin cities of Beszel and Il Quoma. These are not two cities that sit across a river from each other but rather they co-exist alongside each other in the same geographical location. Some streets …
This was one of the best and most messed up books I have ever read. I can’t go into the plot too much as I think it would give too much away but the main character is Carolyn, a librarian who along with her siblings study just one particular field of study out of twelve. …
Continue reading “The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins”
This wasn’t a bad book but it just didn’t interest me too much. There seems to be a lot of this nowadays, re-imagining a classic story from the bad guys perspective. I guess you have a ready made market for your story already in place. This story is all from Jamie’s (Captain Hook’s) POV, from …
This is a new retelling of Scandinavian Mythology. It follows the familiar pattern from origin myths to Ragnarok. Most of the stories follow Odin, Thor and Loki as there is the most material on them according to the author. I always loved reading about these myths when I was a kid, more so than the …
Most people would be fairly familiar with the contents of this as even though they might not have read the book they probably would have seen the film as it was quite popular. The story is broadly the same as the film, Tristan sets off over the Wall to faerie to find a shooting star …
I’d read a review of this on Goodreads and the premise had me intrigued. It is a standalone story of a Golem, told primarily from his point of view. At the beginning of the story he is already 400 years old and spent most of that time in war. He is tired and jaded of …
A somewhat strange book. Describing it it seems to be like a RPG game, where our protagonist completes tasks, each getting harder and more implausible as it continues. We start the story from the viewpoint of a slave on a ship where he is shackled beside our hero. Apparently he’s been a slave for five …
I love this book. It has a lovely melancholic feel as you would expect from a book set just after the end of the world. It is a fast paced book as Gemmell’s usually are but as always he makes you feel for the characters in such a brief period of time. It is a …
Continue reading “Echoes of the Great Song by David Gemmell”
Barry's Bloody Books