Marc Aplin's Blog, page 72

Curse by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié

Spoiler Warning: This review contains spoilers. Please read with caution if you have yet to finish book one. This book, as I might say to my friends, is a trip. (Actually, it’s nowhere near as intense as I remember the next two books being. Of course, as I remembered the first book being better than […]

James Jakins – Author Spotlight

I discovered James Jakins and his work when I read an article about last year’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO). I’m always on the lookout for great indie and self-published authors to add to my massive TBR mountain. In this case, one book caught my attention above all. I know they say you should never judge […]

Self-Publishing Fantasy Blog-Off #4: Fall of the Second Five

* Disclaimer * Writing and reading are subjective arts. What some folks will absolutely love, others will dislike. It is a bit like Marmite in the UK – normal people dislike it intensely, but some weird folks actually enjoy the taste of warm road surface with fresh roadkill upon their tongue. To each their own, […]

The Books of Pellinor by Alison Croggon – Spoiler Free Series Review

The Books of Pellinor is a four books epic fantasy series written by the Australian author, Alison Croggon. Here in the UK the first book is called The Gift, but in other parts of the world it is also called The Naming. The series is a retelling of “Naraudh Lar-Chanë”, “Riddle of the Treesong”, which […]

El Ministerio del Tiempo (Ministry of Time) – TV Series Review

I am a sucker for costume dramas. If a show involves somebody wearing farthingales, I will give it a try, and I’ll usually hang in there even if it’s not that great. Usually on the stationary bike, I’ll pedal along, admiring fashions, upholstery, and candelabras. I’ve watched my share of mediocre historical dramas and fantasies, […]

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

It seems that I have a thing for sentient elephants. My first experience was the excellent Downward to the Earth by Robert Silverberg. But, The Only Harmless Great Thing is much more than just sentient elephants, it’s an emotional piece of work creating a quite plausible alternate reality that makes us think about the morality […]

Draigon Weather by Paige L. Christie

In Adfen, men fear the coming of Draigon Weather – the oppressive heat, the lasting droughts, the slow death of everything that can only be appeased by sacrifice. And women fear the coming of the Draigon – because it is always a woman who is sacrificed. Only nine-years-old, Leiel Sower has already lost her mother […]

It’s Agent Week!

UPDATE: It’s agent week! Head over to our Facebook group to ask our featured agents your burning publishing questions! If you’re an aspiring writer, dreaming of a publishing deal and one sacred day of seeing your hard work on the shelf at your local bookstore, then you’ll likely need an agent. These mysterious beings, hidden […]

Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe

Ferris Bueller Goes to Hogwarts: the Video Game. Though both have left tire tracks over my books in the charts and competitions, I can’t decide whether I hold a deeper grudge against Jonathan French’s Grey Bastards or Andrew Rowe’s Sufficiently Advanced Magic. For whatever reason, Amazon classifies LitRPG as Asian Myths and Legends, and as […]

Witch by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguié

“She must be rich, Holly thought. Then, for the first time, she realized, I’m rich now, too.” Readers, I rolled my eyes. Your parents were going to get you a horse for your eighteenth birthday. What can you call that but rich? I may not have been quite that bitter at reading those sentences, but […]