Best Fantasy of 2025
Including The Devils
Place of birth: Seoul, South Korea
After a really strong beginning to this series, Heir of Fire disappointed me as it didn't quite have the same good pacing and consistent storyline as the previous two books. Heir of Fire sees Celaena running away to her mother's homeland seeks out her Aunt in the land of Wendlyn to find safety and help to fight the King of Adarlan....
6.0/10
Crown of Midnight has to be my favourite book in the series so far with Celaena really coming into her own and where we really start to get into the story.Having survived the trials in Throne of Glass, Celaena takes on her role as the King's Assassin for a King that she despises. Her role causes some friction between her and her frien...
8.0/10
Skylord was reincarnated by Hollywood comic artist Ray Sirico as it was considered one of the best around during the '70s and '80s. It’s 1993 and Ray has nothing to show for his success, being nothing more than a hopeless drunk has-been, he has lost his long-suffering wife and to make matters worse, his publishers have decided the ...
6.0/10
The Underworld rules the city of Veldaren. Thieves, smugglers, assassins... they fear only one man. Thren Felhorn is the greatest assassin of his time. All the thieves' guilds of the city are under his unflinching control. If he has his way, death will soon spill out from the shadows and into the streets.Aaron is Thren's son, trai...
8.0/10
Throne of Glass is one of those novels where I did the ultimate sin and judged it by its cover… And I'm very glad I did.It is a great fantasy story about the prodigy assassin Celaena Sardothien, who is dragged out of a prison camp to compete to be the champion of the man who put her there (the King of Adarlan) by the Crown Prin...
7.0/10
This book is one of those rare books that I come across sometimes, a bit like Mortal Instruments, where I'm not really sure if I really enjoyed it or not. The story was pretty good, it was well written… but something about it stops me from making my mind up.Apocalypse Now Now follows Baxter Zevcenko as he unearths the supernatu...
6.9/10
The army of the dead are coming… Avry of Kazan, the last Healer of the mystical Fifteen Realms, has a power that can’t be matched. But in the minds of her friends and foe alike, Avry no longer exists. Now, as the psychotic King Tohon builds an army mightier than any that has been seen before - a league of undead soldiers - Avry must...
6.0/10
Between the living and the dead is the Order of the Deacons, protectors of the Empire, guardians against possession, sentinels enlisted to ward off malevolent hauntings by the geists. Sorcha, among the most powerful of the Order, is called to a small settlement, But more is occuring than just geist activity. It's a conspiracy of evil that re...
7.5/10
Mogworld has been on my reading list for sometime and the more I’ve looked at it the higher my expectations have been of it. Written by one of my favourite game critics Yahtzee Croshaw, I was expecting it to be a lot more pessimistic, in the style of his game reviews. How wrong could I be? If anything this book is a great mash up of tradit...
8.7/10
What would you do if you were stuck in a giant cube, floating through space and something from the outside wanted in? Well, that is the subject of Maria V Snyder’s latest book. Although I wouldn’t say that Outside In was her best book to date it is still an enjoyable read and kept me so hooked that I accidentally read the first few p...
7.2/10
The Cross, sequel to Uprising, and a novel about the Vampire Federation. I read the first book a few months ago and found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. It was fast paced, interesting and a nice change to vampire novels that only revolve around sex or fulfilling fantasies. The Cross, I am glad to say, also stays away from that p...
6.0/10
What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in a massively multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game? Well, this is the situation that the star of Charlie Foxtrot’s MMORPG finds himself in.Geordie finds himself stuck in the online world of Thila unable to return home. At first he thinks it is an accident that he ended up in Thila bu...
5.5/10
For me vampire novels tend to be hit or miss. They are either incredible with a great storyline or they are just an excuse to write about vampires having sex. Fortunately Uprising isn’t the latter one of these options.Uprising is a bit of a vampire mystery story with not that much mystery in it since you follow the story from both s...
7.7/10
I feel a little bit bad about reviewing this book because from the first page I found myself annoyed with the book. There is honestly that much I can really say about Fallenwood except that maybe I would look at it in a much nicer light if I didn’t have a science degree and a fair amount of medical training.I say this because, page ...
4.6/10
I suppose I should start by saying that technically this wasn’t technically a bad book there was just very, very little in The Beast Call. The protagonist of The Beast Call is the young woman Dray Rena, who reluctantly follows her brother into battle after she runs away from an arranged marriage. Her main purpose is to protect her brother ...
4.4/10
Mijak is getting close to dominating not only the deserts but now the seas. Ethrea is just a short sail away but the wind refuses to cooperate and Hekat is getting frustrated. It is time for Mijak to bring their rule to the rest of the world but there is something wrong and only a sacrifice on a large scale can fix it.Meanwhile Rhian stru...
8.5/10
Amy had the choice to go with her parents on the 300 year voyage to Centuri-Earth or to stay behind and live out the rest of her life with her relatives. She chose to go with her parents and expected to wake up on a whole new planet but that was not the case. When she did wake up it was in a cold metallic room and 50 years to go before they arri...
6.5/10
Shalár is the leader of the vampiric Darkshore Clan, a group that are shunned by their fellow aelven race due to their affinity to blood and their aversion to the sun. She is fed up of living in Darkshore where life is tough and there is not enough food, she just wants to return to her home of Fireshore. She struggles to make her small cl...
6.0/10
The King of Ethrea is dying and has left no one as his successor except his daughter Princess Rhian, who is not yet old enough to take up the throne in her own right unless she is married. While Rhian despairs over the death of her father, so soon after the death of her brothers, she fails to see the danger from the ...
9.2/10
First she was an unwanted daughter who was sold into slavery and then she became a warrior and then the Empress. Hekat started life knowing nothing but pain and anger but as she grew up she knew that she was special, she was godtouched. No matter what anyone tells her Hekat knew she was special.Also godtouched is Vortka, fellow slave turn...
9.0/10
The Steam Queen is a steampunk novel that follows eighteen year old anti-hero Erica, who is not your usual hero. She has an extreme fear of dirt and a compulsive need to punish those who wrong her, sometimes going to such extremes that her father can no longer protect her. His solution: sign her up to mercenary team the Steam Queens in the hope ...
7.5/10
While everyone believes in the Gateway, a way to get to the Outside, Trella is happy to ignore them knowing that the Gateway doesn’t exist. It is a spark of hope in the otherwise depressing life of the Scrubs and Trella will have none of it. For a Scrub life is what it is.Life as a Scrub means that Trella spends her life cleaning th...
8.2/10
Struggling to protect the legacy of his Traveller father, Gabriel faces troubling new questions and relentless threats. His brother Michael, now firmly allied with the enemy, pursues his ambition to wrest power from Nathan Boone, the calculating leader of the Brethren. And Maya, the Harlequin warrior pledged to protect Gabriel at all costs, is f...
8.0/10
Fear stalks our lives. In the press. On the television. Over the airwaves. Across the internet. Everywhere we go, someone somewhere is always watching. Waiting for the mistake that will reveal secrets, truths, lies, the real story or what they want to believe. No longer is anonymity a given right. We are being controlled without our knowledge an...
7.8/10
In today’s world trying to stay hidden from the Brethren is becoming increasingly difficult as cameras and sensors watch every movement. Security cameras have facial recognition and can follow any one person based on their biometrics. Chips in passports can be detected by scanners. It is the world that the Brethren have always wanted, a wo...
7.8/10
Spy Glass is the eagerly awaited third and final instalment of Maria V Snyder's Opal Cowan series. After the disastrous outcome to the events of the previous book's adventures, Opal is back at her family home licking the wounds.Opal now has to adapt to life without magic. She tries to get back into her usual routine but without he...
8.8/10
In the second book of the Opal Cowan series Opal is finally ready to graduate from the Keep and now must decide whether or not she is going to continue working for the Sitian council, or whether she is going to try and make it on her own. Will Opal go it alone without the council and risk having her magic exploited by others for personal ga...
8.6/10
Four years after she helped Yelena Zaltana save Sitia from the Fire Warpers the one-trick-wander, Opal Cowan, still has not developed the myriad of magical skills that her fellow students at the Magician's Keep have discovered. To keep her mind off her inability to use the most basic of magic Opal spends her time in the glassworks where she ...
8.0/10
Including The Devils
Including Hell Bent
Including Babel, Fairy Tale
Including She Who Became the Sun, The God is Not Willing, A Marvellous Light and The Shadow of the Gods
Including The Unspoken Name, Age of Empyre, The Once and Future Witches and The Trouble with Peace
Including A Brightness Long Ago, The Raven Tower, The 10,000 Doors of January and Beneath the Twisted Trees
Including Circe, The Ember Blade, The Fall of Gondolin and The Poppy War
Including The Fall of Arthur, The Stone Sky, Godsgrave and Tarnished City
Including All the Birds in the Sky, Nevernight, Wrath and Fellside
Including The Hollow Boy, Ancillary Mercy, Half the World and Ruin
Including The Slow Regard of Silent Things, Fool's Assassin, Words of Radiance and The Oversight
Including Emperor of Thorns, The Shining Girls, The Republic of Thieves and The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Including Some Kind of Fairy Tale, King of Thorns, The Wind Through the Keyhole and The Killing Moon