FANTASY
THE UNSPOKEN NAME by A. K. Larkwood (Tor £16.99, 464 pp)
THE UNSPOKEN NAME
by A. K. Larkwood (Tor £16.99, 464 pp)
What’s not to like about a betusked teenage priestess-turned-assassin, especially when she’s so sweetly lovelorn and tremendously good at fighting?
Csorwe is the Chosen One —chosen to die, that is, in the service of her god. When a better offer comes along in the form of service to a glamorous, amoral father-figure of a mage, she jumps at the chance.
This awe-inspiring debut gets everything spot on. An epic register of nasty gods, trans-dimensional gateways, malevolent priest cults and a gripping quest are offset by a gentle love story and a heroine plagued by the odd bad choice and mild dysmorphia.
Spoiler alert: she is beautiful, tusks and all, and gets the girl. But what a journey!
CRESCENT CITY by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury £16.99, 816 pp)
CRESCENT CITY
by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury £16.99, 816 pp)
It is an unwritten rule of fantasy that, while fairies may be hexy, the fae shall be sexy. And hexy, too, for that matter.
Sarah J. Maas does not disappoint in her first blockbuster for grown-ups, with a full-scale banquet of magic, lust, violence and very drunken dancing.
Bryce Quinlan is a half-fae party girl, rudely yanked from her hedonistic lifestyle when her werewolf friend undergoes demonic disembowelment.
Along with angelic ’tec Isaiah Tiberius and his spooky enforce, Bryce must negotiate the Byzantine complexities of her world to find the killer.
It’s a glorious and immersive mash-up of high-octane action and eroticised interaction.
To be devoured with relish.
BY FORCE ALONE by Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus £18.99, 516 pp)
BY FORCE ALONE
by Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus £18.99, 516 pp)
The young King Arthur is a racketeer in old Londinium town, Guinevere heads a murder squad, and Galahad turns out to be Camelot’s preening pimp in this extraordinary and vivid retelling of our national myth.
Gritty revisionism is supercharged by the supernatural.
Merlin’s a proper wizard — albeit an adolescent — and, alongside the Questing Beast, ogres and the Green Knight, a coven of wicked witches, Morgan le Fay et al, shapeshifts in and out of the rich and breakneck narrative at will.
As eclectic as the Sword In The Stone and as ruthless as A Game Of Thrones, this retelling of the whole Arthurian Legend stands alongside the very best.
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