Marc Aplin's Blog, page 64
February 12, 2019
The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Durfee
Spoilers Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for The Forgetting Moon. Please read with caution if you have yet to finish the book. “Bloodwood assassins have hunted us your entire life, boy!” Brian Lee Durfee is an epic new force in the dark fantasy genre and one I feel that can stand alongside the likes […]
February 11, 2019
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Priory of the Orange Tree is a multiple perspective, epic fantasy standalone book, written by the author of The Bone Season series, Samantha Shannon. It is also one of my most anticipated books of 2019 and I am […]
February 10, 2019
The Blighted City by Scott Kaelen
The Blighted City begins with a quest and ends with a beautiful contemplation of filial love, loyalty, duty, and grief in a story that blazes a trail out of standard epic fantasy into a really fresh, original science fantasy narrative. The novel starts with an engaging first chapter in which Maros, a retired mercenary and […]
February 7, 2019
The Coilhunter Chronicles by Dean F. Wilson – Spoiler Free Series Review
Steampunk Batman meets A Fistful of Dollars (and later, the Borg). Despite Fantasy-Faction originally being a British website, I am pretty sure that everyone knows Americans romanticize the Wild West: the freewheeling setting, the gunslinger vigilante who stands up to the bad guys when the government can’t. It might as well be the bedrock of […]
We Want You: To Write for Fantasy-Faction
Do you read fantasy, science fiction, horror, steampunk, or any other of the many subgenres of SFF? Are you writing the next great epic fantasy novel or are at least trying to? Do you have some free time to share your love of genre fiction with others? Then Fantasy-Faction wants you! We are a fan […]
February 6, 2019
Is Voltron: Legendary Defender Worth Watching?
The final season of Dreamworks’ Voltron: Legendary Defender dropped on 14th December 2018. Originally launching on Netflix in 2016, this re-boot of the 80s sci-fi adventure cartoon captured the hearts of both new and old fans alike. With a fluid animation style similar to Avatar: The Last Airbender and with a phenomenal voice actor cast, […]
February 5, 2019
Seven Deadly Swords by Peter Sutton
For every sin, a sword For every sword, a curse For every curse, a death Reymond joined the Crusades to free the Holy Land from the Saracens and win glory for himself. Instead, with six others, he found himself bound under a sorcerer’s curse: the Seven Sins personified. Doomed to eternal life and with the […]
February 3, 2019
This Dreaming Isle edited by Dan Coxon – An Anthology by Unsung Stories
This Dreaming Isle by Unsung Stories is a collection of supernatural short stories by different authors inspired by British folklore, British history and the British landscape. Not quite one thing or another, it wanders back and forth across the shadowy borderland between urban fantasy, gothic horror and grown-up fairy-tales. Dreaming is the operative word here, […]
January 31, 2019
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
If GRRM wrote a mix of The Incredibles and Avatar, with a necromancer heroine. Last year, Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone came in second to RF Kuang’s The Poppy War on my personal list of Most Anticipated Debuts. After seeing Ms. Adeyemi’s interview with Jimmy Fallon (he lauded her success at an early […]
January 29, 2019
Firefly: A Traveler’s Companion to the ‘Verse
I am a huge Firefly nerd. Like, seriously huge. I’ve watched the show and the movie many times. I took a movie criticism class in college and compared Star Wars and Serenity, just because I could. When I left my first full-time job, my coworker gave me Firefly comics as a parting gift. When I […]
