In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops. Susan’s search for her father begins with her mother’s possibly misremembered or misspelt surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms. Merlin has a quest of his own, to find the Old World entity who used ordinary criminals to kill his mother. As he and his sister, the right-handed bookseller Vivien, tread in the path of a botched or covered-up police investigation from years past, they find this quest strangely overlaps with Susan’s. Who or what was her father? Susan,…

Please note, Dead Man in a Ditch is a direct sequel to the first Fetch Phillips novel, The Last Smile in Sunder City. If you want my advice, if you haven’t already, I would start there. If you don’t what follows may contain some minor spoilers. Consider yourselves suitably warned. The name’s Fetch Phillips — what do you need? Cover a Gnome with a crossbow while he does a dodgy deal? Sure. Find out who killed Lance Niles, the big-shot businessman who just arrived in town? I’ll give it shot. Help an old-lady Elf track down her husband’s murderer? That’s right up my alley. What I don’t do, because it’s impossible, is search for a way to bring the goddamn magic back. Rumors got out about what happened with the Professor, so now people keep asking me to fix the world. But there’s no magic in this story. Just dead friends, twisted miracles, and a secret machine made to deliver a single shot of murder. Earlier this year I read Luke Arnold’s debut novel, The Last Smile in Sunder City. The novel introduced us to Fetch Phillips, a human detective trying to get by in a city full of all…

You know the drill. What follows is the review of the second book in a trilogy. If you’ve not read book one in this series, A Little Hatred, then it is likely there may be minor spoilers ahead. Do not tell me later that you haven’t been suitably warned. Conspiracy. Betrayal. Rebellion. Peace is just another kind of battlefield . . . Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way. For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye . . . before it kills her. The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply. The old ways are swept…

The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands. Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic. Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people. In an empire made up of floating islands, adrift on a vast endless sea, an old emperor spends his time honing his magical skill. He picks apart the building blocks of creation while ignoring the suffering of the people he once pledged to protect. The system the Emperor created is failing, and the need for change grows stronger every day. Lin, the Emperor’s daughter, knows that something is fundamentally wrong. She just can’t quite put her finger on exactly what the…

Everyone knows the story of Joan of Arc, a peasant girl who put Charles VII on the throne and spearheaded France’s victory over Britain before being burned by the English as a heretic and witch. But things are not always as they appear. Jeanne d’Arc was only five when three angels and saints first came to her. Shrouded by a halo of heavenly light, she believed their claim to be holy. The Archangel Michael and Saint Margaret told her she was the foretold Warrior Maid of Lorraine, fated to free France and put a king upon his throne. Saint Catherine made her promise to obey their commands and embrace her destiny; the three saints would guide her every step. Jeanne bound herself to these creatures without knowing what she’d done. As she got older, Jeanne grew to mistrust and fear the voices, and they didn’t hesitate to punish her cruelly for disobedience. She quickly learned that their cherished prophecy was more important than the girl expected to make it come true. Jeanne is only a shepherd’s daughter, not the Warrior Maid of the prophecy, but she is stubborn and rebellious, and finds ways to avoid doing – and being –…

It is the Age of Enlightenment — of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France to the weather mage Toussaint L’Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic amongst commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas. But amidst all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict. And it will require the combined efforts of revolutionaries, magicians, and abolitionists to unmask this hidden enemy before the whole world falls to darkness and chaos. This week I’m taking a look at the latest novel from H G Parry. A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians is a reimagining of a key moment in European history, with the addition of some distinctly more fantastical elements. Taken from Africa as a small child Fina, is a slave on a British plantation in Jamaica. Magic is used to control the workforce as they are forced to toil in back breaking conditions. Fina has learned to internalise everything as the magic that binds her ensures complete, unyielding…

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five. But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all. I’ve just finished reading The City We Became by N K Jemisin, and it has melted my brain in a whole host of marvellous ways. With that in mind, please be advised that what follows may be a little disjointed, but it covers a whole host of topics. Putting it simply, I have many, many things I need to discuss. I’ve long been of the opinion that cities are a microcosm of the larger world. Places like London or Tokyo are a melting pot of cultures. All human life is condensed together to form a weird cross-pollinated mishmash of society. I’m also a big fan of the idea that every city has its own character. Jemisin takes that idea and runs with it. The main quintet of characters, the five boroughs are wonderfully realised creations. Manhattan, The…

Britannia, AD 535. The Romans have gone. While their libraries smoulder, roads decay and cities crumble, men with swords pick over civilisation’s carcass, slaughtering and being slaughtered in turn. This is the story of just such a man. Like the others, he had a sword. He slew until slain. Unlike the others, we remember him. We remember King Arthur. This is the story of a land neither green nor pleasant. An eldritch isle of deep forest and dark fell haunted by swaithes, boggarts and tod-lowries, Robin-Goodfellows and Jenny Greenteeths, and predators of rarer appetite yet. This is the story of a legend forged from a pack of self-serving, turd-gilding, weasel-worded lies told to justify foul deeds and ill-gotten gains. I’ve always been a fan of legends and mythology, British folklore being of particular interest, so when I heard Lavie Tidhar was writing a book based on the Arthurian cycle I have to admit I got a bit excited. It turns out my excitement was more than a little justified. By Force Alone has been released this week and it is everything I hoped it would be and more. The novel follows Arthur through his entire life. From Uther Pendragon’s tryst…

I’m a fan of Cate Gardner’s writing so when her latest anthology was recently released, I figured it was high time that I dipped my toes back into the waters of short fiction. These Foolish and Harmful Delights features eight tales that explore the darker side of the human condition. Here are a few thoughts about some of the book’s many highlights. This Foolish & Harmful Delights – Imagine Punch and Judy are real. Now imagine that they have been sent to Hell because, it turns out, both of them are more than a little unhinged. The opportunity finally arrives for them to escape their endless torment and wreak some havoc of their own. In this first story, Gardner has morphed the already creepy traditional puppets into a pair of sadomasochistic grotesques who delight in making each other and everyone else suffer. It’s delightful alright, in a deliciously nasty way. A Bleeding of Ink – A dark exploration of mental health seen through the eyes of Alice. I think this is my favourite story in the entire collection. I loved how the boundaries between fantasy and reality smudge and overlap. There is a sense of ambiguity to Alice’s predicament that…

He’s a trickster, a player, a jester. His handshake’s like a pact with the devil, his smile like a crack in the clouds; he’s watching you now and he’s gone when you turn. Tyll Ulenspiegel is here! In a village like every other village in Germany, a scrawny boy balances on a rope between two trees. He’s practising. He practises by the mill, by the blacksmiths; he practises in the forest at night, where the Cold Woman whispers and goblins roam. When he comes out, he will never be the same. Tyll will escape the ordinary villages. In the mines he will defy death. On the battlefield he will run faster than cannonballs. In the courts he will trick the heads of state. As a travelling entertainer, his journey will take him across the land and into the heart of a never-ending war. A prince’s doomed acceptance of the Bohemian throne has European armies lurching brutally for dominion and now the Winter King casts a sunless pall. Between the quests of fat counts, witch-hunters and scheming queens, Tyll dances his mocking fugue; exposing the folly of kings and the wisdom of fools. As a book reviewer, I’m an incredibly lucky…

I’m Fetch Phillips, just like it says on the window. There are three things you should know before you hire me: Sobriety costs extra. My services are confidential. I don’t work for humans. It’s nothing personal – I’m human myself. But after what happened, it’s not the humans who need my help. I just want one real case. One chance to do something good. Because it’s my fault the magic is never coming back. The inhabitants of Sunder City have fallen on hard times. An event known as The Coda has stripped all the magic from their world. Everyone is suffering and each day things only seem to be getting worse. In the shadow of this terrible event, a much-loved teacher has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Fetch Phillips, a down at heel human gumshoe, is tasked with tracing the rogue educator. It shouldn’t be a difficult case. I mean, how far can an ageing ex-vampire who has problems climbing stairs get? Like all the best literary investigators, Fetch is an absolute shambles as a human being. It’s hardly a surprise really. He sees himself as responsible, at least in part, for the biggest catastrophe to befall the world he lives…