Marc Aplin's Blog, page 109
May 26, 2017
David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy: Morningstar Award
There’s a certain something about watching a debut fighter take to the ring. It could be that there’s an element of the unknown. The chance of something new and different. Maybe, because the fighters are out to prove themselves, they’ll go all in, give it their everything – blood, sweat, tears and then some. Or maybe […]
May 25, 2017
Interview with Keith Yatsuhashi
Keith Yatsuhashi is a fantasy author and long time anime fan whose critically acclaimed books Kojiki (2016) and Kokoro (2017) are published by Angry Robot. He’s repped by Red Sofa Literary Agency. He stopped by Fantasy Faction to talk to us about his books and his writing. Hi Keith! Thank you for joining us. Please introduce […]
Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb
Robin Hobb’s genius isn’t flashy. The world she has created is fully articulated, complete with complex characters and histories, detailed magical systems, and fully realized political intricacies, yet she rarely is mentioned alongside Brandon Sanderson and others recognized as fantasy’s greatest world-builders. Her prose isn’t particularly flashy in the same way as writers such as […]
May 24, 2017
Wizard’s Holiday by Diane Duane
It’s probably a safe assumption that people who read my reviews are familiar with the website TV Tropes. (For those who are not, beware: this website will quite literally eat hours of your time, along with expanding your to-be-read and to-be-watched lists.) There is a certain trope which the site refers to as a Busman’s […]
Wizard’s Holiday
It’s probably a safe assumption that people who read my reviews are familiar with the website TV Tropes. (For those who are not, beware: this website will quite literally eat hours of your time, along with expanding your to-be-read and to-be-watched lists.) There is a certain trope which the site refers to as a Busman’s […]
May 23, 2017
Interview with Bernard Cornwell
As a longstanding fan of the writing of Bernard Cornwell, I was delighted when he agreed to answer some interview questions. The profile of his writing has been raised most recently by the television adaptation of The Last Kingdom and its scandalously irreligious hero Uhtred. However, his output of historical fiction is truly prolific, drawing […]
May 22, 2017
Reading My Namesake: Guest Post by Titus Chalk
Titus Chalk finally reads the book after which he was named – Mervyn Peake’s gothic classic Titus Groan. “Your name is TITUS,” said Sourdust very simply, “TITUS the seventy-seventh Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast. I do adjure you hold each of the cold stones sacred that clings to these, your grey ancestral walls. […]
May 21, 2017
The Writer’s Plague
If you are a booklover who didn’t die before 1997, I would wager you have difficulty finding a decent story among the piles of…muck. In the past twenty years, authors—henceforth known as the Infected—have emerged, plague-ridden, with what we will collectively call the writing bug. While I try to remain optimistic, I cannot say this […]
May 19, 2017
Cold Counsel by Chris Sharp
A troll, a night-hag and an undead goblin walk into a bar. What? Oh, it’s not a joke. It’s how the post-credits scene would look if Chris Sharp’s novel were a Marvel movie instead of a book. Slud of the Blood Claw Clan, Bringer of Troubles, was born at the heart of the worst storm […]
May 18, 2017
David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy: Ravenheart Award
The saying goes: don’t judge a book by its cover. No… Put it down. Don’t make me get the hose! The Ravenheart award, one of three categories in the David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy, does just this. It invites you, anyone and everyone, to judge a selection of books by their covers and vote for […]
