Category: fantasy

Book Review – Peter Newman – The Deathless – #Fantasy #HighlyRecommended

Here’s the blurb


“The demons…

In the endless forests of the Wild, humanity scratches a living by the side of the great Godroads, paths of crystal that provide safe passage and hold back the infernal tide. Creatures lurk within the trees, watching, and plucking those who stray too far from safety.

The Deathless…

In crystal castles held aloft on magical currents, seven timeless royal families reign, protecting humanity from the spread of the Wild and its demons. Born and reborn into flawless bodies, the Deathless are as immortal as the precious stones from which they take their names. For generations a fragile balance has held.

And the damned…

House Sapphire, one of the ancient Deathless families, is riven by suspicion and madness. Whole villages are disappearing as the hunting expeditions holding the Wild at bay begin to fail.

Then, when assassins strike, House Sapphire shatters.

Nothing lasts forever.”

My Review

The Deathless by Peter Newman is a stunning work of fantasy.
It is a much easier read than The Vagrant books (which I loved for their sparseness and downright weirdness, and would recommend to everyone – reviews here Book Review – The Malice by Peter Newman – fantasy  Book Review – The Seven by Peter Newman – fantasy – recommended ), but the world created is still vibrantly strange. The first few pages draw you into this new world and immediately grip. There is no huge dump of information, and many readers will read on, mouth agape, wondering just what is going on. If you’re in two minds at this point, just carry on. It is worth it.


With the introduction of more characters, the strangeness occasionally lapses, the characters really quite human with their concerns, and ambitions, but it’s never far from the reader. We are reminded of The Wild, The Deathless and the land beneath the castles of The Deathless repeatedly, and the main action takes places both in the sky and below it.
It is truly a stunning idea, realised, and my only quibble is that the ending is too sudden, and too much is left unanswered. I’m sure this will be resolved in Book 2.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Peter-Newman/dp/0008229015/

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Book Review – A Time of Blood by John Gwynne – Fantasy – Highly Recommended

Here’s the blurb;

Defy the darkness. Defend the light . . . At the battle of Starstone Lake, Drem and his friends witnessed horrors they’ll never forget. They saw magic warping men into beasts and a demon rise from the dead, creating something new and terrifying. So they flee to warn the Order of the Bright Star. But the demons’ high priestess, Fritha, is determined to hunt them down. Concealed in Forn Forest, Riv struggles to understand her half-breed heritage. She represents the warrior angels’ biggest secret, one which could break their society. So when she’s found by the Ben-Elim’s high captain, he goes in for the kill. Meanwhile, demonic forces are gathering a mighty war-host, to crush their enemies and rule the world of man. All while the Ben-Elim are fractured and facing betrayal. Like heroes of old, Riv, Drem and the Bright Star’s warriors must battle to save their land. But can the light triumph when the dark is rising? A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone: Book Two) is the spectacular follow-up to A Time of Dread by John Gwynne.

‘This is extraordinarily good, an epic feat of the imagination. In this series Gwynne is setting a new benchmark in fantasy. I’d love to see it on screen’

Giles Kristian ‘A great read that accelerates the pace and goes one up on its excellent predecessor . . . Exciting, action-packed fantasy’

Mark Lawrence A Time of Blood by John Gwynne is a great book. Or rather, A GREAT BOOK.
I have not read any of John Gwynne’s other books, and yes, this is Book 2 in a series and I HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1. (If you read the book, you’ll understand the capitals.) I was interested in it because it’s title is so like that of the wonderful Deverry books by Katharine Kerr – at least in the UK – where one of the series is called A Time of Omens, A Time of Justice, A Time of Exile and A Time of War. I was hoping for something as good as Deverry and found it, although it is much bloodier, as the title suggests.
It is a sign of just how well this book is written, that I picked it up, and by 5% through, was fully committed to the characters even though I had no back story, and, to be honest, very little idea of what was actually going on, and it is not that easy to work out what’s happening, but I wanted to.
The main characters are all intriguing and well-written, and there is a great deal of action and many battle scenes. The different POV’s mean that we don’t always know what’s happening with some characters, as the scenes taking place are described by someone else, even though the others are there. I believe it’s this that allows the story to move so quickly.
While the idea behind the story may not be that original, two sides on opposite sides of an impending war, the way the story unfolds is exhilarating and exquisitely well told.
I’m already a bit forlorn as I need to know what happens next!

A Time of Blood was released in hardback and ebook on 18th April 2019 and is available here (as well as with other retailers). I highly recommend this book. A firm 5/5. I read it in a day!

Book Review – Breaking the Lore by Andy Redsmith – Fantasy

Here’s the blurb;

“A magical, mischievous mystery perfect for fans of Douglas Adams and Ben Aaronovitch

How do you stop a demon invasion… when you don’t believe in magic? Inspector Nick Paris is a man of logic and whisky. So staring down at the crucified form of a murder victim who is fifteen centimetres tall leaves the seasoned detective at a loss… and the dead fairy is only the beginning.

Suddenly the inspector is offering political asylum to dwarves, consulting with witches, getting tactical advice from elves and taking orders from a chain-smoking talking crow who, technically, outranks him.

With the fate of both the human and magic worlds in his hands Nick will have to leave logic behind and embrace his inner mystic to solve the crime and stop an army of demons from invading Manchester!”

I am a fan of quirky fantasy (Robert Rankin/Terry Pratchett) and was intrigued by the concept of Breaking the Lore. And for about 50% of the book I really quite enjoyed it. It’s not a difficult read, the chapters are short, the characters quite fun – although Malbus is the standout character. However, the story quickly ran out of steam, and I found the last 40% really hard to get into. At this point, the really short chapters didn’t help a great deal, the jokes were all getting a bit stale, and Nick Paris was spending a lot of his time ‘pondering’ but never really finding any answers to his questions, or indeed, doing a great deal to find the answers.
There’s a great deal of potential in Breaking the Lore, but in the end, it fails to live up to that potential, and I was just pleased to get to the end.
With a little less pondering, more of Nick Paris actually doing some police work and following up on his hunches as opposed to leaving them hanging in an effort to extend the story, this could be a really fun book. Perhaps Book 2 will be stronger.
A firm 3/5. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my review copy.

Breaking the Lore was released on 15th April 2019 and is available now from here;

One Word Kill – Book Review – Mark Lawrence

Here’s the blurb;

In January 1986, fifteen-year-old boy-genius Nick Hayes discovers he’s dying. And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.

Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.

He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.

Challenge accepted.

I kept my visible review on Goodreads for this one quite short,

“Ah, the 1980’s! Recaptured in all its glory.”

This is mainly because a lot of people are loving this book, and the reason that I gave it 3/5 is that it’s just not really my sort of thing. It is clever, in places, and Good God, if you want to understand the concept of quantum mechanics, I can’t see how there’s a better way to be taught it, but even all the Back to the Future references couldn’t quite make me love this book as much as others even though I am a fan Mark Lawrence’s previous three trilogies – which I would classify as fantasy.

Will I read the next one and then the final part of the trilogy? Time will tell. Right now I’m not too fussed either way, although I am pleased they’re all being released this year so we don’t have to wait forever to read on! What I would say is that if you do like a bit of sci-fi mixed in with Dungeon and Dragons, some bad 80’s clothes and hairstyles, then this is the book for you. Enjoy it, but sadly, it isn’t quite as good as the new 80’s favourite of Stranger Things.

One Word Kill has an official launch date of 1st May 2019. But if you have Prime, you seem to be able to get it now, and it’s also on the Amazon First Reads scheme.

Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence – Book Review – released today in the UK 4th April 2019

Here’s the blurb;

“Nona Grey’s story reaches its shattering conclusion in the third instalment of Book of the Ancestor.

THEY CAME AGAINST HER AS A CHILD. NOW THEY FACE THE WOMAN.

The ice is advancing, the Corridor narrowing, and the empire is under siege from the Scithrowl in the east and the Durns in the west. Everywhere, the emperor’s armies are in retreat.

Nona faces the final challenges that must be overcome if she is to become a full sister in the order of her choice. But it seems unlikely that Nona and her friends will have time to earn a nun’s habit before war is on their doorstep.

Even a warrior like Nona cannot hope to turn the tide of war.
The shiphearts offer strength that she might use to protect those she loves, but it’s a power that corrupts. A final battle is coming in which she will be torn between friends, unable to save them all. A battle in which her own demons will try to unmake her.

A battle in which hearts will be broken, lovers lost, thrones burned.

HOLY SISTER completes the Book of the Ancestor trilogy that began with RED SISTER and GREY SISTER. A ground-breaking series, it has established Mark Lawrence as one of the most exciting new voices in modern speculative fiction.”

 

Holy Sister is a satisfying conclusion to the Book of the Ancestor Trilogy. For other authors, I would have found that acceptable, but for Mark Lawrence, I confess, I was a bit disappointed.
As with the ending of the previous two trilogies, especially Jalan’s, I’m left wishing there had just been ‘more’.
The concurrent storylines are not without excitement, indeed from about 50-80% the storyline is extremely exciting, but to get there I had to wade through the first 35% and I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped I would. Yes, a year has passed since I read the previous book, and I had forgotten much, but even so, and especially considering the ‘summation’ at the beginning, I feel I should have been able to grab the characters and events far more quickly. For readers who can just plough on through all 3 books one after another, I’m sure this won’t be a problem but I’m far too impatient to have actually waited for the end of the trilogy.
And the eventual ending, well. It was somewhat anti-climatic.
If this was merely a coming of age story, then I would say the job had been accomplished very well, but it was always more than that, and sadly, Book 3 doesn’t quite do justice to the characters.
I appreciate that there are many who love this book – I’ve been seeing 5-star reviews flying around for Holy Sister for about 6 months. It might just be that, for me, the book suffers from too much hype, and so I would like to apologise to the author if my comments seem too harsh. It’s truly not the author’s fault when something gets blown out of all proportion.
The majority of people will love this book – and I’m excited for Mark Lawrence because that means he’ll get to write more and more books, and share his wonderful ideas with a wider and wider audience.
I think we will get to return to the world of the Book of the Ancestor, and I look forward to that. Perhaps then all my unanswered questions will find answers. Although I doubt it. Mark Lawrence is a sly old fox for a good reason!
Thank you to the publisher for sending me an E-Arc. I confess, there may have been a squeal of delight.

Holy Sister is released in the UK today in hardback, ebook and audiobook and you can purchase it here (other retailers are also available). I give it a 4/5;

2018 in review – (better late than never)

2018 has been an amazing year, and yet, as I think back over it, I struggle to remember all the small details that added up to make it feel so good. Even, I confess, I struggle to remember what books I wrote/published and when they all came out. This, no doubt, is because I had much of December 2018 away from the keyboard (apart from an editing job I had to do) following on from the exhaustion of nailing a ‘quite large’ word count during NaNoWriMo (or November for those not yet inducted into the world of National Novel Writing Month (The word count was bigger than the 50K NaNo suggests, but I’m not bragging about it:))).

But, perhaps, NaNoWriMo is a good place to start, because, I hope, NaNoWriMo2017 brought forth my first release of 2018. Wait. Wait! I tell a lie. NaNoWriMo2017 was a fantasy project. Sigh. Ask me about events 1000 years ago, and I’m fine. Ask me about last January and I utterly fail!

So, again.

Right, 2018 began with the release of The First Queen of England Part 2 on 24th December 2017. My next project, perhaps unsurprisingly, was The First Queen of England Part 3, released in April 2018, and the final title in The First Queen of England Trilogy, although not the last I wrote about Queen Elfrida.

With the trilogy finished, I turned my attention back to a slightly abandoned project, The Earls of Mercia. Quite frankly, I was a bit terrified. I’d not written an Earls book for some time – allowing myself to be swept along by Queen Elfrida, Lady Ælfwynn, a fantasy book and no doubt other things I now can’t remember. What made the return to the Earls all the more terrifying, is that I’d long moved on from the time period I’d studied for my dissertation, and was getting to what I would term, ‘the more complicated bit’ of the eleventh century. Even my ‘timeline’ had run out – filled only with the sporadic accounts of people’s births and deaths and little else. This is the time period (1035 onwards) which many people think they ‘know’ but which was still filled with huge potential for Leofric and his son.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Leofric, and Book 7 was released in July 2018. By now I’d made a monumental ‘life’ decision, and given up the ‘day job’ to turn my hand to full-time writing. This, I confess, worried the hell out of me for the first few weeks – when effectively, I wrote a book in 3 weeks flat – so desperate to prove I had the motivation and desire to succeed without the dislike of the ‘day job’ to drive me ever onwards with my writing goals.

The result was, a somewhat unexpected, return to the world of Queen Elfrida, and The King’s Mother. Purposefully designed to be a little ‘harsher’ in outlook, to give Queen Elfrida the ‘savvy’ she needed to succeed, I thoroughly enjoyed writing The King’s Mother.

So what next? In true style, I didn’t opt for the ‘easier’ option of writing the next book in The King’s Mother Trilogy but instead returned to the world of The Earls of Mercia, and The Earl’s King was released on 24th December 2018.

I’ve taught myself a few tricks when writing sequels. I used to, back in the day, immediately write a draft beginning and end for the next book when I’d finished the previous book, now, I make copious notes on the final edit, and then make even more notes on what I think should happen next – it’s normally a long list of questions and a few character names but I rely on it when I return to old projects to get the ‘feel’ right for the next book. I’ve also started ‘character’ and ‘plot’ summaries for each character. I have a little book for The Earls of Mercia, filled with characters and descriptions, and I’m not sharing it!

But that wasn’t the end of my writing. So to NaNoWriMo2018, and I gave myself (I know, how devilish) a month away from historical fiction (just about), and a month to write fantasy (my first love). I had half a novel from NaNoWriMo2017 which needed finishing, and also another idea that was making my head hurt with its desire to be written. As a back-up, I also had the sequel to The King’s Mother should my fantasy projects crash and burn.

In the end, I wrote a huge amount of words – and have two good first drafts to edit for both my fantasy projects and a small beginning on the historical fiction novel, which will be finished in February this year.

Aside from writing, I went to two author events, (daunting stuff), and met some great people, and had my work assessed by an agent at one of the events, and a publisher at another. While neither moved forward with the project, the feedback was excellent – perhaps if I didn’t write in such a ‘niche’ time-period I would fare better with publishers/agents – but hey, don’t call Anglo-Saxon England and the Viking era ‘niche’!

I also met some lovely authors at the events – all of us just about as awkward as we can be – authors, they don’t get out much you know.

As for book sales throughout 2018 – I must thank each and every reader who chose one of my titles and enjoyed it. Sales have increased, and not just because of ‘new releases’ and I step into 2019 confident that I ‘might’ (just about) finally know what I’m about and how I can achieve it – both with historical fiction and fantasy. I’m still teaming with ideas and have made no firm plans for my writing after the end of February – otherwise, I’ll be stubborn and rebel against it!

I also have a new, far flashier, website thanks to ‘tech-support’ teenager. (I would recommend that all author’s get a ‘tech-support’ teenager – although they are quite an expensive investment.)

Website

So, here’s to an exciting 2018, and hopefully, an even more thrilling 2019.

(I’m going to do a year review of books I recommend next.)

 

 

 

Book Review – Lancelot by Giles Kristian – highly recommended (historical fiction)

Here’s the blurb;

“Set in a 5th century post-Roman Britain besieged by invading war bands of Saxons and Franks, Irish and Picts, Giles Kristian’s epic new novel tells – through the warrior’s own words – the story of Lancelot, the most celebrated of all King Arthur’s knights. And it’s a story that’s ready to be re-imagined for our times.
It’s a story imbued with the magic and superstition that was such an integral part of the enchanted landscape of Britain during this dark times. Many of the familiar names from Arthurian mythology will be here – Mordred and Gawain, Morgana and, of course, Merlin – as will be those vital icons of the legend such as the Round Table and the sword in the stone but these will be reinvented, reforged for a new generation of readers.
Lancelot is a story of warriors and kings, of violent, of warfare and bloodshed but it is also a story of loyalty and friendship, of over-arching ambition, of betrayal and guilt, of love and lust, and the win tragedies of revenge and remorse.”

I received a free EArc from Netgalley.

Lancelot is a brilliant book. I really can’t recommend it enough – but at its heart, it is also flawed. The more I think about this, the more I imagine this might have been done on purpose – a mirror image of the character, perhaps.

When I first began reading Lancelot I simply thought the author had been very clever with his book title. (Go check my Goodreads log for the book – I say it there). The story, while it might have been about Lancelot, could just as easily have been about any character in post-Roman/pre-Saxon/settlement period Britain (everyone has their own word for this period). It was not necessarily a Lancelot that anyone would recognise.

For all that, the young Lancelot is an intriguing character, and even if the book had just been an author with a clever title, I would probably have been just as impressed as I ultimately was.

The world Lancelot inhabits is a wonderful reimagining of Britain at this strange time period – with the Romans fled, and the Saxons on the surge. It is stuffed with warlords and kings, with kingdom names and conjures up a wonderful landscape of the time period. While all the action takes place in those areas which would be termed, British or Pictish, the very ‘smell’ of the Saxons is always blowing on the wind., for all that it is modern-day Cornwall, Devon, Wales and Scotland that form the backdrop for the story and there are only very occasional Saxon characters.

We meet Lancelot in the first chapter, Guinevere takes longer to appear, and Arthur? Well, his father makes an appearance before him – and Arthur only arrives 50% through the book. And this is as it should be – after all, this is Lancelot’s story and not that of Arthur’s. We do meet Merlin not long after Guinevere – so the ‘names’ we know from the Arthur Legend are firmly there – Tintagel is often mentioned, as too is Excalibur.

As in any novel about a famous warrior, there is a great deal of training, fighting and ‘rough-stuff’ from the other boys being trained, but mixed with the twin thread of friendship and magic. The magic is artfully arranged – it is just ‘accepted’ without explanation, and that appealed to my less than ‘magical’ mind. Other authors may have ‘overcooked’ the whole Merlin/Druid/Old Gods stuff but I think it is handled exceedingly well throughout the story. The ‘friendship’ element is also very skillfully told – it becomes more and more important as the book progresses.

Lancelot has a lovingly crafted feel to it. It meanders down little-trodden paths, and we might be left wondering why, but just as Robin Hobb manages with her ‘Fitz’ books, it never feels irrelevant. It’s a delightful tale of occasional irrelevance, that I just didn’t want to end, and I never say that about a book.

There were times when I couldn’t fathom what the author would do with his characters next and there were parts where I felt cheated. At 80% through I was completely perplexed, and actually, the ending of the book is either its weakest element or the author at his cleverest (I still can’t decide). it is here that he relies most on the readers ‘prior’ knowledge of the Arthur legend – and we are left to make our own assumptions until the very final scene, when there is, once more, some closure.

I really did love this book, but I would have liked it to be much, much longer – I would have liked all the ‘gaps’ filled in, I would have liked answers to questions that are asked but never resolved, I would have liked more Arthur and Lancelot, and I would certainly have liked more, much more, of those famous battles, but Lancelot is a wonderful and powerful telling of a legend that we already think we know – but which is ripe for retelling. It relies on an understanding of the legend – while also reworking it. A fine piece of work that I thoroughly enjoyed – even if I didn’t initially want to! :)

Lancelot is available now, and Camelot is due for release in May 2020.

Get your copy here;

 

Book Review – Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence – fantasy – 5/5 stars

Here’s the blurb;

“In Mystic Class Nona Grey begins to learn the secrets of the universe. But so often even the deepest truths just make our choices harder. Before she leaves the Convent of Sweet Mercy Nona must choose her path and take the red of a Martial Sister, the grey of a Sister of Discretion, the blue of a Mystic Sister or the simple black of a Bride of the Ancestor and a life of prayer and service.

All that stands between her and these choices are the pride of a thwarted assassin, the ambition of a would-be empress wielding the Inquisition like a blade, and the vengeance of the empire’s richest lord.

As the world narrows around her, and her enemies attack her through the system she has sworn to, Nona must find her own path despite the competing pull of friendship, revenge, ambition, and loyalty.

And in all this only one thing is certain.
.
There will be blood.”

Read it in a day! What greater compliment is there.

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence -the sequel to Red Sister – is a good book. Never doubt that. It might even be an excellent book – and just as with Red Sister there will be a wide swathe of people who rave about this book, ensuring everyone they know, and vaguely know, goes out to buy it. This is a good thing. Mark Lawrence is a great writer – he doesn’t mess around with anything we don’t need to know – everything to his writing has a point – whether we know it at the time or not. His storylines are pretty rock solid, and his ‘world-building’ never, ever deteriorates into long sweeping paragraphs that are unneeded and detract from the action (which can be a problem with fantasy writers).

Yet, in giving this book 5 stars, and saying how great it is, there is, I admit, a part of me, that wishes it were as dark and complicated and downright transfixing as his previous two trilogies. The Book of the Ancestor Trilogy, for all that some may call it ‘dark’, is almost a walk in the park compared to his previous diabolical creations of Jorg and Jalan – and I admit – for all that sometimes I did find them a bit too ‘dark’ – I miss that ‘darkness’. Don’t all shout at once, I appreciate that death-dealing nuns do sound pretty dark, but when it’s mingled with the whole ‘school’ scenario, it does lose its ‘dark’ appeal for me – and I find some of the much-quoted sentences a bit misleading as to the path the story ultimately takes. No amount of bloodshed can quite make-up for that, but, I am very excited to see what happens in Book 3. Clearly, there’s still a great deal to come in The Book of the Ancestors series, and I’m keen to see how it all ‘ends’, while also being a little wary – I don’t think the final book will answer all my questions – but then, many great fantasy writers (cough, Robin Hobb) leave us thinking about the might-have-beens.

So five stars – and Book 3 is on my ‘to-read’ list already.

Grey Sister is out in the UK today – for some reason we’re weeks and weeks behind EVERYONE else!

Book Review – Kin by Snorri Kristjansson – An intriguing idea – Viking murder mystery

This book intrigued me from the beginning – but perhaps the comments I read such as ‘no one does Vikings like this’ were slightly misleading for this particular book by the author. To begin with, I was quite confused by the direction the story was taking.

The characters in the book are intriguing and well thought out – well, most of them are, some of them are just confusing and it does take a while to sort out who everyone is, and it does, I’m afraid to say, start to become much easier to understand once the ‘action’ has started and the number of characters has diminished somewhat. That said, it takes nearly half of the book for this to happen, and the anticipation of ‘who’ will be the victim does start to become more important than why there will be a victim because the why is very clear from early on.

Much of the story is told from one point of view, that of Helga, and that is good. However, every so often, the author does drop in a different point of view, which is a bit jarring and perhaps not needed.

That said the book flows well, and I enjoyed reading it and only spent some of my time wondering about the historical accuracy of it all, and whether certain things would actually have happened.

An intriguing idea.

Kin is released today and you can get a copy from here.

Book Review – The Seven by Peter Newman – fantasy – recommended

“Years have passed since the Vagrant journeyed to the Shining City, Vesper in arm and Gamma’s sword in hand.

Since then the world has changed. Vesper, following the footsteps of her father, journeyed to the breach and closed the tear between worlds, protecting the last of humanity, but also trapping the infernal horde and all those that fell to its corruptions: willing or otherwise.

In this new age it is Vesper who leads the charge towards unity and peace, with seemingly nothing standing between the world and a bright new future.

That is until eyes open.

And The Seven awakes.”

I received a free EArc from Netgalley and notice that this has just come out in paperback so I am sharing my review again!

After only a few pages, I decided to read the previous book in the series, as the world I discovered was both intriguing and quite alien. I thought I needed some back story, and indeed I did. My review for The Malice is here.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2011536175?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

I should also perhaps have taken the time to read The Vagrant but impatience won out, and anyway, The Vagrant, unlike in The Malice, is a real part of this final part of the trilogy (I am assuming it’s the final part).

Anyway, back to The Seven.

The world created by Peter Newman throughout The Vagrant series is inherently alien. It feels new and strange and, on occasion, very, very weird. This, more than anything, immediately draws the reader in, for Newman’s descriptions are sparse in the extreme, and I was often left decrying his lack of description (which is weird for me because I often skip excess descriptions in books content to let my imagination hold sway). Neither is it just his descriptions that are sparse, the whole nature of the book is trimmed down so that you really have to read each and every word – there’s no skipping a bit because you sort of know what’s about to happen. There is also, in the grand scheme of things, little conversation. This ties with the ‘pared’ down nature of the planet that these people inhabit.

The characters in this final book – Vesper, Samael and Scout, The Vagrant, Jem, her daughter, Obeisance and The Seven, as well as The First, Neer and other characters from the earlier book (including The Buck although not as much as I might have liked) – are all scarcely sketched and yet all have very distinct characters. There is no need to’like’ any of the characters (not like in some books) and yet throughout the series you gain respect for them all – even when they might be being cowardly or acting contrary to what we might hope they do. This is a strength of the book – for all the weirdness and strangeness – these are people (I use that word lightly) that we can understand if not relate to.

I very much enjoyed the ‘backstory’ in The Seven. Throughout The Malice I found it a little distracting, but in The Seven, the back story is vitally important, and indeed, at the end, I would have liked to know more about Massala and her creations.

Book 3 is eminently more readable than The Malice – and I don’t think it was because I knew more about the ‘world’ of The Vagrant – I think the storyline is more recognizable and therefore flows better. Yet I don’t think the author ever quite gives the reader what they want – there is not really a happily ever after, there is just an ending, and one which is never wholly assured until it actually happens.

There are very good battle scenes, and very good ‘political’ scenes and yet through it all, the world of The Vagrant remains aloof – difficult to grasp onto. It is not a typical fantasy book and some might well struggle with it, but I think it’s well worth the struggle (The Malice took me a month to read because I struggled with elements of it – The Seven is a much quicker read) and it is refreshing to read something so very different and ‘new’.

The Seven is available now and can be purchased here;