Marc Aplin's Blog, page 214

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie

Half a King isn’t the book that proves Joe Abercrombie’s skill. Those credentials were long established with the First Law trilogy, which turned our expectations on their heads and introduced a new way to explore fantasy storytelling. What Half a King does is remind us that it’s not the violence or occasional profanity that has […]

The 100 – TV Series Review

I feel that I should start this review by stating that I have never been a super huge fan of sci-fi, in either print or visual media forms. It wasn’t until I watched the entirety of Firefly a few years ago that it finally clicked for me. Sci-fi didn’t have to be super weird; it […]

Elements of Fantasy – Frogs

For a dame seeking a handsome, wealthy husband who has an affluent family, all she needed to do was kiss a lot of frogs. Simple and foolproof. The Brothers Grimm received most of the credit for igniting the folklore about a frog who helped a girl find her ball in a well. He pressured the […]

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Review

“We are nothing but dwarfs, standing on the shoulders of giants”, Bernard of Chartres allegedly said, and I’d be hard pressed to find a bigger truth. Whether in fantasy literature, telecommunications or psychology, we are always taking what others have done and twisting or merging it to make something bigger, faster, better or just more […]

Why Do We Need Stories?

Have you ever thought of why we need stories? Clearly, as this site demonstrates, we love stories. We love heroes and villains, adventure and danger, thrills and spills, and, of course, at the end, we like the good guys to win (most of the time). But, why? Is it just the excitement, the characters, the […]

Fantasy-Faction Anthology – Website Visitor Edition

Next week we will be getting the first delivery of our Fantasy-Faction Anthology! This first edition print is a special edition that we will be making available just to you guys, Fantasy-Faction’s Website and Forum users, a month before the ISBN editions (both ebook and print) are launched and distributed. Here’s what’s inside: From award […]

Black Feathers & The Book of the Crowman by Joseph D’Lacey

Our world is collapsing, the planet choked with pollution and strangled by economic hardship. A government agency with dubious intent, known as the Ward, is collecting political dissenters and rebels, for the greater good. And a boy named Gordon Black is born amidst the chaos, his life somehow tied to a strange figure known as […]

Fantasy Rings: The Ultimate Power Accessory

We all know THE Ring. The One Ring to Rule them all. (And if you don’t, then shame on you.) The Ring is so well-known in popular culture that it was the solution to one of Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers mysteries. And just yesterday I saw a meme online that I couldn’t help but ‘Like’ […]

Money Makes the World Go Round

I missed The Desolation of Smaug movie when it was in cinemas, but my wife and I just watched it on Netflix, and while she was all ‘look at the giant dragon!’ I was all ‘look at the giant pile of cash he’s sitting on, I mean, I know dragons like gold, but Scrooge McDuck […]

The Long Mars by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

This review contains spoilers for the previous books. Read with caution if you have yet to finish The Long Earth and The Long War. The Long Mars is a worthy third installment of the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. Continuing the tradition of slow building, character driven stories, The Long Mars […]