Marc Aplin's Blog, page 174

My Favorite Lessons from Independence Day

This weekend is the Fourth of July holiday here in the States, and while that doesn’t mean squat for the rest of the world, it does give us all the perfect excuse to revisit an old-school sci-fi favorite: Independence Day. A major summer blockbuster of 1996—can you believe it’s almost 20 years old?!—it introduced sci-fi […]

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s tale of a girl who follows a white rabbit down a hole in the ground and finds herself in the strangest of places. It’s a story that’s left a huge and lasting legacy, with a multitude of adaptations and influences across all […]

Suffrage or Just Plain Suffering? The Princess Problem in Fantasy

It’ll never be easy to create a Cinderella who isn’t a victim. This has clearly been a challenge for Disney, whose live action version of the classic fairy tale opened earlier this year. Modern fantasy heroines should appeal to their young female audience as strong yet compassionate, intelligent yet humble, warriors, princesses, majestic ice-castle-builders. Cinderella’s […]

Maoyu Mao Yusha – Anime Review

For fifteen years, the demons and humans have been at war, and both sides have profited from it, but at the expense of those less fortunate. Maoyu Mao Yusha begins with the Hero venturing into demon territory to challenge the Demon King. The encounter, though, goes nothing like Hero expects – beginning with the revelation […]

Hobbies, Or Why Taking A Break Matters

Ever have one of those days, where you’re just knackered, your concentration and motivation gone? Not a lot of fun, for anyone. It’s a hard one too; when you’re writing, and you know where your story is going, you feel compelled to write, but in a burnt-out state, you’ll just write drivel you’ll want to […]

Books on Writing Fantasy

There are lots of books about writing out there, waiting to be read by future authors. Books on characters, books on plot, books on writing a novel in X amount of days. And of course all of this information can be used when writing fantasy novels, but wouldn’t it be nice to read a book […]

The Sacred Band by Janet E. Morris and Chris Morris

From the very first chapter of The Sacred Band, I had a feeling about how I wanted to write this review, and the further in I went, the more certain I became. Reading this book from Janet Morris and Chris Morris is exactly like meeting an old classmate from high school, some 25 or 30 […]

After the Burning: Princess by C. J. Peter

The following book was reviewed as part of Mark Lawrence’s Great Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. For more information, visit Mark Lawrence’s blog or this previous announcement from Fantasy-Faction. C.J. Peter’s After the Burning: Princess isn’t a perfect book, but much like its main character, it has a lot of heart. The story centers around young Julian […]

Blood Oranges by Kathleen Tierney

Urban fantasy is something of a gamble for me. While I do enjoy reading about mythical creatures navigating the modern world, I sometimes find the books get too dark and gritty for my taste. I prefer idealistic to realistic in my fiction, and I certainly prefer idealistic to cynical. However, I will brave even the […]

The Venusian Gambit by Michael J. Martinez

The Venusian Gambit is the third and final instalment in the Daedalus series by Michael J. Martinez and boy does it strive to redefine the word ‘epic’. I read the first book, The Daedalus Incident, a couple of years ago and found it to be an exciting swashbuckling, space-sailing adventure with multiple dimensions, races, species, […]