Marc Aplin's Blog, page 146
March 10, 2016
Marked in Flesh by Anne Bishop
If you are familiar with the Black Jewels trilogy by the same author, you know Bishop’s talent for great character-driven plots and excellent worldbuilding. Her latest series, The Others, is even better. I can honestly say that this is one of the best in urban fantasy today. Marked in Flesh is the fourth book in […]
March 9, 2016
What a Difference an Editor Makes.
Marc Aplin, Fantasy-Faction’s own Overlord, wrote persuasively and eloquently a few months ago about the absolute necessity of editing for self-published authors. “The worst thing I see is when an author truly believes they don’t need an editor, that they can do all the refining of the manuscript themselves. They go right ahead and publish […]
March 8, 2016
Calamity by Brandon Sanderson
This review contains some spoilers for Steelheart and Firefight. Read with caution if you have yet to finish the first two books. “Life was so unfair. You couldn’t both destroy everything around you and live like a king.” With each book in his Reckoners series, Brandon Sanderson has peeled back a layer of the world […]
March 7, 2016
Heroines on the Edge
Lalla Paul, the main character of The Ship, isn’t born a heroine. It might be the end of the world, what with the military government periodically bombing the hell out of unregistered citizens, but she still lives with her parents in a flat in London, has enough to eat and is taken to the British […]
March 6, 2016
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
The Anubis Gates was first released in 1983, and I was fortunate enough to pick up a paperback copy at the time from my local library. Back then, I would read anything that could be classed as fantasy and sci-fi, and this tale of time travel back to the 1800s mixed with magic and the […]
March 5, 2016
Steal the Sky by Megan E. O’Keefe
Detan Honding is a thief of noble birth, ever accompanied by Tibs, his right hand man. The pair find themselves in the desert city of Aransa, roped in to a plan to steal a great airship called The Larkspur. Meanwhile, a series of murders across the city cause panic and a manhunt ensues for a […]
Small Press Fantasy Titles On Our Radar: March 2016 Edition
For the past three months, Fantasy-Faction has been running a very popular ‘on our radar’ post. In this post we show readers which books they should be looking forward to for the coming month. Due to demand through Twitter, Facebook and Reddit we’ve decided to run a Small Press version of this post. If there […]
March 4, 2016
Medusa’s Web by Tim Powers
“The past,” she repeated, “it is always out there, isn’t it? I hate now. I hate that whenever you look at a clock, it shows a different time. What’s the use of knowing what time it is, if it’s always changing? And it’s always later!” Since The Drawing Of The Dark (1979), in which King […]
Interview with Janisha Chatterjee
Eric Brown is a prolific writer of speculative fiction and whether writing about telepath’s investigating sinister cults on distant spaceports; an isolated populace of New York in 2040; or a half-british, half-Indian student evading Russian assassins in an alternative and steampunky India: you can be assured of a fast-paced novel set within a highly imaginative world that is full of interesting […]
March 2, 2016
United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas
Almost as soon as World War II had finished, the Japanese Government issued numerous apologies for the crimes the country had committed during their 14 years of conflicts (they began warring with China in 1931). These apologies primarily related to the treatment and death rates of prisoners of war and civilians under Japanese occupation. Still, many […]
