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. Frostborn by Jonathan Moeller
This is a box set of the first three of first of 15 books in the Frostborn epic fantasy series, plus a prequel novella. The other books are $4.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. The USA Today bestselling author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From E.S. Foster:
I love a good epic fantasy, so I was excited to start this one.
The story begins with a prologue explaining how one of King Arthur’s sons escaped the Saxons of our world and entered a fantasy realm full of magic. A huge group of spider-devils rose up against their armies, but this son made a pact with a member of the high elves, which introduced magic to humans. With this magic and the magical swords made from the elves, they were able to defeat the spiders and beat them back. The peacetime leads to two orders being created, one dealing with spells and one dealing with the magic swords.
Several centuries later, Ridmark is one of the knights in one of the orders. He’s taking part in a festival that has just been declared. We get a little bit more background about what the kingdom is like now that there is peace. We also learn that Ridmark killed one of the spider-devils when he was just eighteen, so he is one of the most respected knights in the land.
Ridmark hopes to use this to his advantage to wed Aelia, daughter of one of the dukes. He manages to get a dance with her during the festival, but after the dance, he realizes that the magical sword he carries is glowing. He announces that someone with dark magic is near and turns to see a man in a red cloak standing and watching everyone.
So this story had a lot of worldbuilding in the beginning, which made for kind of a dense read. I noticed a lot of tropes that are common in fantasy as well. I think I might stick with this one though, just to see where it goes.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Violet Legacy by Tamara Nikolai
This is the first of two books in the New Atlantis paranormal romance series. The other book is $2.99, and is not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
This story begins with Rieka, a young woman who has been searching for the lost tomb of the queen of Atlantis. In this world, the lost city of Atlantis exists, and humans and citizens of Atlantis have coexisted for centuries. The tomb of the queen is said to be the home for coordinates that lead to royal treasure.
But Rieka isn’t interested in the treasure. She wants to find the tomb just like her mother wanted to before her death in a plane crash. Her mother happened to be an Atlantean, making Rieka only half-human.
Rieka is on an expedition in Turkey, where she’s scaling down a cavern. At the bottom, she discovered a temple that contains the queen’s tomb. She notices that she has the same eye color as the queen — her eyes are fiery red, but this isn’t typical even for Atlanteans.
Rieka is ecstatic to have finally found it, but she needs to escape when some kind of explosion occurs and the temple collapses. Now she needs to figure out a way to get back in.
The story then shifts to Dante, a member of one of the Atlantean houses. He’s also been looking for the tomb to restore his and his father’s reputation with the other houses. One of his coworkers informs him that Rieka has found the tomb, but that she also has the same eye color as the queen and the royal family. Dante decides this will come in handy and asks to meet her.
I thought the premise of this story was really interesting. It wasn’t anything like I had read before, and I was interested to see what would happen to the characters and where things would go from here. I think I might stick with this one.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Shock Pepper by Blox Widdle Manor
This is billed as the first book in the Shock Pepper science fiction series, but there are no other books out yet. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Hannah M:
Our story opens with a young boy and girl spraying their garden plants with a hose. All of a sudden, a man emerges from their koi fish pond, muddy and confused.
We then move to a policeman, who is stopped in the street by the boy. The boy claims he needs to show the policeman something shocking and drags him to the garden with the mysterious man. However, when they get there, they find a disturbing sight. The man is dead on the ground, with his testicles lying in a bloody mess around him. Horrified by this, the pair try to find the culprit and see a figure carrying a baby. When they try to pursue this individual, the figure disappears, leaving the policeman and the boy confused.
The next chapter focuses on a dejected man, Sam, nursing a broken heart, with no job and a strained relationship with his parents. The parents hate the fact that their son spends time with his childhood friend. That friend tells Sam about a witch who makes potions that will make a person sleep for ten years. Sam is convinced of its magic and wants to know more.
I did carry on reading this and loved it. All the characters pop up in each other’s storylines, and it was interesting to guess how it would all eventually climax. It was a very different take on the science-fiction genre, and I will definitely read more of this author’s work — though I did find mistakes in the novel that an editor should’ve picked up.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. Fear University by Meg Collett
This is a complete box set of all five books in the Fear University paranormal romance series. The books are normally $0.99 to $4.99 each. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
First, a disclaimer. I hate young adult books because I’m old and grumpy. I hate stories set in magical academies because I don’t like going to class and having to write papers. And I have a cold, cold heart and would rather read about people killing each other than falling in love. I don’t expect you to do anything about any of this — I have a therapist — but I’m just warning you, so you know that I come into this review with three big chips on my shoulder.
Anyhoo.
Ollie has been one step ahead of death for the previous two years. She works as a waitress in a diner, carries a gun in her pocket, and has a congenital inability to feel pain. And has been raised in various horrible foster homes.
She’s walking home to her apartment alone, on a dark and rainy night, when she hears a weird ticking sound. Then she’s attacked by a dog with weird eyes. There have been a series of animal attacks reported in town over the past week, but this is no normal dog. Ollie is badly hurt.
Then two creepy guys show up and attack her as well, then kidnap her. They’re taking her to Fear University.
And I know I said I dislike everything in this book’s description, but I really enjoyed this beginning and really like Ollie. She’s sarcastic, tough, puts up a hell of a fight, and has a very dark past. My kind of woman.
Anyway, at Fear University she learns that there’s a kind of werewolf-like monster that’s killing people. The monsters are growing in number, and the only way to stop them is with hunters trained at Fear University. The government knows about the monsters, but the information is kept secret to avoid panicking people. Ollie decides to sign up. That means that she’ll be taking courses at Fear University — and that one of the guys who kidnapped her will be her tutor.
I’m torn about whether I want to keep reading or not. On the one hand, I like Ollie, I like the fact that the book is full of action, murder and mayhem. On the other hand, I don’t like how easily she buys everything her captors are telling her — and the fact that she thinks that one of the guys who kidnapped her is cute. Also, that she readily agrees to become a student at the school, and the other students are smug and annoying because apparently being a hunter is an inherited trait, and Ollie is a civilian.
Also, the school is a former prison, and there’s still a giant wall around it — and the students sleep inside prison cells at night. There’s a curfew, and they’re not allowed to leave the main building. For their own safety, apparently.
They offer her a deal to stay — they’ll clear her record, so she doesn’t have to spend the rest of her life on the run any more. If I were her, I wouldn’t take the deal. She’s better off on her own than with these guys. I read on for a few more chapters, and I just kept getting more and more upset about her choices, so I’m not going to stick with the book.
But I can see why people like it. I just checked, and the first book in the series has over a thousand five-star reviews. So if you like your romance with a big dose of violence, and a college setting, this book is very readable and Ollie is an extremely compelling character.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. The Burning Sands by P R Adams
This is a box set of the first three of of nine books in the Burning Sands science fiction adventure series. The other books are $3.99 to $4.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From Maria Korolov:
The book opens with Reggie waking up from hibernation, a painful process. There’s nobody else in the lab and there seems to be a power problem in the research facility. He was supposed to have been under for a month, but now his muscles are all gone. He finds clothes and gets dressed. And he finds a working computer — and learns that the battery power on the hibernation tanks will run out in fifteen minutes. There’s enough to wake eleven other people — out of 16 in the tanks. Other people in hibernation died, the computer said, as a result of catastrophic failure.
And someone is trying to break into the facility — even though its fifty feet below ground, a hundred miles from the nearest population center, in the heart of a desert.
Something’s gone very, very wrong. And it looks like the hibernation has lasted much longer than a month. Now an ape-like axe-wielding monster is trying to break into the lab.
I like the setup here, and the fact that Reggie and the other people he was able to get out of hibernation have to figure out what’s going on, and what happened while they were all under, and who’s attacking them. The thing I don’t like, though, is that every single female character is described based on how attracted Reggie is to her, and that Reggie, who’s the highest-ranking of the people who are awake, seems to be a very bad leader who’s immediately having personal issues with the rest of his team. Reggie is awkward, doesn’t seem to have anyone’s confidence, and people only reluctantly take orders from him. And one of the team members wonders why Reggie picked the people he picked for reawakening — and left others, more senior management people, to die in the hibernation tanks when their power lapsed.
Reggie’s orders end up with one of the men on the team being killed by another one of the axe-wielding cavemen. But Reggie thinks that it wasn’t his fault. Then, on top of all his other failings, we learn that Reggie’s also a coward. A coward with daddy issues.
I read a few chapters in and Reggie is still a bad leader, making bad decisions all over the place. For example, one of the team members had suggested that the cavemen who attacked them could be the result of a mutation after a nuclear disaster of some kind, but they don’t take any precautions about radiation.
I still like the book’s premise, but I don’t like any of the characters so far, especially the protagonist. The story could be the kind of arc, I guess, where he grows into his leadership role and deals with his personal issues, but, so far, he seems to be in way over his head and trying to bluster through it, even though he’s putting everyone around him in danger. If this was a movie, and Reggie was played by a sympathetic actor, I probably wouldn’t mind it. As it is, being inside Reggie’s head is making me very anxious. I keep second-guessing all his decisions and am frustrated by his inability to get along with any of the other characters.
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.
Hannah M is a student with a strong interest in publishing. She hopes to build a career that allows her to share diverse stories and voices.
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