Mesmerically gripping Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels: Between Two fires by Christopher
Between Two fires by Christopher Buehlman (Gollancz £22, 448pp)
A fallen priest, an excommunicated knight and a girl with all the gifts walk into a bar… sorry, fight their way across a starving, plague-ridden, medieval France on the off-chance they can save the world.
Ranged against them are pretty much everyone they meet: desperate to rob, rape or maybe even eat them.
But behind the horror of this mud-soused, blood-spattered odyssey are the most beautiful and unexpected grace notes of wisdom, humour and kindness.
Though knight, priest and girl are caught up in a cosmic war between good and evil – complete with real angels and hell-spawned monsters – it’s their humanity that carries the field.
Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence (Harper Voyager £18.99, 384pp)
Back in the day there was an Academy of Kindness where unwanted girls were brought, bought and butchered by the staff and each other until only the most ruthless were left to mete out justice.
But those days are over. One by one, these priestesses of vengeance have been hunted down and as far as she knows, Rue may be the last. But when mercenaries come to her village and slaughter her friends, she knows she must act.
There’s something rhapsodic in Lawrence’s treatment of violence: unflinching, full-on and mesmerically gripping. You may want to turn away, but the narrative’s rictus grip will hold you to the bitter end.
The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus £20, 336pp)
The Library of Traumatic Memory is available now from the Mail Bookshop
We’re in Alan Garner territory here: an intense and complex story where the keening echoes of the past resonate down the centuries.
On a lonely peninsula in Ireland’s southwestern corner, Christian works in the Huxley Institute where his job is to archive traumatic memories.
A descendant of the building’s original architect, it soon becomes apparent that his own past and the locations are intimately linked.
Adding to the mystery are tragic love affairs in past and present, Dr Dee’s obsidian scrying mirror, an ancient copper mine and gypsy seers. But the big question is how the institute’s intricate architecture encodes its own dark history.