Pile by the Bed reviews A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon an epic standalone fantasy set five hundred years before the events of The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Pariah by Anthony Ryan – the start of a new Game of Thrnoes-style fantasy series.

Pile by the Bed reviews The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, a stand alone epic fantasy.

Sam Hawke’s assured debut fantasy novel City of Lies starts intriguingly. Jovan, the narrator has been trained from a young age in the family trade of poison taster for the Chancellor of Silasta. He has been exposed to multiple poisons by his uncle as part of his training and has become partially immune to them as he learnt to identify them. He has been trained in the place of his elder sister Kalina whose constitution was too weak to handle the small amounts of poisoning. Despite this they are close and are both also close to Tain, heir to the Chancellorship. Their world is thrown into stunning and sudden disarray when both the Chancellor and their Uncle Ethan are poisoned with something neither Ethan nor Jovan can identify and their city is besieged.  While City of Lies can be read by anyone it definitely has a young adult bent. While not teenagers, the main characters are all young adults, thrust into an adult world, learning quickly how to navigate treacherous political waters while dealing with a series of escalating crises. Their relative youth allows them to question the way things have been done traditionally (particularly as tradition has partially led to current events) and find new ways forward. But it also sometimes makes them easy prey for more experienced political operators.  The narrative of City of Lies alternates between Jovan and…

Stephen Donaldson turned the fantasy world on its ear in the 1980s with his groundbreaking series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. That series took the standard fantasy tropes and recast them with an antihero at the centre and richly described and highly original world building. Which is why it comes as a bit of a disappointment in the exposition heavy prologue to his new series that we seem to be back in fairly standard epic fantasy territory. The two kingdoms of Bellenger and Amika have been at war for as long as anyone can remember but the causes of the war are lost in the mists of mythology. Both armies have ground to standstill through their use of sorcerers who can conjure one of six decimates to defeat the opposition. Just as Bellenger gains a tactical advantage through the invention of the gun, all of their sorcerers lose their abilities, it is believed through the use of the little known seventh decimate by their enemies. Bellenger Prince Bifalt is charged with a mission to track down the knowledge of this power and bring it to Bellenger to restore the powers of their sorcerers before the kingdom is overrun. And that…

Back in 2008, Peter Brett released The Painted Man (also known as The Warded Man in some countries), the first of his Demon Cycle series. Brett’s world was intriguing and unique. In it, demons of different forms and with differing powers would rise at night to attack mankind who were able to repel the attacks using symbols known as wards. Over the course of the series, the use of wards has become more sophisticated and the demons have become smarter, upping the stakes of each battle leading to this final volume and the ultimate war between man and demon. But each volume also became longer and less focussed, spinning out with backstory and new point of view characters.  Like the last couple of instalments of this series, The Core needed a serious edit. Brett is unable to let any character or locale go. Dedicated fans of this series may appreciate the amount of detail and the sheer number of characters that Brett catches up with. But this means it takes over 450 pages before the main characters start on their ultimate quest to end the demon war. And even then there are 400 pages left. Most of these side stories and characters have little relevance to this main plot and most are eventually abandoned as the focus returns. That said, once the action starts it does not let up, as humans previously at each other throats join forces against the demons…

The dragons in Anthony Ryan’s Draconis Memoria series are not, as the saying might go, your grandfather’s dragons. In this world there are dragons of varying colours – green, red, blue, black and white. Each has a different preferred mode of attack and the blood of each can give specially talented humans (the blood-blessed), short-lived superhuman capabilities. Only, as The Legion of Flame opens, the dragons, led by the super intelligent white dragon, are revolting. Having taken over their home continent and either killing or enslaving the populace, the dragons are on the move. The main point of view characters from The Waking Fire return. Lizanne, arsekicking secret agent for the Ironship Corporation, is sent on a mission to their sworn enemy the Corvantine Empire. Lizanne’s mission quickly spins out of control as she ends up in a prison city and formenting revolution. Meanwhile, blood-blessed adventurer Clay Torbeek is heading to the south pole to see if he can “save the world” following a vision of the future that he had in his encounter with the white dragon. Clay’s trajectory, while full of adventure and close calls, is a little more surreal when he finds himself in a strange world…

After a brief prologue, A Shattered Empire, the final volume of Mitchell Hogan’s Sorcery Ascendant Sequence picks up minutes after the last volume ended. Things are looking dire for the Mahruse Empire, and possibly the world as a whole. An evil sorcerer leading a massive army has taken over the city of Anasoma, bloodthirsty creatures of legend are still on the march, a sorcerous weapon has knocked the Emperor’s forces into disarray, and a strange band of mercenaries have offered him their support. While various factions vie for power or cover their backsides, a bunch of disparate heroes, all with their own agendas, still have their eyes on the main game. Again the focus is on Caladan with occasional side trips to other (more interesting) POV characters. Caladan, the callow youth with strange powers of A Crucible of Souls (reviewed here), discoverer of dark secrets about his powers in Blood of Innocents (reviewed here) is now a powerful sorcerer in his own right. Caladan becomes through this book an agent of bloody vengeance, his trust and empathy stripped away as his powers grow. Fans of classic epic fantasy, and this series in particular, will enjoy the well-paced and lovingly described magical…

There are many who credit Game of Thrones with the resurgence of the dragon in modern fantasy. But let’s face facts, dragons never really went away. A global fantasy staple from ancient times, (dragons are all over both Eastern and Western mythologies) they have also been the mainstay of some classic modern fantasy classics other than GoT including The Hobbit, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series to name a couple. Despite this venerable history and plenty of pretenders, Anthony Ryan has managed to bring something new to the table with his swashbuckling, vaguely steampunk and hugely entertaining The Waking Fire. Ryan’s world is divided into the Blood-blessed and the non-Blessed. There are few Blessed but they are able to channel power in the blood of the dragons which live only on the remote continent of Arradsia. The blood of different dragons – blue, red, green and black – confers different temporary superhuman powers on the user. But captive breeding and over-hunting has seen the power of dragon blood diminishing. Meanwhile war is brewing between the Corvantine Empire and the rest of the capitalist-driven world ruled by individual corporations. Through these rising tensions Ryan focusses on three characters – Lizzane, spy for the…

Lian Hearn returns to her best-selling faux-Japanese fantasy world in a new four book series being published in Australia in two volumes. Set three hundred years before her Tales of the Otori, The Tale of Shikanoko is pure sword and sorcery fantasy with a Japanese twist. As with her Otori series, the setting is not Japan, or even a Japanese version of ancient Japan, but it is a Japan-like world heavily based on the myths, legends and style of Japanese mythological tales. As the book opens, a young boy loses his father to forest goblins and then, before he can come of age, his uncle tries to kill him in order to inherit his lands. Saved by a forest sorcerer, Kazumaru is renamed Shikanoko (“the deer’s child”) and is given a stag’s mask of great power and a new destiny. At the same time, moves are afoot to unseat the emperor, kill his son and heir and put his brother on the throne of the eight islands. When Shikanoko emerges back into the world, he is thrown right into the middle of this conflict. Being a mythological tale there is little room for too much character development. Characters tend to…