Review: The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley
Reviews / February 29, 2016

The Last Mortal Bond is a truly epic conclusion to the The Unhewn Throne trilogy. I just can’t stress enough how much I feel Staveley has grown as a writer since Emperor’s Blades. I felt the first book, The Emperor’s Blades, was unfairly over hyped, setting a level of expectation that I just didn’t feel like the book could live up to. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely enjoyed it or I would not have read on, but it was not without its issues. Providence of Fire set a new level of standard for the series, it was a fantastic second installment and the real test was going to be if that level of story telling could be maintained in the third and final book. I’m happy to say it succeeded. Easily. This series as a whole undoubtedly lives up to the expectations that were set for Staveley’s debut novel. This is a thrilling book that really ties up so many things, and was still able to deliver unexpected twists. All three of the Malkeenian siblings have changed tremendously since that first book, it is amazing to think back to the young naive characters they were when this series started. Sadly, with…

The Speculative Herald’s Best of 2015
Book List / December 5, 2015

  One of the perks I’ve found with working with several bloggers is that we can cover more books than we have time to read on our own. So, when it came time to make our Best of 2015 list, I decided to ask each of the contributors to submit a ranked list of their favorite books (yep, I’m mean like that. Choosing favorites can be hard, ranking is even harder). I then used a scaled points system to calculate an over all list. So, the end result features a variety of books that either several of us agreed belong in the top 10, or books that perhaps just one reviewer read, but placed in their high on their ranked choices of the year. With so many great choices we had to expand our collaborative list past just 10 books to 25. Since our blog started late in the year, many of these books do not currently have reviews here. But we do plan on adding them, so keep your eye out. So here it is, Speculative Herald’s list of our absolute favorite books from 2015! And because I like to get straight to the good stuff, I am listing them in order starting with…