War of the Wolf by Bernard Cornwell

War of the Wolf (2018) is the eleventh book in Bernard Cornwell’s THE SAXON STORIES series, which was adapted into The Last Kingdom, on Netflix. It’s easy to see why the series was optioned for a visual adaptation — Cornwell’s prose neatly balances battle scenes and moments when plots are quietly hammered out, and his faithfulness to his faithfulness to 9th and 10th century Britain is admirable without becoming slavish, allowing his room to invent his own characters or scenarios and fold them into established historical precedent.

Not having read any of the preceding books in the series, I was at a disadvantage when it came to jumping into Uhtred of Bebbanburg’s life; Cornwell doesn’t spend much time with exposition or info-dumps, and there ... Read More

Equoid by Charles Stross

Equoid is a novella set in Charles Stross’ LAUNDRY FILES world. It isn’t necessary to have read any of the LAUNDRY FILES novels, but you’d probably get a little more out of Equoid if you first read at least the first two novels, The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. This story takes place after the events of the fourth novel, The Apocalypse Codex, and before the events of the fifth novel, The Rhesus Chart.

Bob Howard is a computational demonologist who works for the Laundry, the secret British agency that helps keeps the world safe from the eldritch horrors that lurk in another dimension. When curious mathematicians and physicists s... Read More

Ever After by Kim Harrison

Rachel Morgan has been through a lot since she left the IS and went private. She’s lost love, found love, been betrayed over and over again, made friends with demons, found out that she’s a demon and now she has to save her friends from the clutches of the demons one more time. It’s nothing she hasn’t done before, except that this time she faces a demon that all the rest of them are afraid of which is truly ironic since he is their creation.

The exact biological issues that are all tied up with being a witch or a demon and the genetic disease known as rosewood syndrome are the major theme of Rachel’s childhood. She should have died just like all the other babies with rosewood. The bio engineering and the cure that were developed at the behest of Trent Kalamack’s father are still illegal according to modern law. So, when babies who are destined to die from rosewood’s begin to survive and then are stolen... Read More