FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[salty-horse]

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Penric & Desdemona #14) by Lois McMaster Bujold is $1 on Amazon.com (only - "digital list price" discount)
The latest novella in the series.

When sorcerer Learned Penric hears of the suspected demonic possession of an ox at his brother-in-law’s bridgebuilding worksite, he thinks it an excellent opportunity to tutor his adopted daughter and student sorceress Otta in one of their Temple duties: identifying and restraining such wild chaos elementals before harm comes to their hosts or surroundings.

What begins as an instructive family outing turns anything but routine when a mountain search becomes a much more frightening adventure for Penric and his charges. What is undergone there by both mentor and students will yield lessons both unexpected and far-reaching.

[salty-horse]

Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson is £1 in the UK (Kobo, Amazon)
Novella.

A detective thriller in a police beat like no other. Anthony Davis and his partner Chaz are the only real people in a city of 20 million, sent there by court order to find out what happened in the real world 10 days ago so that hidden evidence can be brought to light and located in the real city today.
Within the re-created Snapshot of May 1st, Davis and Chaz are the ultimate authorities. Flashing their badges will get them past any obstruction and overrule any civil right of the dupes around them. But the crimes the detectives are sent to investigate seem like drudgery - until they stumble upon the grisly results of a mass killing that the precinct headquarters orders them not to investigate. That's one order they have to refuse.
The hunt is on. And though the dupes in the replica city have no future once the Snapshot is turned off, that doesn't mean that both Davis and Chaz will walk out of it alive tonight.

[DrNefario]

The Wizards and the Warrriors by Hugh Cook is FREE on Amazon UK at the moment.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wizards-War.../dp/B0GF8V6T83

It's also on KU, so I'm guessing it might be Amazon-exclusive.

As far as I know, this long-running series was brought back into print (eprint?) by a group of fans, very recently (pub. date Jan 2026). I'm assuming this is a promotion rather than an error.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The Wizards and the Warrriors by Hugh Cook is FREE on Amazon UK at the moment.

Came here to post this!
Also in the US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0GF8V6T83

Amazing that it's free. I first learned about it December and was sad it's no longer available.

The publisher's website: https://zenphospress.com/about/

[maddz]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The Wizards and the Warrriors by Hugh Cook is FREE on Amazon UK at the moment.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wizards-War.../dp/B0GF8V6T83

It's also on KU, so I'm guessing it might be Amazon-exclusive.

As far as I know, this long-running series was brought back into print (eprint?) by a group of fans, very recently (pub. date Jan 2026). I'm assuming this is a promotion rather than an error.

Read it back in the day, not quite as bad as The Road to Underfall, but getting that way. I think the problem was that UK publishers were looking for another Tolkein and missed what made LoTR great.

Kobo has books 3-10, but not 1 & 2.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The Wizards and the Warrriors by Hugh Cook is FREE on Amazon UK at the moment.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wizards-War.../dp/B0GF8V6T83

It's also on KU, so I'm guessing it might be Amazon-exclusive.

As far as I know, this long-running series was brought back into print (eprint?) by a group of fans, very recently (pub. date Jan 2026). I'm assuming this is a promotion rather than an error.

Great, now the title theme from Wizards & Warriors for the NES is gonna be stuck in my head all day...

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by maddz

Kobo has books 3-10, but not 1 & 2.

I saw on Reddit they'll all be available there on May 1, once the Amazon promotion is over.

[salty-horse]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

I saw on Reddit they'll all be available there on May 1, once the Amazon promotion is over.

Came here to post this too, as I just got an answer from the publisher

[Hollow Man]

I'm always fascinated by fan effort like this, and it's hard to pass on a well regarded, free, traditionally published (at least it was) as opposed to self published, work that is in a genre I partake in.

I've read the first two chapters, and while I can't say I'm yet as blown away as the fans, it has a bit of that breezy, sarcastic wit that Douglas Adams (another author we lost too early) was king of. We'll see how it shakes out.

Edit: also, to nitpick, the ebook has a tiny bit of extra space (although not quite a full blank line, thankfully) between each paragraph, which drives me batty.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

Edit: also, to nitpick, the ebook has a tiny bit of extra space (although not quite a full blank line, thankfully) between each paragraph, which drives me batty.

The two Gene Wars ebooks from C. J. Cherryh were worse.
Calibre editor is good. Or sometimes the "Remove line Spacein, Set Paragraph indent" on conversion is appropriate (used for all Gutenberg with 1.3em indent)

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The two Gene Wars ebooks from C. J. Cherryh were worse.
Calibre editor is good. Or sometimes the "Remove line Spacein, Set Paragraph indent" on conversion is appropriate (used for all Gutenberg with 1.3em indent)

Yeah I've seen much worse; I'm just too lazy to strip off the DRM and edit it myself.

So far it's decent, but most of the stuff I'm reading these days is more complex in terms of style. This skews a bit YA in terms of writing flow. I'd be curious to know if his later books dip a toe in more challenging waters.