Living in a world very much like our own, a seemingly ordinary person is wrapped up in a whirlwind journey that takes her across the multiverse, far from the world of her home. On the way, the protagonist discovers there are an infinity of worlds at which there is one true realm at the center, […]
On a tropical island inhabited by castoffs, treasure hunters and malcontents, a dipsomaniac treasure hunter, Stagger, and his supremely capable partner Infidel get into a deadly spot. While Infidel may be mostly invulnerable and superhumanly strong, Stagger unfortunately, is not. When the treasure hunter dies, his ghost does not move onto the next realm, […]
When we last left Jorg Ancrath, Prince of a small feudal realm in a post-apocalypse Europe, he had unleashed the power of the Builders to complete an impossible task in humbling one of his father’s rivals. The author seemingly accomplished the impossible task of getting readers to care about and respect a character who is […]
A military unit outside of the boundaries of its Empire, messing around in client kingdoms and bordering polities. A motley group of soldiers and gritty veterans, more than a bit war-weary. Some of those soldiers are burdened with dark secrets, and a mission and purpose unclear to anyone around them. Standard Sword and sorcery stuff, […]
Egil and Nix are thieves. Good thieves, as a matter of fact. True, they have side interests and pasts. Nix knows something of magic. Egil was trained as a priest of the Momentary God. Both of them have pasts and long careers as thieves, years of tomb robbing and other unsavory jobs. Now, the results […]
It’s the early 17th century. Elizabethan England. The scene is London, a diverse and eclectic metropolis. Maliverny Catlyn is a skilled but down on his luck swordsman and gentleman who is trying to scrape together a living on the hard streets of London, manage his relationship with his lover Ned, and keep his tortured […]
The magic returns (or comes into being) to our technological modern day world is not a new idea in fantasy. Rachel Pollack’s Unquestionable Fire. The novels of Alyx Dellamonica. The roleplaying games Shadowrun and GURPS: Technomancer hypothesize what would happen if magic erupted into the modern world. Other novels and stories ponder a return […]
When last we left Liam Kelly, the slow revelation of who and what he was had left him if not in a happy place, at least a relatively stable place. True, he had lost much in discovering his true heritage, lost his wife, lost friends, lost (or should we say, walked away) from his […]
Book Review: Songs of the Earth by Elspeth Cooper. Gair has been keeping a secret. Although he a good warrior for the Church, he has a talent for magic that the Church decries as witchcraft. It comes as a terrible song that he cannot stop hearing, and when it manifests too strongly, the magic […]
I am going to start this review off on a note and structure rather different than other book reviews of mine you’ve read of mine at the Functional Nerds and say this right up front: Prince of Thorns, a debut fantasy novel by Mark Lawrence, is a contentious novel with a mostly unsympathetic sociopathic […]
Last May, I read The Winds of Khalakovo, and reviewed it here at the Functional Nerds. The Winds of Khalakovo is a secondary fantasy novel borrowing from cultures not usually invoked in fantasy–Tsarist Russia and ancient Persia. Throw in a pair of very different magic systems, very non standard cultural issues of duty and honor, […]
The scene is Budapest, Hungary in the late 1930’s. Hitler’s saber rattling over in Germany is becoming more and more bellicose, and there is the scent of war in the air. The quasi-fascistic pre war Hungary is not the most pleasant of places, especially for a Jew like Magda. The fact that she is not […]
Kafkaesque Adjective Marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity e.g. Kafkaesque bureaucracies. Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger. In the manner of something written by Franz Kafka. There are precious few writers whose names have transcended their status as a proper noun. Dickens has become an adjective to […]
Captain Darian Frey has had some more reversals of fortune. Despite the encounter at Retribution Falls, keeping his beloved aerium fueled airship The Ketty Jay is serious business. His navigator is still weird and possibly inhuman, his daemonologist is still haunted by something he won’t talk about, his outrider fighter pilots are still a […]
Lucy Stone works as a game designer in Edinburgh. Digital Damage is making a Massively multiplayer online role playing game based on dark ages Britain. With Zombies and other odd things. Slaving away at this game, Lucy gets a call from her mother, a fellow émigré from a troubled region in the Caucaus. Her mother […]
Jacob Aldridge, scion of a respectable, well off family in 1882 London, has had the shadow of tragedy hanging over him. His beloved fiancée, Rhoda Carothers, has suddenly died, and he seems more than usually affected by the tragedy. A chance meeting with Livia Aram is shocking to both, for Livia very much resembles the […]
Its late 19th Century Seattle. The gold rush of the Klondike a couple of decades earlier meant that the city was large and growing when inventor Leviticus Blue’s magnum opus due too greedily and too deep, releasing a gas that turns those who breathe it too deeply into the walking dead. Those bitten or injured […]
Sing, Muse!: Moses Siregar III‘s The Black God’s War Two very different realms have struggled against each other for years. The Rezzians, worshipers of ten deities, have engaged in a holy war against their godless neighbors, the Pawleons. With the birth of a royal son who is also a prophesied holy leader with divine powers, […]
A savage pant—almost a laugh—puffed foul breath that blew hair from Sanders’s forehead. Sanders raised a fist, but the beast caught his arm with ease and slammed it on the concrete floor. Liam felt bones give way with a sickening snap and was pinned between satisfaction and revulsion. Sanders howled. A talon plunged into […]
“Ah!” Malagigi’s eyes flickered over the three staffs of power we carried—the staffs that were our Prospero Family legacy: Gregor’s Staff of Darkness, Erasmus’s Staff of Decay , and my flute, The Staff of Winds—before coming to rest upon Durandel riding in its sheath at Erasmus’s side. Softly, he murmured. “Maybe, with […]
hierophant noun. 1. (Historical Terms) (in ancient Greece) an official high priest of religious mysteries, esp those of Eleusis 2. a person who interprets and explains esoteric mysteries Back when I wrote a review of Finch, I called Jeff Vandermeer the “Hierophant of the New Weird”. I used that unusual word on purpose, then, and I use […]