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. Seventh Bridge to the Heavens by TJ Reynolds
This is the first of three books in the First Fist fantasy adventure series. The other books are $0.99 to $4.99 each, and are in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From E.S. Foster:
Luca is a soldier. He’s doing some a breathing exercise with the cohort he’s a part of. His clan is about to set out on a mission to one of the nearby villages in order to pillage and destroy it.
I’m not really sure what the reason is for them to do that. It seems that their primary goal is to be the biggest and the strongest, so this mindless violence is just normal for this world. And the soldiers seem pretty proud of it, too.
We also get a little background on the way magic works here. Different clans represent different elements, such as water and earth. However, Luca is unique among the soldiers because his magic never awakened in him, no matter how many rituals he tried. Still, the soldiers keep him on because he makes up for his lack of magic with combat skills.
Then captain introduces a new recruit, Calvin. Luca is tasked with training Calvin, who proves himself promising as Luca begins testing him. Calvin asks if he can just take an elixir that will help accelerate the awakening of his magic, but Luca says that this isn’t recommended. It also reminds him of how disappointed he was that he himself doesn’t have any magic.
Side note: a cool power that the Earth Clan gets is the ability to turn to stone. Luca is definitely missing out.
From there, events in this story progress slowly. Luca writes a letter to his girlfriend back home, and his roommate gets into a sparring match. To prove himself, Luca decides to brawl with his roommate as well. This is about where I stopped reading.
While I thought the magic was cool, I realized that I wasn’t going to like the characters and the whole idea of why the different clans exist. From what I have read so far, the violence seems very mindless, so it was difficult to like the characters and their motivations. I don’t think I’ll stick with this one.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. Curse of Stolen Flame by Catarine Hancock
This is the first book of the Firebird romantasy series. No other books have been released yet. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Lilivette Domínguez-Torres:
Kindra Bedelyn is a Firefury, which means that she has fire magic running through her veins. But all of her life she has lived in an Earthwarden village, where she is an outcast.
Ever since she turned thirteen and flame magic erupted from her, Kindra has spent her days watching over and protecting her village from ruffians and bandits. She is not afraid to use her magic to protect those she cares about and get rid of any threats, which is why everyone in the village is used to the smoke, the fire, and the smell of death she carries around sometimes.
Yet no matter how hard she works to protect her people, almost everyone in the village is afraid of her and her magic, something that used to bother Kindra at first but now she’s used to it.
Then letter with the royal seal arrives at her doorsteps. It’s from the royal family. Apparently, Prince Jasper needs to marry her in order to break a curse, a curse that has kept the royal family from being touched by magic for hundreds of years.
But Kindra isn’t happy about giving up her freedom and and the people she knows just to become a royal pet, kept for her magic.
So that’s what happens in the first few chapters and I have to admit that they were a lot better than I expected. The writing and the pacing of the story flowed very well and I’m interested in learning more about what will happen to Kindra once she is taken away by the royal family and marries the prince.
I really like it so far so maybe I’ll actually get to continue reading it one of these days.
If you’re looking for a romantasy story full of powerful magic, a likeable main character, and an interesting storyline then I definitely recommend you check this one out. It’s not a deep high-fantasy story but it’s still pretty interesting and fun to follow.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Black Winter by Colton Lively
This 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 Alex Korolov:
This is an EMP book, which means an electromagnetic pulse wipes out all electronic devices, such as cellphones, computers, and even most modern vehicles. Usually, chaos ensues. Let’s check this one out.
In the first chapter, we meet Emily Fairfield. She lives on a 24-acre farm two hours outside Chicago with her 15-year-old son Michael. Well not exactly a farm. It’s actually a homestead. There’s some food being grown, twelve goats, a bunch of bees, and a half-dozen pigs. It also has its own well. Sounds like a good place to live in case an EMP happens. Hmmmm, interesting…
Anyway, Emily’s driving her son to school, which is nearby, when they drive up to a bunch of stalled-out cars blocking the road. They hear gunshots.
In the next chapter, Emily creeps up to whoever’s doing the firing. She spots a group of six terrorists, all wearing matching camouflage from head to toe. They’re using automatic weapons to pick off innocent bystanders near them.
Emily’s got a gun which she uses to shoot one terrorist in the head, and quickly kills a couple more, which prompts the remaining three to run away. Unfortunately, when she gets back to her car, she sees her son’s been shot. He’s not dead, but not looking too good either.
It seems a little suspicious to me that one person with a handgun would be able to fight off a group of six trained people with automatic rifles, but who knows, maybe Emily’s an especially talented shooter.
Anyway, this book gets to the action pretty fast, and if you’re into post-apocalyptic shoot-em up sort of stories, this is one you would probably enjoy. The thing that would stop me from reading an EMP story would be if it’s too slow and doesn’t have a lot of action, but that’s not a problem here.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. Iron Truth by S.A. Tholin
This is the first of four books in the Primaterre science fiction adventure series. The other books are $3.99 each, and are in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Terrence Smith:
The opening chapter does a great job of creating a creepy atmosphere. The Ever Onward, a ship carrying passengers in cryo-freeze from Mars to a new settlement, is laying in ruins. The electronics are glitchy, the walls are corroded, and everything is covered in a layer of dust. Most of the pods have been destroyed, leaving few survivors.
Joy, a chronically-ill botanist, is one of them. She managed to get onto the Forever Onward thanks to her brother, Finn, who works for the corporation that created the ship. She goes into stasis expecting she will be asleep for five years, to awaken to a new world, and 100 years have passed instead — only for her to awaken to a hellscape.
She is not alone. Duncan, the survivor who woke her, is disturbed, constantly on edge, and does not know how to treat a woman. He stands way too close to her, breathing on her neck, and grips her wrist forcefully.
The start of the book also does an excellent job of making one care about its characters. Joy has a strong relationship with her brother, who is warm and affectionate with her. With the destruction of the ship, I was shaking my leg, fearing for both her and her brother’s safety.
I am genuinely interested in where this story will go, and can see myself continuing to read this.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. Earthrise by Daniel Arenson
This is a box set of the first six books of the 15-book Earthrise space opera series by a USA Today bestselling author. The other books are $4.99 each, but the entire series is in Kindle Unlimited. There are also other series by the same author set in the same universe. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From Maria Korolov:
The aliens have arrived and destroyed much of the planet before the humans were able to stage a successful counterattack. It’s now decades later, and humanity is still fighting a war of slow, painful attrition against the invaders.
Marco, who lost his mother in the war, has just turned 18, old enough for the draft. He’s terrified. He’d rather stay home, in the library his father runs, working on his novel.
The book starts slowly. We watch Marco’s mother die, then see his last day at home — and his last night with his girlfriend. We see him getting ready to go, saying goodbye to his father, then the trip to the recruitment terminal with his adopted hockey-playing sister, then the suborbital shuttle trip to the training center in Chile.
The book reminds me a bit of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, except the aliens are giant centipedes instead of insects. It’s definitely my kind of book. Since the series is in Kindle Unlimited, I will probably finish it and, if I like it, go on to read the entire series.
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.
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.
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.