The Vord have returned to Alera. The invading insectoids are more powerful than ever—now with Furycraft—and they’re quickly sweeping across Alera. The First Lord must stave-off the attack, despite his rapidly failing health. Convincing the High Lords to cooperate is quite an undertaking. Meanwhile, Tavi and company are in Canea, the land of the wolf-like [...]
In Cursor’s Fury, the fourth novel in Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series, Tavi’s identity is finally reviewed. Who he is, and why he didn’t develop furycrafting abilities until so late in life. Astute readers may have already figured out his parentage and the political ramifications, but the big secret comes out in the open during [...]
The third in the series, Cursor’s Fury takes place two years after the events of the previous Codex Alera book. Tavi is now a full Cursor, going undercover as a military officer in a new Legion that is soon sent to a distant corner of Alera to fight a much larger invasion force of Canim [...]
The Magic of Recluce is the sort of book that takes a little while to get into, but it’s hard to put down after. L. E. Modesitt tells the story from the first-person perspective of Lerris, a “bored” youth born on the island of Recluce. The Order-obsessed nation pushes him to leave on the dangergeld—a [...]
Set two years after The Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher’s Academ’s Fury continues the story of Alera. Tavi is now a student at the Alera Imperial Academy, secretly studying to become a Cursor—one of the First Lord’s intelligence agents. The other characters from the first book are similarly occupied with new responsibility and battles of [...]
Steampunk? Check. Detectives? Check. Queen Victoria with cybernetic implants keeping her alive into the early 1900s? Check. A murderous villain trying to achieve immortality using an ancient Egyptian ritual? Check. There is just no way George Mann’s The Osiris Ritual couldn’t be entertaining. It’s a fun quasi-Victorian penny dreadful with a dash of the supernatural [...]
Jim Butcher, author of the ever-entertaining Dresden Files books, has a lesser-known fantasy series that I finally got around to starting. The Codex Alera, as it is called, is set in a sword-and-sorcery type world (with it’s own unique twists on a usual trope, of course) and is quite the departure from the famous sardonic [...]
Death Masks is the 5th book in the Dresden Files series, but only the 2nd book that I thought was awesome. The other is Fool Moon. It starts out a little aggravating, since there is still too much emphasis on vampires for my taste. There is a funny scene with Harry Dresden to be interviewed [...]
At the beginning of Summer Knight, the White Council convenes in Chicago to discuss the matter of the war with the Red Court vampires, and maybe execute a meddling wizard by the name of Harry Dresden if they can get away with it. But that’s the least of his problems. Queen Mab, ruler of the [...]
With The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson begins a new richly-detailed fantasy series known as The Stormlight Archive. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it is only the very beginning of an epic story that will span an estimated ten books before its completion. There are three main protagonists, along with numerous side characters. Kaladin [...]
