Marc Aplin's Blog, page 238

The fantasy genre has always been happily aware of its deep connection to history. Pull a book at random from the fantasy section of your bookstore and you’re sure to find something that jogs your high school memories of Scandinavian Vikings (The Blade Itself), the Napoleonic Wars (The Thousand Names), The Wars of the Roses […]

If you’ve always wanted your zombie hordes flavored with fungus, then The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey was written for you. Those who devour science articles will be well versed in the fungus that turns ants into zombies. The infected ants will stumble back to the colony, die, then bloom a terrifyingly […]

Last week we brought to your attention the fact that there was a battle of words and intentions going on between George R.R. Martin and HBO. To give you the short version: HBO said that although they didn’t want to they would write their own conclusion to Game of Thrones if George doesn’t finish book […]

A couple of weeks back our good friends at Gollancz got in contact and asked if we’d like to interview one of our favourite authors, Brandon Sanderson. Of course, we said ‘YES!’, but because Brandon is busy we knew we’d only have a very limited amount of questions we’d be able to ask, so we […]

Every year there are a number of debut authors that are so enthusiastically hyped by publishers that, as a reviewer, have you whispering a small prayer under your breath each time you receive a parcel: ‘please, Lord, let this envelope contain [insert name of book here]‘. This year has been no exception; Den Patrick’s The […]

You know when you first read or watch something, and you’re like, “Can’t believe how crap that was” or “Did not like that at all”, but then, by some fortuitous turn of events, you watch or read that same thing again, and you’re like “That was awesome” or “hilarious” or “actually not that bad”. “What […]

We here at Fantasy-Faction do like to dip our toes into a bit of Science-Fiction from time-to-time, so we were excited when Gollancz books announced earlier today that they have obtained World Rights to a two-book Space Opera from one of our favourite fantasy authors, John W. Campbell and Hugo-Award-winner, Elizabeth Bear. The series is […]

Fantasy sinks its figurative talons into us all. Its origins are ancient, with roots in the epic Icelandic Eddur and Old English poems like Beowulf. It owes a debt to Shakespeare, to the adventure narratives of the eighteenth century, to the Gothic movement, Romanticism, the medievalism of the Pre-Raphaelites and to the fin de siècle. […]

It seems that reissuing books with new covers is all the rage right now… Just a few weeks ago we reported that Robin Hobb was getting some cool new covers for her original Farseer Trilogy and that George R.R. Martin was getting some travel-guide looking covers for those who didn’t want to hold a book […]

The Hero’s Journey or ‘Monomyth’ is one of the most pervasive and well known formulas in fiction, yet many writers have never even heard of it. The Hero’s Journey is essentially a collection of common structural elements that recur in stories, and they have been used to create a formula for the narrative of a […]