#FF Fantasy Reviewers #WyrdAndWonder Week 4

Every Friday throughout this Wyrd and Wonder month, I’ve been doing a “Follow Friday” blog post featuring five fantasy book reviews from bloggers I follow and one from a collaborative site, and this is our last Friday! What better way to celebrate fantasy than to shout out fantasy book reviewers!

Week One | Week Two | Week Three

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Esme @ The Weatherwax Report. 

The Heart of Stone by Ben Galley.

I was excited to read this one, I knew a little bit about it before I picked it up, I knew that it had a golem as one of the main characters which is what got me so interested – I love non human POV’s.
I couldn’t put this book down, the pace was pretty quick and there were a bunch of battles and action scenes, the book is almost 500 pages and I think I finished in less than 36 hours of picking it up.

 

 

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Vicky @ Roaring Bookworm. 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

Summing up this book in one word: wow!
Children of Blood and Bone is definitely a fantasy series to watch: it’s inventive, it’s exciting and it shakes up the YA/ fantasy genres in a way I think needs it. Adeyemi said that the issue of race was a massive part of her writing process- and that can be seen in every detail, metaphor and event that happens in this book- but both as a commentary, and as a read, it’s an excellent piece of work. Highly recommended!

 

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Imyril @ One More. 

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab.

A Darker Shade of Magic is my first encounter with Victoria Schwab, but I knew early on that it wouldn’t be my last (not least because it was going to take a major second-half catastrophe to undermine the exuberant delight I was taking in reading it, so the sequels were a dead cert).
A Darker Shade of Magic was far too much fun. The villains were wicked, the heroes were ambiguous in more ways than one, and the threat was blood-curdling (literally). Red London was full of pageantry, White London was terrifying, and Black London… well, it’s a shadow and a threat, as Legolas might say. Chock full of action and derring do, my only complaint would be that I felt like it slipped a gear in the final act – over-revving, maybe? The climax wasn’t quite as satisfying as the build up to it, although it was still thrilling.

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Sol @ The Middle Shelf. 

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

There aren’t many novels that have received the Hugo Award and that I’ve really liked. But The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin grabbed me from the first pages and I couldn’t leave it until I had reached the end.
The Fifth Season really deserved its Hugo and so did the second volume, The Obelisk Gate. It is an outstanding work of fantasy, something so well told and with such world building, I’d be amazed if we still don’t talk about in 20 or 30 years. But like any great fantasy tale, it so much more than that.
Not all fighters use knives, after all, says a character in The Stone Sky. Jemisin uses words and she fights with this story for a better world. The Broken Earth trilogy is most certainly a winning strike.

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Lisa @ Over The Effing Rainbow. 

Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

Here’s an important thing to know about me: I love stories about the Fae. From Peter Pan to Labyrinth to Pan’s Labyrinth, I have loved them all my life, and for precisely the reason that those three examples highlight: there’s no one true way to define what ‘Fae’ is, beyond otherworldly. Except maybe ‘dangerous’, and with Under The Pendulum Sun, Jeannette Ng certainly nails that identifying marker down.
I’d be lying if I said this book hadn’t utterly blown me away. As debut novels go, I think this is a damned hard one to beat, and I’ve read some really great ones. In fairness, both to it and to others, though, I’ve never read anything quite like this. As an example of SFF at its finest, it shines like a faerie moon hanging before an angler fish. Just watch out for those teeth.

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Fantasy Book Review. 

Art of War Anthology Edited by Petros Triantafyllou

(Review by James Tivendale)

Before reading Art of War: Anthology for Charity I knew 28 of the authors and approximately a third of these stories are from their already crafted fantasy worlds.
They all standalone if you’re new to the individual authors and they are still highly engaging. The anthology seems a perfect mix of famous names intertwined with top quality independent authors whose output is often just as credible and enjoyable.
This could be the finest fantasy anthology around and I believe it will be a long time before I see one that is as complete, well-produced and brimming with as many quality tales.

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