Kaylin Neya is a Hawk, the police arm of the Halls of Law in the city of Elantra. She is always oversleeping, never finds time to do her laundry, and can't be bothered to style her hair. Kaylin is brash, impatient, ignorant, and almost suicidally tactless. Kaylin is very human. She is also covered in ancient writing that gives her enormous power to heal or destroy. Kaylin is the Chosen, though no one has ever explained who chose her or why. For her new case Kaylin is given two new partners. Severn is a man from her past in the poor fief of Nightshade that betrayed her in the most horrific way possible. Tiamaris is a dragon. Their case takes them into Nightshade to investigate murders just like a series of deaths from Kaylin's childhood where someone was killing children with markings like hers. There she meets the fieflord Nightshade and he claims her as his own. Kaylin must face her past and win through the present if she and Elantra are to have a future.

Gen thought it was a good idea to brag about his thieving skills in a wine shop and declare he would prove himself by stealing the King's seal. Which he did. Unfortunately, agents of the King had heard his boasting and thus he finds himself in prison for a while. Then the Magus, chief advisor to the King of Sounis, offers him freedom if he steals an unspecified item from an unknown place. Again Gen says he can steal anything and joins the Magus in a small party heading to a mysterious destination.

When I first noticed this series, I saw that the subject matter was a combination of a zombie apocalypse and super heroes and I knew this was not something that I would get into. Therefore I chose to ignore the series despite seeing many positive reviews for it. These books are also shorter than what I normally prefer, so I had multiple reasons to continue to ignore this series as the positive reviews continued to roll in. However, eventually I found myself looking for a change of pace so I decided to give it a shot ore »and I am very glad I did.  Peter Clines masterfully combines the two genres into an interesting, face-paced story with some surprising detail behind it. I listened to this series on audiobook and it felt like I was listening to a comic book filled with fun characters. I enjoyed every minute of it and eagerly await more.

Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril feels broken in both body and spirit. After fighting through several wars and then pulling an oar as a galley slave he's finally walking back to the last place he felt at "home". He's 35 going on 70 and his whole desire is a quiet comfortable place to hide. Instead of a quiet retirement Cazaril finds himself secretary and tutor to the sixteen year old Royesse Iselle and her companion Betriz. Guiding her through the corrupt court that betrayed him is Cazaril's idea of hell but things are far worse than he thought. The royal house of Chalion is under a curse and Caz must find a way to break it to save both Iselle and his country. 

The future, as initially presented by author James S. A. Corey, finds mankind having achieved space travel within our solar system but with no means to reach further out to the stars. Unfortunately, having access to additional planets and resources does little to unite humanity and instead it gives us a new way to discriminate against each other. A tenuous peace barely exists between Earth, Mars and the residents of the outer planets, and it is within this fragile environment that the discovery of an ancient alien proto-molecule lights a spark that threatens to ignite the powder keg. It all feels very plausible and makes for some great story telling.

Each book in the Post-Human series isn't very long, or deep, so don't expect a ton of character development here; however, David Simpson does cram a dizzying array of science fiction topics into this small space. The sci-fi concepts include nano-technology, human augmentation, Matrix-like virtual reality, sentient artificial intelligence, Borg-like assimilation, terraforming, and alternate universes just to name a few. The story itself is a wild ride that goes from one mankind threatening scenario to another in rapid succession with hardly a breath in between. It is an over the top action movie in book form with mankind constantly on the brink of extinction as the lead characters battle to save it.

If you like happy endings where the hero gets the girl, or the hobbit returns home to sit by the fire and enjoy the rest of his life, then you need to look elsewhere. Joe Abercrombie is ruthless in the way he resolves his story arc and no character gets through this series unscathed no matter how important. Things go from bad to worse for most of the characters and even those who win big in the end are actually losers. All characters in a Joe Abercrombie world find the cards stacked against them in everything they do, but it is impossible not to be entertained as we witness them doing their best to achieve a positive outcome that will never materialize. This is a 3 book series that wraps itself up nicely despite the fact that Abercrombie has written additional books in this world with some of the same characters.

​​​​​​​Furies of Calderon kicks off the Codex Alera series which is an excellent 6 book series written by Jim Butcher. The series follows the life of Tavi, a young boy with no fury-crafting skills, in a world where everyone has access to elemental furies and their magical abilities. The fantasy world of Alera is very interesting and the magic system hooks you in quickly by creating a diverse set of circumstances. Furies are elemental beings (Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water or Wood) capable of helping the person who summons them in various ways from small everyday tasks through fighting in combat. As examples, earth furies help lift heavy loads and wind furies help their summoner travel faster. Alerans start to manifest their personal furies as children and by the time they are teenagers they are capable of summoning one or more furies to aid them at will. A person's place in society is often dictated by the strength of their furies.

David Farland has created a world where rulers take advantage of a magical process by which they acquire one or more of the attributes of their subjects, such as strength, stamina, glamour, metabolism, grace, etc. The person that gives up such an endowment is known as a "dedicate" and they are now crippled in that capacity for the rest of their lives, all so that the receiver can be enhanced. Those who receive endowments are known as Runelords, and they each approach the ethics of receiving endowments from different moral perspectives, which adds to the richness of the characters. Some are ruthless in their thirst to improve themselves for their own purposes, while others pledge their lives to making the world better on behalf of their dedicates.

​​​​​​​The Riyria series has an interesting publishing history that is not very typical. Michael J Sullivan self-published 6 books in this series on his own and they were successful enough to land him a publishing deal with Orbit Books. These 6 books were then re-packaged into a trilogy containing 2 original books each and known as the Riyria Revelations. This is a great trilogy that has a strong story arc containing well written and entertaining characters and it all wraps itself up nicely at the end. What more could you want?