Book Recommendation: Savage Legion by Matt Wallace

As usual, before I get to why I loved and recommend Savage Legion I’ll point out that I have a little explainer of my approach to book and short fiction recommendations and you can find it here.

Next, let’s be clear here and get the bias out of the way: I am a Matt Wallace fan. I can not claim to have been a fan for his entire journey so far as a writer, but I’ve been a fan for quite awhile and have delved into the things that came before I was aware of him. There is nothing of his I’ve read I would say I haven’t enjoyed and quite a bit I’ve loved. In particular, one of the really fun things I’ve enjoyed about being a fan of Matt Wallace is that he is always doing interesting and frankly innovative things with his work.

To be really frank about it? I believe it is fair to say Matt Wallace tends to be cutting edge in the things he tries with his work and that has made being a fan delightful even as it has likely made it harder for him to break through to the wider audience that work deserves (it doesn’t always pay to be one of the first people with their foot through the door). Examples? He was one of the very early explorers of podcast fiction and his serial novella series SLINGERS was self-published (including exploring options for directly selling to fans outside of the Amazon option) a year before Tor.com announced the inaugural list of their very successful novella line and declared novellas the future of publishing (Wallace would be a part of that list, with another series of novellas that wasn’t afraid to be boldly, wonderfully gonzo in it’s combining urban fantasy with cooking and catering).

With that it in mind it really didn’t surprise me, though it did intrigue me, when I heard that his next works would be delving into all new territory for him as he would be branching into contemporary middle grade and into epic fantasy. It is that last, the recently released SAVAGE LEGION that I want to talk about more fully here.

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Weekly Fiction Rec Roundup 1

So I’ve joined Mastodon. You can find me at @JXilon@mastodon.social. I figure I basically don’t use Facebook or Google+ or any other social media outside of Twitter so I could afford one more thing to keep up with.

I’m hoping to make my mastodon feed a happy sort of place more tightly focused on creative stuff than my Twitter is. To go with that theme I’ve started posting one photo of mine there every day and sharing one story (not of mine) every day. I’m trying to read at least one short story every day, and if I like it I’m sharing it on Mastodon. If I don’t I go to the well and share a favorite story I’ve read before.

At the end of every week I’ll be posting the stories I recommended on Mastodon here in one collected post.

So here’s what I shared this week:

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