#2012 reading challenge

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Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole (Double Review)

Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole (Double Review)

With the upcoming release of Myke’s second novel, Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier in the first quarter of 2013, I was one of the reviewers invited to review the book as I’d previously reviewed the first novel, Control Point. And the great thing is that Fortress Frontier is a much better novel than Control Point, especially since it has a much better protagonist and the story is much more…

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Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (Book Review)

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (Book Review)

Myke Cole is another 2012 debut author I discovered in that same year. His first novel Shadow Ops: Control Pointpresented an interesting world where magic and technology exist side by side and where governments around the world use magically-empowered special forces. It was a fun novel, albeit a protagonist who made it really tough to like him, and is one that I can certainly recommend, if only…

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Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper (Book Review)

Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper (Book Review)

Two and a half years ago I got it in my head to make an effort to read as many of the David Gemmell Morningstar Award shortlisted nominees as I could. Maybe it was because all these finalists were debut authors of the previous year or something, but I thought that it would be a fun little challenge to take on. One of the very first books I read as part of this impromptu challenge was Elspeth…

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Full Blooded by Amanda Carlson (Book Review)

Full Blooded by Amanda Carlson (Book Review)

Full Blooded wasn’t my first urban fantasy read of 2012, not by a long shot, but it was definitely one of the most fun such books I read in that year. So much so that I made it a point to read more urban fantasy novels in 2013 (and 2014!), including some of the more… traditional types of urban fantasies that have become mainstream in the last decade or so. Full Bloodedwas a downright surprise, I…

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Wake of The Bloody Angel by Alex Bledsoe (Book Review)

Wake of The Bloody Angel by Alex Bledsoe (Book Review)

As I’ve said elsewhere before, 2012 was the big year for me, when I branched out into all sorts of different genres and subgenres. One of these was nautical fantasy and even then a more low-brow kind of nautical fantasy at that. Wake of the Bloody Angelwas my first book by Alex Bledsoe and one of the very few books that I’ve finished in a day. Considering the length of it, that is certainly an…

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Legends of Dune by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert (Book Review)

Legends of Dune by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert (Book Review)

Frank Herbert’s Duneis for me one of the best space opera stories told, ever. It has had a great influence on me, as both a reader and a writer, and it really opened up the world of grand space opera for me, a world of rich, detailed settings and fantastic characters. Since Frank Herbert’s death, his son Brian and noted SFF author Kevin J. Anderson have taken up the master’s mantle and they’ve…

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Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi (Book Review)

Hammer of Angels by G. T. Almasi (Book Review)

G.T. Almasi’s debut to his smash-read Blades of Winter arrived in February 2014, but thanks to reviewer privileges I got to read the novel much earlier, in December 2012 itself. I didn’t like the sequel as much as I’d liked the debut, but it proved to be a good enough read in the end and I loved getting back with the protagonist Alix Nico on her globe-trotting adventures.

In light of The Founding…

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Blades of Winter by G. T. Almasi (Book Review)

Blades of Winter by G. T. Almasi (Book Review)

G. T. Almasi debuted in late summer 2012 with his debut novel Blades of Winter, the first in the Shadowstorm series. It was a novel that captivated me from the get go, being a very modern James Bond-style action-thriller that also reminded me that I loved the action-espionage-drama-thriller genre mash-up.

In light of The Founding Fields currently suffering some major site issues, I’m going to be…

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