Adrian Collins's Blog, page 18

The Case of Cozy Versus Grimdark

I have a confession to make, and I hope I’m not ejected from the GdM family for it: I like cozy SFF and I indulge in a good novel now and then. I know, I know, but honestly, Miss Percy’s Pocket Guide (to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons) was like a Band-Aid on my heart and soul, and I eagerly await the release of the audiobook for the third and final novel in the Miss Percy series. Lighter novels make up about a third of my reading.

So, let it not be said that I’ve maligned our cozy brethren. Rather, I admire them and their ability to find a shining beacon of gentleness in the current climate. I appreciate the skill it takes to hold fast to the goodness that they find in their communities, and offer it back to us in literary form so that we can feel the glow of their affection through their pages.

And yet, my most recent review for GdM was for the recently launched novel Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen (thank you Poisoned Pen Press for the ARC) and it encapsulated everything I love the most in Grimdark. Without reiterating my review, Blood on Her Tongue was very much a book that celebrates women’s wrongs. As the world spins ever deeper into what feels like an IRL grimdark plotline, I find myself more stubbornly committed to seeking out stories like Blood on Her Tongue. Stories that have sharp, brittle edges. Stories of survival at any cost, stories that have split knuckles and bruised ribs because they’ve been fighting for their very existence against overwhelming odds. Stories that suffer that existence in a hostile environment, stories that spit in the face of the status quo.

Cozy offers an escape, and I do need the escape now and then. Reading cozy SFF is kind of like taking a vacation. The reader is invited to step out of their lives and into an indulgent bubble for a little while. The real masters of cozy, like Quenby Olson, are able to infuse that bubble with earnest emotion, nail-biting stakes, and well-earned happy endings. I appreciate the opportunity to sidestep my anxieties about reality.

Grimdark, on the other hand, is the ultimate comfort media. Grimdark is the genre of my heart and soul, because only in Grimdark can I find such broken, imperfect heroes as I found in Blood on Her Tongue. Grimdark makes space for my reality, wherein simply the act of existing feels like a rebellion against the suffocating system that tries to smother all resistance. Real life forces us into making impossible choices as we struggle to make ends meet, and Grimdark crouches down in that gutter with us to offer us a hand. Here, in this genre, we can find the clearest reflections of ourselves. We get to see the echo of our own impossible choices playing out in fiction, and we get the catharsis of hard-won victories on a personal scale.

On Grimdark pages, said victories are not guaranteed. Sometimes the price paid for them is devastating. Sometimes the heroes are so shattered by their journey that they are unrecognizable from the character we met on the first pages. Call me crazy, but that shattering is where I find comfort. After all, I am not the same person I was back on my first few pages. Life has pressed down on me from so many sides that there are fault lines in my assembly, sure to leave me quaking when they knock together too hard. But Grimdark tells me that I can still be the hero of my story, even though I am so imperfect, even though the options available to me may in fact leave only the possibility for a Pyrrhic victory.

So, I offer this from the pages of GdM: thank you to the cozy novels that let me take a vacation in your gentle worlds. Your genre gives me the rest and recuperation I need. But I can’t vacation from myself forever. Eventually, I have to come home to the detritus I’ve accumulated on my path through life.

And that home is built on a Grimdark foundation. I surround myself with Grimdark fables that acknowledge the inevitability of chaos, but celebrate the stubborn core of humanity and survival even in the whirlwind of entropy.

We do not go quietly, or softly, into the status quo. Thank you, fellow Grimdark fans, for being such good company.

This article was first published in Grimdark Magazine Issue #42

Read Blood on Her Tongue By Johanna van Veen

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INTERVIEW: Voice Artist Jeff Hays

I listen to many audiobooks; as someone juggling family life with an endless passion for reading, any chance to sneak in a good story is precious. Last year, I dove headfirst into the phenomenon known as Dungeon Crawler Carl. The book itself is amazing, but the audiobook series truly takes things to another level, thanks mostly to the incredible talent of voice artist Jeff Hays. Jeff is like a one-person theater with over 200 audiobooks to his credit; he brilliantly brought characters like Carl and Princess Donut to life with his voice acting.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff where we chatted about his approach to voice acting, his company Soundbooth Theater, and the voices he’s crafted to vividly bring Matt Dinniman’s story to life.

[GdM] Do you ever hear a character’s voice in your head when you’re not working? For instance, do they comment on your grocery shopping choices?

[JH] Haha, no. Fortunately the voices in my head get plenty of time to come out and play when I’m actually narrating. They’re content to keep to themselves and rest otherwise.

[GdM] What’s the longest you’ve ever had to record in one session, and how did you manage to get through it?

[JH] I’ve done 8-hour sessions before. That’s including small breaks of 5-15 minutes. As long as the voice I’m narrating with is close to my normal voice, I can do that with little issue. Never tried to narrate longer, but once I’m done with an 8-hour session, my voice is pretty tired but not painfully so.

On Dungeon Crawler Carl, I max out at about 5 hours. Carl’s voice is significantly deeper and more gravelly than my natural voice, so it fatigues my voice much faster. In fact, I really need to build up to sessions that long. When I narrate for DCC, I can feel my throat get uncomfortable, and it deteriorates in quality rapidly once I do.

[GdM] Vocal fatigue is real. What’s your go-to remedy when your voice is shot?

[JH] Whisky. Now, this is specifically the answer to the question AS WORDED. If my voice is SHOT, meaning it’s to the point it hurts or sounds bad, whisky can help me make it a few more minutes. But I haven’t done that in ages, and I don’t recommend it. I don’t recommend EVER narrating while your voice is shot, or recovery takes longer, and you may even damage your instrument.

To MAINTAIN a healthy voice for LONGER as you narrate, I recommend green or otherwise lighter colored hot tea, honey, and lemon.

[GdM] LitRPG, fantasy, sci-fi—you’ve done it all. Which genre feels the most like home for you?

[JH] LitRPG without question. I’ve done so many books in the genre, and so much of my business is catering to the LitRPG reader/listenership, that I’m always expecting stats, loot, game chat and snark in books that I read now! Though I love the genre, I do wish I worked more in different genres, just to change things up. As a reader, genre is not usually something I look for because I like it all and only really care about quality. But I am disproportionately attracted to noir and horror.

[GdM] Are there any dream books or series you would love to narrate?

[JH] The Aldair Chronicles by Neal Barrett Jr., The Reincarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony, Dragonlance by Weis and Hickman, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, anything by Dashiel Hammett…

[GdM] Jeff, let’s talk about Soundbooth Theater! Please give us a general overview for those unfamiliar.

[JH] Soundbooth Theater is the audiobook and Cinematic Audio production company that I started about 4 years into my narration career, in 2017.

As this company has grown—much faster than I could’ve possibly imagined, btw—my philosophy as a narrator and producer has spread throughout all the productions we now put out.

Fiction is made up. If I want listeners to stay engaged: as a narrator I have to convince them it’s real by feeling the way the author intends for the reader, whether broadly for the work as a whole or from one scene to the next, and channelling that to the listener.

Characters are the most important part of any story, so they need to be brought to life for the listener by the actors portraying them. The more closely the actor can believably sound how an author intends, or how a listener might imagine a character of that description, the more easily they can see those characters interact with each other within the work.

It wasn’t too long until I brought my true love, music, into our productions, and then sound effects. We’ve been practicing and slowly incorporating more and more of these elements into our productions, until the point we finally started making full-on audio drama. (Cinematic Audio sounds sexier, which is why we use that term, but we know audio drama is nothing new) And then, of course, when we got to a point that we wanted to produce more in this style, that’s when we made the decision to start our own distribution platform!

[GdM] Did you always envision it as the powerhouse it is today, or did it evolve organically?

[JH] Absolutely not. I figured the brand would help other narrators find success by giving us all a banner to share. Instead, it became a brand that meant quality, excitement and sincerity amongst listeners. Authors and publishers have noticed this, and now see our involvement in a project as a significant value-add, since throughout the years we’ve recognized our flagship titles and served them fantastically well by associating voices and sounds that resonate for listeners with them. Combine this formula with something as brilliant and widely appealing as Dungeon Crawler Carl, and now we’re almost a household name in the world of audiobooks, and I never would’ve imagined such success in my early-to-mid career.

[GdM] What was the catalyst for starting Soundbooth Theater? Was there a particular moment when you thought, “We can make this bigger and better?”

[JH] I was getting tired of working alone. I was happy to finally be creative in my work, but missed the social and cooperative aspect of being in a band. It wasn’t so much a business decision, as just a way to make my work more fun and exciting, and also to help other narrators find more success. Also… I was getting kinda sick of doing female voices. I got really good at them. That was one of the little tricks I was able to do to get a little extra attention back then, but not something I wanted to be known for the rest of my career. And of course, I believe that the best actresses are always just going to sound better. So, I found Laurie Catherine Winkel eventually, and recruited her to replace me in a series I was narrating in first-person as a female character (A Witch’s Path), then I found Annie Ellicott, I convinced her to stay at my house so she could do some female characters in my latest project, I directed her and trained her, and the rest is history.

[GdM] Soundbooth Theater is known for its full-cast performances, sound effects, and original music. What inspired you to push beyond traditional narration and create something more theatrical? Were you influenced by any specific full-cast audiobook or program?

[JH] There were some initial inspirations in audio drama. Locke and Key was pretty big when I first started narrating. I’d listened to Neverwhere in college. And as a toddler, I listened to a lot of storybooks on cassette from the library. But the real inspiration—for both audio in general and acting—has always come from film and TV, as the Cinematic Audio moniker implies. As a musician, I’ve always been obsessed with sound, so it was only natural that my desire to incorporate more sound into our productions would eventually result in this direction for me.

[GdM] What’s the ultimate dream project for Soundbooth Theater? What would you LOVE to produce without limitations or budget constraints?

[JH] Legends and Lattes! I’ve read both books in Travis Baldree’s series, and not only do I think we can bring it to life beautifully, but I think the format of the stories lend themselves really well to our production style and an episodic release. Plus, we could work with Travis on original stuff, make a sort of cozy sitcom out of it. (please don’t take that word with it’s often negative connotation, I think we could make a really compelling and heartfelt “sitcom”)

[GdM] Dungeon Crawler Carl has become a phenomenon. I powered through the series (books 1-5) and barely slept for two weeks, and “God Damnit Donut” has now entered my permanent lexicon.

[JH] Thanks for being obsessed! Apologies for the ear worm.

[GdM] The audiobooks are developing a cult-like following, primarily due to your incredible narration. When you first read Matt Dinniman’s work, did you immediately know it was something special? Did you think, “Yes… a talking cat with a Mid-Atlantic accent?”

[JH] I immediately knew I wanted to work on it, and that it fit my own tastes perfectly. However, that’s not often a good indicator of commercial success! I had no idea it would do even close to as well as it did, so for that I will always be bewildered and incredibly grateful.

[GdM] How did you develop Carl’s voice? Did you go through multiple iterations, or did he just come to you fully formed?

[JH] It was pretty much instant. I saw the picture of him on the cover, noticed he was a big, chill dude, and I’d been using my Patrick Warburton impression as a character voice for a long time, so that was already pretty well developed. He’s been in so many roles I loved, but always type-cast in this way, so it was a no-brainer.

HOWEVER, you will notice that Carl’s voice has developed even more over time, and he sounds pretty different from what he did in book 1. I would attribute that to me becoming more familiar with the character as the series went on and just naturally adjusting along the way.

[GdM] Does Matt ever play the “let’s stump Jeff” game with unusual accent combinations? For example, an Icelandic rugby player with a New Zealand accent and a lisp? Or perhaps a thousand-year-old surfer in the body of a teenager who is both Zen and keen on tasty waves?

[JH] Several times a book, now! Just listen and you’ll notice. I say BRING IT ON!

[GdM] Do you have a favorite moment or scene from the series that was particularly fun or challenging to narrate?

[JH] When Donut gives Bea the business. Listeners who’ve made it that far will know exactly what I’m talking about. The Butcher’s Masquerade is my favorite from the series, both in the story and my performance, and it also happens to be the only one I narrated cold. Meaning, I didn’t preread it before narrating. That scene caught me off guard, and made me tear up REAL bad. But the moment is incredible, and I still sometimes watch myself in the youtube video that’s out there and remember the feeling.

[GdM] Fans love your ability to make the humor hit just right. Comedy is generally tricky, but it seems like it would be doubly hard in an audiobook. How do you handle comedic timing when it’s just you and the mic?

[JH] It’s never just me and the mic. The scenes and characters are alive and vivid in my mind when I perform. Timing in a scene is an organic thing that happens between speech and thought for characters, so it emerges from the vision I have of them.

[GdM] With the series growing in popularity, would you be up for reprising your role if Dungeon Crawler Carl ever got an animated series or video game?

[JH] Hell yea!… for the right price. I’m VERY busy.

[GdM] Finally—be honest. Do you ever randomly slip into Donut’s voice when you’re off the clock? Maybe when ordering coffee?

[JH] Honestly, no. My character voices are for entertainment only! I keep my work and my personal life as separate as possible. At least when it comes to my voice.

Jeff Hays is a voice actor with tremendous range, a producer and narrator of over 200 audiobooks—including the beloved Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman—a musician and composer and Founding CEO of Soundbooth Theater. His creativity coupled with unrelenting ambition led him to launch Soundbooth Theater at the crossroad of these mediums.

This interview was first published in Grimdark Magazine Issue #42

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REVIEW: The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

There’s dark academia, and then there’s The Library at Hellebore, the latest dark fantasy horror from the mind of two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Cassandra Khaw. Modern fantasy literature is rife with magic schools, but none as grim or as brutally dark as Khaw’s Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted.

The Hellebore student body consists of world-eaters and apocalypse-makers known, respectively, as Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks. With a campus environment like that, it’s no wonder that the primary means of student recruitment is through abduction.

Although Hellebore promises its students a normal life after graduation, the school harbors a much darker secret: on graduation day, the faculty embark on a hungry rampage, feasting ravenously upon their students. A small group of students escape to the school library, forced to work together if they want any hope of survival. However, the sanctuary of the library proves to be short-lived.

The ensemble cast is led by Alessa Li, the first-person narrator of the novel who, like many of her peers, was kidnapped and forcibly enrolled at Hellebore. Alessa’s narration shifts back and forth through time, building suspense while creating a disorienting feel that deepens the unsettled mood of The Library at Hellebore.

As someone who is usually left unsatisfied by the dark academia aesthetic, I appreciate how Cassandra Khaw cranks the darkness nob to its pitch-black setting and then splatters it with blood and a heavy dose of entrails.

Cassandra Khaw’s prose in The Library at Hellebore is their best since The Salt Grows Heavy, a darkly beautiful nightmare of a novella that weds Han Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid with a cannibalistic apocalypse. While The Salt Grows Heavy reads like a hallucinatory nightmare, The Library at Hellebore feels more grounded in its vision of unforgiving horror.

The Library at Hellebore packs a surprising amount of nuance for a body horror, a subgenre that I wouldn’t normally associate with subtlety. Cassandra Khaw also makes effective use of unreliable narration, building up to a conclusion that left me floored and speechless.

Altogether, The Library at Hellebore’s marriage of dark academia and body horror delivers just the right balance of physical gore and psychological dread. Cassandra Khaw blurs the line between the monstrous and the humane, while delivering a gut punch of a story that serves as an allegory of survival in a world of pain. The Library at Hellebore is highly recommended for readers looking for a new twist on grimdark.

Read The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

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REVIEW: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

V. E. Schwab is a chameleon author. All their works, whether standalone like the awesome The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, novellas like the charming Gallant, or a longer series like The Fragile Threads of Power, are very different sorts of stories, linked only by the fact they are all in some ways a dark fantasy and all written by Schwab’s masterful pen.

V.E. Schwab’s latest literary offering is Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, the story of three young women linked through the centuries, their lives twisting together like the roots of vicious flowers growing in the same patch of soil. Maria is wild, headstrong, sure there is more to the world than her tiny town, and desperate to escape. Charlotte is sent away to the city and feels herself being wedged into a life of conformity that she does not want. Finally, there is Alice, who crosses the ocean to escape her grief and start anew, not realising that heartache is not so quickly left behind.

It is so hard to go into a read when you have sky-high expectations; the risk of it not being quite what you dreamed of feels very real. Everything I had heard about Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil made me want to love it. V. E. Schwab writes a toxic lesbian vampire fantasy? I started reading it, expecting it to be awesome. Luckily, it was. This is Schwab’s writing at its best. Beautiful prose, characters that feel so real they could be just behind you, whispering their life in your ear, and a plot that danced across the pages. I am slightly in awe that I read over 500 pages in just over a day without it feeling like a chore.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a modern gothic novel with some light horror. Schwab masterfully handles themes of loss, love, loneliness, and many others in a delicate way. Schwab’s characters are the most central part of this story, rather than it being an action-packed plot, and stepping into the world was so easy. This is helped by the fact that at the start, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil reads like a historical novel, and we have Maria’s perspective fully established before the reader has any fantastical elements. It also feels hauntingly familiar because vampires are a foundation stone of dark fantasy. But Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil isn’t a retelling. Schwab has written an entirely new and entirely brilliant story.

This is the sort of book that will speak to people’s souls. It might not have epic battles, political manoeuvring, or a quest to save the world, but it will make people feel seen. Readers will see little pieces that are like them, dotted across the three narratives. It feels like Schwab has put their everything into Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, and reading it was an excellent experience.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is due for release in June 2025. Thank you to V. E. Schwab and the team at Tor Books for providing us with an ARC of the novel.

Read Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

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A Blessing or a Curse: How Success Breeds Oversaturation

As a fan of fantasy and sci-fi, I am constantly dreaming up ideas of which stories will be adapted for the screen and creating the perfect cast in my head. It’s one of the joys of really loving something and caring about a product and feeling connected to a story. Whether it is the latest book or a new game, I’ll devour something and wonder what that story would be like if made into a film or TV series. Countless online communities do the same, sharing their ideas and rating each other’s opinions – it adds to the community aspect of a new product (although it can breed some negativity too!). There are so many incredible stories I want adapted and it feels as though just a tiny few make it to the screen which feels like a complete waste – but when something does make it on our screens and becomes popular, does it have a positive or negative effect for its fans and the genre?

It’s all about money – we know that. TV and film companies will adapt things that they feel will be a hit and fantasy and sci-fi stories generally will end up needing large budgets which create a level of risk. They need a breakout hit to prove that there is a winning formula, but what happens next? Let’s take Game of Thrones as an example. A hugely popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire written by George RR Martin, there was no guarantee that the show would be successful. However, HBO backed the first season with money and marketing around the always incredible Sean Bean, knowing that he could draw in fantasy fans from Lord of the Rings following that trilogy becoming the most critically acclaimed of all time. Debuting in 2011, it redefined what television audiences expected from fantasy dramas and delivered a gritty, realistic series with political intrigue that draw in fantasy fans and newcomers alike. It became one of the most influential shows of the decade and naturally, everyone wanted to capitalise on its success. A wave of fantasy adaptions focusing on ‘gritty realism’ followed with the aim of finding ‘the next Game of Thrones’. Fantasy shows emerged from every streaming service and channel with varying degrees of success. The Wheel of Time finally arrived on our screens thanks to Amazon Prime which also bought the rights to Lord of the Rings for a monumental sum of money and produce The Rings of Power, a show that added a bit more grit and darkness to Middle-earth. A multitude of spin-offs in the world of Westeros were announced with many being dropped due to apparent quality issues whilst House of the Dragon and the upcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms made it through. Even America’s Boy Scout and the world’s most well-known symbol of hope, Superman, took on a darker edge in the more grounded and gritty Man of Steel and follows ups Batman V Superman and The Justice League. Everything seemed to go darker and for fans of grimdark, this might sound like a great thing, but was it?

I want more fantasy out there. I want Joe Abercrombie’s First Law world to come to life on the big screen. I want to see Mark Lawrence’s Jorg be a bastard as I sit on the sofa knowing what is to come but being just as excited for how someone has adapted the incredible character. I really want Empire of a Vampire to blow people away with clever adaption of a world with Daysdeath and the Grail introduced to those who haven’t read the amazing book. But what I don’t want is countless medieval fantasy worlds trying to be ‘the next Game of Thrones’. Game of Thrones has done that and it was amazing (mostly). We don’t just need a grimdark aesthetic and high production values, we need more. We need carefully crafted stories by people who understand the source material and what makes them unique and loved by so many. If not, we end up with a market bloated with Game of Thrones rip-offs as companies vie for that same audience but with a lack of understanding of what made it such a hit in the first place.

This brings me to The Witcher. Popular books. Wildly successful games (God I love The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt). Henry Cavill, a huge Witcher and Warhammer fan cast as the protagonist Geralt and a budget to allow for the fantasy elements to be pulled off effectively. What could go wrong? This had to be a sure fire hit. Cavill knew the source material better than most and he, and most of the cast, do amazingly well in the series from Netflix. But whilst the show is enjoyable, something is missing. Rumours spread from the set that the writers were mocking the source material and arguing with Cavill over the direction of the series and how closely it should link to the books and games and this eventually led to the star leaving. The Witcher had so much potential but instead, it is just an enjoyable but inconsistent series. Still, many people have watched it and production was then rushed on a prequel which definitely missed the mark and showed what happens when you’re trying to milk the cash cow. Animated efforts since have been more effective and allowed more creative freedom (Nightmare of the Wolf and Sirens of the Deep). I understand media being created to make money but I feel the oversaturation of the market following some success misses the point. Things are successful because they have a mix of things: a good story first and foremost, a creative team that understands the reason the story worked in the first place, and a dedication to craft something that will appeal to a wide audience without stripping the story of what makes it unique.

Competition can of course foster creativity and in the world of streaming giants, each company wants their own version of what is popular. On the other hand, excessive imitation can lead to stagnation with nothing standing out or feeling unique. Even in the superhero genre, it felt as though Marvel became too comfortable with their early success which was built on great stories with a creative team that cared (that’s how you make something like Guardians of the Galaxy a success). When they went into overdrive and began developing films at a faster rate, the quality dipped and is just now recovering as they pause and focus on quality instead of quantity. Audiences will feel overwhelmed if things feel too similar and there can be fatigue and disinterest, especially when the quality dips. It can devalue genres and make it harder for original works to break through.

It is all about innovation and not imitation. There is nothing wrong with being inspired by something successful but the key to longevity and success is not chasing trends and saturating the market with copycat works but in fostering new voices, narratives, and fresh techniques. Audiences crave originality. Two of the best modern directors, Robert Eggers (Nosferatu, The Northman) and Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Interstellar, The Odyssey), don’t try to retread over old ground. Their films may have their fingerprints all over them with a similar style but they are all crafted as unique stories built with love and care and that is why they are so successful and critically acclaimed. Rather than asking, “How can we make the next Game of Thrones?” we need to ask “What’s the next great story we can tell?”. Perhaps then I will see Logen Ninefingers and Jorg delighting and disgusting audiences on the screen. Until then, I await patiently for something new in the grimdark landscape.

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EXCLUSIVE: Cover Reveal for A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark

Anna Smith Spark is a lady who really needs no introduction to fans of grimdark. She is an awesome writer of dark fantasy and a great friend of ours here at Grimdark Magazine. After collaborating last year with Michael Fletcher for our novella In the Shadow of Their Dying, the Queen of Grimdark is back with her latest folk horror fantasy A Sword of Gold and Ruin. Anna told us that this sequel to A Sword of Bronze and Ashes is ‘darker and even stranger than the
first book’ and we cannot wait to read it.

A Sword of Gold and Ruin is a lyrical blend of epic myth and daily life. Kanda and her family are on a quest to rebuild the glory that was Roven. Mother and daughters stand together as a light against the darkness. But mother and daughters both have hands that are stained red with blood. They walk a path that is stranger and more beautiful than even Kanda dared imagine, bright with joy, bitter with grief. Ghosts and monsters dog their footsteps – but the greatest monsters lie in their hearts.

So, without further ado, here it is:

Exclusive Cover Reveal of A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark

Exclusive Excerpt from A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark

Not only has Anna sent us the cover to share with you all, she’s also gifted us an exclusive extract to whet your appetites even more. A Sword of Gold and Ruin is first being published in hardback with a set of gorgeous sprayed edges, so not only will it be a great read it will look beautiful on your shelves too. Perfection.

Here’s our exclusive excerpt:

Chapter One

The crocuses were in bloom.

A gray sky, that gray that suggests rain and softened weather. The storms of winter are almost now the first spring rain. A bird was singing in a tree still bare, yet the song was calling a mate or singing that she had one, in the single note there repeated there was spring blossom and summer sun and hatching eggs. The ground was cold mud and bareness, yet from the mud with the snow’s melting fresh on it the crocuses were in bloom purple and white and yellow, and beneath the ground the world was waking to burst up green. And the bird flew low and brown with twigs in her beak to build her nest.

But the air was far colder than Kanda had expected, biting at her face and hands, stinging her throat as she sucked it down into her lungs. Stepping out of the door with her coat loose and unfastened, her face turned bright to the sky. The cold made her gasp. Pleasant, refreshing: the taste, the feel of the winter cold in her mouth stepping out from hearth smoke: that was a thing she loved. But the smell of the air, the light that streamed in pale through the hall’s high windows – they had made her think of warm days and warm sweet flower air and she had relaxed herself for the warmth on her face.

Almost unbalanced, walking in the biting cold feeling – knowing – that it was spring. The bird there singing, even if the trees were bare, knew it was spring. And the crocuses she waded through knew.

Winter is not a good time for fighting. And not a good time for burying the dead.

The earth is too cold in winter to bury the dead. Spring is the fitted time for these things.

From the slopes of the mountains before her on the far horizon, smoke was rising. The wind blew the wrong way for her to smell it. Thin columns. Many columns. Kanda put her hand on the hilt of her sword. More smoke rising on the horizon than would soon rise from the slopes of the mountains where she stood.

“Ah, it’s cold.” The voice made her almost jump. She turned. Laughed.

“If you insist on going out in your shirt, Gallyn.”

“Look, you can see my breath.” He huffed out into the gray air.

“No, you can’t.”

“No, you can’t. Bah.” He puffed out his cheeks, blew out like blowing a war horn. “It should be cold enough for that.”

Kanda looked at him. “Have you even been to sleep?”

“That’s for after all this, when the excitement’s died down. We fight, we celebrate, then we sleep.”

“Gallyn…we haven’t started fighting yet. This is still the boring bit.”

“We celebrate, we fight, we celebrate again…then we sleep. Bah, it really should be cold enough to see my breath.”

“Gallyn….” His face was such a boy’s face. So young. Celebrating for him almost meant cakes and games and running about. Kanda thought looking at him: why could our Lord not have made me as young as that? Her hair was red as fire, her skin was brown as earth, her eyes were blue as sweet deep water, on her brow she wore a circlet of bronze; out of good sown earth and wildfire and red autumn berries, the Lord of Roven had shaped her. But he had not, in his great wisdom, made her beautiful and young.

Gallyn, Great Leap, silver trout and green willow leaves, golden sand on summer beaches, the babble of a snowmelt river, dragonflies in a buzz of rainbowed wings. His helmet had a young stallion rearing in the dance as its crest.

“Go inside and put your cloak on before you catch a cold and miss the battle entirely,” Kanda said.

“A cold! A mere cold keep me, Lord Gallyn of the Six Swords of Roven, from fighting?”

“Yes, but…. Go inside and put your cloak on before you catch a cold and have to ride into battle with a sore snot-crusted nose beneath your helmet.”

Laughter. “That might bother Morren. But not me. However – it is far too cold to be without a cloak, yes.”

If it was Morren, Kanda thought, she would say now, “Are you…have you been drinking before the battle?’ and fret over him. But Gallyn skipped off back into the hall only young and foolish and in such high thoughtless good spirits. He shouted from inside the hall: “And sneeze so hard I almost fall off my horse mid-sword thrust! Spray snot all over the enemy even as I cut off his head!”

“Get on with you, Gallyn.” Ah, he was by far the best of them!

A trumpet rang from behind the hall. A long, mournful note.

Gallyn said, “Oh.” He came back out, cloaked now in shining white. His face was grave now. A boy’s face, shocked by war and death.

Kanda thought: our Lord of Roven in his wisdom made him young and innocent. Thus every time the battle ends and the dead are gathered, the cost of war comes new to him. Poor sweet Gallyn.

A bow shot’s distance, perhaps, or a little more, or as far, perhaps, as a man could run and not be winded, or as a horse could run for the sheer pleasure of its running, or as far as Gallyn could leap. Up to the crest of the hill on which the king’s hall was built, down the other side one hundred, two hundred, three hundred steps. There in the lee of the king’s hill a pool lay very clear, perfectly round and black like the eye of a prized milch cow, fringed in dark rushes. In the middle of the pool was a black rock. On the rock was a pyre. Birchwood that seemed to be not wood but white bleached bone against the black water and the black rock. On the pyre, quiet, almost sleeping, was a body wrapped in a fine red cloak.

The king’s hall, the king’s hill, the king’s pool in which the king must bathe on his crowning. The king’s cloak. The king’s son.

The horn blew its one terrible note. Comfortless, pitiless in its grief as the scream of a gull or a hawk. In answer, pitiless and comfortless also, the women raised the lament.

Mare. Mare.

Henket.

How young he was. How splendid.

So beautiful he was, and fierce, and strong.

Night has covered his eyes.

There is no joy in his face.

His arms are as stones in the empty field,

His eyes are as stones,

As stones, as cold ashes, his face.

Mare. Mare.

Henket.

Henket.

Mare, that is only despair. Mighty ceaseless quenchless all-consuming sorrow. Grief.

Henket, that is only death.

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REVIEW: The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Keisling

Last Updated on April 4, 2025

Grief is a powerful theme in horror. So is getting old and facing that consistent dresser the Grim Reaper. And your neighbours being a bit creepy? Classic. Two-time Bram Stoker award-nominated author Todd Keisling’s retirement-community-gone-weird tale The Sundowner’s Dance from Shortwave, out April 22, combines these all into one poignant, heartfelt yet also gloriously sinister and freaky melange that creeps its way into your heart before exploding into a surreal, cosmic haze and asks the big questions about life, death, and, as we shall see, introverts.

Our protagonist is Jerry Campbell, a grief-stricken elderly widower who, haunted by memories of his wife, buys a new home in a retirement community, Fairview Acres, for a fresh start. Although the neighbours seem nice enough, if a bit odd, there’s strange noises on his roof at night, a bleeding woman screaming about worms on his porch, and an overly friendly chairman of the community association who keeps inviting him to the endless and bizarrely energetic all-night parties. Oh and there’s a massive stone in the park that seems to be at the centre of everything.

The set up to The Sundowner’s Dance is impressive. The first quarter does a delicate balance of grief horror—I found Jerry’s struggles to deal with the memories of his wife particularly moving, made more complex by his battle to deal with his anxiety in her absence—with neighbours-acting-weird suspense. That tingling, deep unease of these suburban-paradise-gone-wrong tales makes these early sections strong.

What proceeds from that is a strange ride of cosmic, grisly discoveries about neighbours and increasing high stakes on a cosmic level. Keisling loves a nightmarish tableau, and there’s some grotesque images that might put you off spaghetti for a few centuries.

But for me the most satisfying part of The Sundowner’s Dance was the unerring thematic commitment to the explorations of grief and aging. There is a strong sense overhanging this tale of the strange no-man’s land the elderly enter when their life partner dies and they must face an entirely new world, and new choices, even as their health fails and their years dwindle. We see one of these choices—challenge the concept of death and aging itself—play out in this book, and you’ll no doubt be stunned to find out it’s not as rosy as the brochure promises.

But impressively, there’s another meaty theme here distinct from growing old that really resonated with my millennial bones. Jerry is an introvert, and finds the never-ending peer pressure of his neighbours as wearying as any introvert reading this would find it (I got empathetic anxiety at some of his neighbours’ prodding.) There is a sense here of a group of people thinking they know best for the freaky introvert without ever seeking to try and understand them, and those of us who have felt this peer pressure from extroverts their whole life to “join in” will find Jerry’s plights here just as thematically satisfying as the revelations on death.

That said, this is ultimately a book about facing aging, grief, and death the right way, and to this end Keisling packs a hell of an ending that pulls no punches while being undoubtedly beautiful. The finish is strong on this one.

Overall, for all its retirement community mystery and cosmic creepiness, The Sundowner’s Dance is an elegiac reflection about one man’s confrontation with the pain that most of us will face and the fate that all of us will endure. A heartfelt creepfest that packs a punch.

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REVIEW: The Sundowner’s Dance by Todd Kiesling

Grief is a powerful theme in horror. So is getting old and facing that consistent dresser the Grim Reaper. And your neighbours being a bit creepy? Classic. Two-time Bram Stoker award-nominated author Todd Keisling’s retirement-community-gone-weird tale The Sundowner’s Dance from Shortwave, out April 22, combines these all into one poignant, heartfelt yet also gloriously sinister and freaky melange that creeps its way into your heart before exploding into a surreal, cosmic haze and asks the big questions about life, death, and, as we shall see, introverts.

Our protagonist is Jerry Campbell, a grief-stricken elderly widower who, haunted by memories of his wife, buys a new home in a retirement community, Fairview Acres, for a fresh start. Although the neighbours seem nice enough, if a bit odd, there’s strange noises on his roof at night, a bleeding woman screaming about worms on his porch, and an overly friendly chairman of the community association who keeps inviting him to the endless and bizarrely energetic all-night parties. Oh and there’s a massive stone in the park that seems to be at the centre of everything.

The set up to The Sundowner’s Dance is impressive. The first quarter does a delicate balance of grief horror—I found Jerry’s struggles to deal with the memories of his wife particularly moving, made more complex by his battle to deal with his anxiety in her absence—with neighbours-acting-weird suspense. That tingling, deep unease of these suburban-paradise-gone-wrong tales makes these early sections strong.

What proceeds from that is a strange ride of cosmic, grisly discoveries about neighbours and increasing high stakes on a cosmic level. Kiesling loves a nightmarish tableau, and there’s some grotesque images that might put you off spaghetti for a few centuries.

But for me the most satisfying part of The Sundowner’s Dance was the unerring thematic commitment to the explorations of grief and aging. There is a strong sense overhanging this tale of the strange no-man’s land the elderly enter when their life partner dies and they must face an entirely new world, and new choices, even as their health fails and their years dwindle. We see one of these choices—challenge the concept of death and aging itself—play out in this book, and you’ll no doubt be stunned to find out it’s not as rosy as the brochure promises.

But impressively, there’s another meaty theme here distinct from growing old that really resonated with my millennial bones. Jerry is an introvert, and finds the never-ending peer pressure of his neighbours as wearying as any introvert reading this would find it (I got empathetic anxiety at some of his neighbours’ prodding.) There is a sense here of a group of people thinking they know best for the freaky introvert without ever seeking to try and understand them, and those of us who have felt this peer pressure from extroverts their whole life to “join in” will find Jerry’s plights here just as thematically satisfying as the revelations on death.

That said, this is ultimately a book about facing aging, grief, and death the right way, and to this end Keisling packs a hell of an ending that pulls no punches while being undoubtedly beautiful. The finish is strong on this one.

Overall, for all its retirement community mystery and cosmic creepiness, The Sundowner’s Dance is an elegiac reflection about one man’s confrontation with the pain that most of us will face and the fate that all of us will endure. A heartfelt creepfest that packs a punch.

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REVIEW: Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

First published in 2017, the novella Clockwork Boys by Hugo and Nebula award-winning writer T. Kingfisher has recently been given a rerelease by the team at Titan Books. The second novel in the Clocktaur War series, Wonder Engine, will get the same treatment in the Spring of 2026. I am a massive T. Kingfisher fan and adore her cute and creepy novellas, so I was very excited to get my hands on Clockwork Boys.

In Clockwork Boys, we follow a paladin, an assassin, a forger, and a scholar on a quest. It is a tried and tested format of epic stories, but rather than being on this mission for the good of their hearts, this band of misfits is there because they have no other choice. Charged with treason and sporting magical tattoos that will literally eat them alive if they do not try their best to succeed forger Slate, assassin Brenner, disgraced knight Caliban, and the very reluctant Edmund, the scholar must travel across the border, deep into enemy territory, to discover how the deadly clockwork boys are made and how they can be killed. If they succeed, they will all receive pardons; it’s a shame that no one expects them to.

Clockwork Boys is a darkly comic story, and the slightly broken group of eccentric characters was endearing. But as much as I really really wanted to have a great time reading this novella, it missed the mark for me. Which I am genuinely very sad about, as T. Kingfisher is one of my favourite authors. I think the darkest of gallows humour and light horror, which I loved in novellas like Nettle and Bone or A House with Good Bones, wasn’t quite as big a part of this story, and Clockwork Boys is more of a traditional adventure or heist fantasy.

However, Clockwork Boys was still an okay read. It didn’t blow my proverbial socks off, but I didn’t abandon it in frustration. I enjoyed the characters, particularly Slate, and Kingfisher remains very good at creating normal, adult women in her writing who feel very real. There was humour, and a fair amount of witty banter, and the story flowed well for a short novel. Clockwork Boys covers a journey to a place and sets up the reader for the second novel, and it does its job.

I went into Clockwork Boys expecting the wrong thing; I am used to Kingfisher creating superb dark novellas and wrongly presumed that this story would be more of the same. This is not a light and airy swashbuckling tale; it has some dark elements, like the demon rotting inside Caliban, and it subverts many of the quest narratives’ tropes, but it wasn’t the sort of story I was expecting to read. Kingfisher discusses her motivations for writing Clockwork Boys in the afterward at the end of the novella and explains her inspirations of games like the Neverwinter Nights or Dragon Age, if reader are more familiar with these games and the stories of fantasy paladins they will likely enjoy Clockwork Boys more than I did.

Thank you to T. Kingfisher and the team at Titan Books for sending us a copy of Clockwork Boys.

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REVIEW: Of Darkness and Light by Ryan Cahill

Book two in ‘The Bound and the Broken’ series, Of Darkness and Light, begins with a battle. You are instantly thrown back into Cahill’s world with a swift, bloody slap to the face that will draw you in and submerge you in this desperate fight once more. At the end of book one, Of Blood and Fire, Calen and Dann had travelled with Aeson, Dahlen and Erik to the free city of Belduar, a city that had survived countless sieges over the years and was famously impenetrable. Until now. Shady goings on lead to the Empire’s army breaking into the city followed closely by three Dragonguard, content to melt anyone and anything in their path.

In fleeing Belduar to the Dwarven freehold under the mountain, Calen stretches his abilities with the Spark (the in-world magic system), nearly burning himself out (literally) to aid the retreat and escape. As some of the last to leave Belduar, and in the chaos of such brutal defeat, our core set of characters become split. For the bulk of the story in Of Darkness and Light, our original trio – Calen, Dann and Rist – are all separated, as are the father and sons, Aeson, Dahlen and Erik. This allows Cahill to explore and develop these characters as individuals following on from Of Blood and Fire’s introduction to them as a group.

Elsewhere, Calen’s sister Ella remains unaware of her family’s fate and is unknowingly accompanied by the man who orchestrated their deaths – Farda. Although she has wolfpine Faenir at her side, Ella’s journey is not easy and her safety is not guaranteed. As they travel, we also get insight into Farda’s past and character – a former Draleid with an obsessive reliance on a coin toss to decide the fate of those around him.

We are also introduced to Dayne, an eldest son returning to Valtara – the land of his family – following many years in exile hunting down those responsible for the murder of his parents and the immolation of countless lives of his countrymen. He returns to a nest of political machinations and treachery that sees his younger brother and sister at the heart of it. Dayne has aligned himself with Aeson for the coming war, but can he free Valtara and secure his position first?

Of Darkness and Light is a significant step up from Of Blood and Fire in terms of page count, character development, intrigue, grimness and authorial skill. There is a lot going on but at no point does it feel overwhelming or unmanageable. Characters that didn’t see much focus in book 1 are given the chance to grow and shine. There’s also expert exploration of the mental toll violence and war will take on someone; the pressures of leadership and the different choices we make under stress. Adding a level of fallibility to heroic characters that makes them all the more relatable and engaging.

Where Of Blood and Fire introduces us to the story and promises it will be epic, Of Darkness and Light starts to peel back the curtain and show us where we’re heading. The scope and potential expands through this book and hints at much, much more than you may have originally thought. It grows alongside Valerys, the ice-white dragon, and keeps hinting at even greater heights while still maintaining an action-packed, well-written story for the immediate moment. This is an excellent second instalment and the series continues to impress.

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