Marc Aplin's Blog, page 211
August 30, 2014
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The back cover and inside jacket of American Gods would have you believe this is a novel about gods, carefully hidden amongst American mortals, gathering their forces for a bloody civil war, and the ex-con who gets caught up the impending battle. These things do indeed happen, but they aren’t at all what American Gods […]
August 29, 2014
A Snake In The Grass by K. A. Stewart
I discovered K.A. Stewart’s Jesse James Dawson series several years ago when the first installment, A Devil In The Details, hit the shelves. Featuring demon-slaying samurai family man Jesse, the storyline and characters were a breath of fresh air in the crowded and often over-amped urban fantasy market. Jesse puts his own soul on the […]
August 28, 2014
Fantasy Book Club – September 2014: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
For September, our members voted to read The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. Quite curious about this one, it sounds like a fun change of pace. The extraordinary journey of one unforgettable character – a story of friendship and betrayal, loyalty and redemption, love and loneliness and the inevitable march of […]
‘George R.R. Martin & Robin Hobb In Discussion’ Full Event Video
A week or so ago I posted a report of the ‘George R.R. Martin and Robin Hobb In Discussion’ event held in London on August 19th 2014 and organised by Harper Voyager. There was a live stream on the night and Blinkbox have been hosting clips of the event over the course of the last […]
August 27, 2014
What the Stale Air Tastes Like: An Apocalyptic Overview
The stars are going out. The nuclear fallout bunkers were built in a rush. Your cat seems to be mutating into some sort of slug monster. We have reached end game. All our endeavours are for nothing, apart from that collection of bottle caps that you’ve been storing just for this day. The end is […]
Richard Ford Interview
Richard Ford is the author of a number of fantasy and science-fiction stories. His latest series, Steelhaven, is a gritty fantasy novel in the same vein as Joe Abercrombie and has the same kind of epic feel and interchanging viewpoints as A Game of Thrones. Here’s the blurb for the first in the series, Herald of […]
August 25, 2014
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Online games can be a little daunting to approach—at least they were for me. I’ve not tried many—count ‘em, two—but it seems I struck lucky with the second. I never tried games such as World of Warcraft and the like, since honestly, I never could get past the character generation screens. I look for a […]
August 24, 2014
Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie
Around a week or two ago I had the imponderable pleasure of meeting Joe Abercrombie at Fantasy-Faction’s Grim Gathering. I was reading Best Served Cold at the time, my Abraham Lincoln bookmark treading lightly at 100 pages prior to the finale. I had it signed and told him that I would be writing this review, […]
George R.R. Martin Ice Bucket Challenge
If you are active on Social Media, watch television, read newspapers or have left your house – even once – in the past few weeks, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the Ice Bucket Challenge. Sadly, not quite as many people know about the cause, promoting the awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encouraging […]
August 23, 2014
The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains: A Tale of Travel and Darkness with Pictures of All Kinds by Neil Gaiman
This is a review of the book and the performance which took place on 6th July 2014 in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. When I was a little girl I loved dark stories – like fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers or ghost stories for example. Either read in the darkness of my bedroom with […]
