It’s been a busy week, filled with chores and travel, but the long drives meant I got to listen to my audiobook. It’s also been a week when my appetite for Fantasy and Urban Fantasy has been reawakened.

Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.

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This week, I read three fantasy books and the second book in a mystery series set in a small town in Canada. It was a good week, The mystery novel turned out to be better than the first one in the series, the collection of Urban Fantasy short stories contained some gems, and the cosy fantasy book made me smile. My only disappointment was a Dark Academia fantasy novel that was much too dark for me to finish. 

After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream – for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can’t go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune’s shady underbelly could make it all too easy for Viv to take up the blade once more.
But the true reward of the uncharted path is the travellers you meet along the way. Whether bound by ancient magic, delicious pastries or a freshly brewed cup, they may become something deeper than Viv ever could have imagined . . .

I should have believed the hype when this came out. It was a little buble of happiness delivered through a cosy fantasy about a retired Orc mercenary following her dream to lead a different, more rooted kind of life by setting up a coffee shop in a city where no one has heard of coffee. Like it’s prequel ‘Bookshops & Bonedust‘, this was a delight.

My review is HERE

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school’s honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.
If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.
And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.
Fabian isn’t worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.
As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

It seems that I’m not suited to Dark Academia books, even when they’re set in schools of magic. I set this book aside at 30% because I found the premise cruel and too similar to the ‘SAW’ movies. I don’t want this stuff in my head.

My review is HERE

Journalist Cat Conway is looking forward to an easy assignment covering a major wellness and self-actualization summit at the Pinerock Resort, featuring Bliss Bondar and Bree Guthrie, creators of the Welcome, Goddess empire and widows with attitude. Cat’s mother, Marian Conway, bestselling author and defiantly mediocre parent, is on the agenda—and so is murder.
When one of the influencers turns up dead, suspicion falls on the high-profile guests. Could the killer be a jealous business partner? Or the Instagram-famous poet? The academic who takes vicious aim at the wellness movement? The empowerment guru whose wife hates him? Or Cat’s mother, who has a reputation to protect and a shocking secret to hide?
Cat’s pulled into investigating another celebrity death, but this time while struggling with the possible demise of her livelihood: The Quill & Packet is struggling financially, and may be headed toward its final edition. A convoy of protesters, angry at Cat’s reporting, has besieged the Quill’s newsroom. Can Cat rescue her mother and her newspaper, or will the killer stalking Port Ellis beat her to the deadline?

My wife and I listened to this on a couple of long drives that weren’t quite long enough to finish it, so we spent a couple of hours at the end of the trip relaxing into the end of the story.

This was a big improvement on the first book in the series ‘Bury The Lead’. Cat felt flat in the first book. In this book I got inside her head and I got to see her relationship with her formidible celebrity mother. The pacing was much better and the descriptions of the people were fascinating and credible. I enjoyed the way the book wove a critique of the ‘Wellness’ industry, the spread of disinformation, and the anti-science cults into the mystery.

I’ll be back for book three.

A collection of eleven Urban Fantasy short stories, including:
Jim Butcher’s Cold Case, Molly Carpenter—Harry Dresden’s apprentice-turned-Winter Lady—must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you’re a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad…
Seanan McGuire’s Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything “weird.” They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.
In Kevin J. Anderson’s Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble’s latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner…
In Rob Thurman’s  Impossible Monsters, infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue—and nightmarish—vengeance involving some quite nasty impossible monsters.

In theory, there are no dusty corners in my digital library where a book can slink out of sight and sulk because I didn’t get around to reading it in the first month after I bought it. In practice, that’s exactly what ‘Shadowed Souls’ managed to do. I bought the book a day after it was published in November 2016. If that sounds eager, it’s because this book has new stories from six authors whose work I follow and each story has its own narrator, And yet, here I am in 2025, stumbling across the book when it shows up in a LibraryThing search for something else.

In the introduction to this collection, Kerrie Hughes says that she “…invited the authors to write a story that good and evil are just two aspects of a complicated and very human story, I wanted the plots to play with the concept and invite the reader to explore the edges of their own darkness.” Some of the stories hit the mark perfectly – dark, complex, compelling, tales. A couple, the ones attempting humour, didn’t hold my attention.

I recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys Urban Fantasy that’s thoughtful and packs a punch. I recommend the audiobook. Having a different narrator for each story made this a great listen.

My review, including comments on each story, is HERE

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I need a change of reading diet. I’ve been reading too many crime novels and thrillers. I’m ready to spice things up with some fantasy, Urban and otherwise. Three of the books I’ve added this week are by authors who I read for the first time last week in the ‘Shadowed Souls’ anthology. One is a new release by an author I’ve been following for a long time (although he was also in ‘Shadowed Souls’) and one is the first book in a dragon series that a reviewer I follow is a fan of. I don’t know when I’ll get to them all, but it’s nice to have them where I can reach for them when I want to escape into someone else’s imagination.

n the heart of Ohio, Jessie Shimmer is caught up in hot, magic-drenched passion with her roguish lover, Cooper Marron, who is teaching her how to tap her supernatural powers. When they try to break a drought by calling down a rainstorm, a hellish portal opens and Cooper is ripped from this world, leaving Jessie fighting for her life against a vicious demon that’s been unleashed.

In the aftermath, Jessie, who knows so little about her own true nature, is branded an outlaw. She must survive by her wits and with the help of her familiar, a ferret named Palimpsest. Stalked by malevolent enemies, Jessie is determined to find out what happened to Cooper. But when she moves heaven and earth to find her man, she’ll be shocked by what she discovers—and by what she must ultimately do to save them all.

I met Jessie Shimmer, a kick-ass outlawed-but-still-trying-to-be-good heroine with a complicated past, when she was going up against demonic forces in the short story ‘What Dwells Within‘ in the ‘Shadowed Souls‘ anthology. I liked her style so I picked up ‘Spellbent’ (2009) the first book in a trilogy. If I hadn’t read the short story first, this cover would have put me off but it’s an ebook and the cover is of its time so I’ll go with it.

Nial Sarnin is twenty-one—far too young to have lost her beloved husband, Jika. One year after his death, Nial prepares to fly a kite sewn from his wedding shirt, believing it will carry Jika’s spirit to the stars.

But instead of drifting gently skyward, the spirit kite moves under Nial’s direct control, revealing her as a Kitemaster—a rare gift in a world forever ruled by winds and magic.

Her newfound powers attract Captain Wolf of the kiteship Midnight Rain. With runaway Prince Vikaan, Wolf seeks to thwart Queen Kavaya’s ruthless ambition to dominate the skies and conquer all neighboring kingdoms.

Nial may hold the key to stopping Kavaya’s brutal reign and saving countless lives—including those she loves most—but only if she learns to master her extraordinary gift in time.

Every gust of wind promises hope, renewal, and a chance to reshape a world teetering on the brink in this inspiring tale of loss, resilience, and transformation.

I love the variety in Jim Hine’s books. Most of them are light-hearted but still make some serious points about power or gender or the suppression of knowledge. His recent books have felt a little – not darker – he’s not heading into horror- but more sombre. More aware of the consequences of the bad things that can happen to any of us.

I was excited when I saw that he’d started a new series. I hooked when I saw that it’s a series that starts with loss and deals with the possibility of renewal.

Having faked her death to escape the mistakes of her past, Vivienne “Lady Vengeance” Cain only wants to drink away her demons and be left alone… until the kid wanders into her bar with questions.
His name is Marcus Orestes, and he wants to know about his father. Justice, once the world’s greatest superhero. Justice, who died along with the rest of Supergroup. Justice, whose powers the kid seems to have inherited.
And no sooner does Orestes show up than all hell breaks loose. Ninjas, two-bit super thugs, murder bots, and even her niece, the amazing A-Girl, and worse: some sinister force pulling the strings. The dangers are overwhelming, but Vivienne isn’t the type to just lie down and die.
Time to sober up, come out of retirement, and get to the bottom of this…
And Lady Vengeance is all out of bourbon.

This wins the award for BOOK COVER THAT MAKES ME NOT WANT TO BUY THE BOOK, I bought it anyway because I liked the short story ‘Baggage’ in ‘Shadowed Souls’. In that story, Vivienne Cain wasn’t the cardboard cut out supervillain/superhero she might have been. I’m interested in her and I want to see what she does next

Cal Leandros is 19. He eats junk food, he doesn’t clean up after himself and fights with his half brother Niko. It’s a fairly normal life, but for the fact that Cal and Niko are constantly on the run. Cal’s father has been after him for the last four years. And given that he’s a monster whose dark lineage is the stuff of nightmares they really don’t want him and his entire otherworldly race catching up with them. But Cal is about to learn why they want him, why they’ve always wanted him – he is the key to unleashing their hell on earth.

Meanwhile the bright lights of the Big Apple shine on, oblivious to the fact that the fate of the human world will be decided in the fight of Cal and Niko’s lives . . .

‘Nightlife’ (2006) is the first book in Rob Thurman’s ten-book Urban Fantasy series about a half-human bogeyman, the monstrous Cal Leandros (think Dexter with a foul mouth and supernatural abilities), This is another series that I ws introduced to via ‘Shadowed Souls‘. His story, ‘Impossible Monsters’was dark and bleak I’m not sure I can take a whole book like that, never mind a series, but I’m going to ‘Nightlife‘ a try.

Miss Mildred Percy inherits a dragon.
Ah, but we’ve already got ahead of ourselves…
Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg.
The egg—as eggs are wont to do—decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.”
But England has not seen a dragon since…well, ever. And now Mildred must contend with raising a dragon (that should not exist), kindling a romance (with a humble vicar), and embarking on an adventure she never thought could be hers for the taking.

‘This is the first of three books in the ‘Miss Percy’s Guide’ series about dragons. I’ve been hearing good things about the series for a while now. I’m hoping this first book will give me a smile or two sometime uring this summer.

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It’s time for me to hit my TBR pile again. I’ve picked out three fanatasy offerings. One is the first book in an epic fntasy series, one is a slightly offbeat novella and one continues a low-key vampire series that I’ve been following.

The Emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands. 
Lin is the Emperor’s daughter and she spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic. 
Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.

‘The Bone Shard Daughter‘ (2020) was Andrea Stewart’s debut novel and the first book in a now completed Drowning Empire trilogy. It made a splash when it came out. It was nominated for (but didn’t win) lots of awards. Locus Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2021), British Fantasy Award Nominee for Best Fantasy Novel (Robert Holdstock Award) (2021), Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy and for Debut Novel (2020), BookNest AwardNominee for Best Traditionally Published Novel (2020).

I’ve held back on reading it because I didn’t want to be waiting a year for each new book to come out. If it lives up to my expectations, I’ll be getting to the other two books this year.

The audiobook has three narrators, which sounds promising. Here’s the audiobook extract that convinced me to buy the book.

Erin Rogers and her daughter Casey have been missing in the Alaskan wilderness for five days. Troy Spencer is determined to find his sister and niece at any cost. Once there, a local tells Troy about a loner, Bishop, a man shrouded in secrets, who may be his only hope.
As Troy sets out to find the mysterious Bishop, Casey is lost in the woods, alone and frightened, seeking help for her gravely injured mother. But she is not alone, something ancient stalks these forested trails, something evil that hungers for fresh blood.
The trio soon finds themselves caught in a struggle against time as an ancient rivalry is renewed.

This novella is a roll of the dice. Candace Nola’s name keeps coming up in lists of horror/dark fantasy writer’s to watch. I loved the cover of ‘Bishop‘ (2022) and I like the wilderness setting, so I’m giving it a try.

Aileen has always been certain of a few undeniable facts—black raspberry is the only ice cream flavor that matters, vampires can’t be trusted, and her loyalty, once given, is unquestionable. When a late-night visitor shows up needing her help, she agrees without hesitation. 
It’s not long before a pounding at her door reminds her that nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems. Now, with her friend missing, Aileen realizes her simple favor leads to consequences she cannot avoid as she finds herself drawn further into a world she’s done everything to escape.
As loyalties are tested, Aileen will need to decide how far she will go in the name of friendship. Because bodies are dropping and the trail leads right back to one she holds dear. Will she stand fast in her beliefs or will she be forced to betray another?
One thing is clear—her choice may lead to her salvation or her doom.

‘Moonlight’s Ambassador‘ (2018) is the third book inT. A. White’s Urban Fantasy series set in Columbus Ohio and featuring ex-army, turned-into-a-vampire-against-her-will milennial, Aileen Travers. I enjoyed the first two books ‘Shadow’s Messenger’ and ‘Midnight’s Emissary‘. I like Aileen’s snarky attitude and I enjoy Natasha Soudek’s slightly quirky narration