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 Curse Keepers by D.G. Swank
This is the first of three books in The Curse Keepers paranormal romance series by a New York Times bestselling author. The other books are $0.99 each, and are both in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Lilivette Domínguez-Torres:
Ever since her mother died, 23-year-old Ellie has always trusted her instincts and tried to forget the stories her father used to tell her about the curse. She liked to think the curse and her link to it were nothing but a myth that passed down her family through the years, yet everything changes the moment a mysterious yet attractive young man arrived at her workplace.
Ellie knows something is wrong with this young man because of the way she feels like being near him literally takes her breath away. She can barely breathe while giving him his check and a voice in the back of her head tells her to stay away from him, but it’s not until he approaches her and takes her hand between his that she realizes why. The moment their skin touches, Ellie feels as if an electric current has gone through her body and she starts hearing screams, which instantly makes her realize that maybe the curse wasn’t just a myth.
From my point of view, the beginning of this first book felt a little rushed. You barely get a glimpse into who the main character is or how she survives in the world before things start getting complicated and she’s suddenly out of breath and creeped out by the newcomer.
I know I am a fan of fast-paced books but this just felt like a little too fast for my liking. Because of this I didn’t manage to get hooked into the story or be interested in the curse or how it affects Ellie and the people around her. I just wasn’t a fan of this beginning and I don’t think I’ll continue reading because I’m not interested in what’s going on or whatever happens next–especially with Ellie and the mysterious man.
Still, feel free to check out this book and judge it for yourself if you’re a fan of urban fantasy books.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Panic Peak by William A. Liggett
This is the first of two books in Warming World Adventures, a climate change thriller series. The other book is $5.99, but is in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Terrence Smith:
This climate change thriller hits a little too close to home.
Humanity is deep in the climate emergency, and the impact on countless lives can be seen on the news every day. This novel should probably be placed in the general fiction section instead of science-fiction, or perhaps in the current affairs section.
The premise of the book is that there’s one glacier that is growing even as the rest of the world’s glaciers are shrinking. The likely source of this is the experiments that one scientist has been conducting in manipulating the weather. In order to fund this research, he turns to a coalition of oil tycoons that hope to use the technology to offset the criticisms of their contributions to the environmental crisis.
The mystery of the glacier’s growth is what Kate, another climate scientist, is investigating, even though her glacial research center is in danger of being shut down by bureaucrats.
The opening chapter of this novel is scary, since the monster in it is one that humanity is witnessing time and time again, massive downpours and catastrophic flooding. Kate witnesses a family in their car, swallowed by flooding of a forest river and submerged.
The other scientist, the guy who’s secretly making the glacier grow comes off as the most interesting character so far. He is doing what he is doing for the right reasons: trying to find an antidote to the catastrophic climate disasters around the globe. However, he is doing it with the aid of some unsavory characters, including a Saudi cartel member who gives more than an implicit death threat if word of Cooper’s project or their collaboration gets out to the public.
Overall, this looks to be a compelling tale of ecological crises and corporate conspiracy. A big plus goes to the hero being a scientist. I would not mind continuing with this story further.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Captive of Outlaws by Jade R. Evans
This is the first of three books in Shifters of Sherwood, a paranormal romance series. The other books are $4.99 each, but are in Kindle Unlimited. The third book isn’t out yet, but will be released in December and is available for pre-order. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
The story starts with Maren, a young girl whose parents have just died in a car crash. She’s at the funeral with her social worker, and she isn’t taking the events well.
During the funeral, a man comes up and makes a speech. Even though Maren hasn’t actually met him yet, she already doesn’t like him. There’s just something off that she can’t put her finger on.
After the funeral, the man, John, comes up to Maren and explains he’s the executor for her parents. Maren is going to have to stay with him now until she comes into her inheritance. She ends up being so shocked that she faints.
The book then cuts to seven years later. Maren now works as a mechanic for John. She’s detailing a car when a young man comes up and asks for help. Maren climbs out from underneath the car she’s working on and immediately notices how handsome this guy is. They don’t hit it off, however. Maren schools him on cars before John returns and the young man leaves.
John announces that the sheriff is coming over to talk business. Maren hates the sheriff just as much as she hates John, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Once she comes into her inheritance on her twenty-first birthday, however, she can finally escape and live her own life.
Out of suspicion, she decides to see what John and the sheriff are up to. She overhears them talking about conservatorship and planning to keep her out of her inheritance, and also they mention that her parents’ deaths might not have been an accident. Maren decides to break into John’s office to look at those papers.
Maren sneaks back to the garage that night and breaks into the office. Sure enough, there are papers that would make John the caretaker of all of Maren’s finances. Just when Maren thinks about running away, it turns out that someone else is in the garage with her. Before they can get to her, she gets into the car she’s been working on for herself and guns it out of the garage, heading straight for the forest.
So I enjoyed the beginning of this story a lot more than I thought I would. From the description, it sounded like it was going to be another love story with shifters involved, which isn’t my cup of tea. But I really enjoyed learning about Maren and the troubles she’s been going through, so it made for a very engaging and interesting experience. I don’t think I’ll continue with it personally, but if this sounds interesting to you, I recommend you check it out.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. EMP Collapse by Colton Lively
T
his is a standalone book of small town post-apocalypse EMP survival, but the author has many — more than thirty! — other books in this genre, so there’s plenty of reading here if you like his style. And nearly all of the books are in Kindle Unlimited. The author is also a regular on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
I’m not the one who usually reads our EMP books, but our regular reviewer is busy today, so it’s up to me.
An EMP — electro-magnetic pulse — is caused by a nuclear bomb, solar flare, or a special EMP projector, and it kills electronics while leaving living things unharmed.
Well, it kills unshielded electronics. I write about cybersecurity for a living, and a lot of our critical infrastructure is shielded, partly because of all the books and movies about EMP blasts crippling our country.
But the books, at least, keep coming.
And they’re popular. EMP books frequently make our Free Friday lists.
This particular book opens with Georgia, feeding breakfast to her young nice and nephew. The parents — Georgia’s older sister and her husband — are moving from California to South Dakota and Georgia has been babysitting for a few days now to help them out. Georgia herself is only 22, and she’s planning to move out to South Dakota to join them. She’s planning to live in a small cabin guest house on their property, help out around the new farm, watch the kids, and get some writing done.
The kids are talking about how a friend told them that the end of the world is coming. She dismisses their worries.
She’s got two more days of babysitting left before the kids get on a plane to South Dakota. Then she herself will have another week to pack her stuff into her truck and drive out to join them.
Oh, and as the first chapter ends we also find out that some people think the end of the world is nigh because of an upcoming meteor shower. Both Georgie and her sister think that’s nuts.
Then there’s more of the same. Kids are bickering. Neighbor is annoying. The news reporters are talking about the meteor shower. We get more backstory about the family. And there’s a earthquake. Which, since this is California, is only to be expected.
Instead of staying put, Georgia takes the kids and leaves the apartment building — and finds out its not an earthquake after all. Instead, fireballs are coming down from the sky and destroying everything around them. She gets the kids into her truck and starts driving out of town, and manages to make it out past all the chaos and destruction. Her phone is out, but she’s got a paper map, a full tank of gas, and an emergency kit. She decides to keep driving.
She’s halfway to her destination, her gas is running out, she still has no service, and for some reason she’s not meeting anyone who’s at all helpful. There are no emergency services out anywhere, and towns have gone dark. It’s weird.
And creepy.
Too weird and creepy for me.
But if this is your kind of thing, the author has a lot of book in this style, so you’ll have a lot of reading material — and the books are often free, so keep your eyes out.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Hometown Space Pirate by C.G. Harris
This is the first of four books in the Viraquin Voyage science fiction adventure series. The other books are $2.99 to $4.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Arturo Sierra:
Clichés are easy to tolerate when they are the ones you expect and asked for. But, I’ve gotten a quarter of the way through the book and no space piracy has taken place yet, which is really off-putting. I expected swashbuckling, clever rogues, morally gray ship-captains, and daring heists pulled by a motley crew of varied, quaint characters who crew the ramshackle ship seen on the cover of the book. Instead, what the author delivers is the story of a tin-hat-wearing crackpot who turns out to be right about aliens being out there.
Ben, the main character, is trying to let the world know about his telepathic connection with alien intelligences. In the first chapters, he goes on a talk-show to promote his tell-all book, an experience which goes about as well as one would expect. The scene has certainly been written before, as is the punchline that aliens apparently are big fans of the show Friends. Fortunately, we are spared the joke that it doesn’t make much sense how the lovable bunch of twenty-year-olds manage to afford apartments in New York and spend all their time at the coffee house.
But Ben is not crazy! There are indeed aliens who want to speak to him. And so, soon after appearing on TV, he’s abducted, as it appears he has become unwittingly embroiled in some sort of interstellar conflict and he is The Most Important Person, all of a sudden.
The story moves forward at a reasonable enough pace, and it does generate sufficient intrigue to be engaging, though the turns of the story are very predictable. This would be much easier to tolerate if the cliches were the ones I expected to find, about space pirates, but I was not prepared to root for the vindication of a conspiracy theorist.
I assume the actual space piracy will come along eventually, but a quarter of the way in is too long for me to wait in a story that doesn’t hold much for me and actually makes me a bit uncomfortable, as these days it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sympathize with any folk of the they-are-keeping-the-truth-from-us persuasion. Especially since, beyond being the only one in contact with aliens, Ben is a bit of an empty vessel.
The writing in this book is competent enough, even if the sense of humor is a bit stale, but the discontinuity between the opening arc and the presumed later space-opera shenanigans makes it hard to imagine who might enjoy it, because you’d have to want two very different sorts of story in one. It presents itself as a conspiracy thriller, but at the start of the second quarter it turns into a space romp, and it’s hard to imagine that the first story could carry on into the rest of the book and resurface in a meaningful way. However, if you always dreamt of seeing agents Mulder and Scully find a ship and go out into the cosmos to fight the alien invaders mano-a-mano, then this might be the thing you were waiting for.
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
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.
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.
Arturo Sierra can be found in Santiago, Chile. So far, he has led an uninteresting life, and with any luck it will remain that way indefinitely.