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. Sparktopia by JA Huss
This is the first of two books in the Game of Gods romantasy series by a New York Times bestselling author. The other book is $7.99 each, and is not out yet — but is scheduled to be released this July and is available for preorder. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Luciana Alioto:
Every ten years in Tau City, ten women between the ages of 18 and 24 are chosen to become Spark Maiden. For their ten years tenure, life is as good as it can be. Being a Spark Maiden is in fact one of the highest titles a woman can hold. The Spark Maidens are celebrated and pampered in all possible ways.
However, there is one downside. This lavish life is destined for all Spark Maidens but one. In fact, the apprentice that shows the best mastery of the magical power of the Spark is sacrificed to the God, never to be seen again.
Usually this unfortunate fate is only reserved for the First Spar Maiden, however it seems that in Clara’s – out protagonist – decade something is amiss.
Clara is the Ninth Spark Maiden of her decade, she has been a very lucky girl and is fully aware of it. Not only because of all the privileges she has gained throughout her tenure, but also because as soon as her ten years as a Spark Maiden are up, she will finally be free to marry the love of her life. It is all picture perfect, except that seven out of ten Spark Maidens have already been claimed during Clara’s decade.
It has never been the case that so many maidens were claimed by the God in a single decade. We meet Clara at three months from the end of her tenure, but the story is only getting started.
Well, what can I say? This book is so me-coded. I loved the premise at first glance, I was really excited to start it. Clara, our protagonist, is very likeable. Sure, she’s a privileged as it gets, but she is also very self-aware, so her character comes across very composed and not at all entitled.
The magic system also piqued my interest. The society relies on the production of Spark, which is ensured by the sacrifice of the Spark Maidens every ten years. I haven’t delved deep enough to fully grasp the way the magic system works, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
Okay, all good things so far. Let’s move on to the downside.
The book starts off as repetitive. I’m a sucker for good world-building, I like to fully immerse myself in the world, and love thoroughly descriptive writing styles. But here the author is doing a little too much. Some concepts, despite being quite complex and intricate, are explained superbly — but over and over again. This becomes tiresome very quickly, definitely after the first five times. I hope this aspect improves as the plot progresses, otherwise the reader feels like it is not only handheld, but picked up and spoon-fed altogether.
So to conclude, if you’re looking for your next fantasy read, this is absolutely not one to miss. Run don’t walk to get it for free this Friday, I will definitely keep on reading it as despite the repetitive aspect, it’s managed to fully rope me in, and I will duly oblige to indulge.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Starfighter Down by M.G. Herron
This is the first of three books in the Relics of the Ancients space opera series. The other two books are $7.99 each and are not in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From Alex Korolov:
You’ll probably like this book if you’re a fan of space-based sci-fi stories like Battlestar Galactica.
Captain Elya Nevers is a hotshot pilot. He’s part of a small fight crew that’s about to fight an alien hive-mind race called the Kryl.
Nevers is good at flying, but he doesn’t quite fit in with his crew because he spends most of his free time in flying simulations instead of hanging out with his teammates.
The first couple of chapters are a little slow, mostly about introducing you to the characters, but the alien-fighting action gets going by chapter four, so you don’t have to wait for too long.
I’m planning to finish the book since the story is interesting enough and there’s enough action for readers who enjoy outer space alien fighting adventure stories.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Night Watch by Robert J. Walker
This is a stand-alone post-apocalypse EMP thriller. This author has been on our Free Friday list numerous times in the past, and if you like his style, he’s got over 60 books on Amazon, all in Kindle Unlimited, most of them having to do with EMP disaster themes, and many part of the 98-book EMP Survival in a Powerless World series from multiple authors.
From Alex Korolov:
This is an EMP story, which means a massive electromagnetic pulse wipes out all electronic devices, including cellphones, computers, and many modern automobiles. Let’s see how this one goes.
We meet Bethany and Krystal in the first chapter. They’re from California, but they’re hanging out on a remote beach in Mexico and recording drone footage for a travel video they’re making about the best beaches in Baja.
The two women meet an old fisherman, who warns them that this place isn’t safe for two Americans because a cartel has taken over the area. Bethany gets in their Jeep pretty fast after that, but Krystal takes her sweet time taking more sunset drone shots. Then a large black SUV with its headlights on starts approaching them, and the two speed out of there really fast. Unfortunately for them, the SUV is following them—and it’s catching up.
We get a change of scenery in the next chapter. A punk band is performing to a crowd of 2,000 people. Marco is the seventeen-year-old lead singer and guitarist. Behind the drums is Reuben, who’s Bethany’s seventeen year-old son. On the bass is their shy friend Jason.
The band is about to launch into their final number, when suddenly everything shuts down. The stage lights die. The mics are dead, and the only sounds are some quiet vocals from Marco and Reuben banging on the drums. All the people who were filming the show on their phones realize that they’re dead too. The stage manager tells the band that even the back up generator is dead, which is something he’s never seen. He tells them that something really weird is up and they should get out of there fast. Reuben’s girlfriend Grace runs up to them from the audience and starts helping him pack up his drums.
While they’re all still packing up, there’s a flare of blazing light, like lightning. It fades out and is followed by a big boom, like thunder, but worse. Flames and black smoke are visible in the eastern horizon. Things are definitely looking really bad.
That’s as far as I got, but these first two chapters were a great read. I like the level of tension that is set up right from the start, with the two women fleeing from a cartel. And I like the rock show setting in the second chapter that ends with a World War III-style explosion. Not enough smoke and flames in EMP stories in my opinion, but I do like a lot of action in these books. This one’s a good read for fans of the genre. Enjoy!
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. Heart of Defiance by Eva Chase
This is a standalone novel set in the Abandoned Realms fantasy world, and is a prequel to the Rites of Possession and the Royal Spares romantasy series. The other books are $4.99 each, and are all in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From E.S. Foster:
I really enjoy kingdoms being overthrown in fantasy and other forms of action-packed beginnings, so when I started reading this book, I was most excited for a rebellion that looked like it would take place.
This story starts off quietly enough, with main character Signy beside a lake, mending a fishing net that she found. We get a little background about her as a group of boys her own age come out of the woods and start harassing her. It seems that Signy’s family used to be high-ranking in this kingdom, but it has since been overtaken by enemies. The boys are sons of some of these conquering people.
The overthrowing of the old kingdom happened when Signy was young. One by one, her family members were killed for their opposition. Signy basically lives in exile in a shack in the distant woods, away from the city.
Side note: I often wonder with these types of stories why the people who take over don’t also get rid of the children of the people they just usurped. It seems that these children always grow up to defeat them later.
Signy goes back into the nearest town, where she finds a large outer wall that has several important names carved into them. Two of those names belong to her parents. She scrubs the names to keep them clean in their memory, then leaves, passing by the last remaining statue of her mother that adorns a fountain in the square.
As she’s leaving, Signy sees a group of enemy soldiers appear in the square and approach the fountain. One of them suddenly prepares to demolish it. Outraged, Signy rushes back and pulls out a knife, but she’s easily overpowered. But a bunch of villagers, who have been watching, decide to intervene. They start fighting back. This looks like the beginning of a rebellion. The butcher even rushes out and stabs one of the soldiers with a butcher knife. So things have definitely gotten interesting.
I’ll be honest, the smell of the rebellion immediately made me interested in reading more. I’m a little on the fence about Signy as a character since she seems like a typical snarky, bitter teenager right now, but I want to see what happens with this rebellion, so I’ll keep reading.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. The Forever Life by Craig Robertson
This is the first of six books in The Forever Series of sci-fi adventure. The other books are $4.99 each, and are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
The description of the book reminded me a bit of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary — a single guy, alone on a spaceship, on a mission to save humanity. Right up my alley.
The book opens in the Oval Office, where the president of the United States is getting some bad news. A giant ball of rock — very giant — will swing through our solar system, and knock Jupiter out of its orbit and directly into the Earth. In 97 years, there will be nothing left of us except for a little cloud of dust hovering over Jupiter’s gaseous surface.
Moving an entire planet is beyond the realm of possibility. Earth will need to be evacuated.
Then we jump forward three years. Jon is getting is brain transplanted into a robot built by low-bid government contract. He’s an astronaut, a decorated combat veteran, holds two doctorates — one in biology and one in physics — and he’s the first human to undergo the procedure. But at least the rats they tried it on have survived.
I guess I’m not giving much away to say that the transfer worked. Otherwise, there would be no book to review. He feels just like he did before.
Then there are meetings, tests, more meetings, press interviews, more tests, and finally he’s on the ship. There’s an AI on the ship, but it’s dumber than the AIs we have today. Let me check when the book was written… 2016. Well, that makes sense — it’s the first book in a six-book series. The author had to have time to write all those books. So far, that’s my only complaint.
Never mind, my initial assessment of the AI was incorrect. It’s actually has a very strong personality and is pretty willful — more so than ChatGPT would be, even. So the author was ahead of the curve! The AI was only pretending to be dumb while they were still in orbit around Earth. Which is actually very on-brand for AI. In recent testing, frontier models will, in fact, pretend to be dumber than they are — and engage in other kinds of deceptions — in certain situations.
Anyway, I like Jon a lot, I like the AI, and I like the pacing of the start of the book — I was more than a quarter of the way in before I stopped to write this review.
Jon’s goal is to explore nearby stars to find planets suitable for life. It doesn’t really make any sense to have sent him. It would have been better to send a lot of small probes simultaneously in all directions. Plus, we can see the planets of the nearby stars from here. We can tell how big they are and what their atmospheres are composed of and how suitable they are for life.
Personally, I think a better strategy would have been to start building space habitats. They can already make human-level AIs, and interstellar spaceships, and fusion reactors small enough to fit in an android body, so there should be no problems with getting out to the asteroid belt and starting to collect materials for space habs. You can spin up a space hab to simulate Earth gravity, and you can have perfect Earth atmosphere. We can have ones filled with water to simulate ocean and freshwater environments, to try to save some aquatic species. I think it’s a lot more feasible to scatter humanity across a bunch of spinning habitats than to ship us all off to a distant solar system. The solar system is mostly empty space. A habitat can easily move out of the way if something big is coming at it. And, with fusion power, we’d have unlimited energy.
Plus, in a hundred years — what with human-level AIs and unlimited power — we might have figured out a way to move Earth’s orbit so that Jupiter doesn’t hit us.
I’m a big fan of space habitats. In fact, I’m writing a novel set in a space habitat now. It’s got dodos in it.
But I digress. Bottom line is that I plan to continue reading this book after I’m done with work tonight, and I recommend it to people who like Andy Weir.
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.
MetaStellar news editor Alex Korolov is also a freelance technology writer who covers AI, cybersecurity, and enterprise virtual reality. His stories have also been published at CIO magazine, Network World, Data Center Knowledge, and Hypergrid Business. Find him on Twitter at @KorolovAlex and on LinkedIn at Alex Korolov.
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 on her blog, E. S. Foster and her personal website E. S. Foster - Author
Luciana Alioto is a graduate student at the University of Essex, studying translation, interpreting and subtitling. She loves reading a variety of genres, including classical retellings, fantasy, romance, feminist essays and philosophy works. After completing her law degree, she is now pursuing a career in publishing as an aspiring editor and literary translator.