Kell Shaw
Kell Shaw
Kell Shaw is an author and avid tabletop roleplaying gamer, whose lifelong passion for fantasy—especially Shadowrun, the Lord of the Rings, and the World of Darkness—inspired him to create the Vestiges of Magic urban fantasy universe. Kell’s fascination lies with the modern world colliding with magic, and his stories explore the lives of individuals caught between these realms.
August 2026
September 2026
Top Words
- spfbo
- kill
- benedict
- jacka
- reflections
- richard
All posts (26)
I heard the author, Paul Ardoin, on a podcast pitching this book as a police procedural + Groundhog Day, which is a fair summary. Our main character is Luke Guillory, a detective with the Sacramento police department. He starts off the book as a bit of a loser. He's not a great detective, with a low case closure...
I enjoy the Rivers of London series. I’m not a hardcore fan; instead, I meander through them like a slowly winding stream, often encountering them at the library. This means I read them out of order, with lots of odd discoveries. And so I encountered Tales from the Folly at Parramatta Library (or 'Phive' as the...
Here's a Michael Whelan book cover from 1976, which I prefer to the Gollancz collection. Elric of Melniboné! Before Anomander Rake and Dragnipur, before the Dragonlords of Valyria fell, before Geralt the White Wolf hunted monsters, there was Elric. Like Clark Ashton Smith's work, you may not have read Elric...
Catch and Kill is Craig Schaefer's new book. It's a cyberpunk and magic heist story, which will be familiar to fans of Shadowrun. Set in the future of the author's First Story universe (the home of the Daniel Faust and Harmony Black books), magic has been revealed openly to the world. Now people can study magic at...
My podcatching app, Downcast, is stuffed full of podcasts. I couldn't bear to delete any. Except my phone is running out of space. Apps demand updates. But I do want to listen to them... eventually. Just like that sad pile of unplayed video games, gathering dust. I'll get back to that. Eventually. I've got podcasts...
This book is a portal fantasy, a coming-of-age story, and a travelogue all in one! There's a strong romance subplot, but I wouldn't call it a romantasy as it's not the primary focus of the book. Sadie Sheldon is a young woman in early twentieth-era Canada. She wants to travel and see the world as an independent...
Image by Junior Peres Junior from Pixabay I'm going to do a few articles on dark fantasy, grimdark and otherwise. My Cambion Chronicles series is heading in that direction, and what better way to explore dark fantasy that doing some dives into it? Let's kick this off with one of my favourite writers, Clark Ashton...
Earth is in danger! A giant meteor is going to crash into our planet, destroying all life. Luckily, the space-faring Atlantean civilisation is here to help. They used to be an ancient civilisation on Earth, thousands of years ago, before they developed spaceships and left to settle another planet. How are they going...
James Stark is back in town, and he's pissed. Eleven years ago, Stark’s magician ‘friends’ turned against him and sent him to Hell, where Stark spent all of that time battling demons in an arena. Oddly, each time he got torn apart or nearly died, he got better and became more powerful in the process. After achieving...
A few weeks ago, I went to visit my mother, who lives in northern New South Wales, Australia. Tweed Heads is like the retirement capital of the universe. Maybe like Florida, for those American readers, but much more low-key. (I am not sure where one retires to in the UK, as all the beaches appear to be pebbly, which...
I have this love/hate relationship with LGBT fiction. Either it's too sugary sweet for me, or so bitter and miserable that I want to lie in bed with the covers pulled over my head and not turn another page. I was trying to describe this to a friend, and they explained the concept of queer fiction being ‘hug-boxing'...
Imagine waking up in your favourite fantasy world. Except, what if it's Game of Thrones? And what would you do? Try to warn Ned? “Don't take the job!” Help Tyrion? Try not to change the plot? Except portal fantasy is deliberately designed to allow outsiders to mess around with the plot, ever since there was A...
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