The Book Plank

The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan, The Black Iron Legacy #1 A group of three young thieves are pulled into a centuries old magical war between ancient beings, mages, and humanity in this wildly original debut epic fantasy. The city has always been. The city must finally end. When three thieves - an orphan, a ghoul, and a cursed man - are betrayed by the master of the thieves guild, their quest for revenge uncovers dark truths about their city and exposes a dangerous conspiracy, the seeds of which were sown long before they were born. Cari is a drifter whose past and future are darker than she can know. Rat is a Ghoul, whose people haunt the city's underworld. Spar is a Stone Man, subject to a terrible disease that is slowly petrifying his flesh. Chance has brought them together, but their friendship could be all that stands in the way of total armageddon.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson With Earth abandoned, humanity resides on Station, an industrialised asteroid run by the sentient corporations of the Pantheon. Under their leadership a war has been raging against the Totality - ex-Pantheon AIs gone rogue. With the war over, Jack Forster and his sidekick Hugo Fist, a virtual puppet tied to Jack's mind and created to destroy the Totality, have returned home. Labelled a traitor for surrendering to the Totality, all Jack wants is to clear his name but when he discovers two old friends have died under suspicious circumstances he also wants answers. Soon he and Fist are embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not only their future but all of humanity's. But with Fist's software licence about to expire, taking Jack's life with it, can they bring down the real traitors before their time runs out? Last year Gollancz published some stellar debuts, the big names included: Den Patrick, Jon Wallace and Edward Cox. ...

Control Point by Myke Cole, Shadow Ops #1 Army Officer. Fugitive. Sorcerer. Across the country and in every nation, people are waking up with magical talents. Untrained and panicked, they summon storms, raise the dead, and set everything they touch ablaze. Army officer Oscar Britton sees the worst of it. A lieutenant attached to the military's Supernatural Operations Corps, his mission is to bring order to a world gone mad. Then he abruptly manifests a rare and prohibited magical power, transforming him overnight from government agent to public enemy number one. The SOC knows how to handle this kind of situation: hunt him down--and take him out. Driven into an underground shadow world, Britton is about to learn that magic has changed all the rules he's ever known, and that his life isn't the only thing he's fighting for. I have had my eye on this book for a while now, a very very long time. Too be honest I have postponed reading the book because the intr...

The Forever Watch by David Ramirez The Noah : a city-sized ship half-way through an eight hundred year voyage to another planet. In a world where deeds and even thoughts cannot be kept secret a man is murdered; his body so ruined that his identity must be established from DNA evidence. Within hours all trace of the crime is swept away hidden as though it never happened. Hana Dempsey a mid-level bureaucrat genetically modified to use the Noah 's telepathic internet begins to investigate. Her search for the truth will uncover the impossible: a serial killer who has been operating on board for a lifetime... if not longer. And behind the killer lies a conspiracy centuries in the making. When I read about the release of The Forever Watch I was very excited. There are three letters in the synopsis that got me stoked. DNA. And finding out that David Ramirez is an ex-scientist in the field of Molecular Biology I knew that this would be an excellent read with top notch scienti...

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell, Greatcoats #1 Falcio is the first Cantor of the Greatcoats. Trained in the fighting arts and the laws of Tristia, the Greatcoats are travelling Magisters upholding King’s Law. They are heroes. Or at least they were, until they stood aside while the Dukes took the kingdom, and impaled their King’s head on a spike. Now Tristia is on the verge of collapse and the barbarians are sniffing at the borders. The Dukes bring chaos to the land, while the Greatcoats are scattered far and wide, reviled as traitors, their legendary coats in tatters. All they have left are the promises they made to King Paelis, to carry out one final mission. But if they have any hope of fulfilling the King’s dream, the divided Greatcoats must reunite, or they will also have to stand aside as they watch their world burn…     I am going to be honest, I wanted to read Traitor's Blade solely on the cover at first, yes I know never judge a book by its cove...

Only two weeks still remain of 2013 and well, what an eventful year it has been! Looking back on it a lot of things happened, both for the better and yes, also for the worse, but hey thats life it has its up and downs. Lets leave it at that and reflect solely on the books, it's the main reason you are probably reading this post. In terms of books, 2013 has been an amazing year, a lot of good titles have passed in more than enough genres. I tried to read a lot of them, but it always seems that time is your worst enemy. Simply there isn't enough time to get down to every book I wanted to read, I still got quite a TBR pile in the corner of the living room that I hope to tackle soon. In April I made the decision to fully let The Book Plank lift of it's own feet, before this I was a reviewer for Fantasy Book Review. However since then, this blog has gathered quite the attention and positive feedback: so thank you guys. I especially want to thank all the publishers and authors ho...

Reviver by Seth Patrick, Reviver #1 Able to wake the recently dead, and let them bear witness to their own demise. Twelve years after the first reviver came to light, they have become accepted by an uneasy public. The testimony of the dead is permitted in courtrooms across the world. Forensic revival is a routine part of police investigation. In the United States, that responsibility falls to the Forensic Revival Service. Despite his troubled past, Jonah Miller is one of their best. But while reviving the victim of a brutal murder, he encounters a terrifying presence. Something is watching. Waiting. His superiors tell him it was only in his mind, a product of stress. Jonah is not so certain. Then Daniel Harker, the first journalist to bring revival to public attention, is murdered, and Jonah finds himself getting dragged into the hunt for answers. Working with Harker's daughter Annabel, he becomes determined to find those responsible and bring them to justice. Soon t...