Marc Aplin's Blog, page 218
July 21, 2014
Women Write Fantasy
There have always been serious issues revolving around gender parity and sexism in the fantasy community. Whether this is the depiction of women – as little more than damsels in distress waiting for the fella to rescue her – or the fact that many bookshops and even publishers seem reluctant to fully invest in the […]
Women Write Fantasy…
There have always been serious issues revolving around gender parity and sexism in the fantasy community. Whether this is the depiction of women – as little more than damsels in distress waiting for the fella to rescue her – or the fact that many bookshops and even publishers seem reluctant to fully invest in the […]
July 20, 2014
Queen’s Guards perform Game of Thrones theme
A few weeks ago we posted some pictures up of the Queen’s visit to the set of A Game of Thrones. That was actually in Belfast, Ireland, but today we’ve found out that the Queen brought something from A Game of Thrones back with her to London. That ‘something’ is the show’s theme tune. Last […]
Myke Cole’s ‘Gemini Cell’ Cover Revealed
Fantasy-Faction has been lucky enough to do a number of the UK cover reveals for Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops novels. I must admit that in August last year, when we shared with the world the cover of Breach Zone, I thought there wasn’t any way Myke’s covers would be getting any better. Larry Rostant got […]
Toll the Hounds by Steven Erikson
A ticket to ascendant adventure costs no more than the Toll of the Hounds, but do you have the courage to pay it? Toll the Hounds, book eight of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, is an extraordinarily good read because it gives us what we want, in spades! We get old friends and new, […]
July 19, 2014
Winner of the April 2014 Writing Contest
We’ve been getting such good feedback for the short stories our members have submitted in our Monthly Short Story Competition that we have decided to post them on the main site at a rate of one a week. Today we will be looking at the winner from our April 2014 contest. This time for our […]
Del Ray put together one heck of a US Sampler…
We really like Del Ray books. They make a real effort to connect with genre fans through Suvudu, one of the best Science Fiction & Fantasy blogs around. In addition, their list is absolutely phenomenal – Scott Lynch, George R.R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Naomi Novik to name buy a few. In their latest bid to get […]
July 18, 2014
Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews
In this seventh installment of the popular Kate Daniels urban fantasy series, we have come to a crossroads. Kate has spent her entire life trying to hide her powers and live under the radar of her father, Roland, a god-like being whose envy of his offsprings’ potential power has left him with one remaining descendent—Kate—because […]
Robin Hobb’s new US covers (complete contrast to UK)
Wow, it seems that we’ve done a lot of posts on Robin Hobb’s cover art lately! That said, I’m not complaining… a big problem that the publishing industry has is that they tend to concentrate too much on the new up and coming titles whilst forgetting the ones that – we think – are still […]
July 17, 2014
Fantasy and Studio Ghibli – Part Two: The Search for Identity
In the first part of this series, I took a look at the earlier Ghibli films – Nausicaä, Princess Mononoke and Laputa – and examined the ways in which they explored the eternal struggle between nature and mankind. In this second part, I’m moving on to films which utilise symbols and motifs typical of the […]
