Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author Sarah Beth Durst invites you to her new standalone novel nestled on a far-away island brimming with singing flowers, honey cakes, and honeyed love. The hardcover edition features beautiful sprayed edges.

Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium.

This should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home.

But Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to—the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing—causing the death of everything within them—Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again.

This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Funny, kind, and forgiving, The Enchanted Greenhouse is a story about giving second chances—to others and to yourself.

Review:

I was sent an early copy by Tor in exchange for an honest review.

For me a 3-stars is a good rating, it means I enjoyed it and would recommend it, but it didn’t stand out, or had some issues to me

This was an enjoyable read, but I had a few things that didn’t quite make it a 4/5-star read. I haven’t read The Spellshop, but this isn’t a direct sequel and while it is set in the same universe you can read this as a standalone. I went in expecting a romantasy, but I somehow never quite connected with the romance.

He’s a grumpy gardener used to spending all of time alone. She got turned into a statue for years as a punishment for using magic when she wasn’t allowed to. She gets sent to his greenhouse-filled island so she can try and help stop the enchanted greenhouses’ from failing. Overall it’s a good story, with the various enchanted greenhouses providing wonder and interesting backdrops. It’s set in Winter, an odd choice for a Summer release, so I’d argue that you should hold off reading this until the colder months arrive!

I wanted to be invested in the romance but I just… wasn’t. With this genre of books you know who going to be the couple, and yet I still didn’t really see the romance blossoming, and when it was I just wasn’t all that sold? The middle dragged a bit and I think this is when the romance should’ve been in full bloom, but somehow it didn’t do it for me.

I enjoyed the storyline of the long-dead sorcerer, the exploration of the island, the theme of family and forgiveness. It all comes together to make a good story that just dragged on a tiiiiny bit too long. As the cover suggests there is indeed a flying cat, but Emeral stops being a bit part of the story fairly early on, which was quite the shame!

A good story with a romance that just didn’t quite capture me. This is a book for cosying up with in the winter months and for dreaming of your own enchanted greenhouse.

Synopsis:

A collection of eight stories, Digital Extremities shines a spotlight on ordinary people in a callous yet hopeful future. Set across small towns and remote islands, where neon flickers against old buildings and oaks, this collection paints a unique view of a traditionally cyberpunk setting.

In 2089, a woman miscarries and seeks a way to find peace amidst overwhelming grief. Years later, a young man must find a way to pay rent outside of his job at the glassblowing studio. A pair of students, excited to go to college, install new hardware that promises to improve their cognitive functions. A private investigator searches for a missing child who has a reputation for embarking on risky adventures. Each tale is shaped by love, loss, and perseverance, weaving a vision of life outside of the megacities.

Review:

Digital Extremities is a delightful and interesting collection of stories from the future. Bassett gives us small snippets of people’s lives and how they go about navigating the world and maneuvering through dilemmas.

Stylistically, this book kept reminding me of World War Z. Each story was set in the same world, around the same time, featuring the same technology. This made it easy to carry over information and continue picturing a world where people modified themselves with enhancements and shiny chrome.

The stories typically focused on one person and ranged from a major dilemma to a slice of their life. I enjoyed familiarizing myself with each character and getting to know the world around them. The best part was probably what was unspoken. While characters faced decisions or hardships, I often found thought-provoking questions nagging at me about what else could go wrong with the current technology or what would happen if they had made a different decision. This did not make the stories feel lacking, just opened up my mind to more possibilities.

While Bassett does a wonderful job digging in with tension, he has mastered the slower, quieter moments: playful banter, reminiscing about times past, and ruminating over a hobby.

I listened to this one on audio, and I found the narrators to be excellent. No bias at all. With a wide cast of characters from all over the world, the accents were impeccable, and the differentiation was excellent.

Digital Extremities offers a glimpse into a world we may know someday, which brings excitement over technological advancements to assist in helping the elderly or finding a lost child. It also quietly lays out the ways in which this tech could fail us.

If you enjoy cyberpunk adventures, short sci-fi stories, and tales that say more with fewer words, this one is for you.

Synopis:

The Saxons have returned and their war bands stalk the land. The lords of Britain look only to their own survival, unable or unwilling to unite as they once did under Arthur.

And in a monastery hidden in the marshlands of Avalon, a novice monk prepares to take his vows. However, two strangers – the wild-spirited, Saxon-killing Iselle and the ageing warrior Gawain – will pluck him from his sheltered existence and his world will be turned upside down.

Together they will go in search of the last druid, to find the cauldron of a god, and to raise an army to hold the darkness at bay.

And as they journey, so the novice will cast aside his training and embrace his legacy.

For he is a warrior born.

His name is Galahad. And he is the son of Lancelot . . .

Review:

Lancelot, by Giles Kristian, was one of my most unanticipated favorite reads of early 2025. I’d heard glowing reviews, but even so, I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. The beauty of the prose and the power of the story carried me away, and the ending lines still consume my thoughts as some of my favorite of all time.

I’ll confess I approached the sequel: Camelot, with some trepidation. Lancelot was written as a standalone novel that told a full and complete story. Sure, there were some loose ends that could be wrapped up, but none were truly meaningful, and certainly nothing that demanded a sequel.

But at the same time, I was excited to return to Kristian’s vivid world and deep characters. I certainly didn’t wait long before cracking open the second book of the trilogy and diving in.

I was greeted by a story even more unexpected than the first, a story that pulled me in and kept the pages turning until the very last sentence.

In an attempt to avoid spoilers, I will say little about the plot. The story takes place in the same brutal world as the first, in which the remnants of Arthur’s army and allies struggle against the never-ending waves of the Saxon invasion. Camelot focuses on Galahad, the son of Lancelot, as he finds his way through a murderous and dangerous environment.

Much of what I said about Kristian’s first story remains true here. The prose is rich in both style and description, painting a vivid world that lives and breathes as its characters suffer. The names and places of the Arthurian legends are familiar, though their roles are largely of Kristian’s invention. This story, by its nature, is even more a reimagining of the Arthurian tale than a retelling. It takes us in directions Mallory never would have considered.

There are strong themes of legacy and consequence running throughout these pages. Galahad is a character of contradictions, and his journey of resolving those contradictions forms the beating heart of the story. The choices of the first novel are analyzed anew from a future perspective, reminding the reader constantly that a person’s legacy is rarely as straightforward as history makes us think it is.

It’s a powerful tale, and one that has lingered in my mind these last few weeks. Kristian is cementing himself as one of my favorite new (to me) writers, and I’m tremendously excited to tackle the third book in the series soon.

Bella Dunn returns to the Eileeran Saga to follow up The Sorrow of the Wise Man. Book two, Darkness Unleashed comes out November 27th but you can get a teaser here and now at Fanfiaddict!

3 …

2 …

1 …

Let’s do this.

Release date & time: November 27th 2025

Blurb:
The war between the Eileerean sisters left a legacy far worse than the corpses of the fallen soldiers. The peace forged by Daelyn’s grandmother is crumbling.
Callandra was left under the rule of a tyrant, and while Gaelyr and Lyhtana brace for another war, tragedy strikes Vaedora, in an ominous turn of the Wheel of Fate.
To save Atheatis, Daelyn must protect her only child, Elara, even if it means sacrificing her whole Queendom.

Thrust into a fate she was not prepared for, Elara will be forced to watch her world burn.

New alliances will be forged. New enemies will rise.
Elara will learn the darkest secret of the Eileerean House, and yet the greatest mystery of all remains stubbornly out of reach.
Your fate will find you.

Pre-order link: https://books2read.com/darknessunleashed

ARC Sign-up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1BzY4KilpdDQyWuOm18d-H7znNlcwWekUBi69XPVZ6JU/edit

GoodReads link:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/232466317-darkness-unleashed

Author Bio:

When she was a child, Bella believed she could control the wind.

One day, when she was about 6 years old, she read The Snow Queen and fell in love with books. She wrote her first “award winning” story in 2^nd class (her teacher used her story as a reading test. Not sure her peers were very happy…)

After that, she never stopped writing, particularly enjoying creating chronicles and short stories, as well as “theatre plays” to perform with her childhood friends.

Bella graduated in Biology and joined a postgraduate school, decided to pursue a career in Science, but her passion for the written word never dimmed and she continued to scribble here and there, drafting several novels and short stories in the past years. Although her preferred genre is fantasy, she dips into other genres as the stories “finds her”.

If you enjoy Bella’s books and stories, consider supporting her writing: buy her a cup of tea!

Bella Dunn – Embrace the magic of reading.

Today, the Fantasy Hive released the cover for Ai Jiang’s sequel to A Palace Near The Wind, and it is STUNNING!

According to Titan Books, A River From The Sky is a “powerful, beautifully told novella [that] explores the bonds of family, the pain of leaving all you have known behind, and the terrible price of our industrial future.”

It sounds like the perfect thematic counterpart to A Palace Near The Wind, which combined family ties and loyalties with an ecological twist.

One of the things I love about this cover is the growth of Lufeng between books one and two. Take a look at both covers together and you’ll see what I mean.

As you can see, Lufeng has gone from facing away with her eyes almost closed to looking straight ahead with eyes wide open. Her hair is more wild. Her expression more fierce. The artist, Nat Mack, has brilliantly captured a story between these two covers that matches the progression of Lufeng’s journey. And don’t even get me started on how cool the fish and clouds are!

I apologise in advance to your wallets, but if the cover hasn’t already made you instantly click the pre-order button, then the blurb Titan Books have released for it definitely will:

Fleeing from the bone palace and crashing into the waters below its steep walls, Lufeng and her siblings reach Gear, with its huge deadly water wheels, where their sister Sangshu is waiting for them. In the chaos of the enormous waves, within moments they’re snatched away and taken into rebel territory, where they learn more of the deadly experiments Zinc has wreaked upon the people.

Loyal to Copper now, Sangshu herself is a victim of Zinc’s experiments. Desperate to find her family, she races through Gear to Engine, ruthless Zinc’s industrial heartland, where she burns with a desire to fix her own mistakes and those of others and find a way to save her world.

Amazing, right? For those of you who like the stats, here they are:

Title: A River From The Sky (book #2 in the Natural Engines)

Publisher: Titan Books

Publication Date: 26th April 2026

Cover Artist/Designer: Nat Mack (@missnatmack)

Pre-order Link: https://titanbooks.com/72039-natural-engines-a-river-from-the-sky/

Ai Jiang is a master storyteller who has already given us something special with A Palace Near The Wind. Check out my review here. I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

Blurb

Where reality fails, dreams are eternal.

After saving the realm from the wrath of the gods, crystal sorceress Everleigh Bennet hopes to return home and relax with her family. Instead, she finds her lover, Felix, imprisoned by the God of Wisdom in a scheme that threatens to remove his free will forever. Everleigh must venture to the kingdom of Terrangus to either free her family from the clutches of the Masked God or, if fate wills it, grant them eternal peace.

Protocol of Valor is a novella set in the world of the Legacy of Boulom series. It takes place 60 years before the events of Platinum Tinted Darkness.

About the Author

Timothy Wolff lives in Long Island, New York, and holds a master’s degree in economics and a career in finance. Such a life has taught him the price of everything but the value of nothing. He enjoys pizza bagels, scotch, karaoke, oxford commas, and spending the day with family and friends. The obvious culmination of the past 36 years was to write a fantasy series where a drunk teams up with a swordsman, two mages, and lizard-people to oppose god. Why do we write these in the third person?

Strength without honor—is chaos!

He can be reached at:

@TimWolffAuthor on X

Timwolffauthor on Instagram/Threads

@timwolffauthor.bsky.social on Bluesky

timwolffauthor@gmail.com

Every Friday, we’re highlighting a panel from the TBRCon2025 all-virtual SF/F/H convention, looking back on the incredible variety of discussions that we had the honor of hosting.

This week, join moderator/author Krystle Matar and authors James Logan, Kailee Pedersen, Zammar Ahmer, Aimee Donnellan and David T. List for a TBRCon2025 panel on “The Debut Author Experience”.

To check out all of our TBRCon2025 content, click here.

The audio of this panel is available to stream and download on:

Anchor | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Podcast Addict | Amazon Music | Overcast | RadioPublic | Pocket Casts | Breaker | Podbay

You can also watch the panel below via the FanFiAddict YouTube channel or stream the audio via Spotify.

Synopsis

Light dims on humanity’s reign over the galaxy.

Charlus Vaughn, a teenage refugee, escapes deadly machine justice with her penitent mother.

Rescued by a data-pirate crew, she falls into the path of ancient arachnid machinations that propel her back towards her mysterious origins and the heart of her unknown heritage.

Review

I haven’t been able to read books in the last few months due to personal circumstances in my life. But there is nothing like a good DB Rook, book to hook you back into the world of reading, and damn did he not disappoint.

DB Rook is back and has bodly stepped into the world of Sci-fi, and it’s absolutely fantastic. Residuum is a novella from what looks to be a future series release A Darkening Dawn. And if the series is anything like this visceral dark short beauty, I can’t wait.

Residuum reminds me of a mash up between Gaurdians of the Galaxy and The Terminator, where the good guys versus robots programed to wipe out the human population across the galaxy. For the authors’ first time writing sci-fi, it shows that he is a master of his craftsmanship.

I love DB Rooks writing, with each book he releases, they go from strength to strength. His prose are wonderful to digest. His world-building and setting are brilliant. From start to finish, you are hooked and drawn into a dark tale that fills you with chills. Residuum is fast-paced, action-packed, and beautifully character driven.

What i loved about this story is that it’s really dark and that the author is able to mix in hilarious and humorous moments when things are looking very bleak for the characters. My favourite characters were Tapedeck and Shadwell, a robotic hero and an Insectoid limb ripper, and the other characters are just as lovable.

In this story, DB Rook throws you straight into a massacre. Our main protagonist, Charlus, and her mother, Merrian, are on the run after night of terror from the black bots sent into terminate the human population. Deposited on a strange planet, they are running blind into chaos and only have each other. With kept secrets and betrayal, will they survive from being hunted down. Only time will tell.

If you haven’t read or checked out DB Rooks books or Novellas. His Callus and Crow book from The Wayward World Chronicles is excellent, a fantasy dystopian dark tale full of goodness. I very highly recommend for all fantasy lovers…

Synopsis:

Druss, Captain of the Ax, is the stuff of legends. Tales of his battles are told throughout the land, and the stories expand with each telling. But Druss himself grows older, until finally, the warrior turns his back on glory and retreats to his mountain lair. There he awaits his old enemy: death. 

But far below, the barbarian Nadir hordes are on the march. All that stands between them and the Drenai people is a mighty six-walled fortress, Dros Delnoch—a great citadel that seems destined to fall. If it does, the Nadir will sweep inexorably across the land, killing all who oppose them.

Reluctantly Druss agrees to come down from his mountaintop to lead this last, hopeless fight. Lost causes mean nothing to him—he has fought in such battles a thousand times in a thousand lands. And he is a hero to inspire a new generation of warriors. He is Druss the Legend.

Thus begins David Gemmell’s most celebrated novel—an unrivaled classic of mythic heroism and magnificent adventure. . . .

Review:

I’ve officially had people telling me to read David Gemmell for years now. He’s a writing legend best known for his Heroic Fantasy tales. Legend is his first novel and probably one of his best-known works, and often recommended for newcomers to Gemmell’s work. I chose it mostly on a whim, but I’m glad that I did.

Of the plot summary, there is little to say. The story focuses almost exclusively on the siege of the walled city of Dros Delnoch by the Nadir invaders. An aging legend named Druss, Captain of the Ax, is convinced to fight one last time against truly hopeless odds. What follows is very much a classic siege story, filled with action, betrayal, page-turning tension, and magic.

It wasn’t the plot, though, that seized my attention. It was the characters and the heart with which they’re written. These are hard men and women, shaped by hard times and constant strife. They’re not as complex as what we’ve come to expect in more modern fantasy, but they’re compelling all the same.

The Siege of Dros Delnoch is a tale of bravery, courage, and honor, and I’ll confess, is exactly the sort of story I’m a sucker for. Gemmel is rightfully considered one of the foundational voices in Heroic Fantasy, and after reading Legend I better understand why.

Legend was published in 1984, and while it still largely holds up, there are some signs of its age. The very ending of the story, in particular, incorporates a fair amount of deus ex machina that probably wouldn’t survive a developmental editor these days. That being said, I was enjoying the characters enough that I was in a pretty forgiving mood.

If you’re looking for a tale of honor in warfare, loads of action, and compelling characters, Legend is a great book to crack open.

Synopsis:

An outlaw lost at the edge of the galaxy and an honorable commander who will have to risk everything to save her, Parallax is a heart-pounding, slow burn space opera romance packed with action, adventure, banter, and found family.

The tenuous alliances of the United Tribal Axis have fractured, breaking humanity into warring factions. Hinata finds himself fighting a losing war against an opponent that doesn’t play by the rules. While Freyja focuses all of her efforts on uncovering the origin of the signal that she is convinced is the key to revealing the source of the chaos ripping their society apart. Upon returning from an outer rim mission, Freyja realizes that Skyla hasn’t received a single communication they’ve sent in months and must convince Hinata to abandon his post to mount a rescue mission in search of the missing captain. But there are forces at play larger than any of them realize.

Review:

With Umbra last year and now Parallax, which released just last month, Amber Toro has created a fascinating sci-fi universe with deep and layered protagonists who I will be following as long as she decides to keep writing books. 

I read the first book in the Sentient Stars series a couple of months back and then dove into Parallax once the summer hit. Both share a slow-burn romance quality that permeates throughout, but there is more than just love stories here. Toro has set up multiple sci-fi storylines that keep the plot moving forward along with compelling and blood-pounding action. 

When I saw the “Romance” angle was a selling feature and that there were three main point-of-view characters, I was initially worried it would be a love triangle. I’m happy to see that Toro didn’t go the easy route, instead crafting interesting backstories to set the three leads up with separate motivations and desires. 

Umbra set everything up with Freyja, Skyla, and Hinata sharing the spotlight. Throughout these books, Toro weaves their stories together — literally — with each of them as POV characters, bouncing from one to the other with each chapter. Even then, the narrative keeps pushing forward, almost willing the characters to stay involved in each other’s lives in the process. 

With just a few books under her belt, Toro is already establishing herself as a writer to pay attention to. I’m looking forward to seeing what she does next in the Sentient Stars books and what mysteries our characters solve in their futuristic look at humanity. In fact, the title of the series gives us even more. Some of the vessels in Toro’s universe have advanced artificial intelligences, imprinting on a few of our characters basically at birth. So that means the ships themselves are their own characters with their own unique motivations, providing a little more sauce to the wonderfully plated meal put before us. 

Now, she does a lot right, but Parallax isn’t perfect. I dinged the final score just a little based on supporting characters and the greater storyline. Our main three characters are expertly crafted, but unfortunately that means that some of the side characters are left a little one-dimensional. The strength of our leads definitely covers it up, but a little more backstory on a few of them would be helpful, I think. Also, since the entirety of the book is from three characters’ perspective, we sometimes don’t see what’s happening in the rest of the universe until our characters get there. That isn’t always a bad thing, but with an expansive space empire, it seems a little smallish at times. 

But those are very small nitpicks. I had a great time with Parallax, especially seeing our characters separate at the end of Umbra and how that affects them and ultimately brings them back together in this sequel. Toro expertly leaves us wanting more at the end, and I will be waiting for book 3, whenever it shows up on my Kindle.