Marc Aplin's Blog, page 241

This review contains spoilers for Wool. If you haven’t read Hugh Howey’s Wool, stop here and go do so immediately. You should do this first because Wool is one of the best science fiction books to come out in recent memory, and second because it’s very much a big-reveal kind of book—one I can’t help […]

A few years ago I reviewed and raved about a remarkable book, A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Well, having been ‘optioned’ by Hollywood quite some time ago, it seems that the film is pretty close to actually being made. It was announced earlier today that the award-winning director of The Orphanage and The Impossible, […]

At some convention in the distant past on some panel about something or other, someone once asked me whether I was an architect or a gardener. I had really no idea what they were talking about but replied that, as a physicist and an engineer, I was probably more of an architect with everything laid […]

With just one more sleep until the publication of Words of Radiance, Fantasy-Faction have teamed up with Gollancz Books to bring you a special treat to celebrate this week’s edition of our weekly Way of Kings read along! Together, we’re sharing an audio extract and the first seven chapters of Words of Radiance. Not bad, aye? If you CLICK […]

Interactive fiction games have been around for some while now: the original grandparents being the old-fashioned, non-linear game books and their more recent, upbeat offspring called text adventures. Whilst the latter only allows software-based text to forge your own path (most often through puzzles), and game books require the reader to choose set options to […]

Swords of Haven introduces us to Hawk and Fisher; they’re husband and wife, the only truly honourable cops in Haven, a violent and corrupt city filled with monsters, wizards, thieves and politicians. This volume from 2006 collects the first three stories – Hawk & Fisher, Winner Take All, and The God Killer – published between […]

An absolutely incredible pixel artist, Antonia Heslop, has recreated the top 14 most brutal deaths of The Game of Thrones series as 8-Bit GIFs. The author has put them in order of what they consider the most brutal, but here are our two favourites by way of the ‘pixelated-awesomeness’ scale: The moment we realise no […]

Laughter disarms the fiercest of men. – Lokabrenna A child’s fascination with something can last a long time and spark great ideas; ideas that can be turned into books. As a little girl, Joanne Harris found Thunder of the Gods by Dorothy G. Hosford in her local library. She loved the book so much that […]

Fantasy-Faction is lucky enough to have a good number of talented published authors – especially female authors – posting in our forums. Perhaps I am being presumptuous, but I’d like to think that each of these wonderful ladies are friends of mine and so am very interested in their opinions and experiences revolving around the […]

Twitter has been alight with the news that one of the UK’s biggest and best known talk show hosts, Jonathan Ross, has withdrawn from his role as Master of Ceremonies at this year’s Hugo Awards. For those who don’t have a clue who he is, he isn’t too far from the mould of Jay Leno […]