Sword of Destiny - Andrzej Sapkowski

RATING: TWO STARS

Geralt of Rivia is a witcher, a man mutated by magic and potions who is as feared by the common folk as much as he is the monsters he hunts. For he is a hunter of great renown, a master swordsman who battles evil in all of its forms. Shunned aside from a small circle of friends, he is forced to take coin for his livelihood and spends much of his life alone, wandering far in search of contracts suited to his skills.

The Good
When I first heard that this was the book that inspired the hit Witcher games, I knew it was going to be good. Those games are epic on consoles and the book gives more of the same. It's full of lore about different beasts and monsters, with Geralt using his preternatural abilities and magic potions to give him a much needed edge over creatures that are vastly stronger and superior in guile and speed.

The short stories of this anthology don't disappoint and are both exciting in their combat and meaningful in their explanation of morality. Simply being a monster doesn't make something evil and men can be every bit as dark despite being part of the human race; it is up to Geralt to decide on what premise he will take a contact.

The Bad
I think the main issues with the book come from its translation. Sapkowski wrote the original version in Polish and I have a feeling that it is a lot better than the English version, if you can read the language. Simply put, the English translation isn't that great. It's not grammatically incorrect to be fair, rather everything has been translated literally. The result of is is incredibly cheesy fantasy dialogue and words the Western World doesn't really use in speech, like 'comrade.' There's nothing wrong with this in the original version since they're the culturally appropriate words, but the translator should have made a bit of effort to use some creative license with his work to make the book seem more relatable. This isn't the only problem as well and the translator hasn't considered the fact that English has far more words in its vocabulary than other languages do, particularly adjectives. This gives authors a chance to really describe subtle differences in movements, colours etc and Sword of Destiny was very bland to read, with brief, unpadded text - again, a bit of creative licence from the translator could have easily remedied this!

Final Thoughts
Overall, Sword of Destiny is a good, exciting read that puts a slightly different spin on 'monster hunting' than many other books do. It's main problem comes from the translation in my opinion, which although can't be faulted from a technical point of view, leaves a lot to be wanted from the prose and is responsible for the book's low rating.

Flights of Fantasy - Michelle Miles

RATING: FOUR STARS

Flights of Fantasy is a charming anthology by the indie author Michelle Miles. As the name suggests, it's a work of high fantasy and is filled with elves, magic, dragons and more. The book leaves very little for a fantasy junkie to crave and contains several stories, which are listed below:

Dragons of Emhain: The Usurper
Eorwulf
Dragons of Emhain: The Dragon Master
A Dance Among the Faeries
Dragons of Emhain: An Ancient Magic
Mingled Yarn

The Good
Miles has done a great job with this book and has created a plethora of interesting characters that really grew on me despite the fact they are only present in short stories. Her characters are believable and I really felt for them through the disasters and events that unfolded through several, superbly written stories.

Miles really let her imagination run wild throughout this anthology and her Dragons of Emhain stories are particularly good. I'm not sure whether these are linked to a bigger piece of work she has done, but I really hope so! The stories in Flights of Fantasy seem like snippets of a larger book and I'm dying to know what happens overall!

The Bad
Like most anthologies, Flights of Fantasy has some stories that are better than others. As I've said above, I particularly enjoyed the Dragons of Emhain stories, but many of the others weren't really my thing and I found myself skipping through some of them. That being said, I would like to state that there was nothing wrong with the ones I skipped and they were as well written as all the rest in the collection - they just weren't my cup of tea as stories!

My Thoughts
I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with Flights of Fantasy since I hadn't read any of Miles' works before. Her stories are well, written, immersing and imaginative. I really rate this anthology and suggest it as a good time-killer for all of you fantasy fans out there!

Upcoming anthology: 'Rogues' by George R. R. Martin et al

Hi all,

Here's a quick message to all of you fantasy fans out there, who might be interested to learn of a new anthology that will be released soon (although there's no publication date as of yet). The anthology is called Rogues and features 21 stories from some of the biggest authors in the fantasy genre, including a new Song of Ice and Fire story by George R. R. Martin and a piece by Patrick Rothfuss himself!

The full list of featured authors (as it stands at the moment) is:

• George R. R. Martin
• Patrick Rothfuss
• Joe Abercrombie
• Daniel Abraham
• David W. Ball
• Paul Cornell
• Bradley Denton
• Phyllis Eisenstein
• Gillian Flynn
• Neil Gaiman
• Matthew Hughes
• Joe R. Lansdale
• Scott Lynch
• Garth Nix
• Cherie Priest
• Steven Saylor
• Michael Swanwick
• Lisa Tuttle
• Carrie Vaughn
• Walter Jon Williams
• Connie Willis

I'm certainly going to keep my eye on this one and will let you know once a release date has been set!