I went into Central Station completely blind, which is sometimes the best way to experience a book. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Older teenagers thrilled by Maas’s Throne of Glass series will find the first volume of the Crescent City series a page-turning delight.Įric Brown’s latest novel is The Martian Menace (Titan ).Thanks to Tachyon Publications for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The predictable slow-burning romance follows, spiced with some slick plotting and atmospheric world-building. When the brutal murder of a pack of wolf shapeshifters is followed by others just as grisly, Bryce Quinlan, a fae‑human hybrid, is asked by the city’s rulers to investigate, assisted by hunky love interest Hunt Athalar, a slave assassin. Magic rubs along with technology and the elite possess occult powers witches, shapeshifters, werewolves and vampires rule over a subclass of humans. Crescent City is a futuristic metropolis with a social structure based on that of the Roman empire. Knowledge of the future allows her to amass material wealth, but does awareness of her mistakes allow her to avoid making them once again? By turns tragic and triumphant, heartbreakingly poignant and joyful, this is ultimately an uplifting and redemptive read.Īfter more than a dozen bestselling epic fantasy novels aimed at the young adult market, Sarah J Maas’s adult debut is the meaty House of Earth and Blood(Bloomsbury, £16.99), a vast tome totalling almost 800 pages, filleted into 97 easily digestible chapters. The novel follows Oona over the course of eight disordered years as, on each New Year’s Day, she finds herself inhabiting her own body at a different age: one year she is 51, the next 27, then 40 … It’s a non-sequential journey of self-discovery in which she must come to terms, both psychologically and practically, with her unique predicament. So begins Margarita Montimore’s thought-provoking The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart (Gollancz, £14.99). She awakes in the body of her 51-year-old self, and the year is 2015. Oona is no longer 18, and it’s no longer the 1980s. A day later, the choice has been made for her. It’s New Year’s Eve 1982 and Oona Lockhart, who turns 19 tomorrow, faces a dilemma: to remain in New York with her musician boyfriend, or to leave him for university in London.

Seven Vampires by Lavie Tidhar