Suvudu Universe

A nice balance this week, with lots of reading, our usual features, and even a few special guests:

• WTF Friday review of The House of Blood by Wayne C. Rogers
• Interview with Tamara Thorne & Alistair Cross (authors of The Cliffhouse Haunting)
• Waiting on Wednesday with All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
• Great Self-Published Fantasy Blog-off - The First Five
• A to Z Challenge: Q through V

On the review front, a few new digital additions this week, the first two of which are destined to be WTF Friday reads. Car Nex: The Evil One by E.R. Robin Dover promises a NYC mayor who summons a creature of Hell to destroy the underground terrorist group he's been secretly financing, while F.U.B.A.R. by Joe King features a punk rock witch, a werewolf, a medium, a ghost, and a female Japanese ninja facing off against a globe spanning, world devouring evil.

The last addition offers up a chance chance to read an author I've been curious about for some time now. George MacDonald Fraser is best-known for his legendary Flashman series, but we're beginning our literary encounter with Captain in Calico, featuring an illustrious eighteenth-century pirate who marauded the Caribbean seas, lost his love to the governor of the Bahamas, and rediscovered his passion with famous Irish pirate Anne Bonney.

On the just-because front, I also nabbed a handful of Kindle freebies this week featuring ghosts, tentacles, elves, and archaeologists.

And, finally, I picked up my Book Outlet shipment of 'Daves' today - the Star Trek cross-over omnibus from David Mack, my missing Lord of the Isles volume, and a nice box set of first three Safehold novels.

αωαωαωαωαωαωαω

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is another weekly meme, this time focused on what books are spending the most time in your hands and in your head, as opposed to what's been added to your shelf.

I took some time away from the new-release review schedule the past two weeks to work through my first five titles in the #SPFBO. Now that I'm back, I've decided to throw caution to the wind, ignoring release dates, and just reading what catches my eye.

• No Return by Zachary Jernigan
This is a book that somehow slipped by me when it was first released, but the blurb for the upcoming sequel caught my attention. It's a different sort of fantasy epic, a violent, sexually-charged, apocalyptic sci-fi/fantasy hybrid . . . and I'm enjoying it.

• The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán
Anybody who thought I could sit on this until closer to the release date is crazy! It's a book that gets off to a rollicking, dinosaur-laden start, with some of the most inventive battles I've ever read, interesting characters, intricate conspiracies, and a biting edge to the narrative.

What's topping your shelves this week?