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. Gathering Water by Regan Claire
This is the first of three books in the Gathering Water urban fantasy series. The other books are $3.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
It’s Della’s eighteenth birthday. She lives with her foster mother, and is supposed to move on and begin her grown-up life after being in the foster system since birth. The next foster kid isn’t due to arrive for a couple of weeks, so the foster mother is okay with Della staying a little bit longer if she needs to. But Della is already packed, and has an room ready above the convenience store where she works.
The only thing left to do is to have one last meeting with her social worker. And it turns out that the social worker has something for Della besides a few platitudes. She’s finally been able to track down the name of Della’s birth mother, the one who died in childbirth as a Jane Doe, but who was, much later, identified by the police. There’s a journal, some papers, and a big metal key. Turns out that Della has a family — and one of her grandparents left her a house.
And she realizes that the relatives must been informed by the police that Della had died — and that they’d had plenty of time to track her down.
Should she go meet the relatives who didn’t want her, and look at some ancient house that’s probably already fallen apart? Or should she stay with her convenience store job?
She’s got a little money saved up, so she can afford to take off some time to go, so she decides to do that. There’s a bunch of stuff to do first, like updating her birth certificate with her new name — her real name — but two weeks later she arrives in North Carolina to find out where she came from. A lawyer meets at the bank where her mother’s safety deposit box is, and she hands over all the legal documents, including her mother’s death certificate, the police reports, the new birth certificate, and her identification. The lawyer also tells her that the family didn’t know what happened to her mother, or that she’d been pregnant. Except for one person — the police report says that her grandfather was notified, and the lawyer can’t understand why the man never said anything to anyone.
In the safety deposit box — which turns out to be what the big metal key is for — is cash, savings bonds, more journals, and some family jewelry. She opens her own bank account at the bank to deposit all the money.
The family trust has been taking care of the house, to some extent, at least, and an uncle has been paying the taxes on it so that his little sister’s house wouldn’t be lost. Which makes sense, if he didn’t even know his sister had died. The house is in decent shape, and fully furnished, with dust sheets draped over all the furniture. Over the course of the next couple of days she meets her family, finds out that they really didn’t know, that her uncle is desperate to take care of her.
We also get hints that Della’s got a nearly physic ability to tell if someone means to do her harm, which had come in handy in the various foster and group homes she’d been in.
It’s a slow beginning, but Della is a very compelling character and the book is easy to read. It really sucked me in. This is not my genre — I don’t like family drama, I don’t like stories about teenagers, and I prefer a lot more action right from the start — but I have a feeling that I’ll be sticking with this one .
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. The 28th Gate by Christopher C. Dimond
This is the first of eight novella collections in the 28th Gate space opera series. The other books are $4.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list but we previously reviewed this book for another article.
From Maria Korolov:
This is a collection of novellas set in the 28th Gate universe, and has over two thousand great reviews.
When the book opens, we’re introduced to Hunter, a contract bounty hunter with a starship-grade particle cannon that he can carry in one hand. He usually keeps it in a holster, though.
The guy is trying to avoid getting noticed by a mega corporation, taking on freelance hauling jobs on out-of-the-way worlds, when he gets a new job offer, to track down an employee of a smaller local company who’s stolen some proprietary information.
But really, they’re hiring him to track down the thief and kill him.
But the guy has standards. He doesn’t mind finding people. And he doesn’t mind killing people. Just not as part of the same job. But also, he doesn’t like the corporate guys making the job offer. They don’t like the fact that he turns down the job and he’s forced to draw his gun, but luckily his backup, Gloria, another mercenary, shows up in time to stop a gun fight from breaking out.
The next gig is more up their alley — to find a guy’s missing daughter.
I like the writing and the characters. It has some strong “Firefly” vibes.
After I first reviewed this book, back in 2021, for a post on best sci-fi short fiction on Amazon, I went back and finished it. It was a fun read — so much fun that I went and bought the second book in the series, and finished that one, as well.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. The Broken Heart of Arelium by Alex Robins
This is the first of four books in the War of the Twelve epic fantasy series. The other books are $4.99 to $5.99 each, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
I do like classic-style, non-romantic epic fantasy, and I’m hoping that this book is that.
It starts with Reed, looking down over an enormous circular crater that stretched all the way to the horizon. There are watchmen posted around it, day and night, and a twelve-foot-high wall around its entire perimeter, topped with signal fires and enough dry wood to keep lanterns burning around the clock. But the walls and the watch towers are starting to crumble, and repairs are promised but never arrive. Over the years, the number of guards has been growing smaller and it’s been getting harder to recruit new men.
I’m not surprised. The job sounds boring, and then there’s the celibacy requirement.
Then a signal fire is lit on a distant tower, soon joined by more and more. A section of the wall was in danger and needed help. Reed and a fellow watchman head towards the beacons, followed by more of the guards.
Then the two of them find a body, and then a grey, short creature with spindly, clawed arms attacks Reed’s companion and kills him. Reed fights it and takes the creature down. But more creatures appear. Reed and the other guards run for safety as the creatures try to surround them, but when they get the gatehouse they find that there are bodies strewn across the square and around the guardhouse and the gate. Only a few surviving men are left, trying to keep the creatures at bay.
It looks like they’re all going to die when help arrives. It’s a knight — a seven-foot-tall man carrying a five-foot-long axe, with super-human strength. He yells at the creatures that they have violated the peace treaty and then in a few seconds kills more creatures than Reed had been able to kill over the past hour.
There’s plenty of action here, and the story really pulls me in. If you like epic fantasy, and big battles, definitely pick this one up.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. A Fate of Wrath & Flame by K.A. Tucker
This is the first of four books in the Fate & Flame romantasy series. The other books are $5.99 each, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
At first, when I started learning about this book, I thought it would be a pretty standard new adult-type fantasy with elemental magic and things like that. I was pleasantly surprised at how different this was from other books I read.
It begins with a prologue, with two characters, Sofie and Elijah, who are husband and wife. It’s the early 18th century, and witch burnings have just taken place at the foot of the European castle the two live in. They claim to be nobility, but they are actually servants to some kind of devilish deity. Whenever people get too suspicious of them, they pray to this deity and have the deity grant them entirely new bodies. So they’re effectively immortal.
Sofie announces that it’s likely the people below will learn that they dabble in dark arts and that she’s going to die from their witch burnings like her friend. Elijah insists that that won’t happen because he will protect her. Sofie also reminds him that she was chosen by the deity mentioned earlier, so she can pray for a new body to hide her identity.
Things then proceed to get steamy, and the two go to bed. Sofie wakes up the next morning in a new body just like she thought, but Elijah appears dead. Panicking, she uses her fire magic she received from the deity to call out and locate Ellijah’s spirit. His spirit, however, is whisked away from her into the void. Sofie realizes that this is a curse from the deity they worship.
Three hundred years later, in the present, Sofie has taken refuge in another castle with her husband’s body. She’s gone through several new bodies over the years, praying and doing the deity’s bidding in the hopes that the deity will restore her husband. Finally, the deity appears and says it’s time for the next step.
The first chapter then shifts to Tee, a woman who works as a jewel thief for a crime boss. She’s at a fancy New York party in the middle of high society, but just as she locates her target a woman comes up to her and announces that she knows who Tee is. The woman introduces herself as Sofie.
I really liked the premise of this one! It doesn’t rely too much on tropes, and it uses things like elemental magic in new ways that I haven’t seen before. I think I might stick with this one.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Space Team by Barry J. Hutchison
This is the first of twelve books in the Space Team humorous space opera series. The other books are $0.99 to $2.99 each, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
Humorous science fiction is my favorite genre (and the one I that I personally write in). Also, since it might be hard to see on the thumbnail of the cover, the word “saving” in the subtitle is crossed out and replaced, so it now reads “Screwing up the galaxy, so you don’t have to.” And the spaceship has a sign just above its engines that says, “Suck it.” The text bubble on the guy in the space suit says, “Oh ha-ha, guys. Real mature.”
As the person who assigns these Free Friday lists, I normally wait until everyone else picks their and I do the books that nobody else on our team wants to take on. We’re short of people to review romance books, by the way, in case you’re interested in joining us.
But not today. Today, I grabbed this book before anyone else could even see it. I like everything about this book, the cover, the description, the fact that it’s a long series that’s fully in Kindle Unlimited — and especially the fact that it has over 4,000 reviews on Amazon, and more than 5,000 on Goodreads, and pretty much everyone loves it. Not that I necessarily love what everybody loves — I’m not going to love a creepy horror book no matter how many stars it gets — but in this case, I have a feeling I will.
After a short prologue about a cyborg trying to fight against the authorities on an alien planet, we meet our protagonist, Cal, a small-time crook sentenced to serve two years in a cushy prison for identify theft. Or, as he likes to put it, identity borrowing. And with good behavior he’ll get out in half the time.
But there’s a bureaucratic mistake and he’s sent to the wrong prison, where it will take a day to get him transferred, and, until then, he’s trapped in a cell with a horrible murderer.
I liked the battle the cyborg was in. And I liked the first chapter about Cal — it reminded me a lot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Then we meet the cellmate. His name is the Butcher, and he’s in for killing his family members, chopping them into pieces, and storing them in carefully marked bags in his freezer.
The Butcher is a gigantic man in his fifties, baby-faced, with scars on his forehead, teeth filed to sharp points, and a preference for being naked from the waist down. Cal wedges himself into the farthest corner and plans to stay there all night, as far from the Butcher as he can get.
But the Butcher isn’t about to let him do that. Things go bad. Then get worse. Then get even worse still. There’s a fight with the Butcher. A riot in the prison. Cal is kidnapped and injected with something that render him unconscious. When he wakes up he’s in a different room. The same size as his cell, but completely empty, and he’s shackled down.
It’s aliens. Cal’s been kidnapped by aliens and now he’s on their spaceship. And he’s not the only one who’s been kidnapped. There’s a sulky werewolf, a cyborg, and a jar of goo with eyeballs. Cal is injected with something that lets him understand what people are saying.
It seems that the Zertex Corporation, which runs the elven billion planets in this sector of the galaxy, has need for some serious criminals, and the werewolf and the cyborg are pretty bad. Turns out, they wanted the Butcher, but picked up Cal by mistake. Apparently, the Butcher was the most prolific serial killer on Earth. The company wants them for a very specific mission. Cal refuses, wants to be sent back home, and is told that Earth has been destroyed. Mostly destroyed. At least two-thirds. By accident, while the aliens were scooping up Cal.
I see why people love the book. I got to chapter seven before I forced myself to stop reading and finish writing this review. It’s fun and breezy and light. The characters are cartoonish and over-the-top, and that’s not a bad thing if you’re in the mood for something escapist. Which I am. I mean, being kidnapped by aliens sound good to me right now.
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.
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