It's that time again: another Recommended Reading entry.

It has been a little while since we last had one of these, having plowed through a slew of books that didn't really catch me.

That's one of the downsides of doing this, for every readable book you uncover you have to submit yourself to several others that aren't up to scratch.

This book most certainly was up to scratch, and features an extremely interesting protagonist.

Nathan Fierro's The Demon of Cliffside is a first-person perspective 'Alchemypunk' tale told through the eyes of a protagonist with no name. A creature that is hundreds of years old and predates the humanity that has been built above them.

It's a fascinating read, and one that has been carefully crafted to give you a completely alien and detached feel as you experience the tale.

From 250 to 13.

Not that long ago I posted about Mark Lawrence's Great Self-published Fantasy Blog-off. A humorously titled take on the Great British Bake-off, presumably.

Well after making sure my cream had set correctly and my oven was at the right temperature and my sponge was correctly moistened with confiture, I went through all 250 entries that the 'short' list comprised of.

As previously noted, there were a lot of familiar faces, and in my own personal whittling down process I excluded works that I had read before and authors who were already in the Recommended Reading section.

After this, I cut out those authors whose covers didn't appeal to my artist's aesthetic sensibilities and those whose books clearly weren't aimed at me in the first place. This narrowed it down further, but the pile was still large.

Finally, I downloaded a sample of each work onto my kindle and read the opening chapters of every work that was left. The samples I was able to complete were bought outright and will be getting a review at some point in the next year.

As the title of this entry suggested, we went from 250 to 13. Here are those 13:

Pauline M Ross – The Plains of Kallanash
G. R. Matthews – The Stone Road
Melisa McPhail – Cephrael’s Hand
Michael Watson – Valkwitch
Michael McClung – The thief who pulled on trouble’s braids
Christian Freed – Hammers in the Wind
Jacob Cooper – Circle of Reign
James Islington – The shadow of what was lost
Davis Ashura – A Warrior's Path
Greg James – Under a colder sun
Christopher Ruz – Century of Sand
T.O Munro – Lady of the Helm
Barbara Webb – City of Burning Shadows

Note that this is a personal list, and there's a lot of very good fiction that has been omitted in order to compile it. I strongly suggest you check out the authors I mentioned in one of my previous entries about the contest.

You can find Watson, Ashura and Freed's short fiction in our latest anthology, and it was most gratifying to see that they had made the cut.

The others are more of an unknown quantity, but I've heard good things about a number of them.

I shall also be reading and reviewing the final 10 choices the bloggers make in the contest proper, and look forward to adding any additional titles I may have missed in my scouring.

Another entry into the Recommended Reading section!

Those of you who have been following my blog with due dilligence will notice that in the previous entry when congratulating a host of authors affiliated with Fictiongarden I slipped a name in there of someone who hadn't been in either the anthologies or part of the Recommended Reading/Hall of Fame sections.

That name was one Andrew Lowe, the author of the excellent Forging Divinity. Our latest entrant into the Recommended Reading section.

Forging Divinity is a magic-fuelled adventure story in the vein of Brandon Sanderson. It may not be the grimmest or darkest book in the section but it makes up for it with an intriguing plot and likeable characters.

Oh, and the magic system is to die for.

So well done Mr. Rowe! You can expect some pestering e-mails in future. I'll be keeping an eye out for whatever you plan on releasing next.

The Great Self-published Fantasy Blog-off Shortlist announced.

Just a brief update for you all this time to let you know that the shortlist for Mark Lawrence's Great self-published Fantasy Blog-off has been announced.

I say shortlist, but really it's a long, long list of 250 titles. This will be whittled down to a lucky 25 over the next few months by the respective bloggers involved.

The cool thing about this list is that I'm on it too!

A big congratulations to the following Fictiongarden affiliates for their making the cut as well:

Matt Waldram
S.M. White
Luke Matthews
Christopher Kellen
Tony Healey
Tom Wright
Tristan Gregory
J.S. Morin
Michael Watson
Christian Freed
Matthew Colville
Gregory Close
Davis Ashura
Ken Lim
Andrew Rowe
Kal S. Davian
Patrick J. Loller
M. Todd Gallowglas
Graham Austin-King

I've probably missed somebody somewhere, so for that I apologise. It really is a mammoth list, but having read and rated a tenth of the books in question I can say that competition is going to be fierce!

In addition to these fine folk there's a glut of talent out there that I hope to be working with in future anthologies. Good luck to those folks as well, they deserve it.

I've compiled my own substantial list of future reading thanks to the efforts of Mark Lawrence to bring this to fruition. You'll be hearing exactly what I think about many of these books in the year to come!

Last but most certainly not least, a hearty congratulations to Claire Frank, whose Echoes of Imara series has been picked up by Realmwalker Publishing Group. A most enjoyable read that I had the pleasure of reviewing recently. Well deserved!

The site continues to grow! Another new section and another Recommended Reading entrant!

As you've no doubt spotted by now, we have a lovely links page that provides you with a number of intriguing sites on the web relevant to our interests. Go check it out if you haven't already!

In other news, I just finished another great book but with a twist.

This work is the first one I'm going to put in the Recommended Reading section that wasn't published independently.

As evidenced by Rob J. Hayes and many others, the line between independent author and small press published author is growing exceedingly blurred. As a result I am now permitting small press publications to appear in the Recommended Reading section irrespective of whether they have been published independently before.

Fear not though, fair reader! Every work that is published by an indie/small-press will have a big bold disclaimer telling you so. So if you really want to read exclusively self-published materials from the section then you can.

In this case the publisher in question is Ragnarok, who already recently picked up Rob J. Hayes, author of the previously self-published The Heresy Within.

Today's addition to the Recommended Reading section is stable-mate Seth Skorkowsky's Damoren. A dark and pulpy Urban fantasy with no shortage of guns, violence and monsters.

Damoren caught me off guard with its lovingly-crafted deviation from all the standard things we have come to expect in the genre, reading like a big budget horror film at times instead of a typical Dresden clone.

It's solid stuff, and well worth a read if you're into that kind of thing.

In other news, the Artist's and Editor's Corners have taken a sideline to the production of the latest annual anthology, Through The Suffering Of Others, which as we speak is emblazoned upon the front page of the site.

I shall get around to developing them in due course, once I've found all that missing time that I seem to have misplaced.

Last but not least, if you haven't thrown your self-published hat into the ring that is Mark Lawrence's call to self-published fantasy authors then you need to get your skates on, as submissions close this Friday.