fantasy
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The final instalment of the HMRC saga sees the end of the world. I mean, we saw it coming, but we kinda hoped… Ciara had been unmasked as her sister Niamh’s killer, but she’d also rid the world of evil warlock Dabney Hale. And she’d managed to reconcile herself with Leonie and Elle at the…
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So, I’ve been a huge fan of Chuck Wendig’s for many years, and I may now be at a point where just his voice on the page means I’m just primed to enjoy what he writes. And so it was here, where I really enjoyed and stuck with this story, even though nothing and no…
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This is my fifth book of HG Parry’s and she never fails to impress. Like The Magician’s Daughter before it, this is a gentler, more involved story than the Magical Histories. But this also has a fullness that the previous book did not, following every moment of the deep friendships that this book is about…
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“We’re coming to get you. Me and Alice and Ribs, we’re coming. There’s a second orsine. Were going to find it and then I’m going through it, to find you. I’ll bring you out. Can you hear me? Mar? Can you hear me?” He shook his small head. He tried to warn Charlie but no…
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This is an exceptional addition to the world of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, establishing not only the idea of a community of witches and warlocks at the highest levels of British society, but also the rich diversity of magic and its grey relationship with heaven and hell alike. But the incredible success of this slim…
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‘The library is our memory. It’s all that survives.’ Lawrence’s world building is intricate dense and layered. It’s also living, dynamic and sensory, reminiscent of Spirited Away. I would have happily read a story in either thread of this book, but the stark differences in the approach and style of the two viewpoints makes this…
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I think the best indication of my response to HG Parry’s, The Magician’s Daughter, is that I cannot wait to be able to give this book to my own daughter. This is, unashamedly, just a story about growing up, with a fairly straightforward plot, but it’s also cleverly constructed, immaculately paced and the prose is…
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Babel, Or The Necessity of Violence. An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Audiobook read by Chris Lew Kum Hoi and Billie Fulfprd Brown. Babel is an extraordinary book, a rich and deeply personal story. Robin Swift, taken from his native Canton and the arms of his dead mother, moulded into a facsimile of…
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In Sunyi Dean’s first novel, we’re introduced to book eaters; a humanoid race who consume the written word to survive, literally living off of stories, and benefitting from the ability to retain and access all the information in the texts they consume. But, where one might imagine the state of enlightenment this might lead to,…
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Another fantastic magical history! Finding a way to weave an alternate plot into established history is no easy task, and often historical fiction finds greater freedom by looking at minor figures, on the fringe of history, to find the wiggle room to invent. But, as HG Parry so recently showed with her Shadow Histories duology,…
Damien Kelly 