Moving to the third book on my overdue review list brings me to Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb. I enjoyed this coming-of-age story about a noble bastard training to become a royal assassin. It’s a well-paced, touching story that sets up a trilogy of novels. The story is set in the fictional medieval world of…
Next on my overdue book review list is Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton. This is one of the novels published after his passing, and, like many of those works, it feels less finished and polished than his more famous books. But it’s an interesting addition to his historical fiction and a prelude of sorts to…
Now that Merlin Reborn is safely out in the world, I am trying to catch up on reviews of books I’ve finished over the past six months. First up is Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. As its title suggests, it’s a story about revenge. And as revenge stories go, this one is among the…
On my last trip to Africa, I finished the book I had been reading before my first connecting flight, so I had to dig into my Kindle library to find a new read. That was when I stumbled upon the Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed. It has probably been in my library…
The holidays set me considerably behind on posting book reviews, so I am playing catch-up. My first of three belated reviews is Emperor of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. Emperor of Thorns concludes Lawrence’s The Broken Empire trilogy, a series that has grown stronger with each installment. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth that,…
I’ve been spending time lately in Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire, and perhaps my favorite sojourn to date was The Red Queen’s War Book 2, The Liar’s Key. The “Liar” in question is the god Loki, whom we meet in an intriguing prologue set deep in the past inside a Silo-like facility where survivors of a…
I finally got around to reading King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, the second book in his Broken Empire trilogy that began with Prince of Thorns. In the first book, the protagonist Jorg Ancrath was challenging to root for. He was a genuinely evil character, redeemed only slightly by the fact that his enemies were…
Halfway through 2025, I can safely say that The Devils by Joe Abercrombie is the best book I’ve read so far this year. It’s a laugh-out-loud, character-driven fantasy with harrowing action, massive set pieces, brutal betrayals, and a bittersweet ending. In other words, it’s classic Abercrombie. I was hooked after the first chapter. Maybe even…
In preparation for a recent vacation that included several days in Bavaria, I read The Ludwig Conspiracy by German author Oliver Pötzsch. The novel concerns the mysterious death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in 1886. Ludwig, known sometimes as “Mad King Ludwig” or the “Fairy-tale King,” built some of the most eccentric and fantastical…
I really enjoyed Richard Swan’s Empire of the Wolf series, so I was eager to read Grave Empire, which is set in the same world, albeit hundreds of years later. While it doesn’t quite match the gripping quality of the earlier trilogy, Grave Empire presents an intriguing premise and shows promise as the new series…
Everything comes to an epic, violent conclusion in Joe Abercrombie’s Last Argument of Kings, the final book in his First Law Trilogy. This book is the most spectacular in the series, wrapping up—for the most part—the two main plotlines and a myriad of subplots. Some of these conclusions are quite satisfying; others, not so much….