FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[pdurrant]

Arcanum 101 by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill is £1.59 at Amazon UK today. A stand-alone urban fantasy boarding school story, apparently. First published in 2012, on Amazon since 2020, and this is the lowest price since then. Normally £5+

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

Miyazaki makes what he wants to make, and anything he sourced is mostly just for reference.

True. None of Hayao Miyazaki's adaptations would be considered faithful to the source material.

He at least does a better job than his son. Goro Miyazaki's garbled adaption of U.K. Le Guin's EarthSea series was...bleh.

Le Guin herself did not hate the film, though she also was quick to point out that it isn't her film and story. It's G. Miyazaki's film and story. Personally, I think the film is okay. It's not bad taken on its own, but neither is it great which I attribute to G. Miyazaki being competent as a director at his best while H. Miyazaki is competent as a director at his worst.

[tch65721]

The Soldier Son Trilogy Bundle: Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb - $1.99

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007Z4SH5O

In Book One, Shaman's Crossing, Nevare Burvelle was destined from birth to be a soldier. The second son of a newly anointed nobleman, he must endure the rigors of military training at the elite King's Cavella Academy—and survive the hatred, cruelty, and derision of his aristocratic classmates—before joining the King of Gernia's brutal campaign of territorial expansion.

And it continues in the next two novels, Forest Mage and Renegade's Magic.

[tch65721]

Amazon US has a number of "The Hollows" series (books 6-13) by Kim Harrison on sale for $1.99 each.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075V6446N

[ZodWallop]

Cross posted from Horror

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes is $3 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo. If you want it, get it quick. Last time it went on sale, the sale lasted like ten minutes.

Titanic meets Event Horizon in this SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find is shocking: the Aurora, a famous luxury spaceliner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick search of the ship reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Messages scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold on to her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

[ottdmk]

Patricia C. Wrede's A Matter of Magic, which collects her books Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward, is on sale. $1.99 at Kobo Canada... $1.79 if you're a VIP member.

It's also on for $1.99 CDN at amazon.ca.

I've owned this collection for years... really enjoyed both books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

World of Howl Collection: Howl's Moving Castle, House of Many Ways, Castle in the Air
by Diana Wynne Jones is $4 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo. I'm really only interested in Howl's but for $4 I'll take the collection.

Don't expect similarities to the Miyazaki film. But I started Howl's years back, well before the film and found it charming. Written as a modern day fairy tale. I never got to finish the book back then.

I've not read the other 3 books, but the first book is excellent.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett is £0.99 at Amazon UK today. This is the first of his Tiffany Aching Discworld novels.

When the Wee Free Men are involved, listening to the audiobook narrated by Stephen Briggs is great. He's so funny the way he does the voices of the Wee Free Men.

[ottdmk]

So, the Diana Wynne Jones trilogy is available for $1.99 CDN at Kobo and amazon.ca, but under the name "The Land of Ingary Novels."

I think I'll pick this up. It's hard to go wrong getting three books for that price, and Howl's at least has a really good reputation.

[DNSB]

Kobo has the second book in Anne McCaffrey's Freedom/Catteni series on sale for $1.99 Cdn as does Amazon.ca. Probably also elsewhere on Kobo and Amazon.

Kobo Canada - Freedom's Choice by Anne McCaffrey Freedom/Catteni #2

Amazon Canada - Freedom's Choice by Anne McCaffrey Freedom/Catteni #2

I read the first 3 books in the series decades back in paperback. I never got around to reading Freedom's Ransom which was the 4th book in the series.

[Kieran Seymour]

Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth is a Daily Deal in the UK today. It's the only one of the seven not to have previously been down to 99p.

amazon.co.uk | Kobo

[tch65721]

For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, Book 5) by Kim Harrison - $.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OI0F9O

[tch65721]

Killing Time (The Time Police Book 5) by Jodi Taylor - $.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C85DHL96

[ZodWallop]

The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft is $3 at Amazon, B&N and Kobo US.

The first book in a wildly inventive and mesmerizing new fantasy series from acclaimed author Josiah Bancroft where magical mysteries abound and only one team can solve them: The Hexologists. “Bancroft is a magician.” — Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe

“Fantastic! The Hexologists fizzes eloquently with wit and elegance, but also has marvelous worldbuilding and an excellent plot - and a central pair of characters who I quite simply love. A cocktail of a book made with the very best champagne.” — Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library

The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case.

But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake—going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven—the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people.

Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for a case that will test every spell, skill, and odd magical artifact in their considerable bag of tricks.

[salty-horse]

The first 3 books in the Edinburgh Nights series by T. L. Huchu is $3 each in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
This is a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy.
The blurb for The Library of the Dead:

A sharp contemporary fantasy following a precocious and cynical teen as she explores the shadowy magical underside of modern Edinburgh.

WHEN GHOSTS TALK
SHE WILL LISTEN

Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghostalker – and they sure do love to talk. Now she speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to those they left behind. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children – leaving them husks, empty of joy and strength. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honor-bound to investigate. But what she learns will rock her world.

Ropa will dice with death as she calls on Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism to hunt down clues. And although underground Edinburgh hides a wealth of dark secrets, she also discovers an occult library, a magical mentor and some unexpected allies.

Yet as shadows lengthen, will the hunter become the hunted?