At first glance at the cover and blurb for Mark Smylie’s prose debut The Barrow, you’ll notice that something sets it apart from a significant portion of recent fantasy. There are no warring states, no fight for the throne. There is no greater evil or battle between light and dark. The Barrow, at its heart, is a…
It’s been a while since I’ve had a giveaway here at A Bitter Draft. This time around I’ve got Mark Smylie’s debut novel, The Barrow, thanks to the wonderful people at Pyr. Action, horror, politics, and sensuality combine in this stand-alone fantasy novel with series potential. Set in the world of the Eisner-nominated Artesia comic books. To…
It seems like every other book that I read is by Christian/Miles Cameron. After finishing The Ill-Made Knight, the first in Cameron’s Chivalry(?) series, I am convinced that the man cannot write a bad book. He’s able to write medieval and ancient historical fiction as well as fantasy without really suffering from the sort of timidity that…
To be honest, you don’t need to look further than the name of the publisher (Jo Fletcher) to know that de Castell’s Traitor’s Blade is an excellent book. Falcio val Mond is First Cantor of the Greatcoats, the now-dead king’s elite justiciars. Since the Dukes usurped the Kingdom of Tristia from King Paelis, the disbanded Greatcoats,…
First, third, or anywhere in between. Every story has a perspective. Several of the novels I’ve recently read got me thinking about perspective as a whole and why authors choose which to use. There appears to be a trend for recent authors to try their hand at the story-within-a-story narrative. Name of the Wind, Blood Song, and…
