Reception: LIttle known

Hawkwood’s Voyage (The Monarchies of God Book 1)

Related Posts
Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder Book 1)

set in the same world as  the powder mage serie

Death’s Angels (Volume One of the Terrarch Chronicles)

In a world of magic and gunpowder, the half-breed Rik must rise from simple soldier to the deadliest assassin the world has ever known. In Death's Angels, Rik and his fellow soldiers of the Seventh Infantry uncover a sinister conspiracy Read more

Hawkwood's Voyage
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genre:
trope:
Published: 1996
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:
Reception:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade Book 1)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genres: ,
tropes: ,
Published: 2016-11-29
Lenght:
Seriesize:
Author:
Narrator:
Reception:
Protagonist:

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is the critically-acclaimed debut novel from Seth Dickinson, one of the rising new stars in fantasy. Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up and see red sails on the horizon. The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies.

They will conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She’ll swallow her hate, join the Masquerade, and claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free. To test her loyalty, the Masquerade will send Baru to bring order to distant Aurdwynn, a snakepit of rebels, informants, and seditious dukes.

But Baru is a savant in games of power, as ruthless in her tactics as she is fixated on her goals. In the calculus of her schemes, all ledgers must be balanced, and the price of liberation paid in full.

The Worm Ouroboros

The Worm Ouroboros
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genre:
Lenght:
Author:
Narrator:
Receptions: ,

E.R. Edison’s The Worm Ouroboros inspired the epic-fantasy writers that followed him. This production is of the first edition (1922).

The Lords of Demonland are celebrating Lord Juss’s birthday when an envoy arrives from Witchland. He brings demands from King Gorice XI of Witchland that the Lords of Demonland “kiss his toe, and acknowledge him to be their King and they, his ill-conditioned, disobedient children”. The Lords of Demonland reject this utterly and, to settle the matter, they challenge King Gorice to a wrestling match against their champion, Lord Goldry Bluszco.

But the situation is worsened by the result of that match and ultimately, war is declared. A war that includes dark magic, sorcery, quests, mystical lands, and heroic high-adventure. Ursula K. Le Guin called it “An eccentric masterpiece”, C. S. Lewis said it represented “A new climate of the imagination”, Orville Prescott said it was “A literary event of the first order.”

Critics compared Tolkien’s writing to it when he first published The Lord of the Rings and he freely acknowledged its influence. Eddison writes his narrative in a lyrical, medieval style and in the tradition of Norse mythology, Arthurian myths, and Greek tragedy. In his short dedication he says, “It is neither allegory nor fable but a story to be read for its own sake”, however, the theme of repetition (the cyclical nature of life, history, and war), is undeniable. The “worm (serpent or dragon) Ouroboros” is, after all, “The serpent which eats its own tail”.

Conan – Blood of the Serpent: The All-New Chronicles of the Worlds Greatest Barbarian Hero

Conan - Blood of the Serpent
Date:
MainCategory:
Newstuff:
Type:
Genre:
Published: 2022-12-13
Lenght:
Author:
Narrator:
Reception:
The pulse-pounding return of Conan, the most iconic fantasy hero in popular culture, with a brand-new standalone novel by New York Times bestselling author S.M. Stirling, tied directly to the famous tales written by the legendary Robert E. Howard. Conan the Barbarian, the world’s most famous fantasy hero, returns in an all-new novel tied directly to the famous works by his legendary creator, Robert E. Howard. Set early in his life, Conan has left his…

All new novel of conan published in 2022

A Blade For Hire

A Blade For Hire
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genres: ,
trope:
Lenght:
Author:
Reception:

Who, and where, is Amheris? The question that will dominate the fortunes of Hale – a former soldier turned blade for hire – and could yet decide the entire fate of Ambria.

After a bloody fight to protect the Lady de la Faye, Hale is offered a new task by his patron and frequent employer, the Lord Barthelme: to travel to Andrid and escort two priests on their journey to find their missing contact, known only as ‘Amheris’. But despite the priest’s assertions that this a routine job for a routine payment, the task quickly turns into a lethal game of cat and mouse, as Hale and his charges find themselves pursued at every turn by a relentless and deadly foe.

Magic, muskets, mystery and mayhem are all unleashed in this swashbuckling fantasy thriller.

Artifact by Gregory Benford

Artifact
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genre:
Published: 1998-07-01
Lenght:
Author:
Reception:

Artifact A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft and espionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war.

Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth. It is mystery and madness — an enigma with no equal in recordedhistory. It is mankind’s greatest discovery … and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next. A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaen tomb.

An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft and espionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientist baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.

It is mystery and madness-an enigma with no equal in recorded history. It is mankind’s greatest discovery. . .and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

Colony by Benjamin Cross

Colony
Date:
MainCategory:
Newstuffs: ,
Type:
Genre:
Published: 2021-01-28
Lenght:
Author:
Narrator:
Reception:

Harmsworth. A remote, mist-shrouded island in the Russian Arctic. Archaeology Professor Callum Ross makes the discovery of a lifetime: a prehistoric ice mummy preserved for thousands of years by the sub-zero temperatures. Only, they didn’t die of natural causes….

As Callum races to unravel the mystery of the mutilated corpse, others race to sabotage the expedition. He and his team are left stranded, and they are not alone on the island. Someone, or something relentless, is stalking them.

As the arctic mist descends and the death toll rises, the team is thrust into a nightmare fight for survival, involving submarines, cyber warfare and Spetsnaz. But none of this can prepare them for the real terror that survives deep within the island’s heart: a secret so ancient it’s been overlooked by time itself.

The Sunken City

The Sunken City
Date:
MainCategories: ,
Type:
Genres: ,
trope:
Lenght:
Author:
Reception:

At the bottom of a prehistoric lake in Antarctica there is a city old as time, a relic of an alien pre-human intelligence. Somewhere, deep in its ancient labyrinthine depths, there is an ever-increasing source of power of incalculable menace.
Now an elite team of Navy divers is going down to investigate it, and what they find is a nightmare beyond imagining.
The city is not dead.
As it wakes from its deathless slumber of countless millions of years, so does the race that built it, unleashing a deadly force that will harvest the human race like cattle.
Trapped beneath the ice, haunted by the city, its inhabitants, and the monsters spawned from their own fragile psyches, the divers have only one chance to destroy it before it rises to engulf the world of men.
The clock is ticking.
And the city’s black heart is beating

Necropolis

Necropolis
MainCategory:
Period:
Type:
Genre:
tropes: ,
Published: 2013
Lenght:
Author:
Reception:

Set in an alternate Victorian London, where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are not just fictional characters, Basil Copper’s Necropolis (1980) is a tale of mystery and intrigue worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle or Wilkie Collins. Private detective Clyde Beatty, a rival of the great Holmes, has been hired by the lovely Angela Meredith to inquire into her father’s suspicious death. As Beatty’s investigation unfolds, the danger intensifies: more murders ensue, and attempts are made on his life. It is clear there is more to Mr. Meredith’s death than meets the eye, and it may have something to do with the brazen robbery of a fortune in gold bullion.

The clues lead Beatty to the eerie Brookwood Cemetery, where fatal secrets lie hidden in the catacombs beneath a city of the dead. . . . This edition of Copper’s chilling Victorian Gothic mystery is the first in more than three decades and includes the original illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian and a new introduction by Stephen Jones. Copper’s tale of Lovecraftian horror, The Great White Space (1974) is also available from Valancourt Books.

“A feverish gaslight gothic that’s as rich in Sherlock Holmes-like atmosphere as it is in ghoulish doings.” – Kirkus Reviews “A dark, exotic Gothic thriller . . . Excellent!” – Booklist “A gothic mystery in the truest sense. . . . Copper has written in the grand tradition of A. Conan Doyle and created a spellbinding narrative of mystery and suspense.”

The Great White Space

The Great White Space
Date:
MainCategory:
Type:
Genres: ,
trope:
Published: 2013
Lenght:
Author:
Reception:

Colin Wilson Frederick Plowright, a well-known scientific photographer, is recruited by Professor Clark Ashton Scarsdale to accompany his research team in search of “The Great White Space,” described in ancient and arcane texts as a portal leading to the extremities of the universe.

Plowright, Scarsdale, and the rest of their crew embark on the Great Northern Expedition, traversing a terrifying and desolate landscape to the Black Mountains, where a passageway hundreds of feet high leads to a lost city miles below the surface of the earth. But the unsettling discoveries they make there are only a precursor of the true horror to follow.

For the doorway of the Great White Space opens both ways, and something unspeakably evil has crossed over-a horrifying abomination that does not intend to let any of them return to the surface alive . . . One of the great British horror writers of the 20th century, Basil Copper (1924-2013) was best known for his macabre short fiction, which earned him the World Horror Convention’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. The Great White Space (1974) is a tale in the mode of H. P. Lovecraft and is recognized as one of the best Lovecraftian horror novels ever written.

This edition, the first in more than 30 years, includes a new introduction by Stephen Jones.

“The best writer in the genre since H. P. Lovecraft.” – Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

“Outstanding in the genre.” – August Derleth

“In the same class as M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood.” – Michael and Mollie Hardwick

“One of the last great traditionalists of English fiction.” – Colin Wilson