Marc Aplin's Blog, page 153
January 16, 2016
Revisiting The Magicians by Lev Grossman
I recently re-read Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, the 2009 novel that some ham-fistedly referred to as a “Harry Potter for adults.” A television series based on the book premieres January 25 on SyFy in the US, and I still haven’t read The Magician’s Land (the final book in the trilogy) so I figured the time […]
January 15, 2016
Top Ten Wolves in Fantasy
Ask people to name a fantasy animal and chances are pretty high that they will say a dragon. But in a deep and intelligent discussion (read: random!) on Twitter recently, three of us (Alex Shepherd, Doug Smith and myself, Dominic Stevens) noticed that it’s the wolf which keeps cropping up again and again, whether in […]
Three Things Fantasy Can’t Get Right with Combat
This may come as a shock, but I don’t think any of us read fantasy for realism. In fact, we usually read it to escape from the real world and thus are very willing to let a whole lot of crazy stuff pass so long as it is cool and adds something to the story. […]
January 13, 2016
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is widely celebrated for his literary fiction, including the Man Booker Prize-winning Remains of the Day (1989), and more recently his sci-fi sampling Never Let Me Go (2005), which saw a film adaptation by Mark Romanek in 2010. Ten years after his last novel, The Buried Giant (2015) saw Ishiguro once […]
Small Press ‘On Our Radar’ – Call for Monthly Releases
Following a discussion on Reddit that proved demand, Fantasy-Faction has decided to run a Small Press edition of our monthly ‘On Our Radar‘ post. What this means is that every month we will be inviting Small Press from around the world to submit up to three titles that they are releasing for the coming month and that […]
January 11, 2016
Angel of Storms by Trudi Canavan
I reviewed the first book in the Millenium’s Rule trilogy – Thief’s Magic – back in 2014 here on Fantasy-Faction and I’m sorry to say I was rather harsh. Angel of Storms, however, was superb and everything I’ve come to expect from such an accomplished author. A note from Canavan included in the hardback edition […]
The Last Mortal Bond by Brian Staveley
“The ancient Csestriim are back to finish their purge of humanity; armies clash outside the capital city; leaches, solitary beings who draw power from the natural world to fuel their extraordinary abilities, maneuvre on all sides to affect the outcome of the war; on the islands of the Kettral, the survivor’s of Valyn’s wing return […]
January 9, 2016
Susan Dennard Interview
Susan Dennard has come a long way from small-town Georgia. As a marine biologist, she got to travel the world before settling down as a full-time novelist and writing instructor. She is the author of the Something Strange and Deadly series as well as the forthcoming Witchlands series. Today she was kind enough to stop […]
Fantasy Titles On Our Radar: January 2016 Edition
From January 2016 we will be running a monthly feature called ‘On Our Radar‘. The aim of this post will be to show you the Fantasy titles that we are looking out for and remind you what’s hitting shelves over the course of the coming month (a couple of Sci-Fi titles may slip on there […]
January 7, 2016
The Only Bit of Writing Advice You’ll Need in 2016
If you’re anything like me then every time an interview with an author is posted, you’ll find yourself scanning it for information about their writing process. It doesn’t matter whether they write literary classics or dinosaur erotica, I’ve long held a fascination with the way other writers work. Are they plotters or planners? Do they […]
