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. Justina: Daughter of Spartacus by Ryan Lew
This is the first of seven books in the Justina Saga, a historical fiction series that, based on the description, doesn’t seem to have any sci-fi or fantasy elements. The other books are just $0.99 each, and are all in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before — with this same book.
From Luciana Alioto:
I love reading stories set in the classical era, something about both Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire has always fascinated me, so this book jumped out at me immediately.
The book starts with the escape of a group of slaves, including Marona, her husband, and an elderly married couple. We are immediately thrown into the action, as the group is finally following through with their plan: killing their masters in their sleep to then flee the Eternal City.
If you are not a fan of detailed gory descriptions this is not the book for you.
Everything goes to plan that night, and the four slaves, with blood-stained tunics as further evidence of their crimes, head towards the aqueducts that will take them to their freedom.
But alas, it was not meant to be. The son of the murdered masters gave the alarm and the slaves were found the following morning. Marona’s husband gets killed, the rest are arrested to be taken before Caesar himself.
The story the shifts to Justina and we first see her in a sparring session with one of her brothers, a witty man not skilled in the arts of the gladius. We follow the fight from the point of view of Antonia, one of the slaves belonging to the household.
We immediately get some backstory, as we find out about Antonia and Justina’s bond, how they grew up together, despite one of them being a slave and the other the daughter of the master.
After Justina defeats her brother, the mistress of the house tells everyone the news about the murder of people they know, by none other than the hand of their own slaves.
Then we meet Gaius Julius Caesar himself. We get access to his internal monologue, as he basks in the attention and flattering of his guests. The feast is soon interrupted by the guy who led the capture of the murdering slaves from the first scene, who brings forward the three slaves. Caesar was expecting four, and the premature death of one of the slaves displeases him. The scene quickly turns very intense, as he disembowels Marona in the middle of the hall, for everyone to see.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be continuing reading this book. Despite the interesting premise and characters, the writing style didn’t do it for me. All the characters introduced in the first chapters have potential to be fleshed out later on in the story. The author focus was clearly on the action and keeping the prose fast-paced — which is highly praised by those that left high reviews — however the description and world-building were neglected, compromising the immersion of my reading experience. I also found the action scenes to be somewhat disjointed and hard to follow at times.
From Tim McHugh:
This book is a story about a secret child of Spartacus who grows up in the elite class of the Roman Empire as Ceasar is building his dynasty. As a huge fan of the Spartacus show, this is right up my alley. I love everything about Rome: the politics, the warfare, and the secret plots.
The first couple of chapters in this book take us through a group of slaves who attempt to escape a noble family’s estate. They sneak through the palace and as they make their move we learn a lot about how brutally slaves are treated. They are sexually assaulted and treated as sub-humans, so now that an opportunity presents itself, they take it. They murder their masters in bed and escape the estate. The group makes it far, nearly out of Rome, but they run into a Roman legion. The soldiers murder one of them and drag the others away to present to Caesar.
The third chapter cuts to an elite family’s household where brother and sister are sparring. The sister displays superior swordplay and downs her brother easily. We learn that the sister is Justina, our supposed offspring of Spartacus. She is fierce but kind, especially to her slaves, standing up for them against her brother.
I usually find a lot to complain about in my reviews but not this time. This book is great. Its pacing is fast but we don’t lose any details, the subject matter is gritty, and the writing is eloquent. The setup suggests the plot is heading for complex political intrigue and that’s something I can’t get enough of.
I’m going to continue reading this one and I highly suggest it to others.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
4. The Hybrid by E.K. Frances
This is the first of five books in The Hybrid Series of dystopian science fiction. The other books are $2.99 to $3.99 each, but are all in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From E.S. Foster:
This story immediately gives off Divergent vibes for me, so I’m a little skeptical going in.
In this world, humans with special abilities are called alphas. On every kid’s thirteenth birthday, they are brought to a ceremony where they are sorted into different groups.
Sebastian lives in an abusive home, sleeping in nothing but a crate. He hears strange steps outside his door and wonders if it’s an alpha of some kind. Someone who sounds like his father tells him he has a big day tomorrow.
We then get some backstory. It turns out that Sebastian’s brother died, and it was his fault. His father burned everything the brother owned, and they moved into a new house. Sebastian has never stepped outside since. He just lives in a stone room, starving. It looks like his mom isn’t in the picture either.
He and his dad go outside for the ceremony. They pass by humans who are not meant to become alphas and reach a part of town where plenty of alphas live. They reach the Academy, where Sebastian will be placed in one of four groups. His dad wants him to be a Necro, which I take to be some kind of necromancer, but Sebastian wants to be a healer. His dad says that, if he’s not placed in Necro, he will be thrown back into the basement forever.
At this point, I stopped reading only because I was so monumentally depressed by what was in front of me. I couldn’t feel for any of the characters, and it felt like everything was just being thrown at Sebastian for dramatic effect.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
3. Chosen by the Princess by Sadie Waters
This is the first of three books in the Realm of the Chosen romantic fantasy series. The other books are $2.99 and $3.99 each, and are not in Kindle Unlimited. This is the author’s first time on our Free Friday list.
From Maria Korolov:
This is a “reverse harem” romantasy, which means that the female protagonist doesn’t have the choose between the sexy men — she can have them all.
It’s not a trope I like, since that sounds like a logistical nightmare to me. But I know that the whole point of escapist fantasy is to enjoy stuff you never actually want to see in real life. For example, I love it when macho spies kill people without consequences. In fiction. If this happened in front of me in real life, I’d be pretty upset.
So I understand that other people might like the having-all-the-guys fantasy.
Anyway, Katrinetta is a princess who’s about to turn 18, and she’s pretty anxious about it, so she’s hiding out in a palace garden. Then the commander of the guard comes and sits down on the bench next to her, and she breathes in his scent. He always makes her smile. Also, he’s known her since she was a toddler. I can’t tell exactly how old he his, but from the fact that he was already a captain by the time she turned 15, I’m guessing he’s a bit older than she is.
One of the things that Katrinetta is worried about is that the royal doctor will have to confirm that she’s still a virgin. The other thing that’s worrying her is the choosing ceremony, which involves her being matched up with someone. But before then, she’ll have a period of Exploration when, I assume, she’ll be dating multiple guys.
Then, in the next chapter, something unexpected happens. The royal physician is too old to do his part. Apparently, the virginity test isn’t just a physical exam. It requires actual intercourse. But instead of having whoever is supposed to be the doctor’s successor do the deed, the queen decides to randomly pick a guard to do it. And they’ll cover him up, so Katrinetta won’t know who he is and won’t get emotionally attached. This is supposed to be a medical procedure, after all.
So, given that the entire plot seems to be revolving around Katrinetta’s sexual awakening and exploration, I think I’m going to skip this book. But if you’re interested in a sexy story set in a cozy kingdom where women order the men around… okay, when I put it that way, it sounds pretty appealing…
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
2. ARC by Devon C. Ford
This is the first of three books in the New Earth apocalyptic science fiction series. The other books are $3.99 each, but are both in Kindle Unlimited. The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From Maria Korolov:
First, a disclaimer. I don’t like dystopian fiction because I want my escapist reading to actually be escapist. I want to read about far-off space battles or cozy fantasy coffee shops or kick ass women stabbing vampires to death.
Second, the book is set in the near future. And the problem with setting any book in the near future is that it becomes obsolete very quickly as technology moves ahead of it. That always annoys me.
So I’m going to keep these two points in mind as I read the beginning of the book, and try not to let my prejudices color my judgement.
The book opens in 2033, in orbit around the Earth. Dr. Anderson has been up here for 18 months, on what used to be the International Space Station and is now the ARC. I guess they decided not to decommission the ISS after all.
And in 19 hours, there’s going to be an impact of some kind, the station’s AI tells Dr. Anderson. The ARC is full of cryogenically frozen humans, and it’s soon going to be Dr. Anderson’s turn to go under. He expects to be frozen for a hundred years.
Then we go back in time to 2021. Amir, a billionaire, splits his time between the U.S. and India. His company makes self-driving cars, drones, body armor, and armor-piercing munitions. After Amir took over as head of the company on his father’s death, he began to put company resources toward commercial space travel. That included buying up the ISS and the Hubble telescope. Then, in 2021, they discover an asteroid coming at Earth that will hit in 12 years. Amir decides to keep the knowledge a secret.
Then, finally, we get to the real story.
David Anderson is a computer prodigy who invents an AI with nearly human-level reasoning abilities. The billionaire, Amir, brings David and his whole AI project to Texas. Amir also rounds up a bunch of other big-shot scientists and makes them all sign a non-disclosure agreement before he tells them about the asteroid.
And then we learn more about this AI that David built. It’s basically an expert system — a bunch of questions and answers. Like, say, if you wanted it to decide if something was a dog or a chicken, it might look at how many legs it had. Four legs — dog. Two legs — chicken. The problem with these expert systems is that they’re super fragile. What happens if the dog is in an accident and loses two of its legs? Or you have a cat instead of a dog?
This is what I mean about having novels set in the near future — technology passes them very quickly. In real life, we moved in from expert systems a long time ago, to advanced analytics and machine learning, to neural networks, and, most recently, to generative AI.
Expert systems are also notoriously time-consuming to program. You have to get all the information you need for every possible decision encoded into the computer, plus all the ways in which the information could change over time. When companies build expert systems, it generally requires teams of data scientists together with subject matter experts who know about all the nuances that go into, say, deciding whether something is a dog or a cat or a chicken.
Then we follow Amir as he prepares his company to save humanity, and David as he continues working on his AI. In addition to the space station, Amir is also building giant bunkers underground where both people, animals and plants will be cryogenically frozen to help restore Earth ecosystems after the disaster.
I think if they told more people about what was going on, there could be lots more different kinds of projects — more space stations, more bunkers, more of everything as every government and every corporation put all their resources at survival. Yes, there would be riots, and people would die — but people would die in the disaster anyway. But with more hands on deck, humanity might be able to come up with more solutions and more options.
Meanwhile, David is working alone on the AI project. He doesn’t have the patience to explain what he’s doing, so he doesn’t even have any assistants. Then the AI starts giving him answers that he didn’t program in. Which is something that happens with neural nets or generative AI but doesn’t happen with the kind of expert system that David is building. Apparently, the AI has gotten so smart that it’s starting to rewrite its own code. Again, generative AI can do this — which is why everyone is freaking out about it — but expert systems can’t.
Anyway, there’s a lot more of this kind of thing. Amir is manipulating governments, recruiting scientists and experts of all kinds, kidnapping people when they refuse to come voluntarily, and so on.
I don’t like the building sense of dread from the upcoming disaster, and the ruthless way that Amir forces everyone to do his bidding. It’s hitting a little too close to home! But some people enjoy reading these kinds of books, and, to them, I’d say that the book is pretty readable and moves at a fast pace. And it’s definitely a vision of the future that could easily happen.
Get the Kindle ebook free from Amazon here.
1. The Inquisitors’ Guild by Dave Dobson
This is the a box set of three books in the four-book Inquisitors’ Guild humorous fantasy series. The other books are $1.99 to $3.99 each, and most are in Kindle Unlimited. For some reason, the third book in the series in neither in this box set nor in Kindle Unlimited.The author has been on our Free Friday list before.
From E.S. Foster:
I’ll be honest, I haven’t read too much humorous fantasy, but I was excited to dive in. This story begins with a detective Marten, and his partner, Boog. They both work for the Inquisitor’s Guild, which is sort of like a task force that fights crime and solves cases in a fantasy landscape.
Marten and Boog are hiding out in a tavern when their target walks in: a jewel thief. They wait, talking to each other in code while deducing that this is the man they’re looking for. Suddenly, a woman steps into the tavern and begins talking with the thief. It’s clear that she’s interested in the jewel that the thief stole. Marten and Boog have been tasked with apprehending the thief and retrieving the jewel, so they step in before the woman can take it.
The woman engages in a fight with them, using her arcane magic to try to disarm them, while the thief uses his sword. Luckily, Marten has a magical wand of sorts that helps fight her off. The woman escapes, but not before using magic on the jewel to make it briefly come to life.
During the fight, the thief tries to escape, but halfway through the back kitchen, he suddenly explodes, leaving the jewel behind.
Marten and Boog meet with their supervisor, and they try to unravel why and how the thief randomly exploded. It’s clear that there’s something bigger afoot, and it looks like they have a bigger case to solve.
I really liked where this was going! The humor kind of reminded me of Terry Pratchett, so I think I might stick around with this one and at least look into the first book.
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
Tim McHugh writes sci-fi and fantasy. Though he currently works full time in the software industry, he has a love for stories with grey characters and moral ambiguity that tell us something about the world. His book A Voice for the Scavengers is now available on Amazon.
Luciana Alioto is a graduate student at the University of Essex, studying translation, interpreting and subtitling. She loves reading a variety of genres, including classical retellings, fantasy, romance, feminist essays and philosophy works. After completing her law degree, she is now pursuing a career in publishing as an aspiring editor and literary translator.