Hi there, I’m Alex. All the reviews posted here have been written by me so I thought it would be useful for people if I include a bit about myself as a reader.

Primarily I read Science Fiction and Fantasy books, and more of the latter than the former. I enjoy a good romance and I read children’s books as well, though not enough of either to make a section for them on here. I also won’t be posting negative reviews. Ideally, this would be a place where I can recommend books, tell you what I like about then and then tell you other books I think you’d like based on this book.

What I look for in books in primarily good world building and impactful moments. Books are an escape for me and I love sinking into them and pouring over them so the deeper the world building the more I like it. If I’ve highlighted a bunch of parts and added comments that go ‘Ooooh, this could connect to this’ and then proceed to theory craft then that’s a perfect for me. Especially if they lead into impactful moments. I’m sure there’s a more academic term for it but it’s when everything has built up to a moment, all the main characters are on the ground and one of them struggles to his feet for one more round. It’s when this character that went off three books ago and hasn’t been heard from since speaks from the shadows and tell the heroes that they’ve discovered a secret that could change everything. It’s not quite a plot twist because it doesn’t need to be a twist. Sometimes it’s just a character gritting their teeth and pushing on through. It’s the parts that make me sit up, adrenaline flowing through me and yelling “Yes. Hell yeah. That was awesome!”

Of secondary interest to those two are characters and plot. Don’t get me wrong it’s not like I don’t care about characters, I’m just more lenient of them being vehicles of the plot. To an extent. If they continuously make stupid decisions just because the plot demands it or they’re very self-congratulatory/two dimentional then I really don’t like them. But I don’t need every character to be deep and complicated. I feel about the same with the plot. I appreciate a well-crafted plot and story arc, but it can be very basic as long as it’s well told. What I really care about is the ending. How books end is pretty make or break for me. A fantastic story can have a rushed or unfulfilling ending and it will ruin the entire thing.

I’m doing my best to write a review of every book I’ve read since 2020 but there’s quite a backlog on that (currently 291), as I want to reread them first and I also want to read new books coming out. I’m not letting myself read something unless I’ve posted a review of the previous book in the series, which is helping a lot. As such you might notice a lot of reviews from the same series coming out quite fast as I race through.

On that note, here are some books coming out soon I’m really excited about:

1. The Malevolent Seven by Sebastien de Castell, published 11^th May, 2023. I love reading Sebastien de Castell’s work. His book are full of impactful moments, where reading them make you feel epic. This is a new series from him and I can’t wait to see what it’ll bring.
2. Bleeding Heart by Brittany M. Willows, published 11^th May, 2023. I very much enjoyed the first book in this duology, Bloody Spade. It was full of anime silliness but it played them straight and told an interesting story with them, which I really appreciated. I’m really interested to see how this ends up.
3. The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells by John Bierce, published 14^th May, 2023. I can’t tell you enough how much I need to read this book. Mage Errant was such a big series for me that I bought all my friends copies of the first few books for Christmas in 2021. It’s got the interesting world building and impactful moments that I crave, along with interesting characters. This and Waybound by Will Wight are the two books I’m most looking forward to in the next few months. I sadly haven’t caught up on reviews for it yet so expect to see all those books reviewed by me in the next few weeks.
4. Waybound by Will Wight, published 6^th June, 2023. I can’t state enough just how much I want to be reading this book right now. If Mage Errant was my series of 2021 then this was my series of 2022. It’s a masterclass of writing and I seriously, if I listed everything I loved about it then I’d be here forever.
5. Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews, published June 13^th, 2023. I really really love the Kate Daniels series. The main one is full of great and kickass moments. Unfortunately I bought the series with my sister and she’s currently got all of them and I don’t have them on Kindle, so reviewing them has had to take a backseat. But you’d better believe that I’m going to steal them back as soon as I can. In any case, this one looks like it’s going to be fun and the previous book, Magic Tides, was a nice reset on the series.
6. Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman, published 2^nd July, 2023. The Dungeon Crawler Carl series is one of the few ‘dark’ series that I’ve got a lot of time for. It’s done with more care and respect than many that I see and it’s a lot of fun to read. The last book, The Butcher’s Masquerade, ended on such a dramatic note that I can’t wait to read this next one.

As such, and in no particular order, these are the series I’m currently trying to work through:

1. Mage Errant by John Bierce
2. The Wandering Inn book series by Pirate Aba
3. The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews
4. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

If you like reading through this website and want to support me then please spread the word! Twitter is dying and if more people know about this before it goes then I’ll survive this better than I would otherwise. I’m also primarily an author so feel free to go to my official website and have a look around to see if anything there interests you.