Tag: Review

The Complete Hammer’s Slammers: Volume I

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The Complete Hammer's Slammers
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Published: 2009-10-06
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The Best-Selling Series That Rocketed David Drake to Military Science Fiction Stardom. The First of Three Volumes Collecting the Complete Series. With a veteran’s eye for the harsh and gritty details of war, David Drake depicts a futuristic analog of tank combat in his Hammer’s Slammers fiction. The Slammers are neither cartoon heroes nor propaganda villains; rather they are competent professionals engaged in a deadly business. The inevitable conflicts between policy, necessity, and human nature make Drake’s Slammers fiction instantly identifiable and utterly compelling.

This is the first of a three volume set presenting for the first time the entire genre-defining Slammers series in a uniform trade paperback set, with new introductions by major SF figures and new afterwords by David Drake. Each volume will also include a Slammers story not collected in previous Slammer’s books. “Fans of Drake’s edgy stories of a mercenary tank regiment in a future not all that different from our present will rejoice [at the publication of] the entire series in three volumes.

Drake, a Vietnam vet who served in the Blackhorse Regiment, uses prose as cold and hard as the metal alloy of a tank to portray the men and women of Hammer’s Regiment. . . . In his depiction of combat, Drake rivals Crane and Remarque.” —Publishers Weekly, reviewing the Night Shade hardcover edition

The Red Knight: (The Traitor Son Cycle Book 1)

The Red Knight
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Published: 2013-01-22
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Miles Cameron weaves an epic tale of magic and mercenaries, war and depravity, politics and intrigue in this action-packed debut fantasy The Red Knight. Twenty eight florins a month is a huge price to pay, for a man to stand between you and the Wild. Twenty eight florins a month is nowhere near enough when a wyvern’s jaws snap shut on your helmet in the hot stink of battle, and the beast starts to rip the head from your shoulders. But if standing and fighting is hard, leading a company of men – or worse, a company of mercenaries – against the smart, deadly creatures of the Wild is even harder. It takes all the advantages of birth, training, and the luck of the devil to do it.

The Red Knight has all three, he has youth on his side, and he’s determined to turn a profit. So when he hires his company out to protect an Abbess and her nunnery, it’s just another job. The abby is rich, the nuns are pretty and the monster preying on them is nothing he can’t deal with. Only it’s not just a job. It’s going to be a war. . .

If you’re a fan of Mark Lawrence, John Gwynne, or Brian McClellan you won’t want to miss miss out on this intricate, epic debut fantasy. The Traitor Son Cycle The Red Knight The Fell Sword The Dread Wyrm The Plague of Swords The Fall of Dragons Masters & Mages Cold Iron Dark Forge Bright Steel

Market Forces: A Novel

Market Forces
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Published: 2008
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Chris Faulkner has just landed the job of his dreams. But Shorn Associates are market leaders in Conflict Investment. They expect results, they expect the best.

Chris has one very high-profile kill to his name already but he will have to drive hard and go for kill after kill if he’s to keep his bosses happy. All he has to do in the meantime is stay alive …

Morgan’s new futuristic thriller is perfect for any fan of the modern thriller. It combines the big ideas of Michael Crichton with a pounding narrative drive.

Altered Carbon (Takeshi Kovacs Novels Book 1)

Altered Carbon
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Published: 2003-03-04
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW AN EXCITING SERIES FROM NETFLIX • The shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning in this “tour de force of genre-bending, a brilliantly realized exercise in science fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review

In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold.

The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes)

The Steel Remains
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Published: 2010-01-12
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“Bold, brutal, and making no compromises—Morgan doesn’t so much twist the clichés of fantasy as take an axe to them.”—Joe Abercrombie

A dark lord will rise. Such is the prophecy that dogs Ringil Eskiath—Gil, for short—a washed-up mercenary and onetime war hero whose cynicism is surpassed only by the speed of his sword. Gil is estranged from his aristocratic family, but when his mother enlists his help in freeing a cousin sold into slavery, Gil sets out to track her down. But it soon becomes apparent that more is at stake than the fate of one young woman. Grim sorceries are awakening in the land. Some speak in whispers of the return of the Aldrain, a race of widely feared, cruel yet beautiful demons.

Now Gil and two old comrades are all that stand in the way of a prophecy whose fulfillment will drown an entire world in blood. But with heroes like these, the cure is likely to be worse than the disease. Praise for The Steel Remains “The award-winning author of Altered Carbon and Market Forces brings the same iconoclastic approach to his fantasy debut as he did to his sf technothrillers. . . . [Richard K.] Morgan’s storytelling talent and his atmospheric, hard-hitting prose make this a strong addition to mature fantasy collections.”

Krondor’s Sons (by Raymond E. Feist)-Riftwar Cycle

Prince of the Blood
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Published: 2004
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A newly revised edition of Raymond E. Feist' s continuation of his classic Riftwar series. Set twenty years after the events of the Riftwar, Prince of the Blood follows the adventures of Prince Arutha's sons in the dangerously unstable Great Empire of Kesh. Set twenty years after the events in The Riftwar Saga, Prince of the Blood follows the adventures that erupt when a group of powerful nobles attempt to overthrow the Empress of Kesh,…

Part of the Riftwar Cycle, in chronological order :

Riftwar Saga

Riftwar legacy  (written after the other two)

Krondor’s sons

The Riftwar legacy : Krondor: The Betrayal -Riftwar Cycle

Krondor
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It is 9 years on from the aftermath of Sethanon and deadly forces are stirring on the horizon. The bringer of the latest grim tidings is Gorath, a moredhel (dark elf). At the root of all the unrest lie the mysterious machinations of a group of magicians known as The Six.

Part of the Riftwar Cycle, in chronological order :

Riftwar Saga

Riftwar legacy  (written after the other two)

Krondor’s sons

The Silmarillion (tolkien)

The Silmarillion
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Published: 2001
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illustrated edition here

The #1 New York Times Bestseller

The Silmarillion is the core of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imaginative writing, a work whose origins stretch back to a time long before The Hobbit. This mythopoetic masterpiece is a must-read before you watch The Lord of the Rings on Amazon.

“Majestic! … Readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings will find in The Silmarillion a cosmology to call their own, medieval romances, fierce fairy tales, and fiercer wars that ring with heraldic fury… It overwhelms the reader.”—Time

The story of the creation of the world and of the First Age, this is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back and in whose events some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part. The three Silmarils were jewels created by Fëanor, most gifted of the Elves. Within them was imprisoned the Light of the Two Trees of Valinor before the Trees themselves were destroyed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord. Thereafter, the unsullied Light of Valinor lived on only in the Silmarils, but they were seized by Morgoth and set in his crown, which was guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth.

The Silmarillion is the history of the rebellion of Fëanor and his kindred against the gods, their exile from Valinor and return to Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all their heroism, against the great Enemy.

“A creation of singular beauty … magnificent in its best moments.”—The Washington Post

“Heart-lifting … a work of power, eloquence and noble vision… Superb!”—The Wall Street Journal

The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again (Lord of the Rings)

The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again
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Published: 1966
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Version illustrated by the author here

The adventures of the well-to-do hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who lived happily in his comfortable home until a wandering wizard granted his wish.

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely traveling any farther than his pantry or cellar. But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard Gandalf and a company of dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an adventure. They have launched a plot to raid the treasure hoard guarded by Smaug the Magnificent, a large and very dangerous dragon.

Bilbo reluctantly joins their quest, unaware that on his journey to the Lonely Mountain he will encounter both a magic ring and a frightening creature known as Gollum.

The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, 1)

The Fellowship of the Ring
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Published: 1993
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After discovering the true nature of the One Ring, Bilbo Baggins entrusts it to the care of his young cousin, Frodo, who is charged with bringing about its destruction and thus foiling the plans of the Dark Lord.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s three-volume epic, is set in the imaginary world of Middle-earth – home to many strange beings, and most notably hobbits, a peace-loving “little people,” cheerful and shy. Since its original British publication in 1954-55, the saga has entranced readers of all ages. It is at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale. Critic Michael Straight has hailed it as one of the “very few works of genius in recent literature.” Middle-earth is a world receptive to poets, scholars, children, and all other people of good will.

Donald Barr has described it as “a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world…especially sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness.” The story of ths world is one of high and heroic adventure. Barr compared it to Beowulf, C.S. Lewis to Orlando Furioso, W.H. Auden to The Thirty-nine Steps. In fact the saga is sui generis – a triumph of imagination which springs to life within its own framework and on its own terms.

Illustrated version here