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Category Archives: Review

Lies Weeping: A Review

When I first encountered Glen Cook’s The Chronicles of the Black Company, I was fresh out of college and working at Borders (it was 2010, and the economy was garbage, and it was the only work I could get, despite a degree in technical writing). I found the original ten of Cook’s fantasy novels (published between 1984 and 2000) in large paperback omnibus editions, and I was immediately entranced by the cover art and the premise of a mercenary band roaming across a fantasy empire and struggling to survive against all odds. It would be over a decade before I managed to sit down with them, and at the time I was unaware that Glen Cook was not only still alive but also still writing, continuing the adventures of Croaker, Goblin, One-Eye, Lady, and all the others. I recently had the opportunity to go through the audiobook versions of the entire series in anticipation of the release of Lies Weeping, a new volume set after the events of Soldiers Live.

The Black Company as it was is no more. Soulcatcher and her forces were finally defeated, and Taglios was freed from her rule. The heroes who were trapped beneath the Plain of Glittering Stone were freed to participate in the final battle, and many were lost in the struggle. Now the Company is lead by Suvrin, who had once served as Sleepy’s lieutenant. They have returned from Taglios, through the Shadowgate into Hsien, to the outpost known as An Abode of Ravens. Taking over as co-annalists are Arkana and Shukrat, two young women from the world known to the company as Khatovar who were taken in by Croaker and Lady. Lady herself remains with the company, but with the defeat of the goddess Kina, her magic is greatly diminished once again. Shukrat and Arkana may bicker over how best to maintain Croaker’s legacy with the Company’s annals, but they’re still working together. Croaker himself is no longer with the Company, having taken the role once held by the demon Shivetya as the guardian of the Plain of Glittering Stone. Now with his burgeoning omniscience, he can monitor all the comings and goings of his loved ones back and forth through time, even when his physical form is still bound to the throne beneath the Plain.

Things are not quite what they all seem at An Abode. Packs of roving monkeys are threatening the Company’s food supply as winter approaches. Strange spirits appear to be haunting Tobo, the Company’s primary mage and friend of the Unknown Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat have spotted an old man wandering about near the outpost, and of all the impossible things, he looks like Croaker. Lady, meanwhile, is crafting a plan to try to restore her daughter, Booboo, to a level of health and sanity she had never in her short life possessed. The only hints anyone has received have been in the form of mysterious notes posted about An Abode, and the whispered phrase “Lies Weeping.”

Glen Cook is launching a new continuation of The Chronicles of the Black Company, with Lies Weeping being the first novel in a A Pitiless Rain. He’s deftly weaving together his original novels with his more recent work like Port of Shadows. Arkana and Shukrat serve as our primary narrators in this book, with amendments by a young man named Dikken in interstitial chapters. This book strikes me as a fine addition to the series that I’ve come to love so much in recent months. My utmost thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Lies Weeping came out last Tuesday, 11/4/25. If you’re a Black Company fan, you should snag this one ASAP. If you’re not yet a fan, now’s as good a time to start as any.

King Sorrow: A Review

Joe Hill’s new novel, King Sorrow, is his first full-length work in almost a decade, and I feel it was absolutely worth the wait.

King Sorrow is the story of Arthur Oakes and his friends, and the dragon to which they find themselves pact-bound. It’s New England in the early 90s, and Arthur is a young black man working in the campus library at Rackham College. His mother is serving a prison sentence at a nearby facility, and so he stays close by so that he can continue to visit her as her parole date approaches. Arthur has his eyes on a graduate program in England once he graduates, but his plans are disrupted when a blackmail scheme is launched against him. His mother has made some enemies on the inside, and the daughter of one threatens injury to Arthur’s mom unless he cooperates. So it is that Arthur begins to steal rare books from the college library’s collection for the blackmailers to sell.

Arthur’s friends eventually find out about what’s going on, of course, but they realize that one of the books that Arthur has been instructed to steal might contain the answers to their problem. The Crane journal, a grimoire bound in human skin, has been a part of the rare book collection for years, and inside it are the instructions to summon King Sorrow, a dragon who is willing to make pacts with humans. One night, in a weed and booze-fueled haze, the group gathers around a table and calls out to him. A bargain is struck. Arthur’s blackmailers will be dead by Easter, and he and his friends will be protected.

The problem with deals, though, is always in the details. Arthur and his friends soon learn that they must choose a new sacrificial offering once a year, or their own lives are forfeit. If the only way to summon King Sorrow is found in the grimoire, then the way to rid oneself of him must be contained in it as well, but the book itself made its way to the blackmailers and their buyer before the Easter deadline.

King Sorrow is a fantastic slow burn. I’ve missed Hill’s writing a great deal of late, but I was thrilled to get a chance to tackle this one early. It was released on 10/21, and so it’s been loose in the world for almost a week. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Queen Demon: A Review

The sequel to Martha Wells’ phenomenal Witch King is here!

In the distant past, the Hierarchs entered the world and seized power. They killed indiscriminately, razing city-states, exerting control over everything, and turning families against themselves. Many tried to stand against them and failed, and for a time, they were believed to be unstoppable. That changed with the arrival of Kaiisteron, Prince of the Fourth House of the Underearth, the one who would come to be known as the Witch King. Kai was a demon inhabiting a human body, and when his host’s people were overrun by the Hierarchs, he was captured. Soon, however, he was taken in by a local nobleman named Bashasa. Bashasa had been preparing to launch a revolution, and befriending Kai forces him to accelerate the plans, as together they manage to kill a pair of Hierarchs.

Decades later, Kai and his allies were split up and imprisoned, left for dead by a group of conspirators who sought to seize control of the Rising World and establish a new empire. They underestimated him. During the events of Witch King, Kai took a new host body, rescued his best friend Ziede, and set off to find out who had betrayed them and why. Classic revenge quest.

Now, reunited with his friends and found family, Kai has a new goal: investigate the origins of the Hierarchs and ensure that they can return to threaten the Rising World again. At the end of Witch King, Dahin, Ziede’s brother-in-law, was hot on the trail of the origin of the Hierarchs. Now he may have proof that those origins are not what everyone believed, and that the Hierarchs are not as fully gone as everyone would like.

Kai must still grapple with the past in Queen Demon, with chapters alternating the early days of the rebellion against the Hierarchs and the modern day struggle for the mysterious Well that powered their abilities. Both timelines see the Fourth Prince navigating the complexities of human relationships, war, and politics. Kai’s growth as a character is evident, largely due to the death of his rescuer, Bashasa, at some point in the past. The legacy he left behind is clearly still serving as Kai’s guiding star as he navigates through his relationships with humans, witches, and other demons.

Martha Wells has been a favorite author for years, since I first picked up a copy of All Systems Red. I love the setting of the Rising World novels, and I will happily return any time we get the opportunity.

Queen Demon is out in the world as of Tuesday, 10/7/25. Go get it.

My utmost thanks, as always, to Netgalley and Tor for an advance copy in exchange for a fair review.

Spread Me: A Review

Sarah Gailey has been one of my favorite writers since I first encountered their work in River of Teeth. They have a tremendous knack for writing team dynamics and characters who survive against all odds. Their most recent book, Spread Me, is a spectacular example of both of these qualities with healthy doses of horror and horniness mixed in.

Kinsey is a researcher. She is the leader of an isolated team that is studying the cryptobiotic crust deep in the desert on a four-year mission. As is expected of humans under these sort of circumstances, the members of the team find themselves romantically (or at least sexually) entangled with one another, with the sole exception of Kinsey herself. While she’s not asexual, she’s not attracted to any of her fellow researchers (or fellow humans). Kinsey has a unique situation that she’s struggled to hide from the others at the station—she’s attracted to and aroused by viruses.

Under normal circumstances, Kinsey’s feelings aren’t an issue. She’s not distracted by the interactions of her coworkers, and feels like the isolation of their research station is conducive to her ability to focus on her work. Really, it’s an ideal setup for her. Until, of course, the specimen is unearthed.

Domino is the one to accidentally uncover it, but Kinsey is the one who saw it was breathing, the one to insist on breaking with protocols and bringing it inside the research station before an oncoming sandstorm can bury it again. Against the protests of Mads, the team medic, she brings the thing into the lab. To give a nod to Gailey’s earlier work, “this was a terrible plan.” Not long after contact with the specimen, the other team members begin to show signs of a viral infection, and Kinsey… Kinsey begins to fantasize about the implications of a previously unknown type of life—one that seems to know just what it is that she desires most, and is willing to do anything to give it to her.

Spread Me is an utterly brilliant erotic horror novella. Kinsey is simultaneously distant and sympathetic as she struggles with the differences between acknowledging and loving what she has and exploring her deepest, most secret desires. The novella alternates skillfully between chapters covering the present situation at the station and the recent past, wherein Kinsey and her subordinates meet, arrive at the station for the first time, and get to know each other. It’s a welcome diversion from the mounting tension (dramatic and otherwise) in the present, and gives you a chance to understand the relationships, and just why everyone at the station implicitly trusts Kinsey, even when that’s not the best course of action.

I absolutely loved Spread Me. It’s the fourth Gailey book I’ve read, and it’s an unrepentantly horny version of my all-time favorite horror movie, John Carpenter’s The Thing. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Spread Me is available today. If you’re looking for sexy horror, this is it. Go get it.

Lucky Day: A Review

New Chuck Tingle horror means that it’s my lucky day. The mysterious man behind Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays is back, and he’s about to throw a curveball the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Vera Norrie is a statistician and University of Chicago professor who is about to celebrate the release of her first book, a takedown of Everett Vacation and Entertainment. On May 23rd, she and her fiancée, Annie, are going out for brunch with a group of their friends and Vera’s mother. The whole day has been meticulously planned by Vera as a way of coming out as bisexual to her mom and announcing their planned marriage. When things don’t go quite as hoped, Vera’s mother storms out of the diner with Vera close on her heels, and then all hell breaks loose.

May 23rd would become known as the Low-Probability Event, a disaster of nearly impossible (and statistically ridiculously unlikely) proportions. Nearly eight million people die that day, and Vera flees from the carnage, leaving everything and everyone else behind. I’m not going to say more about the event itself here, because there’s something to Tingle’s crafting of a series of Rube Goldberg-esque deaths that rival anything seen in the Final Destination films that just needs to be experienced for oneself.

Four years after the LPE, Vera’s depression and isolation are interrupted by the arrival of Jonah Layne, an agent for the Low-Probability Event Commission. He’s on a mission to expose Everett Vacation and Entertainment and their flagship Vegas hotel and casino, Great Britannica, as being somehow behind the disaster of May 23rd, and he’s come to get Vera’s help. She’s enlisted as a consultant to examine the reality behind the LPE, and decides to tag along with Agent Layne, mostly because he’s picked the same fight that she once had all those years ago. The big problem is that, while there was only ever one major low-probability event, there’s been a lot of little ones. For Vera and Agent Layne, things can only get weirder.

Lucky Day is an absolute blast to read. It may not appear as strictly horror on the outside, but Tingle’s writing will leave you questioning the odds of, well, everything you could ever fear. Vera is a painfully relatable protagonist, dealing with utter chaos and devastation by functionally shutting down and ignoring society because, after the LPE, nothing really matters. Agent Layne is a delightful foil, a hyper-competent federal agent reminiscent of Twin Peaks‘ own Dale Cooper or Tingle’s own Dark Encounters (the X-Files-esque TV series Tingle’s protagonist, Misha, was writing in Bury Your Gays). The book is out in the world as of Tuesday, August 12th. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for granting me access to an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Black Flame: A Review

I love when Gretchen Felker-Martin releases a new book, and today is no exception. Black Flame is out in the world today, and that’s more than a little terrifying to think too much about.

It’s 1985, and Ellen Kramer is working as a film and negative restorer at a Staten Island archival firm. When a long lost German film, “Black Flame,” arrives at their building, Ellen and her coworkers are torn. It’s not a popular kind of movie, after all. It’s full of queer people in gender-bending roles, made on a low budget, and only recently recovered from the collection of a now-deceased Nazi officer. The film itself is in horrible shape, requiring lots of extra care and attention from the restoration team. The work, however, would pay enough to keep the firm afloat for most of the next year. Never mind the fact that it has the chance to fix the firm’s public image after their last big project’s connection to the KKK brought all the wrong kinds of attention to them. With that kind of money in the offering, Ellen’s boss leaps at the opportunity. He also decides that Ellen, being Jewish, should head up the effort to restore a lost work by a great Jewish director.

Ellen’s very uncomfortable with all of this. It makes her think of her ex, Freddie, and the time the two of them spent together. Time that she would much rather consider a phase after the two of them broke up. It doesn’t help that her parents are trying to set her up with a nice young man who might become mayor someday. They’re concerned that if she doesn’t get married and have children soon, it might be too late for her. The work strains her relationships with her coworkers too, to the point where all Ellen wants is to finish restoring the print so that she can be rid of the film forever.

That’s not how this is going to go. After accidentally cutting her hand on the film negative, things start to get progressively weirder. Ellen begins to question everything she knows about herself, her sexuality, her gender, her religion, her family history, and even reality itself. As the work stretches on, more and more of the past begins to bubble up to the surface. Some things, after all, will always refuse to remain hidden, and the costs of bringing “Black Flame” back into the present are far more severe than anyone could have anticipated.

Black Flame is a quick, almost frenetic short novel, clocking in at just over 200 pages. It’s far shorter than Felker-Martin’s earlier works, Manhunt and Cuckoo, but it’s no less gruesome and scary. Body horror remains one of her strongest suits, but the tension that she builds with Ellen in such a short period of time is absolutely incredible. I raced through this book out of sheer desire for the release of finishing and seeing how the end finally arrives.

My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Black Flame is on shelves today, August 5th. Go get yourself a nice, fast-reading spooky. It’s almost Hallowe’en, after all.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: A Review

Wait. V.E. Schwab, one of my all-time favorite living writers, has written a vampire book? A lesbian vampire book?!

I’m in.

What does it mean to hunger? What would you do if you were never satisfied? Would you find more people like yourself to share in that desire? What if you could make more people like yourself?

Maria lived in Spain in the 1530s, and was that perpetually wanting child. When she was eventually married off to a wealthy nobleman, she thought that she would want for nothing else. She didn’t anticipate that her husband only wanted her to be a vessel for a child. What the viscount didn’t know was the Maria had befriended an old widow, Sabine, who concealed a dark secret.

Now you may have guessed from my intro here that Sabine was, in fact, a vampire. She had also developed feelings for Maria and so, in an attempt to set her free of the bonds that would tie her to her husband, she turned Maria. In Maria’s desperate, wanting frenzy, she didn’t stop when Sabine offered her own blood in return, draining away everything that the old widow was. Soon, Maria finds herself alone, with no one to guide her in the strange world of night that she’s plunged into.

In 2019, a young girl named Alice meets another girl at a college party. After what seems like it will be a one-night-stand, Alice realizes that there was more to Lottie than met the eye. Knowing what she has become, but finding it almost impossible to believe, Alice sets out to find Lottie again. There are answers to be found, and most of them seem to trace back to Maria, who is now going by the name of the woman who turned her all those centuries ago.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is beautiful. It hit stores on Tuesday, June 10th. My utmost thanks to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

A Fate Forged in Fire: A Review

Aemyra lives a seemingly mundane life working as a blacksmith’s assistant, alongside her twin brother Adarian at their stepfather’s forge. Her gift of manipulating fire, courtesy of the goddess Brigid, is second to none who are not Bonded to a companion creature, and she dreams of Bonding to a dragon. One problem—the only remaining dragons in Tir Teine are in the hands of the royal family, and a Bond can only be broken by death.

That’s where Aemyra’s real secret comes in. She’s a member of an exiled branch of the royal family, and the first daughter born into the royal line in hundreds of years. After her father’s first failed rebellion, he was banished, but his children have been living in hiding in Tir Teine, right under the king’s nose (even providing blacksmithing services to the court). When the old king dies, it’s time for her to step up and return the power of the matriarchy that had previously ruled the land. All she has to do is find the king’s mourning dragon and bond with him before his son manages to do so… Then, no one in Tir Teine will be able to deny her claim to the throne. No big deal, right? Except that the king’s other son, Prince Fiorean, will do whatever it takes to stop her from taking his brother’s place. With his bonded dragon, Fiorean’s fire magic is second to none, and Aemyra

A Fate Forged in Fire is a decently clever twist on a lot of the expected tropes of a modern romantic fantasy, and while it was definitely a slower start for me than some similar titles, I’m glad I stuck with it. It was published on 5/27/25, and is worth checking out if you like the genre, as well as Celtic-inspired fantasy. Hazel McBride has a promising beginning here. My utmost thanks for NetGalley and Random House for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me: A Review

BEWARE! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS FOR BOOK ONE!

SERIOUSLY. GO READ BOOK ONE.

Did you do it? Okay.

Cool. Here we go.

Hail Dark Lord Davi!

Last time we checked in with Davi, she’d successfully manipulated the time loops that she’d been experiencing since she first woke up in The Kingdom, roughly 1,000 years ago (by her own personal reckoning). Since that day, when the wizard Tserigern first told her that she was the Chosen One, fated to save The Kingdom from the Dark Lord, she’s lived and died thousands of times. Each time, beginning a new time loop has allowed Davi to take advantage of her own memories and predict the actions of others around her. Each time, she’s failed to save The Kingdom. So, back at the beginning of Django Wexler’s absolutely brilliant How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, she started a new tactic—killing Tserigern and setting off on a path to become the Dark Lord (surprise! Bet you didn’t see that coming).

Finally arriving on the far side of the continent and triumphing over her rivals, Davi now stood at the head of a massive horde of wilders with her second in command, the orc woman, Tsav, at her side (as well as frequently in her bed). With Artaxes, the arbiter of the challenges, having officially crowned her as Dark Lord Davi, all that remained was… wait… what happens now?

See, during the challenges, Davi died. Again. Only this time, she didn’t reset back to the beginning with Tserigern. She only went back one day. The rules changed, and suddenly consequences meant something again. Now, Davi faces a new problem. If she doesn’t want to lose all of the progress that she’s finally made in her march to power (and her relationship with Tsav), she’s going to have to stop treating the other people around her as tools and stepping stones. So, new list of tasks: 1.) Convince the wilders that they don’t have to kill all the humans. 2.) Convince the humans that they don’t have to kill the wilders. 3.) Not die.

No big deal, right? Davi sets off from the wilderness back to The Kingdom to uncover the mysteries of how humans ended up in this world in the first place, what changed about the time loops, and, if she’s The Chosen One, who did The Choosing.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me is another brilliant, darkly hilarious fantasy adventure from Django Wexler, and is a perfect ending to Davi’s long, long, long life. The footnotes throughout continue to annotate Davi’s incredibly ADHD approach to things (supplementing many of her thoughts with her own intrusive thoughts based on her fading memories of our world). Wexler’s humor ensures that Davi’s journey isn’t too fraught, but there’s definitely more consequences for her actions this time around.

It’s out in the world today, May 27th. Get yourself a copy, and dive in!

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. I’m pretty glad I didn’t need a time loop to get it.

OR DID I?!

The Staircase in the Woods: A Review

“On Friday, June 5th, 1998, five teenagers went into the woods surrounding Highchair Rocks in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Only four of them came out.” – Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

So begins Wendig’s latest novel. That summer night, Owen, Hamish, Nick, Matty, and Lauren went camping. The Covenant, as they called themselves, was bound by solemn promises to protect each other from bullies, to collaborate on homework so none of them fell behind, and so on. That night in the woods, high atop the cliffs, they find something impossible. A staircase, spiraling upward with no remnants of other structure around, no indications of how it had gotten there, or why. When no obvious answers could be found, most of the group decided to leave it be and go back to their campsite. Something about the staircase continues to eat at Matty, though, and so he invokes the Covenant (despite being told that’s not how it works) to get everyone else to go back with him and see what awaits them at the top.

Reluctantly, the other four teens trail along only to watch in shock and horror as, at the final stair, Matty vanishes. There’s no sign of him again.

The days and weeks after are chaos as the four survivors struggle to process what happened and to come up with a cohesive lie to tell to the police about what happened to their missing friend. They face relentless questioning about where they last saw him, who they talked to, and where he could have gone. The only problem is, none of them really know where Matty went, and the staircase is gone too, eliminating the possibility of anyone following after him.

Now, decades have passed, and the four surviving members of The Covenant have done their best to move on with their lives until an email arrives from Nick. He’s dying. Cancer. He wants to get the old gang together one last time before he’s gone, so he offers to fly all of them out to see him. He even invokes The Covenant to ensure that, despite all of the myriad issues they’ve developed as they’ve aged, they’ll come. And so they do.

Upon arrival, they quickly realize that Nick wasn’t being entirely honest with them. Instead of a nice get-together, he leads them off into the woods where, against all sense, they find the staircase again. It’s not the same place, but they know, somehow, that it’s the same staircase. He urges them to climb with him. A chance, he says, to do the right thing. To go find Matty.

To bring him back.

And, in the name of The Covenant, they follow.

The Staircase in the Woods is a brilliant, dark piece of horror from Wendig in the vein of Stephen King’s It (friends coming back together again as adults to face the evil they couldn’t defeat in their youth). The members of The Covenant have fallen away from each other, and they’re going to confront more than just the mysteries that lie at the top of the staircase if they’re going to have any chance of making it out of the woods again. I love Wendig’s horror (see my recent review of Black River Orchard) and I’m certain that most of you will too.

The Staircase in the Woods is out today from Del Rey books. My utmost thanks to them and to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.