So this tells the tale of Circe from her point of view. It starts with her upbringing within the halls of Helios her father and goes through her life up the story of Odysseus and his son Telemachus. The story is interesting with a lot of Greek mythology covered from Prometheus to the Minotaur to …
Tag Archives: Standalone
Kindred by Octavia Butler
This book is labelled as science fiction but it’s not really. Yes there is time travel but it is only there for plot device, it is not explained and isn’t explored really at all, just taken as a fact from the characters. What this book is really is an exploration of slavery in America in …
Places in the Darkness by Christopher Brookmyre
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 …
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The City & the City by China Mieville
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 …
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
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. …
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Lost Boy by Christina Henry
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 …
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
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 …
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
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 …
The Heart of Stone by Ben Galley
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 …
The Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts
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 …
Barry's Bloody Books 