Irish Daily Mail

SCI-FI AND FANTASY

-

JAMIE BUXTON

SIEGE OF STONE by Terry Goodkind (Head of Zeus, €28)

BOOK number three of The Nicci Chronicles sees our eponymous sorceress heroine holed up in the eternal city of Ildakar, under threat of annihilati­on by a petrified army — petrified as in turned to stone.

Except the stone warriors have woken up after a millennium or so and their general is miffed at having missed centuries of potential slaughter.

Making matters worse are the marauding sea-raiders, the ghastly, grinning Norokai, and tensions within the city itself, with a melee of slaves who have revolted, forgotten spells and errant wizards.

This rip-roaring epic sweeps us from lofty citadel to sea-girt pirate stronghold, from pestilenti­al swamp to hidden library.

And Nicci soon realises she must do more than rescue herself, or the city: she must gather her wits and her strongest magic to save the world.

BURNING ASHES by James Bennett (Orbit €12.80)

WHAT the world needs is a dragon with a short fuse and a burning need to do good. The dragon’s problem is finding out quite what to do. In this magnificen­t tale melding the mythic and the modern, an age-old pact has been broken and legendary creatures, called Remnants, are stomping through our world, tearing up London like it’s a toy town.

Smelly ogres? ’Fraid so. Complicate­d vampires? Check. A sarky, all-conquering, talking sword? It has to be Excalibur.

But, best of all, King Arthur himself has awoken from the sleep of ages as an evil revenant at the head of an army of ghouls.

Ben Garston — half-dragon, half-man, all hero — must lead an army of gnomes, hunky punks and tiddy muns against him.

THE LOST PUZZLER by Eyal Kless (HarperVoya­ger €12.80)

A COMING-OF-AGE story with a difference, The Lost Puzzler takes us to a future where humans have swapped utopian perfection for dystopian mess. Meet young Rafik, who is blighted — or blessed — with strange skin markings that show him to be a puzzler. In his village, they’re enough to get him killed. Out in the world, they make him very valuable indeed.

Ruthlessly traded, he must prove himself by solving puzzles of increasing complexity. Soon, he is unlocking mysterious doors under an abandoned city to find technologi­cal wonders.

But is Rafik simply a super-scavenger — or far more than that?

Intriguing and involving, we are confronted by the biggest conundrum of all: why do civilisati­ons sow the seeds of their own destructio­n and what can be done to save them?

 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Ireland