Behind Blue Eyes

We Men of Ash and Shadow by HL Tinsley My rating: 4 of 5 stars #SelfPubFantasyMonth Review now live, at Grimdark Magazine We’ve all heard the phrase, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and I’d have to say this is good advice. The best artwork in the world won’t make a story engage the reader. What a great cover can do is catch the eye and stand out in an unending sea of books. We Men of Ash and Shadow did this for me, as one evening I was scrolling through social media and my attention was caught by the wonderful book cover. This got my attention enough to read the blurb, and I was immediately hooked. “It was the most highly recommended venue the city had to offer. It was called the Ring O’ Bastards and it had the lowest patron to murder victim ratio in a five mile radius.” That’s the opening paragraph to this fine novel. Within moments, I knew I had stumbled on something special. HL Tinsley didn’t disappoint me as I read further. Right away we are ...

The Original by Brandon Sanderson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I received a copy of the audiobook from the publisher through NetGalley. This was fun. I've been a fan of Brandon Sanderson for years, though I'd never read anything by Mary Robinette Kowal. As a collaboration, this was great.. In a not-too-distant future, we follow the story of a recently revived Holly. She can't remember what happened, but soon learns that she was a clone. Her Original apparently murdered her husband, and the authorities wanted Holly to track down her Original to bring her to justice. By justice I mean kill her. Holly's reward would be then to replace her Original and settle back into "normal" life. As expected, this is a grand adventure as Holly pieces together clues and uses her personal enhancements to survive and learn the details of this strange case. Of course, it's not all in black and white.... Oh, I almost forgot to mention it, but I lo...

From Cold Ashes Risen by Rob J. Hayes My rating: 5 of 5 stars Review now live at Grimdark Magazine All good trilogies come to an end. It’s something that we are sad to see, yet we can’t turn away from that final entry in a series even if we wanted to. From Cold Ashes Risen is no different. We’ve come a long way in the saga of Eskara Helsene and while we can’t wait to see how it turns out, it’s a bit bittersweet that it will be over soon. And in the case of our narrator, Eska, a little scary too. “I could feel the fear, and it was delicious.” In my review of The Lessons Never Learned by Rob J. Hayes, I made a comparison to The Empire Strikes Back , in that as a middle-of-trilogy installment, it was a somewhat uncommon occurrence that it didn’t lag in the middle. In many (if not all) ways, Empire was the best of the (original) Lucas trilogy, and I felt that Lessons could be that in The War Eternal . I was half right. My original comparison holds...