James Mordechai

I picked this novelette up because I wanted to read a short SF story, but once I finished it I wished it had been much longer! It's difficult to review this short story without spoiling much of it, but what I can say is that in this future Asian metropolis nothing is what it seems and there are several plot-twists that will give you that “aha!” moment. It's all about memories and how in a dystopia future these can be traded and uploaded in other people's minds. I'd recommend this to anyone that would like to read an original and action-packed SF story without investing too much time in thick trilogies that nowadays have become the norm. I'm looking forward to reading more from Frasier Armitage.

Not entirely happy with this one from Shea. Nice premises but it fails quite badly with the confusing plot and it lacks any climax.

Great premises but poorly executed.

As someone interested in Greek/Roman mythology I did quite enjoy this different take on it. How can we classify it? It is definitely focused on deities from the past, like a mythological story, but it is without a doubt a fantasy set in an unspecified time in the future. There are two pantheons of gods, the classical Greek/Roman one and the Viking one, all victims or perpetrators of machinations in order to survive a cataclysmic event that is endangering their universe. The story feels like an oniric journey of the main character through an alien world and... alien body, given that we start the novel when she wakes up in someone else's body. It is told through her point of view, so we readers have to discover all the things that are happening at her pace.
I have to say that I'm not a great fan of first person present tense stories so it took me a while to get used to it. What helped me was the fact that there were shifts between first person present tense and third person past tense. The latter quite important in order to understand what is going on, given that the main character is clueless for most of the novel, until the very end. If you find yourself a bit lost among the many characters, like it happened to myself, just keep going because it will all be revealed at the very end.
The only issue I had was about the too many characters. Sometimes it was difficult to follow dialogues and relationships between them and given that I'm not that familiar with Norse mythology as I'm sure many others are, it would probably have helped to have a short glossary at the end with the list of the deities.
Apart from this I highly recommend this debut novel to all the mythology enthusiasts that wants to enjoy a different take on it. I'm looking forward for the next one!

Very interesting inter-woven collection of short stories. I picked this up because I was a bit tired of 800 pages-long fantasy tomes part of never ending 10 books series and I was told this could have been up my street. And it definitely was what I was looking for. I was so pleased that after years I could finally read fantasy without the 800 pages commitment. I don't want to spoil much in this review but if you like action, magic, some monsters here and there and a bucolic setting this is for you. What I liked about these stories is that they keep the reader in the dark about many aspects of the world, the magic system, races etc. There is no need to explain everything, even in a complex world like the one in The Shield Road. For example, I loved the Bladekins figures, their skills and ethics and although I would have loved to read more about them I think knowing this little is enough.
The structure of The shield road reminds of what fantasy used to be before Tolkien set the modern standards: short stories sharing a world and few characters showing up here and there. Think about Jack Vance and his Dying Earth's first book where there is a common theme, common world and some characters but they can be read independently.
I got lost a couple of times here and there in some stories, but overall it was a well written collection and I highly recommend it to people like me that love fantasy but are tired of Bible-like books. I'm looking forward to reading a sequel!