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 Avant Champion: Rising by C.B. Samet
This is the first of five books in the The Avant Champion epic fantasy series. The other books are $4.99 to $8.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
This story gave the impression that it was more of a classic style of fantasy. I was excited to learn what that looked like and if this book would fall hard into any familiar tropes.
It begins with Abigail, a girl whose older siblings are workers in the palace. She’s a student at the local university, but due to her connections, she’s able to take on some work as a servant to keep up with her studies. She spends most of her time dusting everything.
Abigail and the other servants are preparing for a ball where the queen is present. Abigail gets to witness a good portion of it, and we get a bit of description of what it’s like. Suddenly, the queen steps up to Abigail and asks her to accompany her to another part of the castle grounds. Abigail quickly obeys.
Abigail steps into a carriage with the queen, and they follow a line of them away from the ball. But in the darkness, tall, black figures appear and take away the people in the other carriages, then disappear. The queen announces that the people who were taken are now dead, having been swallowed whole by the creatures, including Abigail’s brother. The castle is under attack.
They head to the queen’s personal quarters, where the queen’s advisor explains that the queen needs to escape. Abigail is tasked with getting her to a safe place. Trying to keep her fear back, Abigail announces that she knows of a place to hide and promptly starts leading the way.
I liked the start of this story. It definitely feels like a classic fantasy that I could have read as a kid, since it seems geared more toward a younger audience with its writing style. I’m not sure I’ll continue with it though, simply because it veers into spending paragraphs telling all the backstory, which kind of bogged it down for me.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Fae King’s Temptation by Layla Harper
This is the first of eight books in the Court of Bones and Ash romantasy series. The other books are $2.99 to $3.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
This book starts out in the modern world. Kyra is a college student who works as a bartender. She’s up for an important internship and has to deal with a handsy boss and an obnoxious roommate. Still, she’s got a solid plan for her life and is working hard on accomplishing her goals.
Meanwhile, in the world of the fae, Rogar is a king dealing with some complicated political problems, on-going conflicts, and some personal issues. He’s also been around for a few centuries.
Some evil magic throws Kyra from the human world into the fae one. She’s not supposed to be there. She’s now marked for death. Plus, if that wasn’t bad enough, she also has a magic slave mark on her. Rogar saves her by activating the slave mark. That allows the two of them to communicate, but does it also make her his slave? Also, he discovers that she’s his magically-fated mate, but she is also the one woman he can’t have, because of the whole thing about humans not being allowed in the fae world. And Kyra thinks that Rogar is tall, handsome, and well-endowed.
So that’s several of my least-favorite tropes all piled together — fated mates, the guy being way way way too old for the woman, instant attraction, and, of course, the whole magical slavery thing.
But I do have to give credit where credit is due. First of all, I find the book perfectly paced. It moves along briskly, but not so quickly that it feels that the author is just summarizing the action. There’s plenty of tension and action right from the start. And both Kyra and Rogan are sympathetic, compelling characters who seem to be very good at what they do. I love competent people who don’t shy away from doing the right thing, no matter how unpleasant or difficult it might be.
Still — those tropes. I hate those tropes so much. If not for the tropes, I’d still be reading the book.
Of course, lots of people absolutely love those same exact tropes, and they’re probably why this book is on the bestseller list today. If I was stuck in a house with nothing else to read, I’d probably enjoy this book, even while I complained the whole time about all the romantic elements. But I’ve got a stack of unread books on the shelf behind me, so I’ll probably read those first.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Flare by Jonathan Maas
This is a standalone book of philosophical horror. Usually it’s $6.99 but today it’s free. It is also in Kindle Unlimited. Jonathan Maas has been on this list before; we reviewed his book Klareana: The Human Child back in August of 2022, and his sci-fi novella, Project Quetzalcoatl, back in March, 2022.
From Alex Korolov:
This book should appeal to fans of post-apocalyptic survival stories.
I read the first few chapters, in which you get introduced to two different main characters, and also find out what’s happened to the world.
The sun has suddenly gone into an extended solar flare. This means that anyone who’s outside dies instantly, and anyone who stares at its direct light for even a second is permanently blinded. It is possible, however, to be outside at night, as long as shelter is found before sunrise.
Zeke is a traveler who’s just trying to survive. In the first chapter he holes up in some old man’s house and stops the old man from doing something he would regret.
Next we meet Ash.
Ash is a young man who wakes up in his sister’s house after being in a coma due to a car accident. He draws back the curtains on the window for just a second, and he gets a few nasty burns from the sun because of it. Ash find his sister in another part of the house taking care of her boyfriend, who’s grievously injured. His sister’s lover was hit by the sun’s light and he’s basically a melted human that she’s trying to keep alive. He’s covered in third degree burns and he’s blind.
I like the premise of this book and I plan to keep reading. The idea that the sun’s light could suddenly turn deadly is terrifying, and I’d like to see how the characters in this book survive in this crazy new world where one misstep means they get cooked to a crisp. The first two chapters were basically just set up, but it was enough to get me hooked.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. The Fast Track by Tom Draycott
This is the first of three books in The Dance of Truth and Lies young adult dystopian series. The other books are normally $9.99 each, but are both free today. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Terrence Smith:
This book blends George Orwell’s 1984 and Communist China in a young adult story. Mac, Yoshiko, and Ditz live in a future version of England where society is stratified into two categories: the elite, posh, Establishment, said to have a life of ease and opportunity, and the Plebs, who are isolated into warded off neighborhoods, never to be seen or heard from again, and erased from historical records.
They are sorted based on a test each student must take in their respective schools. Mac, Yoshiko, and Ditz each scored perfectly on the test, and are whisked away to a secret third option: Cambridge, where they will study to become the people that help make all the decisions in society, the Techs.
So far, the world is engaging. The 1984 vibes hit almost immediately, when an emotion-detecting drone spies on Mac, checking for any negative emotions the governing body might find inappropriate for society. These drones are essentially the equivalent of George Orwell’s thought police. Yoshiko mouths off at one, clearly not giving a flying flip about pissing off any authority figure.
The story is told through the points of view of multiple characters. Mac is essentially a prefect before he takes the big test, being one to follow the rules, but he has always felt like something was off in the way things are run. Yoshiko relishes rule-breaking, reading forbidden books at 4 a.m. with her girlfriend. Ditz plays the weak, timid damsel, but is actually a manipulative mastermind.
Cambridge strikes me as a high-tech version of Hogwarts emulating Disney’s Tomorrowland, where everyone gets an augmented reality headset and their facilities are on the cutting edge of science. It has gleaming glass towers, shiny domes, a sports stadium, and a lab with genetically altered plants that serve as both food and light drugs to manipulate the students.
The first chapter is a bit confusing, since it goes from scene to scene in Mac’s point of view, without really having a solid grounding of the setting. At least, that is how it seemed to me. It seemed to be in a rush to get the early stuff out of the way before the big exam. It might have been nice to just hang out with these students for a little longer. The next chapters provide more detailed depictions of the world, which make for more engaging reading.
I can’t say that I will continue reading this, because I often end up never continuing the books I start on Free Friday, but if I had the attention span, I might.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. The Last Ranch by William Stone
This is a standalone book of EMP survival. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From Alex Korolov:
This one’s an EMP book, where an electromagnetic pulse wipes out all electronic devices and usually leads to a bunch of postapocalyptic chaos. Let’s see how this story goes.
In the first chapter, Luke is watching his son Ethan at a high school wrestling practice. Luke is also on the phone at the same time, talking about some type of corporate money-related job stuff.
Suddenly, the lights flicker and plunge the gym into darkness. Luke’s phone dies in his hands. Luke pulls out out his laptop and sees that it’s also dead. Every other person in the gymnasium says their phone is dead. Luke knows what’s up. It’s an EMP.
The next chapter takes us to a cattle ranch, where Luke’s wife Caroline is riding a horse and taking care of three hundred cattle. This ranch is in Texas, and it’s really hot. She’s taking care of ranch business when she suddenly feels like something’s gone wrong. She goes and talks to her employees, who say that all their phones are dead. Trouble’s definitely a-brewing.
As far as EMP books go, I like it.
Some EMP stories take a long time to get to the action, but this one gets the story going right from the start. Electronic things aren’t working, and people are going to have to figure out what to do to reach their loved ones and avoid panic. I’ll keep reading 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, Emma and Terrence 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
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.