Marc Aplin's Blog, page 188
February 26, 2015
If It’s ‘Self-Promotion,’ You’re Doing It Wrong
I recently wrote a letter to my grandfather in advance of his 90th birthday, and told him a bit about some of the books I’ve been reading lately. He’s never been interested in reading fantasy, my primary genre of choice, but as a child I can still remember his bookshelf full of westerns written by […]
February 25, 2015
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
RANGE OF GHOSTS nails a lot of fantasy fundamentals: the world building is stellar, the characters are strong and layered, the prose is both precise and poetic, and the plot is compelling, completing its own story while also setting up the pieces for the other two books of The Eternal Sky trilogy. And if that […]
Putting the Fun in Fantasy by Jennifer Williams
With The Copper Promise I wanted to write a fun fantasy book. A sort of knockabout, adventure and peril and dastardly deeds type of book. The type of book that would take you down the pub and deliberately buy you all the weird drinks made from the contents of the sticky bottles at the very […]
February 24, 2015
Books we love: The books that stole our hearts and got us reading
It was Valentines last week so I, as I often do, sent out a holiday themed tweet: What I didn’t expect when I sent that Tweet out was such a huge variety of replies and such a wonderful array of reasoning for why each person had chosen the specific books they were throwing at me. Because […]
February 21, 2015
Militaries and Fantasy or How to Build an Army
Author’s Note: I did my best to refrain from using military and army interchangeably in this article. To clarify a bit, by army I mean one specific body of fighters. By military I mean a country or warlord’s fighting force as a whole. Military history is a bear. Humans have been fighting each other longer […]
Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan
Kami Glass is everything I’ve always wanted in a YA fantasy heroine. She’s clever (though not to the point of being obnoxious), strong-willed (at times to the point of foolishness, but never so much that I got fed up), and able to hold her own against sorcerers and magic despite having no particular powers herself […]
February 19, 2015
The Year of the Ladybird by Graham Joyce
It is 1976, the hottest summer in England since records began, and a young man called David is about to start work at a holiday camp close to the seaside town of Skegness. Under skies that are bright and cloudless, David helps to entertain holidaymakers of all ages, whether it be judging the quality of […]
Most Anticipated Fantasy Novels of 2015: Publishers’ Choice
Every year we take some time visiting and talking to SFF publishers about what their most anticipated novels for the year are. The idea is that the people working in the publishing houses are the ones who actually have laid their eyes on the manuscripts. In terms of the already popular authors they know whether […]
February 17, 2015
Frodor’s Travel Guide to Westeros
See what I did there? Fodor’s and Frodo. Get it? Like the travel guide and the hobbit. You know, from Lord of the Rings? Right, anyway. This is the first installment of our guide. Over the coming months, we’ll be looking at the hottest fantasy vacation spots. First up is Frodor’s travel pick of the […]
February 16, 2015
First new Michael Moorcock Novel in 10 years makes its way to the UK
Can you believe it has been almost a decade since we’ve seen a major novel from Michael Moorcock in the UK? Well, those who have been waiting patiently for Michael’s latest novel to hit UK shores are about to be rewarded, because in addition to re-releaseing a number of Moorcock’s novels in special hefty collector’s […]
