Fantasy
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The Bear and the Serpent is book 2 of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Echoes of the Fall series. Maniye now has three shapes she can step into and, with the aid of her champion form, has learned to work with all of them. The power structures in the north are shifting and re-aligning and Maniye finds herself…
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Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming my favourite author. In The Tiger and the Wolf, the first book of the Echoes of the Fall series, Maniye is a child born to two tribes and beloved of neither of them. In this world, all humans have a totem animal and can shift into that shape whenever they…
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I picked up The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison after EasterCon 2019. I attended a session called Build your Utopia looking for a discussion about creating worlds where humanity’s best traits are foregrounded. I’m kind of sick of the narrative that people are awful and there’s no way to change that. The Goblin Emperor was…
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Fire and Blood by G. R. R. Martin is the first of a two-part history of the Targaryen rulers of Westeros before the events of A Song of Ice and Fire. It starts with the conquest of Westeros by the first DragonLord and ends with the war between members of the Targaryen family which results…
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Redemption’s Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky and Salvation’s Fire by Justina Robson is a duology written by two different authors. It works way better than you might think. Redemption’s Blade is about what people do in the aftermath of war. Particularly, it’s about what heroes do when the world no longer needs them. The main character…
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Last autumn I binge-read a ten book series, Shadows of the Apt, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This is highly unusual for me. I tend to prefer to read something different in between titles in the same series because otherwise I get fed up. In fact, the only other time I read books in a series consecutively…
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Skin by Ilka Tamke is the first in a fantasy trilogy set in Britain in the early 1st century AD. Ailia is a child without skin, which means she doesn’t know her place in the world. Rome is poised to invade and the Britons are divided between those who would fight and those who would…
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Devices and Desires by K. J. Parker Published by Orbit in 2005 Sentenced to death for innovating in a country that tightly controls its industry, an engineer, Ziani Vaatzes, escapes prison and flees to an enemy nation. Outside the Republic the warring duchies are much less technologically advanced, a situation the Republic desires to continue,…
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Swords of Good Men by Snorri Kristjansson Published 2013, Jo Fletcher Books Ulfar arrives in Stenvik with his cousin Geiri, thinking this is the last stop before returning home for exile. Instead, his life is irrevocably changed. Ulfar and Geiri make a mess of approaching the ruler of Stenvik, Sigurd, on behalf of his father…
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Tea with the Black Dragon by R. A. MacAvoy Published 1983, Bantam Books Martha Macnamara comes to San Francisco to see her daughter, a genius computer programmer, only to discover she’s missing. At the hotel Martha meets Mayland Long, an ancient black dragon taking the form of a human in order to seek enlightenment. Mayland…
Boudica Marginalia 