Tales from the Circle

Firebrand Book 2: The Fire-Touched is an excellent follow-up to the first book. It continues the story of Martel as he completes his first year at the Lyceum, hoping that by the end of it, he'll finally pass the novice stage and become an acolyte like the others his age. As this is the second book Martel has become more comfortable at the school and with the surrounding city and I also enjoyed sinking comfortably back into this well-built world with Martel. I enjoyed this second installment almost more than I did the first.  Martel's characterization is consistent with the first one, and he continues to get himself into tough situations and put himself into danger to help others, but by now he has his feet under him a bit more and is better able to handle the situations he gets into - and pick out friends from foes from people who are trying to use him. There's lots of great character work not only for Martel, but also some of the side-characters.  In terms of his magical e...

The Brightest Shadow by Sarah Lin is a progression fantasy with an epic fantasy scope and feel. The world-building in this is excellent, and despite the huge number of pages I've already read I know there's already so much built up and waiting to be uncovered and explored. I also really enjoyed most of the characters and the perspectives they bring to this story. I may be judging it a bit more harshly than necessary by giving it four stars instead of five, but I think that's partially because I can almost see the excellence that could have been, but it just feel a tiny bit short in a couple of small ways when it could have been phenomenal.  The first part of the story was excellent and I was gripped and interested throughout. Tani's Farwalk was an excellent hook into the story - it's a journey she is taking as part of her warrior training with the added goal she has given herself to observe the "Deathspawn" that have arrived on the continent near her home ...

The Wrack is a unique fantasy novel that focuses on the spread of a disease called the Wrack and how it affects the people, their cultures, politics and the world at large. An interesting read in pandemic times, and the author mentions how weird it was to be writing and releasing it during the pandemic. Even though the book is a work of fiction about a fictional disease in a world where magic exists I found the inner science nerd in me extremely excited while reading this book. I also love epic fantasy and I think the author pulls of an amazing feat by showing how the Wrack spreads across this entire world, showing the large, epic scale while still having so many beautiful, close, character moments.  In some ways, The Wrack itself is the main character. There are some characters that show up a couple of times, but in general, don't expect to follow certain characters throughout the novel. The work of fighting the pandemic is a global one and the author allows us to see so many pers...

  The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng is the third and final installment in the Chronicles of the Bitch Queen Series. Read my reviews of book 1: The Wolf of Oren-Yaro and Book 2: The Ikessar Falcon . Just like other two books it's a wild ride. A first person POV following Queen Taliyen as she struggles to save her son and her kingdom from so many threats that she couldn't even have imagined at the start of this series! It's fast-paced and action-packed, full of battles, political intrigue, and truly desperate/hopeless situations that Tali has to navigate. It's also full of amazingly well-crafted characters that feel real in all their imperfections. There's a lot more magic in this one and we get to learn so much more about Tali's kingdom Jin-Sayeng and its history and secrets. I binge-read over the past 3 days - I couldn't put it down and didn't want to do anything else!  This third installment brings together many different pieces that click together so perfectly...

Want to dive into a new fantasy series? My collection of Shorts and Novellas "Tales from The Circle Volume 1: Rise of the Sorcerer King" is currently on sale for only $0.99 as part of the Fantastic Fantasy Series Promo  among many other great series. An excellent way to try out a new fantasy series for a low price!

I usually think of planning as a matter of personal preference. And I often see others asking “what kind of planner are you?” Or “Are you a plotter or a pantser?” But I’ve recently started to realize that the amount and type of planning I do for a novel is not dependent on me, it’s more dependent on the story itself. Planning a fantasy novel is significantly different from planning a sci-fi novel, for example. That much is obvious to me. But even within these different genres each individual story needs a different type of planning. I’ve written a few novels now, only one of which has been published so far, but I’d like to look at the type of planning I did for each one. Children of the Dead City - Epic Fantasy ( Published ) This novel takes place in the fantasy world I’d been building for about 15 years before I wrote it. It’s actually the second version of the same story. I wrote an entire novel that focused on the character Hawk (but his name wasn’t Hawk back then) and...