Naomi's Place

With less than a week to go until the official release of The Last Jager, I’m very proud to announce there will be a blog tour! Organised by the amazing Zooloo’s Blog Tours, the tour starts on Thursday and will run for fourteen days, with new stops every day. I will of course be sharing links to each stop on the tour as they happen, and will update this page with highlights along the way. If…

Regular visitors will know by now that I have a novella coming out next month, and attentive visitors will have seen the lovely cover art that adorns the outside of said book. Personally, I love the artwork, and no matter how many times I see it, I still can’t believe I’ve managed to get such a great cover on a book I’ve written. That artwork was created by a talented chap by the name of Jack…

The last year has been a bit on the hectic side for me, what with one thing or another, so it’s nice to be able to come back here and share some exciting news with you all. And what news it is, too. See, I have a book coming out. Yep, that’s right, The Last Jager is getting an official and real release. For those who don’t know, The Last Jager is a sci-fi novella, and is the first release in…

The one where I share my top ten books of the year, and look forward to the genre treats 2025 has on offer. #AmReading

It’s been a few years since I last posted one of my end-of-year lists, but this year I’ve done quite a bit more reading than in previous years, so I figured it was high time I put another one of these top tens together for my two or three regular readers. This year has been another good year for genre fiction, with a lot of good books hitting the shelves, and a lot of promising new authors.…

The one where I review Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" and wonder why I left it so long to read it. A strong 4.5 of 5 stars. #AmReading

My rating : 4.5 of 5 stars This is definitely one of those books that sticks with you. It’s an interesting mix of space opera and fantasy that switches between two narratives to tell its story, those narratives being the weirdness of a high-concept kinda-post-singularity sci-fi in which an evil sentient entity/program/construct threatens to wipe out the entire extended culture of the Milky Way,…

The one where I shamelessly plug a thing I'm in. #AmWriting #SmallPressBigStories

So anyone who’s been keeping up with me on social media will know that not so long ago I sold a short story to an upcoming anthology. Specifically, it’s the second volume of stories to be released under the Fight Like a Girl title, the first of which managed to get itself short-listed for a British Fantasy Award back in 2017. Well, Volume 2 has finally got itself a release date, and I can…

My review of The Vengeance by Emma Newman, a fabulous swashbuckling adventure with a twist that deserves all five of the stars I've given it. My thanks to Solaris Books for the gift of an eARC. #amreading #SmallPressBigStories

First off I’d like to thank Solaris books for gifting me an eARC of this book. The opinions in this review are entirely my own. Okay, on to the review… Oh my gods, this is simply fantastic. I think it’s my favourite Emma Newman book so far, and if it truly is the first of a new series I will most definitely be buying and devouring every single one. It starts out as a pirate story, then becomes…

My thanks to Titan Books and NetGalley for providing an Advanced Reading Copy of Talonsister. Jen Williams is another one of those authors I love to read. Her first novel, The Copper Promise was an absolute gem of a read, and everything she’s written since then has just gotten better. The novel follows several separate and disparate characters in a world not dissimilar to our own during the…

With thanks to the publisher, Flame Tree Press, for providing an ARC of this book through NetGalley. This is Anna Smith Spark’s fifth novel to date, and as with the previous four, it is an absolutely stunning masterclass in writing fantastic fiction. Infused with a lot of Celtic imagery and themes, and possibly owing something of its DNA to the works of Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, and Lloyd…

With thanks to the publisher, Solaris Books, for providing an advanced reading copy of this book. Back when I was a kid, back in the rose-tinted days of the late eighties, I distinctly remember being glued to the TV screen on a regular basis by a couple of Japanese TV shows. One was fantastic Saiyūki (aka Monkey), based on Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, and the other was the equally…

I really do like the growth of twisted, dark, modern fairytales that seem to be doing the rounds at the moment, and this book here is definitely one of the better additions to the trend. Described by the author as what happens when Jane Eyre meets Frankenstein, this deliciously gothic tale is all about secrets, especially those dark secrets you don’t want getting out in the world, the ones you…

There’s often a concern with the second book in a series that it might not meet up with the expectations raised by its predecessor. Fortunately, that isn’t the case here. The second book in John Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen tetralogy picks up more-or-less exactly where the first left off, and does so seamlessly. It doesn’t take long for the writing to become comfortably familiar, and as…

For those who don’t know, The Cleaving is a new retelling of the legend of British folk-hero, King Arthur. Told primarily from the point of view of Nimue, one of the more unfamiliar (and often overlooked) characters from the mythology, the narrative starts with Uther Pendragon, Arthur’s less-than-heroic dad, claiming the title of High King of Britain, and then proceeds to tell a somewhat abridged…

Where do I start with Echoes of War? Well, for such a small book, it certainly packs a lot into its 150 pages. This is the first in a series of (so far) six books, and right from the start it drops you into a rapidly unfolding tale of intrigue, espionage, politics, derring-do, and explosive space battles. Weaving together four main threads, the narrative builds on itself from chapter to chapter,…

Okay, so this is an absolutely amazing book. It starts off with a slow burn, introducing us to the main characters and the world in such a way that you quickly feel like you’re somewhere familiar, hanging out with old friends and acquaintances. Before long, you’re being dragged deeper into the story, riding along with those same characters and feeling everything they feel, and knowing that…

This is only a short read, a little over a hundred pages, but it packs so much that is excellent into that small space that it feels more like full-length novel. A body is reported in an empty (and supposedly locked down) house, and China Lake Detective Maritza Smith is the one to get the call. The problem is, Rose House is controlled by an AI, and since the death of the house’s architect and…