Marc Aplin's Blog, page 103
August 20, 2017
The Creatures We Base Aliens On
One of the interesting things about fictional aliens is that they’re almost never completely alien. We have no real idea what extra-terrestrials would look like, and it’s nigh impossible to imagine an entirely new species unlike anything we’ve ever seen. As such, we usually fall back on earthly species for inspiration, combining known elements to […]
August 17, 2017
Blackwing by Ed McDonald
Ed McDonald’s debut is an impressive tour-de-force of imaginative worldbuilding, gritty characterisation and absorbing writing. Ryhalt Galharrow’s story comes with the intimacy of a first-person point of view. McDonald gives his protagonist a voice as distinctive and world weary as Daniel Polansky’s Warden from The Low Town trilogy. Like the Warden, Galharrow is a soldier […]
August 16, 2017
Worlds Within Worlds – Part Three: Old Grey Beards
If you ask someone on the street to name the first three wizards that come to mind, you’ll probably hear the names Gandalf, Merlin, and Dumbledore (or Rincewind, if they’re trying to be clever). The image of the white-bearded old man with a staff is woven into modern fantasy, to the point that Pratchett filled […]
August 15, 2017
Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane
And so we’ve reached the end of the line. Not for my writing for Fantasy-Faction, of course. That, hopefully, will carry on for a long time. No, I mean my reviews of the Young Wizards series, as this month I read the latest installment, Games Wizards Play. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone at this point […]
August 14, 2017
The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams
Spoiler Warning: This is the third and, for now, final* installment in Fantasy-Faction’s Osten Ard retrospective. With the release of The Witchwood Crown, Tad Williams has returned to the land from which his greatest tale was born. What follows contains spoilers for the entirety of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and The Heart of What Was […]
VOYAGER TAKEOVER: ANNOUNCING The City Of Brass
Well, the cake and coffee and various other sweet things have run out. The seating is comfortable, but we’re getting a bit bored of being lazy now (I know… I thought it would never happen as well!). You’d have thought that during our capture, Harper Voyager would have provided us with Netflix or a PS4 […]
August 13, 2017
Devil’s Call by J. Danielle Dorn
“On a dark night in the summer of 1859, three men enter the home of Dr Matthew Callahan and shoot him dead in front of his pregnant wife. Unbeknownst to them, the mother of this unborn child hails from a long line of women gifted in ways that scare most folks – the witches of […]
August 11, 2017
Voyager Takeover: Announcing Witchsign
The takeover continues, although there’s a vent that we at Fantasy-Faction considered escaping from. When we talked about it though, the cakes, coffee, books and comfortable chairs provided by Voyager are better than our normal work conditions, so we thought we’d let them get on with it… Oh, Den Patrick! You’re about to hear about […]
August 10, 2017
The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack by Nate Crowley
I first encountered the mad genius that is Nate Crowley via an article on Tor.com last year. In it, the author spoke of how the ocean inspired in him a sense of both wonder and dread; his morbid (and nightmare-inducing) fascination with this topic resonated with my own, and naturally I made a beeline for […]
HarperVoyager: ‘Coldmaker’ Announcement
A number of the HarperVoyager team (authors and editors) are over in Helsinki, celebrating WorldCon. They’ve been teasing us with pictures of a great event and selfies with George R.R. Martin… Check out this picture of Fantasy-Faction favourites Peter Newman and Emma Newman interviewing George R.R. Martin on a special WorldCon edition of Tea & […]
