Fantasy Book Review: Book of the Month
Every month a book comes along that is just that little bit special, a book that stands head and shoulders above the others that have been read and reviewed. This book becomes our Book of the Month and below can be seen the winners since the award began in June 2009.
March 2010 – Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill 
Some doors are better left closed… Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever. A young American woman, Apryl, arrives at Barrington House. She’s been left an apartment by her mysterious Great Aunt Lillian who died in strange circumstances. Rumours claim Lillian was mad. But her diary suggests she was implicated in a horrific and inexplicable event decades ago. Determined to learn something of this eccentric woman, Apryl begins to unravel the hidden story of Barrington House. She discovers that a transforming, evil force still inhabits the building. And the doorway to Apartment 16 is a gateway to something altogether more terrifying…
Read the full review of Apartment 16
February 2010 – Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson 
On the Letherii continent the exiled Malazan army commanded by Adjunct Tavore begins its march into the eastern Wastelands, to fight for an unknown cause against an enemy it has never seen. The fate awaiting the Bonehunters is one no soldier can prepare for, and one no mortal soul can withstand – the foe is uncertainty and the only weapon worth wielding is stubborn courage. In war everyone loses, and this brutal truth can be found in the eyes of every soldier in every world. Destinies are never simple. Truths are neither clear nor sharp. "The Tales of the Malazan Book of the Fallen" are drawing to a close in a distant place, beneath indifferent skies, as the last great army of the Malazan Empire seeks a final battle in the name of redemption. Final questions remain to be answered: can one’s deeds be heroic when no one is there to see it? Can that which is unwitnessed forever change the world? The answers await the Bonehunters, beyond the Wastelands.
Read the full review of Dust of Dreams
January 2010 – Hyddenworld: Spring by William Horwood 
The adventure of a lifetime is just beginning…
It has lain lost and forgotten for fifteen hundred years in the ancient heartland of England – a scrap of glass and metal melded by fierce fire. It is the lost core of a flawless Sphere made by the greatest of the Anglo-Saxon CraeftLords in memory of the one he loved. Her name was Spring and contained in the very heart of this work is a spark from the Fires of Creation.
But while humans have lost their belief in such things, the Hydden – little people existing on the borders of our world – have not. Breaking the silence of centuries they send one of their own, a young boy, Jack, to live among humans in the hope that he may one day find what has been lost for so long. His journey leads him to Katherine, a girl he rescues from a tragic accident – it’s a meeting that will change everything. It is only through their voyage into the dangerous Hyddenworld that they will realize their destiny, find love and complete the great quest that will save both their worlds from destruction.
Their journey begins with Spring…
Read the full review of Hyddenworld: Spring
December 2009 – love songs for the shy and cynical by Robert Shearman 
The first love song in the world, as composed by a pig in the Garden of Eden…
The Devil, alarmed when his hobby of writing romantic fiction begins to upstage his day job…
A man finding love with someone who has an allergy to his very own happiness; another losing love altogether when his wife gives him back his heart in a Tupperware box…
Read the full review of love songs for the shy and cynical
November 2009 – Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth by Chris Priestley 
Robert Harper is going back to school, and it is the first railway journey he has ever made alone. And it is not a very usual sort of railway journey. The train stops at the mouth of a tunnel and in order to help while away the time a strange woman dressed in white tells Robert stories. But these are not the kind of stories normally told to a child. Soon Robert is both entranced and terrified by the strange woman and her macabre stories.
Read the full review of Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth
October 2009 – The Death Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean 
When Pepper Roux was born his aunt foretold that he would not live past 14 years of age. Throughout his childhood his parents haven’t bothered with him much, knowing that his life would be short-lived. So when Pepper wakes up on his 14th birthday he knows this will be the day that he’ll die. But as the day wears on, and Pepper finds himself still alive, he decides to set off to sea in an attempt to try and avoid death for as long as possible. As time goes on Pepper steps into many roles and personas and has numerous outrageous adventures. But can he stay one step ahead of death? Or will fate catch up with him? And, if he does live, which of his many lives will he choose to adopt? This riot of a story is a wonderful adventure, and Pepper is an unforgettable character who stays with you long after his story has been told.
Read the full review of The Death Defying Pepper Roux
September 2009 – Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan 
Liga raises her two daughters in the safe haven of an alternative reality, a personal heaven granted by magic as a refuge from her earthly suffering. But the real world cannot be denied forever and when the barrier between the two worlds begins to break down, Liga’s fiery daughter, Urdda, steps across it…
Read the full review of Tender Morsels
August 2009 – Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay 
"Tigana" is a land under the spell of the evil wizard Brandin, who has cast the spell to avenge the death of his son. Dianora has been sent to get close to the King of Tigana so that she may kill him and avenge the death of the wizard’s son. However the King and Dianora fall in love.
Read the full review of Tigana
July 2009 – The Magicians by Lev Grossman 
Quentin Coldwater’s life is changed forever by an apparently chance encounter when he turns up for his entrance interview to Princeton he finds his interviewer dead – but a strange envelope bearing Quentin’s name leads him down a very different path to any he’d ever imagined.
The envelope, and the mysterious manuscript it contains, leads to a secret world of obsession and privilege, a world of freedom and power and, for a while, it’s a world that seems to answer all Quentin’s desires. But the idyll cannot last – and when it’s finally shattered, Quentin is drawn into something darker and far more dangerous than anything he could ever have expected…
Read the full review of The Magicians
June 2009 – The Forgotten Legion by Ben Kane 
Romulus and Fabiola are twins, born into slavery after their mother is raped by a drunken nobleman on his way home from a good night out. At 13 years old, they and their mother are sold: Romulus to gladiator school, Fabiola into prostitution, where she will catch the eye of one of the most powerful men in Rome, and their mother into obscurity and death in the salt mines. Tarquinius is an Etruscan, a warrior and soothsayer, born enemy of Rome, but doomed to fight for the Republic in the Forgotten Legion. Brennus is a Gaul; the Romans killed his entire family.He rises to become one of the most famous and feared gladiators of his day – and mentor to the boy slave, Romulus, who dreams night and day of escape and of revenge. The lives of these four characters are bound and interwoven in a marvellous story which begins in a Rome riven by corruption, violence and political enmities, but ends far away, where Romulus, Brennus and Tarquinius find themselves fighting against the Parthians and overwhelming odds.
Posted: January 5th, 2010
Author: Lee
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Book of the Month
Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill
Some doors are better left closed . . . In Barrington House, an upmarket block in London, there is an empty apartment. No one goes in, no one comes out. And it’s been that way for fifty years. Until the night watchman hears a disturbance after midnight and investigates. What he experiences is enough to change his life forever.
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Graham Hancock is the author of The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis, Heaven's Mirror, Supernatural and other bestselling investigations of historical mysteries. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages and have sold over five million copies worldwide. Written with the same page-turning appeal that has made his non-fiction so popular, Entangled is his first work of fiction. We have five signed copies of Entangled to give away as prizes. Email us the answer to the following question and the lucky winner, chosen at random, will receive a copy of the book, signed by the author.
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