2014: New Year’s (Reading) Resolutions…

Last year, I resolved to read at least the first book in four fantasy series. I managed to read the first of only two of them… Thankfully, these sorts of thing are not binding, but nevertheless, I’ve decided to (belatedly) come up with another four fantasy series I would like to at least try, if not finish, in 2014. I will include the two I failed to read in 2013, and hopefully keep them high on the TBR list. So, here are the 2014 Fantasy Reading Resolutions…

Margaret Atwood – MaddAddam Trilogy

Celia Friedman – The Coldfire Trilogy

Tom Lloyd – Twilight Reign (from 2013)

Brandon Sanderson – Mistborn (from 2013)

As before, and always, there are no doubt going to be tens of new fantasy, sci-fi, urban fantasy and horror novels series that I will want to read. Even need to read, in my weirdly-wired mind. They will probably get in the way of my fulfilling these reading resolutions (which makes you wonder if these types of posts have any value whatsoever, but there we go). It’s impossible to read all the novels I want to read. But I will do my best to read at least the first in the above series. It certainly helps that I have already bought them. I’ll use the weekend Upcoming posts to highlight stand-alone novels, and also hitherto unmentioned or unrevealed SFF series that catch my attention. In the meantime, though, here is some information about the above-mentioned series…

C.S. Friedman’s COLDFIRE TRILOGY finally available as eBooks in the UK!

This is a series that people have been telling me to read for years! Sadly, it doesn’t seem readily available in the UK (and, when in the US, I could never find it in stores – even the massive Barnes & Noble in Union Square, New York, didn’t have any copies). So, now that it’s available in eBook format in the UK, I really have no excuse anymore! These will also be the first books I read by C.S. Friedman, which I’m a little ashamed about. Better late than never, though.

All three novels in the Coldfire Trilogy are available (they were apparently quietly made available at the beginning of May 2013): Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows. In addition, the Coldfire short story, Dominion, is also available in the UK (and has been for a over a year, actually).

Here’s a synopsis for the first novel in the series…

Over a millennium ago, Erna, a seismically active yet beautiful world was settled by colonists from far-distant Earth. But the seemingly habitable planet was fraught with perils no one could have foretold, and the colonists found themselves caught in a desperate battle for survival against the fae, a terrifying natural force with the power to prey upon the human mind itself, drawing forth images from a person's worst nightmare or most treasured dreams and indiscriminately giving them life.

Twelve centuries after fate first stranded the colonists on Erna, mankind has achieved an uneasy stalemate, and human sorcerers manipulate the fae for their own profit, little realising that demonic forces which feed upon such efforts are rapidly gaining in strength. Now, as the hordes of the dark fae multiply, four people – Priest, Adept, Apprentice and Sorcerer – are about to be drawn inexorably together for a mission which will force them to confront an evil beyond their imagining, in a conflict which will put not only their own lives but the very fate of humankind in jeopardy...