Did you know that Amazon has a list of the top-selling and free sci-fi and fantasy books? The list changes constantly — authors and publishers set their books to free temporarily to promote their work, and, of course, books move up and down in the rankings. Read on to find your fun free read for this weekend! And grab the books quickly because they don’t always stay free for long.
This week’s list is completely different from those of the previous weeks. So if you’re a fan of free books, there are going to be new things to read all the time. If you want to get this list in your inbox every Friday afternoon, subscribe to the MetaStellar weekly newsletter.
There are a lot of books to go through, so this week I’m being helped out by a couple of other members of our MetaStellar community. If you’d like to join me in doing these reviews — and taping our regular Free Friday videos — email me at maria@metastellar.com.
5. The Dusk Reapers by JT Lawrence
This is the first of six books in the Cursebreaker urban fantasy series by a USA Today bestselling author. The rest of the books are $4.99 to $5.99. The second is in Kindle Unlimited and the rest haven’t been published yet, but are scheduled to be released in the next two months. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
There’s nothing that I like better than getting a complete series for free. Plus, I’m a big fan of urban fantasy, especially the kind with women on the cover in tight clothes, holding magical weapons.
I am, one hundred percent, the target reader here.
The story opens with a prologue in South Africa in the late 1990s. A man and a woman are walking hand-in-hand through a forest. The man has an engagement ring hidden in his pocket. He brought the woman to the forest in order to propose to her in a beautiful setting, but the forest turns out to be a little creepy, and he’s starting to regret his decision.
They come to a clearing and he unpacks his backpack. He’s brought a picnic blanket and food and a bottle of champagne. The woman looks away for a second, to hide how happy — and nervous — she is. When she turns back, the man has disappeared. She panics. They’ve been hearing wolf howls in the distance — did a wolf get him?
And then something happens. I’m not going to tell you what, so as not to spoil things. Let me just say that it was cool and I enjoyed it. Also — perfectly creepy for a Friday the thirteenth!
That was the prologue. Chapter one is set in the year 2022, and opens in a hospital. Our protagonist, Asha, is shackled, her arms in padded cuffs. A metal tray flies across the room as she screams and struggles.
There are also voices in the room. They’re talking about the fact that she’s speaking Latin, and about how weird it is that a tray just flew across the room. And about the fact that her heart rate is spiking but she’s pulled out her IV and they can’t get it back in. If they don’t give her a tranquilizer, her heart might stop again.
Then Asha feels a sting in her thigh and eventually, the pain fades and she falls asleep.
When she wakes up again, she has a better idea of where she is — in a hospital, surrounded by people in scrubs and wearing a stethoscope. They’re saying that it’s been two weeks, and they’re surprised she made it.
She takes stock. She’s in a dry hospital bed. She’s survived some unknown trauma. She might be crazy. And she can’t remember her own name.
I love, love, love this beginning and I’ve already started reading the rest of the book. This is my reading for the weekend, and I’m stocked.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. A Conjuring of Ravens by Azalea Ellis
This is the first of five books in the A Practical Guide to Sorcery fantasy series. The other books are $4.99 to $7.99 each and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
This book describes itself as “magepunk,” and having absolutely no idea what that is, I was very intrigued.
The story begins with a group of sorcerers traveling on an expedition through the mountains. We get some backstory about how the various people on the mission lost their lives or went insane. One of the few people left is an unnamed archeologist. He manages to find a strange room carved into the mountainside, and inside he finds a magic circle and a book. He joyfully announces that the book, once it’s deciphered, will solve the world’s problems.
We then get to Siobhan’s perspective. She’s also a sorcerer, living with her father in a rented room. However, there are few people after her, so she needs to climb up the wall and break into her own room with magic to escape.
It turns out that the people after her are investigators because she and her father don’t have a license to practice the kind of magic they use. Siobhan escapes but the investigators chase after her.
She comes across a mysterious man, who lets her into his house. Siobhan doesn’t really trust him, but the investigators catch up and break down the door. Siobhan is forced to reveal her secret: she can transform into a man named Sebastian, though she doesn’t have much control over it.
The reason, it seems, that Siobhan can do this is because of an amulet she wears. The people after her believe she stole it, but Siobhan insists that’s not the case. She found the amulet in the book from the previous chapter, and the magical artifact tied itself to her.
The man offers her a deal: join the gang he’s part of and she won’t be arrested. So it looks like Siobhan doesn’t have a choice.
So like I said before, I haven’t read mage punk before, but I always liked the idea of science-based magic. This magic system, however, was very difficult to figure out. There were some cool concepts in there, but in the end, there was a lot of information in the first few chapters that made the story itself drag. On that note, I don’t think I’ll continue with this story, but if you enjoy magical universities and complex magic systems, check this series out this weekend!
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Hammer of Fate by G.N. Gudgion
This is the first book in the Rune Song Trilogy, an epic fantasy series. The other two books are $3.99 each and they are both in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
This story begins by combining Vikings and magic, so I’m really excited to see where this goes. We’re first introduced to Yrsa, a witch who has been the guardian of an island where her coven was located for many years. Most of the coven has been killed, and more priests and soldiers worshipping another god are on their way.
Yrsa begins performing a ritual to make her a spirit guide. However, the soldiers looking for her catch on, and her spell doesn’t work. She knows she’s running out of time, so she goes to a couple in the woods. Their daughter might the answer to a powerful prophecy spoken by one of the coven members before they died. With Yrsa’s warning the couple escape. Yrsa, on the other hand, dies just as the soldiers arrive.
Years, later, we read from Adelais’s perspective. This is the daughter of the couple mentioned earlier. She is currently trapped in a convent as a novice, but she longs to escape back to her homeland. She succeeded in discussing herself as a man this time.
She makes it outside the convent and prepares to perform magic, but suddenly she spots a man who takes out a knife and stabs someone.
This takes us to Malory’s point of view. He’s a priest of some kind, and he stabbed the man to save his immortal soul. I’m still not really sure why that was Malory’s train of thought. Just then, an assassin comes in and delivers the final blow, but he is killed before Malory can do anything.
It turns out the assassin was a Guardian, who acts against the main faiths in the story. The priests, especially the order Malory is a part of, want them gone. So Malory decides to find Guy, the son of the man who had been killed by the assassin.
Here is where I stopped reading. We then get to Guy’s perspective, which is the fourth in the story. There’s a lot of information being thrown at me, but I don’t see the story moving forward because it’s listing off the perspectives first. I don’t think I’ll continue with this one.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. Enchantments and Enemies by Bridget E. Baker, Leia Stone, Kimberly Loth, Alicia Rades, Megan Linski, M. Lynn, Melissa A. Craven, and Juliana Haygert
This is a box set of six romantasy books by six different authors. Bridget E. Baker, Kimberly Loth, Alicia Rades, Megan Linski, M. Lynn, Melissa A. Craven, and Juliana Haygert have been in our Free Friday list before.
From Maria Korolov:
Let’s start with the first book in the series, Displaced by Bridget E. Baker, the first book in the seven book The Birthright Series, a fantasy series.
Chancery is an Evian, whatever it is, seventeen years old, living on an island in Hawaii. Her mother is an empress and has ruled for nearly nine hundred years. Chancery was born with some kind of disability and should have been killed at birth, but wasn’t. So — these aren’t nice people.
Her best friend, Lark, is secretly half-human. If the other Evians find out, they’ll kill her. Again, not nice people. Lark is a year older than Chancery and wants to be accepted into the intelligence subsection and get to go out and live among the humans. But it’s competitive. If she defeats Chancery in a challenge, she’ll get a spot for sure. But people won’t believe that their battle was real, not staged unless they have a big public falling out first. Plus, Chancery isn’t enthused about throwing a fight at someone as far down in the pecking order as Lark.
If Lark can’t get into the intelligence subsection, she’ll be stuck working for her Uncle Max, restructuring corporations all day long.
What?
I’m so confused. I have no idea what’s going on.
Anyway, Chancery is third in line for the throne, right behind her evil twin.
And, oh, all the human rulers on the planet know about the Evians. Chancery’s mother’s birthday is coming up, and the US president, and a bunch of other global leaders, are coming to pay their respects. Turns out, they’re just the figureheads for the Evians. But most humans don’t know the Evians exist. The Evians are like secret gods, playing with human fates on a whim. Oh, and Chancery seems to have a crush on her evil twin sister’s boyfriend.
I don’t like Chancery. I don’t like her mother much, I don’t like Lark. I’ve gotten old and grumpy and hate teenagers and their problems.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Forgotten Colony by M.R. Forbes
This is a complete box set of all five books in the Forgotten Colony space opera series, which is part of the 36-book Forgotten Universe universe. And the author has plenty more on Amazon — nearly all of it in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Terrence Smith:
The first book is the series, Deliverance, introduces us to Caleb, a soldier who leads a rescue team called The Vultures. His mission is to rescue a team of scientists on planet Earth, which has been decimated by a worldwide plague and an extraterrestrial menace known as the strife. They are slated to transport a truck containing their research to a ship set to leave planet Earth, and Caleb is set to go along with them.
Initially, while the writing holds a lot of action, it is bogged down by a lot of jargon, both of the military and science-fiction variety. The writing also goes into a lot of detail with things like ammo count and explaining the background of the universe and the characters. This ends up pulling me out of the action, as I prefer writing that appeals primarily to the human senses to make me feel like I am actually in the middle of the action. This story might have worked better as a video game, where the player can be on the field fighting the enemy and commanding their squad members.
A surprising thing happened, though: with every cliffhanger ending of a chapter, I was compelled to keep reading. I also got a great sense of the danger facing these soldiers, as a casualty occurs early on.
I might continue with this story, to see what fate befalls the rest of Caleb’s Vultures.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
See all the Free Friday posts here. Do you have other free books for us to check out? Comment below or email me at maria@metastellar.com.
Have you read any of these books? Are you planning to? Let us know in the comments!
Or watch Maria and Emma discuss all five books in the video below:
E. S. Foster is a writer and graduate student at the University of Cambridge. Her work has been featured in a variety of literary journals and small presses. You can find out more about her and what she does at her blog, E. S. Foster.
MetaStellar editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist, writing stories set in a future virtual world. And, during the day, she is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@metastellar.com. She is also the editor and publisher of Hypergrid Business, one of the top global sites covering virtual reality.
Terrence J. Smith is MetaStellar's assistant fiction editor. He has contributed his writing to nonprofits and both print and digital publications. He enjoys all things technology, but remembers to meditate and appreciate the outside world.