Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds is well known and well-loved on the science fiction side of the spec-fic realm. Moreover, he’s known for his space opera and wont for writing hard science. For the uninitiated, hard science, per TVtropes, is “firmly grounded in reality, with only a few fantastic flights of fancy not justified by science, or with…

The Wolf’s Call by Anthony Ryan

With Blood Song, Anthony Ryan introduced readers to Vaelin Al Sorna and the brothers of the Sixth Order – and readers fell in love. When Ryan opted to expand the world beyond the Order, the the story he intended to tell required the expansion of point of view characters, a design choice which allowed readers to…

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

It is important, when taking a novice into the Convent of Sweet Mercy, to do a full background check first. Or at least that should’ve been the case for Nona Grey, who is saved from the hangman’s noose by Abbess Glass to kick off Mark Lawrence’s latest, Red Sister, first Book of the Ancestor. At the Convent…

The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan

Anthony Ryan’s Raven’s Shadow series started with a bang, with many genre readers absolutely adoring Blood Song. The followups, however, seemed to be divisive, mostly stemming from the fact that Ryan opted to expand the series to have primary perspectives beyond what made Blood Song so good…

Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  A dark lord has risen…again…and is marshaling his forces of darkness against the Church of Armes of the Light and all its followers, and it’s up to a band of adventurers to stop him from extinguishing all the light in the world. Dion: priestess and champion of Armes, Lief: the sly, quick-witted rogue, Penthos:…