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. Antiques and Apparitions by Cielle Kenner
This is the first of nine books in the Enchanted Antique Shop cozy magical mystery series. The other books are $0.99 to $5.99 each, and are all in Kindle Unlimited — plus, the second book in the series is free today, as well! This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
I do like myself a nice cozy magical mystery to curl up with on a cold October day. Let’s just ignore the fact that temperatures have been in the 80s this week in Massachusetts…
Marley is a photographer who recently moved to Miami and signed up some new corporate clients, which allows her to buy a nice new camera. The book opens when she’s at the beach, taking photos of a gorgeous sunset, and notices that the same woman keeps photo-bombing every one of her shots. A woman wearing an old-fashioned, baggy swimsuit that’s more like a tennis dress. No matter what angle she uses, the weird woman is there. And when Marley puts down the camera, she doesn’t see the woman at all.
As she drives home, she notices that the signs and billboards along the road have been replaced by vintage ones from the 1920s. She notices things like that because she does a lot of marketing and advertising photography. She thinks that maybe a new movie was filming in the area, or a historical society was gearing up for a conference — or maybe she’s just losing her mind.
After dinner, she pulls up the photos she took that day and the weird woman is still there. Then the room around her blurs and for a second she feels as though she’s in the 1950s, surrounded by old-school furniture and a vintage typewriter instead of her laptop. There’s even a woman on the couch, dressed in vintage clothing.
Then everything goes back to normal and her phone rings. It’s her grandmother, and she wants Marley to come back to the small town of Enchanted Springs in central Florida to take some pictures for the town’s annual founders’ festival.
Well, Marley can definitely use a break, so she agrees.
It’s an old, familiar premise — modern woman goes back to her cozy home town and discovers magical powers she doesn’t know she had. But I don’t care, because I love this premise. And I like Marley. She seems to have her life well organized. Well, except for all the hallucinations. But other than that.
The town looks the same as she remembered it from her childhood, except that it’s now a little bit more prosperous. She notices a lot of people in period costumes as she drives up to her grandmother’s bakery. Probably because of the founders’ festival, she thinks.
The book starts slowly and very cozily. There is a lot of description of the town and its residents, and of Marley’s relationship with her grandmother, and catching up with old friends. One of those old friends is the mysterious woman whom Marley photographed at the beach. Except this time, the woman talks to Marley — and tells her that she’s a ghost.
I love this beginning, and think I’ll stick with it this weekend.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Her Orc King by Zoe Ashwood
This is the first of eight books in the Black Bear Clan paranormal romance series. The other books are $3.99 each, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
My worst fears have come true. Nobody else wanted to take this book, so it’s now my job to read about a romance with a sexy green orc.
Spoiler alert: I’m not a fan of books about fated mates, about monster romances, size differences, kidnapping, and happily-ever-after endings — and that’s pretty much the entire list of tropes in the book’s description.
And, in the first sentence of the book, we learn that the protagonist was kidnapped, sold at auction, and dragged to orc territory.
I’m glad the author makes that clear, in case readers didn’t know what they were in for from reading the description — or looking at the book’s cover.
Anyway, back to the protagonist — there she is, trapped in a wagon, trussed up, with two massive orc guards on either side, thinking that she’s on her way to becoming an orc sex slave. Dawn’s tried to escape several times, and failed each time.
Then they get to the orc settlement and they bring her to the orc king. Then they force her to walk between two lines of orcs — men and women — so that they can find out if she’s supposed to be someone’s mate. They all smell her. Nobody seems to like her smell, so Dawn is hopeful that maybe she can get out of this. Then the king himself smells her — and announces that she is his, and that she’s going to be his queen. Oh, and the orc smells really good to her, too. He smells like home.
The orc picks her up and carries her to a bedroom and puts her down. She immediately looks around for a weapon, but he stops her before she can grab a knife.
So yeah, not my cup of tea. But I’m guessing that she’s eventually going to fall in love with him and have hot, steamy, human-orc sex. So if that’s your kink… well, you’re apparently have lots of company because these books are pretty popular! In fact, this particular book has over 3,000 five-star reviews.
Oh, and all the tropes aside, the book is pretty readable and Dawn is a sympathetic, likable character, who isn’t letting all of this happen to her without putting up a fight.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Dark Horizon by Robert J. Walker
This is a standalone book of post-apocalyptic survival. But if you like the author’s style, he’s got dozens — sixty, to be exact — of very similar books up on Amazon, and they’re all in Kindle Unlimited. This author is a regular on our Free Friday list, as well — people love his books.
From Alex Korolov:
This is an EMP book, which means that an electromagnetic pulse knocks out all electronic devices, such as cellphones, computers, and most modern cars and planes. Usually, havoc ensues. I only had time to read the first chapter of this book, and it was a fun read.
Annabelle Wheeler is a psychiatrist who works with psychopathic serial killers. She’s in her office interviewing one such murderous person named Bradley Channing. Channing is describing a gruesome torture and murder of one of his victims. Channing was handcuffed when Dr. Wheeler started her interview with him, but after he describes his murder, he reveals that he’s slipped his cuffs.
Channing then proceeds to hit a button that locks down the room, and the only way for guards to get in and save Dr. Wheeler is for them to input a code from outside the room. Dr. Wheeler starts to shout the code to the guards, but Channing pounces on her. At the same time, all the power in the room has gone out. Now Wheeler is trapped in a locked dark room with a serial killer!
I think for the first chapter of an EMP story, this one was great. I’ve reviewed many of this type of book, and this was one of my favorites. I’d definitely consider reading on to see what happens.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. Grave Mistake by Laura Greenwood and Arizona Tape
This is a standalone novel set in the same universe as the 13-book Amethyst’s Wand Shop Mysteries, a cozy magical mystery series, by two USA Today bestselling authors. The other books are $2.99 to $5.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. Both authors have been on our Free Friday list before.
From E.S. Foster:
It looks like it’s time to delve into another cozy mystery for the fall season! This one looks like a paranormal romance with a science-y bent. It starts out with Dr. Stacey Barnes, a young forensic pathologist, performing an autopsy. She finishes up with one body after determining their cause of death, then meets with her friend Gabriel, who also works there. He announces that there’s another case she might be interested in.
In this world, paranormal occurrences are the norm. Dr. Barnes actually works with the Paranormal Police Department, which investigates crimes committed by and against entities such as witches. There also happens to be a serial killer out there currently targeting witches, which is a case Stacey really wants to help out on.
She and Gabriel prepare to tackle their next case: two bodies found inside one coffin. During their investigation of both bodies, the story switches to Gabriel’s perspective, and we get a little information about the two of them. It seems that he sees Stacey as more than a friend after growing up together, and Stacey might feel the same way.
As they note the particulars of the bodies, Stacey and Gabriel guess that one body belonged to a necromancer. But other than that, they don’t have too much to go on. However, it soon becomes apparent that maybe this murder might have something to do with the infamous witch-hunting serial killer. It looks like Gabriel and Stacey are going to have to team up to solve the case.
I always enjoy reading a good cozy mystery for these reviews, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I liked how it connected magic with science, bringing in a modern fantasy that I don’t see too often. I also enjoyed the banter between Stacey and Gabriel and how their characters were developing. I think I might stick with this one, and I recommend you check it out!
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Capital Fleet by Scott Bartlett
This is a box set of all three books in the Ixan Legacy space opera series, which is part of the Ixan Universe. The books are normally $4.99 each to $6.99, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list. For newcomers, the author recommends starting with the three-book The Ixan Prophecies series, then moving on to the four-book Mech Wars series, then reading the Ixan Legacy series and finally finishing up with the three-book Fleet Ops series. The first two series are also available as box sets, and all the books are in Kindle Unlimited.
From Arturo Sierra:
The book starts right into the action, and it promises fast-paced fun. Unfortunately, it seems this is an instalment of a series that has been going on for quite a few books, though this is the beginning of a fresh adventure. I’m not sure if some of the characters are carried over. How necessary it will be to have read the previous volumes to enjoy this one, I can’t tell.
There is a brief summary of the story so far, somewhat clumsily located after the cold opening, but it seems intended to jog the reader’s memory, rather than make up for those of us who are not familiar with the author’s previous work.
I didn’t get a chance to read any proper action scenes in the first few chapters, but there are some hints that make me expect they might be cool. Good ol’ naval action in space. On this front, what I was reminded of most of all was Battlestar Galactica, and not only because of the way naval engagements are described. The ship captain, our hero, has some interactions with the civilians on board his vessel that are also reminiscent of Will Adama’s frustrating relationship with the civilians. This will probably become a big plot-point, since the ship is not your run-of-the-mill space cruiser: it carries an entire city in its belly, full of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
That seems like an interesting twist on your typical space opera, and I’m curious to see how it works.
I was a bit annoyed to detect a bit of—can I call it jingoism? The government is presented as a silly, bureaucratic nuisance, which is only there to cover our hero’s warnings about impending trouble in red tape, until it’s almost too late to do something. The civilian authorities are so against any use of force that they chastise the captain for destroying an enemy ship after it fired torpedoes against them, a reaction that really goes beyond my suspension of disbelief, but rather smells like the author trying to make a point. What’s annoying is that the point is not presented very subtly.
The same can be said, and perhaps worse, about that same government trying to make our hero take a test to determine if he’s “biased,” a word which here should be substituted for “racist.” If this reminds anyone of any current issues, well, then there’s that. I can’t say what the author’s actual stances on any issues actually are, but the novel doesn’t handle it with much sophistication and it might turn out to be turn-off for many readers.
Good for enjoyers of military space opera. It might offer some cool action scenes, and some of the worldbuilding seems crafted specifically to up the stakes, which I’m sure will make the battles very exciting to read. I don’t know that there are any ideas that are particularly original, but there certainly might be further in. If you like the genre, it seems like a great opportunity.
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.
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.
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 at her blog, E. S. Foster.