Fantasy – Kings and killers

Here are some picks from our Fantasy newsletter for October 2014. You can read it online or subscribe to get it delivered direct to your inbox.

 

August Fantasy Newsletter

Here’s a selection of covers from our August Fantasy newsletter.

      

 

As well as short stories this month’s newsletter features collections of short stories by the likes of Terry Pratchett, Patricia McKillip, and Sherrilyn Kenyon. You can read the whole newsletter one our website or subscribe and it will get delivered to your inbox every month.

Fantasy newsletter covers

A selection of book covers from our monthly Fantasy newsletter. Subscribe now to get it delivered to your inbox.

Fantasy covers for December

A selection of covers from our Fantasy newsletter for December 2012. Subscribe to get the full newsletter in your inbox every month. Each month we feature some new titles and older items on a theme: December’s theme is apocalypse…

All about angels

This morning saw me staring in despair at the large mound of (nearly) overdue books that has inexplicably taken up residence in my room and bemoaning the fact that now I have to lug it all back to the library … oh my arms!! When I started the pack up, I realized I have read quite a few books lately featuring angels as the main characters. This wouldn’t be my usual choice of reading material so I was left wondering if there was some odd subconscious message here that I haven’t been able to decipher yet or if it was all some sort of strange, happy coincidence.

The first one I extracted from the pile for the going back bag was Archon: The Books of Raziel by Sabrina Benulis. If you are after something whimsical and nice, then don’t pick this one up. To give you some idea, the back cover blurb starts with: “Between Heaven and hell the battle for supremacy is about to begin …” The pages are populated with angels, priests, demons, witches, blood heads, Fae and Jinn. Intrigued? Read on. It presented angels from a very different perspective. There were interesting characters and a few sneaky twists and tricks that kind of crept up on me. Last weekend, I was still sitting up at one in the morning because I just … had … to … finish it. I thought it was a pretty good read and justified the late night. I would recommend it.

The second lot of angel books I had in my pile were two of the Guild Hunter series by Nalini Singh (NZ author too!). If you like paranormal romance, you will probably quite like this series. Whilst the cover image may put you off if you pick up one of the older editions ( and you may possibly want to scuttle to the self-issue machine if you are sensitive about such things), I would say I bet this series will surprise you! Great characters who will grow on you (even if you don’t always like all of them), a world where Angels rule and vampires serve them, and there are exciting people like Guild Hunters and then the regulars like you and I. An easy enjoyable read with engaging plots and sub plots, interesting character back stories, complex inter-relationships between characters and a fair amount of sometimes gory action. If the amount of holds on these items is any indication, loads of other people think they are quite good too.

The last one I excavated from the heap was Vellum, Book One of the Book of all Hours. Again, I was left feeling quite disturbed upon finishing it, but really glad I had. If you are a sci-fi fantasy fan and you haven’t read this you may like to add it to your holds list. I enjoyed it and I already have Ink (Book 2) on mine.

Have you got any “angel” based book recommendations or read any of these?

Fantasy picks from our latest newsletter

Here are some picks from our this month’s Fantasy newsletter.

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