Fantasy Books News for January

Goodreads Awards, WIND AND TRUTH and Big Books of 2025

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Dear reader,

Happy New Year!

There was a surprisingly good reaction to the podcast version of last month’s newsletter, so this month you also get a podcast version again (above).

Fantasy Books News:

-The Goodreads Choice Awards for 2024 were announced late last year. The fantasy winner was TJ Klune’s SOMEWHERE BEYOND THE SEA and the YA fantasy winner was Rebecca Ross’s RUTHLESS VOWS.

-Goodreads also put out their ‘Big Books of 2025’ list. I’m most interested in THE DEVILS by Abercrombie and KATABASIS by R.F. Kuang. How about you?

-Some guy called Brandon Sanderson published some book called WIND AND TRUTH, the fifth in some series called THE STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE.

-Grimdark Magazine have announced that their next issue will publish on January 15th, which among other things will have the conclusion of Scott Lynch’s ‘Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent’ short story.

-I mentioned this in my Christmas email but (remembering that the superhero genre is a sub-type of fantasy 😉) there are still some killer Kindle Comixology sales going on till 6th Jan (link is for US page but they’re on in all stores), including a Marvel Best of 2024 sale.

-Hat tip to Lorna L for this one. A while ago she emailed to point me in the direction of this Andrew Marr BBC documentary about fantasy novels which is available to watch for free for residents of the UK (sorry, US, CA and AUS readers!). Jo and I finally watched it and although I pissed her off by predicting every segueway and quote before it happened, it was still a fun watch.

-Don’t get too excited! I’m just including this because it only came to my attention recently: Someone made a repository of all the sample chapters of George RR Martin’s WINDS OF WINTER that have been released so far (including from transcripts of him reading of some of them!) See it here. I wanted to read these on my e-reader so I created a file of all of them in one ebook too--get that here in any format you like.

Your free and discounted indie fantasy ebook sales for this month:

I went a bit crazy on these this month because I’m pushing the ARC of SOTJ 1 hard right now. Please tap/click lots of them so that I can maintain my BookFunnel group promo reputation!

By the way, if you like these ebook sales I’m experimenting with a new newsletter which just has book sales in it (though they’ll start off being the same sales as in this newsletter, I’ll possibly add more if it takes off). If you’re interested or just want to support me, subscribe here:

What I’ve been reading:

Here’s all the books I read this year as summed up by GoodReads:

This year I had a bit of a reading boom and read 40 books, way more than I’ve managed in quite a few years as ever since I started teaching I’ve had less energy to read. Some of the books I read were individual short stories, but if you subtract those I read 28 novels or complete anthologies this year which is still way more than normal. The secret? I’ve finally managed to get into consistently listening to audiobooks! Which I can do while washing up or commuting. So about 12 of these were audiobooks. The best short story I read this year was THE MONKEY TREATMENT by GRRM; the best novel I read was COLD IRON by Miles Cameron; and the best audiobook I listened to was THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA by Scott Lynch.

By the way, if you’re on it, come be my friend on Goodreads!

And make sure to follow some dude called Thomas Tarasios there too for whenever his books go live 😉

For my last read of the year I needed an easy win to get to 40 books so I read Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #4 aka SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDRY, continuing my late sword and sorcery education. It was typically brilliant, though I forgot I do have to concentrate quite hard to read Leiber…

Faenon recommends:

While we’re on the subject of Leiber, I may have recommended him before but if you’ve still not read any of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series, you really need to fix that. This pulp author and Grand Master of Science Fiction’s short stories about the eponymous adventuring duo have an almost supernatural quality of both taking themselves extremely seriously and being utterly ridiculous, of being both childishly joyful and darkly melancholic, at the same time, and are a major influence on basically every major-league fantasy author working today (for e.g. GRRM, Abercrombie and Lynch all cite him, and Pratchett was a fan too.) He writes beautifully, literarily and philosophically about two guys going around smacking sorcerers with swords. I recommend starting with the Hugo and Nebula-award winning story ‘Ill Met in Lankhmar’ in the collection SWORDS AND DEVILTRY.

Bonus! Over the Christmas holidays I also read a bunch of comics, including ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN: MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, gleaned from the aforementioned Marvel sale. They relaunched Ultimate Spider-Man! This is my favourite line of comics ever, and in my opinion Brian Bendis’ original run on it is the greatest comic book run of all time. I’m not as much of a fan of pretentious Jonathan Hickman, however having followed Spider-Man through being a substitute teacher and an actual teacher (in other universes) I couldn’t resist a new Ultimate-Universe comic that has him as an older man married with kids (the other one is SPIDER-MAN: RENEW YOUR VOWS which I own in paperback and is awesome) and Hickman did a great job with this volume. The only thing I don’t like it is older Peter Parker’s stupid beard!

What I’ve been listening to:

Having now listened to every single Willaim King GOTREK AND FELIX novel, I’ve gone back to Scott Lynch’s GENTLEMEN BASTARD sequence and am 1/3 of the way through THE REPUBLIC OF THIEVES. It’s awesome so far, but RED SEAS started really well for me too but didn’t stick the landing, so I’m trying not to count my chickens. At least I’ll be ready for THE THORN OF EMBERLAIN if it publishes this year!

What Jo’s been reading:

Jo has been continuing to plow through Lois McMaster Bujold’s WORLD OF THE FIVE GODS novellas, and I’ve lost count of exactly how many she read last month so I’ve just linked to the Goodreads series page. I’ve still forbidden her from telling me anything about them as I still want to read the mainline novels one day (maybe next?), but she does tell me that they are extremely good.

What we’ve been playing:

I got Jo and the 7yo Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Crossroads of Destiny boardgame and it’s awesome! It says age 10+ but with a bit of help the 7yo is fine. It takes you through a campaign of the story of the series and is basically like an extremely stripped-down version of Gloomhaven (tactical combat with elemental boosts). I highly recommend it if you have kids and are a fan of the series!

What I’ve been working on:

I always get really depressed around winter because of the short dark days, so this time round I’ve been channeling that depression into writing. The working title of Saga of the Jewels book 3 is SHADOW AND LIGHT and the ‘light’ part is pretty much done, so last month I started on ‘shadow’ and banked about 10,000 words, a normal month for me when I’m drafting while teaching. Book 3 should start appearing in the email serial/podcast later this year, and as a published ebook in 2026 if all goes to plan.

In other news:

It was Christmas! I cooked Christmas dinner (above) for the first time in 36 years! Take that, patriarchy! Also, the 6yo became a 7yo and had a ‘bugs and flowers (and princesses)’ party! Also, the 1yo becomes a 2yo the day this email is scheduled to go out! For her birthday the 7yo got something from her grandparents which she has been requesting for months: a small electric car! Unfortunately, she felt it goes a little too slow for her! Fortunately, the 2yo has fallen in love with it and him ‘driving’ it is one of the funniest things I have ever seen:

That’s all for this month; see you in February. Oh, except to say that I’ve taken some advice and set up a ‘Saga of the Jewels Fan Club’ Facebook Group. If you want to join that then click the link, and the latest recap and episode of the Saga is of course below and in the podcast version of this newsletter too.

TTFN,

-Faenon

Previously on Saga of the Jewels…

The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. He discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. Ryn sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, and VISH the poppy-seed-addicted bounty hunter. Together the adventurers decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where they intend to compete in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament in order to attempt to win its grand prize, the EARTH EMERALD…

EPISODE THIRTY: BLOCKED

Seven days till the tournament.

The haggard Farrian official shut the stone doors of the Governor’s audience chamber behind him, the last to exit, and they slammed with finality.

“Well then,” he said, the resentment detectable in his voice, “I suppose you had better come with me.”

“Where is this ‘manse’ we’re staying in?” Ryn asked for the group, beating Nuthea to it.

“It’s on this top level of the city,” said the official as he began to lead them across the stone floors. “For some reason he’s letting you stay in our finest guest accommodation, normally reserved for diplomats and dignitaries. I can’t think why.” He eyed Vish, barely keeping a sneer from his face. “He must want to keep a close eye on you.”

Out of the building, into the brisk, crisp mountain air, along the way a bit, and the official led them to another of the miniature mountains-upon-the-mountain that were all over Shun Pei--another one of the spines of this gigantic conical porcupine, as Nuthea had come to think of it.

Inside the earthen structure the walls and floor were made of polished grey stone. A circular atrium had several doors leading off it, with golden knockers each carved into the face of a monkey. At the centre of the atrium was a small fountain made of white stone which pumped water up by some hidden mechanism and sprayed it out in a glittering circle.

Now this was more like it. This was more what Nuthea was used to. The Captain’s chamber on Wanderlust was tolerable, but not really up to standards. And, by the end, the Earth Temple had grown quite unbearable. This was much more to Nuthea’s tastes.

“They are single rooms,” said the official, begrudgingly, “so you may each have your own. I am sure you are more than capable of deciding who will sleep where.” He pointed to a stone staircase at one end of the atrium. “There are a few more rooms on the upper floor. I suggest the young ladies sleep up there.” He pointed to the central door that led off from the atrium, the only one without a golden monkey-face knocker. “The dining area is through there. Servants will bring food there at sunrise, noon, and sundown. Each of your rooms locks from the inside, and the keys are in the rooms already. You should have everything you need. Oh, I nearly forgot...”

He reached inside the folds of his blue robes and brought out a collection of small white papers, counted off six of them, then handed them to Nuthea.

“What are these?” she asked, looking down at the square scraps of parchment covered in an inked script of strange symbols that she could not read. The Farrians had a very odd form of writing.

“Your visitors’ papers,” said the official. “One for each of you. If you show these at the gates between any of the levels of the city, they will let you through, so you can pass between them as you wish. You are free to explore the city at your leisure and come and go as you please. Now you should have everything you need. The Governor’s tournament will be held in seven days’ time, next firstday, at Tenkachi, a town not far from Shun Pei. I will visit you again on seventhday to give you the details. If you need anything or have any problems, I can be found at the entry gate to this uppermost level. Enjoy your time in Shun Pei.”

With that, he left, seemingly keen to get away from them as quickly as possible.

“Well this is pretty sweet,” said Elrann when he had gone, looking around at the fountain, the floor, the golden door-knockers. “Much nicer digs than the last time I was in Shun Pei, anyway…”

“Did you hear that?” said Ryn. “They have servants who are going to provide meals for us! No more hard tack and salted beef! We won’t even have to use Nuthea’s coin to buy food anymore!”

“Well,” said Nuthea, “unless we want to explore the city and eat at inns for some of our meals to experience some of the local cuisine.” She didn’t see what the fuss was about. This was all perfectly normal. Although she supposed it wasn’t for Ryn and the others, and she was glad he was happy about it. I haven’t seen him this happy in...ever?

“It’s not bad, it’s not bad,” acquiesced Sagar. “I mean, I’ve stayed in nicer places. But this will do.”

“I suggest,” said Nuthea, “that we all take some time to settle into our rooms, and meet up again in the dining area at noon for our luncheon. Elrann and I will take two of the rooms on the upper floor, as the minister suggested. It is only proper that we have our own floor.”

Sagar frowned, and looked as if he was about to do that growling thing he did and then open his mouth to protest, but Nuthea zapped him with a meaningful glare and managed to head it off. The skycaptain kept his mouth shut, and only a very faint growl came from it. Boys. He needs to learn to control himself.

“Great,” said Ryn by contrast, “see you all at noon. Which room do you want, Cid?”

“I’ll take this one,” said Cid, pointing to the nearest door.

Nuthea and Elrann left them to it and went upstairs, each choosing one of the rooms on the upper floor.

Nuthea shut the door to her room behind her and let out a long sigh.

It had been a long time, travelling on that airship, all cooped up with everyone else, and then navigating that Farrian shrine and fighting to try and get hold of the Earth Emerald. Her companions were growing to become her closest friends–how couldn’t they, after all they had been through together?—but she still needed a break from them from time to time.

Although, the only problem with taking a break from them was that it allowed her grief for her mother rose to the top of her mind. She felt the pang of it again now, a big gaping ache in her stomach, her chest, her heart. It was always with her; she was only distracted from it a little when she was with her companions and focusing on their quest. But she couldn’t spend all her time with them, and this was when she felt it most keenly.

This must be how Ryn felt all the time, too. And he hadn’t just lost his mother, he had also lost his father, his friends, everyone he had ever known who had been part of his hometown of Cleasor. And it had all been her fault… No; I can’t go down that line of thinking again. I’ve dealt with that with the One.

And then, on top of all of that, there was this problem that she had become…blocked.

She held out her two pale hands in front of her, palms up, and willed for some lightning to appear.

A jolt, a fizz, a spark, anything.

Nothing happened.

“Bolt,” she tried whispering under her breath.

Nothing happened.

At most, her arms ached a little.

What was going on? It couldn’t just be that she was out of mana, because she felt physically fine. Tired and grieving, to be sure, but she had slept on the airship all the way back from the Farrian jungle and she had still been eating, so her mana levels should be fine.

No, this was a deeper problem. She should at least be able to produce something in terms of lightning. But she hadn’t been able to for weeks now. She had thought that combat would sort things out, but it hadn’t. She had tried so hard to produce lightning to persuade the Farrian official to let them onto this level of the city, to attack the earthen golem guardians, to try to open the door on the second floor of the Temple, but she just hadn’t been able to, on any of those occasions.

What was going on?

She looked around her room, which she had not even bothered to do yet, so preoccupied had she been with her problems.

Simple, yet comfortable. A mat on the floor which she presumed was where she would sleep. A wardrobe for her clothes. She would need to get one of the boys to bring over some of those from the ship. A mirror. A small desk and chair.

She sat down on the chair, to think.

How am I going to get myself...unblocked?

She held out her hands on the desk in front of her. Her white, delicate, dainty hands. The hands of royalty. What was wrong with them? Why were they not producing what she wanted them to? The gift had always come so easily, so naturally to her, what with her having been touched with the Lightning Crystal at birth, but now the magic just wasn’t flowing anymore. Who could she turn to for help for this?

Then the answer came to her, so obvious she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

Grandfather.

She stood up from the desk and went downstairs, finding the room that Cid had chosen earlier, and used the golden door-knocker.

“Come!” came the eccentric yet friendly deep voice from within.

“Hello, Granddaughter,” said Cid when she entered.

She didn’t preface her visit with any niceties. She was too distressed. “Grandfather, I have a problem,” she said as she walked in. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“You have become blocked in your use of your lightning.”

Nuthea froze mid-stride. “You know already!? How did you…?”

The room was identical to Nuthea’s. Cid had been sitting on the chair at his own desk, but now he got up and gestured for Nuthea to take it, then sat on his mat as he spoke to her.

“It is easy to see, Granddaughter Nuthea, for those with eyes to see it. You couldn’t project when we were first trying to gain entry to the top level of the city, and you didn’t even attempt to use your lightning against any of the Earth Temple guardians or any of the doors or mechanisms in there. Of course, you may have tricked the others with your explanations of why you did not produce it, as after all it is highly unlikely that the element of lightning would have any great effect against the element of earth, but I know better.”

Tears pushed at Nuthea’s eyes. She put out a hand on the table in front of her to steady herself. “Please, Grandfather… You’ve got to help me… I don’t know what to do… How can I get it back? What’s happening to me?”

“Peace, child.” Cid smiled through his beard from where he sat. “Do not fret about it—that will only make things worse. Do not even fret about fretting about it. Simply allow yourself to feel your feelings. That will be the quickest path through them, and through this ordeal. This sort of thing does happen from time to time. In fact, from my knowledge of Jewel lore, there is a name for it among those who bear the gifts.”

“Oh?” Nuthea was intrigued. “What do they call it?”

“Being ‘silenced’.”

Nuthea considered this. “Well, that feels like a good description. I do feel ‘silenced’ in my use of my lightning. I feel as though there is a language I have forgotten how to speak. My lightning projection is a part of me. It’s like I’ve lost a part of my own being that I can’t use any more. It is a little like losing my voice.”

“I know,” said Cid.

Nuthea bristled a bit at that. “How could you know?”

“Because it’s happened to me before.”

Her head rocked backwards. More surprises, she thought. Is there anything that hasn’t happened to Grandfather before? How much of what he knows does he hold back? “What did you do to fix it?” she asked.

“In my case it was a bit different. I became silenced because I fought a magical creature that caused me to be so. All it took to cure it was some good rest and recuperation after the battle, and I recovered my projection.”

“But that hasn’t worked for me.”

“Indeed. This seems to be a more persistent condition. But rest is not the only route to being cured of this affliction. And in your case the silencing does not appear to have come about from battling a magical creature at all, so it must have come from some other source. Tell me, when exactly did it begin?”

Nuthea searched her memory. She didn’t have to for very long.

“After the battle with General Vorr,” she said. “That was the last time I was able to use my lightning. Ever since then I’ve been…‘silenced’.”

“Hmmmm.” Cid stoked his beard. “Forgive my directness, Granddaughter, but then in other words you are saying you have been silenced ever since the death of your mother?”

A pang of grief echoed in Nuthea’s chest. Cid’s words had called attention to what was already there, in the background, but the attention made her feel it again. “Yes…” she said. “My birthmother.” Her other mother had died before she had been born—she had never known her. “Or at least, very soon after her death. I was able to use my lightning in the battle with Vorr and his soldiers immediately after she died. But you are right–ever since that battle end, I have been unable to use it again. Silenced.”

Cid continued to stroke his beard as if the affectation somehow helped him to think. “Well, that makes enough sense. Immediately after it happened you were fuelled by pain and outrage in reaction to it, and the situation demanded that you fight to survive. But once that battle was over and Vorr had been killed by young Ryn, your rage cooled and you found yourself silenced.”

Nuthea frowned. She was beginning to grow just a little bit irritated with her Grandfather in the faith; something she wasn’t used to. He was talking about all of this as if it was some academic exercise, with a removed calm. Didn’t he realise how much this all meant to her? “But why?” she said. “What do you think the connection between my mother’s death and my becoming blocked is, exactly?”

Cid had been staring off at nothing as he pondered, but now he looked at her directly with his peculiar grey eyes.

“Have you forgiven yourself for what happened?” he said.

His words cut through her, straight to the heart of things. But the thing was, Nuthea already had an answer to that.

“Actually…yes,” she said. She would not have said it so confidently had she not known it to be true. “After my birthmother’s funeral, I… I did business with the One. I told him that I was deeply sorry for what had happened to her, and for my part in it, and I cried out to him for forgiveness. And…I received it. I received his forgiveness for the terrible things that I, in part, was the cause of… I am so grateful for his mercy. I do not think I could be able to live with myself without it.”

“Hmmm…” said Cid. “Curiouser and curiouser… Well; keep working on that and receiving the One’s forgiveness, but it sounds as though that is not the source of the blockage, if what you say is true. Tell me–have you also forgiven yourself for what happened with the Imperial General that led to young man Ryn’s hometown being burned down in their pursuit of the Fire Ruby?”

Another pang went through Nuthea at being reminded of that mistake too. And yet, at the same time, once it had gone through her, she knew what the answer to Cid’s question was.

“Yes,” she said. “I forgave myself for that soon after I realised what had happened. Again, I don’t think I would have been able to live if I had gone on carrying the weight of the guilt of it. I prayed to the One for forgiveness, and received it. And Ryn seemed to take a bit longer to get there, understandably, but he seems to have forgiven me too. I even prayed to forgive the General, General Vorr, for what he did to me and my mother as well. So I don't think that's the cause of my being blocked, either.”

Cid held out his open hands, “Well, in that case, I am really not sure at all about what the source of your silencing is. The most common cause of being silenced or blocked, especially in the use of one’s powers, after fighting a silencing creature, is failure to forgive another or failure to forgive oneself. Since it sounds like you have forgiven yourself and the most important other person to forgive–the General–I’m really not sure what is causing this silencing. Perhaps there is some other explanation. Did you touch the Fire Ruby by mistake, perhaps?”

“No.”

“But could it be that you were touched by it? Could it be that you were touched by it without realising, perhaps accidentally during the battle?”

“No, Grandfather. That did not happen. I can’t produce fire either. I can’t produce anything when I try to project.”

“Well, I have to say this most strange,” Cid stood up unexpectedly all of a sudden, apparently signalling that their conversation was over, for now. “I will think on this more, Granddaughter–I promise. But for now, go back to your room and get some more rest. The One knows we all need it. We went through a lot in that Earth Shrine–and we achieved a lot, too. We’re all deserving of a little break, don’t you think? I will see you at noon.”

He had opened the door to his room to let her out. Nuthea was not used to someone else deciding when a meeting was over or when she should come and go, but she swallowed her protest. Her Grandfather must be tired and worn out still from their ordeals in the Earth Temple, as he had said.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” she said as she paused in the doorway on the way out. “You…you will think on this more, won’t you?”

“I promise,” said Cid with a kindly smile. “Now go and get some more rest, and I will do the same.”

He shut the door after her, and Nuthea climbed up the stairs back to her own room.

When she got to it, there were already two people outside it having some sort of argument.

“Ryn! Sagar!” she said. “What are you doing?”

They stopped talking and turned to her at once. They hadn’t heard her coming up the stairs. Ryn looked white as a Manolian mountain. Sagar was red in the face.