Fantasy book news and recs

Slow news month! Here are my best picks from September:

-Parade Magazine released a list of the best SFF books of the year so far, with several fantasies.

-In their latest issue, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction announced that they have gone quarterly rather than bi-monthly. I actually don’t mind this as I can never keep up with reading FSF, but I might have a chance now!

Your indie fantasy reader magnets and free stories for this month:

What I’ve been reading:

School term has started again (teaching) so I’m back to reading for 15 minutes at the end of each day before I literally pass out. Last month I made it through half of ORCONOMICS, an indie fantasy that won the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off a few years ago and which I’d heard of but found again by searching for funny fantasy books that play with traditional adventuring party tropes—in this case intermixed with consideration of the economics of a fantasy world. I had a bit of trouble visualising the characters early on as there are lots of them and I forgot how they were described, but after a while inserting standard DnD templates into my imagination solved that problem. It’s a fun read and it’s made me laugh. Recommended!

What I’ve been listening to:

While in term-time my reading time is pressured, what with traffic-saturated school runs and stacks of housework to do listening time abounds. Huzzah! I’ve taken a break from GOTREK AND FELIX lately and have been listening to RED SEAS UNDER RED SKIES, Scott Lynch’s follow-up to THE LIES OF THE LOCKE LAMORA and the second in the currently three-strong GENTLEMEN BASTARD series (more coming this year!). This book gets talked down in some corners of the internet for not being as good as the first, and for being so different from the first. However, I have absolutely loved it. Yes, it may not be quite as tightly- and well-plotted as LIES, but as someone who had a pirate obsession as a child this venture of Lynch’s protagonists onto the high seas combined with a twisty heist story scratches itches I’d forgotten I had. And as usual with Lynch it’s astonishingly well written. Highly recommended!

What Jo’s been reading:

In a rare unexpected move, last month Jo stole a book not from my TBR pile as usual but from my RLY (read last year) pile instead, and read PALADIN’S GRACE, the cozy mystery/romantasy first-in-series by T. Kingfisher. She enjoyed it, but her assessment was similar to mine: Promises to be a theologically interesting novel, quickly turns out not be, plateaus quite early on and then picks up in the last quarter or so. Sort-of-recommended!

What I’ve been working on:

I finally finished line editing SAGA OF THE JEWELS volume one in response to the feedback I got from my editor. However, I then immediately decided I needed to go through it all again and do a consistency/continuity check, so I’m in the middle of that right now. Look out for an offer of a free advanced review copy of it in your inbox when I’m done. I also found a bit of time to edit a sample of another novel I’ve been intermittently working on which I’m going to send out too—so look out for that sometime as well.

In other news:

The craziness of the return to school has pretty much swamped anything interesting I might have to say in this segment this month (taking on teaching a third A-level which I never studied myself, you see). Therefore, I give you: More local co-op rom hacks! I’ve discovered some more of these and have been playing them with my daughter at the weekends: Star Fox, Mario World, Sonic 1-3. If you don’t know what a rom is and want to learn, go here. If you want the best list of local co-op rom hacks I’ve found so far, go here.

TTFN,

Faenon

Note: No new written SOTJ episode this month, however Matthew has now managed to record last month’s episode as a podcast, so here that is—sorry it’s a month late!