Marc Aplin's Blog, page 224
June 19, 2014
Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
So after reading through Annihilation, I immediately looked up when Authority was coming out in order to present myself at my favorite bookstore and acquire it as soon as it was available. I had wondered if it was possible to make Area X any weirder and creepier than it already was. Authority proved that possibility […]
Forgotten Male Fantasy Authors Of The 80s
Due to the lack of women writers on this post, Fantasy-Faction will be doing a similar version focusing on women writers who readers of today may not have heard of. We have decided to do this instead of add them to this list, because when we asked for suggestions over Twitter we quickly hit double […]
June 17, 2014
Rise and Fall by Joshua P. Simon
I skimmed through a number of books in my kindle backlog before this review. Some I rejected because there were too many errors in the text, some because the characters were dull or generic, and some because the story failed to draw me in after the first few chapters. Rise and Fall is not without […]
June 16, 2014
Worldbuilding A Religion – Part One: Religion vs. Cult
Those of you who have followed Fantasy-Faction for a couple of years (or pretty much since the beginning) will probably remember the Creating God series of articles by Amy Rose Davis. Creating God is an excellent introduction to creating religions in your worldbuilding, and if you haven’t delved into worldbuilding before, particularly worldbuilding a religion, […]
June 15, 2014
Fantasy Medicine – Part Two: Pretty as a Bairnwort
Disclaimer: If you stumbled upon this post while looking for medical advice or information, please note that this article was NOT written for this purpose. Please do not take any of the information below as any kind of medical advice or opinion, since I am not an expert in either homeopathic or mainstream medicine. In […]
Magic The Gathering Movie Coming? GoT Writer Involved…
News broke today that Game of Thrones Writer, Bryan Cogman, is set to write a number of movies based on the popular ‘Magic The Gathering’ card game. According to Deadline, the rights to make a Magic: The Gathering movie were signed up by the studio last January. Fans of the card game will likely be pleased to hear that Hasbro […]
June 14, 2014
Redemption In Indigo by Karen Lord
There’s a small, but flourishing, group of Caribbean writers of African descent working in SFF at the moment, and I’m starting to read their work and, so far, finding it excellent. The language of this book of Karen Lord’s, for instance, for instance, is highly competent, more so than in all but a few books I’ve […]
June 13, 2014
Fantasy and Studio Ghibli – Part One: “Trees and people used to be good friends.”
I am a huge fan of Studio Ghibli animation. Its films are famous for their meticulous detail, beautifully-paced exposition and subtle handling of difficult themes. But what I’d like to talk about in these two articles is the way Studio Ghibli uses fantasy. Here, fantasy means more than Hollywood monsters or bits of mythology mashed […]
David Gemmell Legend Award Winners Announced
The David Gemmell Legend Award winners have finally been announced and I think two of the three awards went the way we were expecting (Best Art and Newcomer), with what I guess you could call it a surprise win – but well deserved one – for Mark Lawrence in the third category of Best Book. Here are the […]
June 12, 2014
Reaper’s Gale by Steven Erikson
You’ve heard of the super cell? That thankfully rare occasion where a number of storms, each one a threat to life and limb and capable of doing some serious property damage, combines to create one mother of an event, the likes of which has people battening down the hatches or fleeing before the front? Well, […]
