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.
Since the first four books on today’s list are all part of the same series, we’re reviewing books one, five, six, seven, and eight instead of the usual books one through five.
8. Snowflakes in Summer by Joshua E. B. Smith
This is the first of three books in The Snowflakes Trilogy of grimdark fantasy horror. The other two books are $3.99 each, but are both in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
First, a disclaimer. I don’t like scary books because I don’t like being scared. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding why anyone would. You guys are all crazy. You won’t catch me going into a haunted house. I’m still traumatized from the time I went to the historic dungeon in Salem, Mass. where the so-called witches were kept in phonebooth-sized stone cells in a dark underground prison.
But all of today’s books seem to have a horror bent, so I hope that there aren’t any jump scares in the first couple of chapters.
Anyway, this book opens with the steady drip of rancid blood onto an old stone floor.
Noooooo!
Didn’t I just say I was still traumatized by the Salem thing?
Deep breath. Back to the book. Apparently, we’re in the middle of an execution. One of several happening that day. There’s a priest executing people in front of an amphitheater full of students.
Apparently, the person who was just chopped into pieces isn’t a person but an abomination, a zombie, animated by magic. The students are being taught how to kill them.
Then there’s a bunch of back story about this world, which seems to be a medieval-style fantasy world, with kingdoms, and magical enemies, and magical priestly orders.
Then we finally get to our protagonist, Akaran, a priest in one of these orders — one of the less-respected ones — who’s arrived at a village to help them deal with a threat of some kind. One that kills people in a way they haven’t seen before.
Akaran is an exorcist, and a neophyte, so the locals don’t think much of him. Akaran demonstrates his powers when he saves the life of a wounded local by pulling some evil magical thing out of him.
He learns that the man was attacked by a pack of wolves with glowing eyes. His next challenge is a young woman wailing loudly while wandering through the village, carrying a gnarled staff with a small glowing crystal on it. She looks half-starved and underdressed for the weather. He ignores her crazy ramblings and urges her to go inside the inn and get warm before she gets frostbite. She finally comes inside and tells him that she’s looking for her lost lord, a powerful elementalist. None of the locals recognize her, and he finally figures out that the woman is from a different plane, the elemental plane of ice.
This book reads like an epic fantasy. The tone is serious, and a little mystical and literary. Despite the gruesome beginning, it feels like it would be a solid read, if a little heavy. Depending on my mood, I might enjoy reading this book, but odds are that I won’t stick with it because I’m in the middle of a massive space opera series.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
7. The Fabulous Miss Fortune by Jessica Gleason
This is the first of two books in the Jessica Gleason Books occult horror series. The other book is $3.99 but is in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
From the cover, I’d guess this is a funny magical mystery. But the description reads more like Silence of the Lambs. Which I haven’t read, by the way, and never will.
Anyway, the book opens at a traveling carnival in 1984. Peggy Lee is a short, brown-haired woman wearing silk scarves and tapestries, and she’s got a crystal ball and tarot cards. She used to have candles but isn’t allowed them anymore, after she accidentally set her tent on fire in Ohio.
She has three chances to prove that she can tell fortunes. And she already used up one. She ran away from home to join the carnival and is desperate to stay. Unfortunately she knows nothing about telling fortunes, so she’s trying to fake it until she can make it. There’s a lot of bad language in this chapter, by the way, in case you’re easily offended, and a creepy lecherous clown.
In the next chapter, we switch to 2022. Three kids, ten years old, who’ve pooled their money and bought two rats from a pet shop. They take the box with the rats to an old abandoned tunnel where one of the kids, the girl, opens it up, takes the rats out by their tails and viciously whacks them on the ground. The rats are still alive when the two boys violently stomp on the rats, killing them in great and gruesome detail.
The kids agree that this was a lot of fun.
Then we’re back in 1984, where Peggy Lee tells a teenage customer that school is going to be tough tomorrow. The teen is annoyed and takes his money back. He didn’t need a fortuneteller to know that school was going to be tough.
Then a couple of college girls come in and she tells them that they’ll go to school tomorrow. But they don’t have classes. She says she meant stool — that the girls will sit on a stool for a while. Then they’ll see a squirrel and go home for dinner. The girls demand their money back as well. And these three people were the only customers she’d had all day.
She’s got one more chance left. Depressed, she drinks some beer and loses her virginity to the creepy clown.
This is all pretty creepy and weird. And, since this is October and all, you guys might be into it. Me? Not so much.
From what I read in the book’s description, Peggy Lee will fake fortunetelling kills by predicting deaths and then killing people to make her predictions come true. Okay, now that I’ve said that, I’m actually curious to see how this book turns out…
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
6. Bewitched by Laura Thalassa
This is the first of two books in the Bewitched paranormal fantasy series. The other book is $4.99 but is in Kindle Unlimited. This series is set in the same universe as the author’s The Bargainer series, which we previously reviewed here. This author has also been on our Free Friday list before. In December of 2022, we reviewed her book Pestilence, a number one Amazon bestseller.
From Lilivette Domínguez-Torres:
Selen Bowers is a 20-year-old witch who wants to join the witch academy of her dreams. She has been trying to get into this coven for years and, finally, she managed to get an interview.
She finds out that she must meet two requirements to be admitted. First, she must go on a magic quest. Second, she must find a familiar animal to bond with.
Finding a familiar is a lot harder than it sounds, which is why Selene decides to focus on the magic quest first. Since the magic quest must be experienced in the wilderness so she can bond with nature, she ends up booking a trip to South Africa and hoping for the best.
She booked the expensive trip on her credit card after getting drunk so she’s really hoping the trip works out or else…she’s going to have a hard time not only trying to get into the coven but also with paying her bills.
What’s interesting about Selene’s magic is the fact that whenever she uses it, it eats away at her memory. This means that whenever she casts a spell — especially a powerful one — she ends up losing some of her memories. Because of this, she’s always running around with a notebook and annotating the important details of her days. That way, if she were to forget anything, she could just go through her notebook — or through the Post-it notes she has all over her house — and remember things. This actually made Selene feel like a very unique character and I really can’t wait to know more about her and what will happen on this trip.
In the end, I love the fast-paced story, I love the clean writing style and I love the fact that this feels like an easy, quick read. I will definitely continue reading this and I totally recommend it for fans of urban fantasy books full of magic, mysteries, and curses.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
5. And Then There Was Silence by Candace Robinson
This is a standalone book that is part of the Untamed Darkness paranormal horror series, which can be read in any order. The other books are between $0.99 and $3.99, and they are available on Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
The story begins with Sadie and her husband, your average cute goth couple on a way to a Halloween party at the cemetery. Sadie has been trying to make it as a screenwriter, but things haven’t been going so well with her career.
To try to get her creativity flowing, her husband’s mother and the rest of the party pretend they’re going to stab her and make her a blood sacrifice. Thankfully, her husband isn’t a very good actor, but that gives Sadie an idea for another screenplay.
She gets started on her next piece, driving to the woods to get some inspiration. While there, Sadie visits an old, derelict cabin that she always admired. She imagines what it would be like to live in and write as much as she wants. But she snaps out of her dreams and, realizing she’s late to meet her husband, rushes home.
When she returns, Sadie discovers that her husband has hung himself, and everything changes.
Sadie goes to live with her sister for the time being. On her birthday, a scheduled letter from her husband, written before his death, appears in the mail. When she opens it, Sadie realizes that he had bought the abandoned cabin she always admired. Now it belongs to her, so she can move in whenever she wants and start writing.
But going forward, it looks like not everything is as it seems with the cabin.
I enjoyed the premise of this one. It was fun getting to know Sadie and her relatable dream of making it as a writer. I think I might stick with this one, given the spooky premise and wanting to see what’s up with the cabin.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Awakening by Catrina Burgess
This is the first of four books in The Dark Rituals dark fantasy horror series. The other books are normally $4.99 each but are all in Kindle Unlimited — and are also all free today. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
Colina arrives at a magic shop, asking the man behind the counter how she can learn the Death Arts. Something terrible has just happened, and now she wants to seek vengeance.
The man states that he can’t help them, but his sister appears and says their uncle could teach her. He declines to offer help because he’s afraid Colina is a Redeemer, part of a group of radicals who try to kill anyone with magic. It seems like this story takes place in the modern day, but right now it’s difficult to tell.
She tries to offer the siblings money, but the man, Luke, refuses. He also questions why Colina would want to learn such dangerous magic. He eventually figures out that Colina is a healer, someone who could never wield death magic, but Colina is desperate. Luke agrees to meet her again at midnight to start training. Before she can leave, Colina nearly collapses from lack of food.
Luke and his sister feed Colina, but Luke tries to get her to explain why she wants to learn death magic. Colina refuses to say, but it’s clear something terrible happened to her. Luckily, she gets to bunk there for the night.
At one point, everyone wakes up and hears screaming, and Luke goes to investigate. It turns out a gang outside is attacking a woman. Colina follows, also ready to fight. But Luke calls on his death magic, releasing a herd of banshees on the gang. After all this happens, Luke collapses, and Colina has a vision of her family screaming and possibly dying.
It turns out that Luke was injured. Colina tries to use her healing magic, but she lost that power when she decides to practice death magic. Fortunately, she has just a little left to heal him. It looks like they’re going to have to continue working together now.
I’m really enjoying this story. The action hit the ground running, and I love magic and modern-day mixing together. This series feels like it has a lot of lore that’s going to be explored in depth. I think I’ll stick with this one.
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:
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.
Lilivette Domínguez-Torres is MetaStellar's marketing assistant and an aspiring book editor based in Puerto Rico. You can find her talking about fantasy books or K-dramas on Twitter at @lilivettedt.
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.