Marc Aplin's Blog, page 105
July 4, 2017
City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett
Spoiler Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first two books in The Divine Cities trilogy. Read with caution if you have yet to finish City of Stairs and City of Blades. City of Miracles completes Robert Jackson Bennett’s The Divine Cities trilogy (which also includes City of Stairs and City of Blades). On the […]
July 3, 2017
Writing A Successful Query Letter
If you’ve heard about query letters, no doubt you’ve heard how annoying, infuriatingly difficult, and soul-sucking they are to write. And every word of that is true. Writing my query was a brutal process, but if you want to get an agent; there’s no getting around it. It’s commonly assumed a query is a novel’s […]
July 2, 2017
Urskuul’s Reading Circle: The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon
Spoiler Warning: This review contains spoilers for the first two books in the Bone Season series: The Bone Season and The Mime Order. Please read with caution if you have yet to finish the first two books. Good afternoon lovely people! And, for those of you who are reading this in a different time zone, […]
June 30, 2017
Tough Travels: Adepts
At the start of every month, Fantasy-Faction will lead you (yes, YOU!) on a tour of the fantasy genre. From high to low, from classics to new releases, from epic to urban; each month, we will guide you in search of a different trope, theme or cliché. Lest we become lost, we’ll be referring to The […]
June 29, 2017
Wizards at War by Diane Duane
At long last, I can finally say something I’ve wanted to say since reading Wizard’s Holiday but couldn’t, for fear of spoilers: How about that cliffhanger? I haven’t seen a cliffhanger in one of Diane Duane’s books before – and given that I’ve made it through nearly a dozen, I do think I can say […]
June 28, 2017
Putting It Right, At Last: Must Read Women Authors in Fantasy
My first article, sent ‘on spec’ to Fantasy-Faction, and written when I was feeling my mortality quite keenly, was a simple affair. I’d written The Stone Road and put it out for the hundreds of thousands of people to read (more the hundreds than the thousands really), and I was starting to reconnect with the […]
June 27, 2017
Worlds Within Worlds – Part One: Writing a Good Game into a Good Book
Humanity has played games for as long as we’ve been able to make up rules and keep score. As we’ve developed as a species, we’ve created thousands of games, and gaming isn’t just something we do out of boredom. In many ways, games are a survival mechanism, a way to recharge our brains and spirits. […]
The Heart of What Was Lost by Tad Williams
Author’s Note: As we prepare for the imminent release of The Witchwood Crown, we now look at The Heart of What Was Lost, Tad Williams’ “bridge” novella. This review is spoiler-free in the sense that I don’t spoil the novella. However, the premise of the novella itself necessarily spoils certain aspects of Memory, Sorrow and […]
June 26, 2017
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword – Movie Review
You know, it’s always struck me as rather odd that, despite there being dozens of amazing stories about King Arthur and his Round Table out there, there’s never really been a truly iconic cinematic movie about the legend. Certainly, there have been plenty of movies made about King Arthur, some of which are even fairly […]
June 25, 2017
Top 10 Things To Do in a Fictional Castle
For those of us who like a touch of the magical and the medieval, nothing quite beats a visit to a fictional castle. But with all those trap doors, winding passageways, and changeable stairs, it’s hard to know where to start and how to make the most of your time. Yes, you may already have […]
