Marc Aplin's Blog, page 216
August 11, 2014
Brent Weeks Interview
Running a fantasy blog, I’m often asked who my favourite authors are. Upon giving my answers, people are often surprised that the likes of Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien and so on aren’t in my top 5 (or even 10). I think it’s because when I started reading fantasy it was because I […]
August 10, 2014
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 […]
August 9, 2014
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 […]
August 8, 2014
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 […]
August 7, 2014
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 […]
August 6, 2014
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 […]
August 5, 2014
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 […]
