Fantasy Book Reviews
As a committed reader, you start to see the signs that you are living a long life. One stark reminder is when a favourite author dies. This has happened too often already for my liking; one particularly heavy hit was Sir Terry Pratchett. In a world in which authors continue to write into their...
I always forget how unpleasant some of the antiheros were in Victorian era fantasy and science fiction. In my mind I think of the era being full of ladies and gentlemen, but there were plenty of loathsome people too. Looking back on the working conditions and how society treated its poor,...
History is facinating, but we often focus on the big characters, the big battles. Whilst King’s were being beheaded and bombs dropped, people kept on peopleling. The history of the normal person can be forgotten, but we exist too. What happened to the normal person on the street when...
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not
What is Fantasy if it is not epic battles against elves and orcs? Fans of the genre know that it can be a lot of other things than just that. Some of the best modern fantasy that I have read have been smaller stories set in fantasy worlds. How about a Die Hard-like experience set in a castle...
I picked this book up as I was looking for more urban fantasy to try. I love the Dresden files and given that new books in that series only seem to appear infrequently, I was getting an urban fantasy itch. This book stood out as it was recommended by talented and under-appreciated author Dave...
I've been meaning to read this book for quite some time. It's been staring accusingly across the room. But I'm still trying to find time to read right now and it's not the most sveltely of shapes, coming in at a weighty 730+ pages. I finally gave in, and I'm glad I did. This does invariably mean...
For any author magic is a tricky beast as you can easily paint yourself into the corner. You can make the magic too powerful, or you can develop a whole magic system that is unbalanced. Things become even trickier when you add those tricksy Fae. Fairy magic is all about breaking rules on a...
Who doesn’t love a good pirate story? What about a story that has flying ships that drop gunpowder bombs? Or a story that has magic and mysterious civilisations living on remote islands? These all sound great and are wrapped together in a lovely fantasy package in Michael...
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not
There is a long tradition of Folk Horror in the UK, but plenty of other countries bring their own flavour to the genre. American Gothic has all the trappings of classic Folk Horror, but has that distinct US flavour. The woods out there seem different, ancient landscapes unused to the people that...
When it comes to vampires, I understand that there is a rich tapestry of versions you can now read about, but I like mine to have that old fashioned appeal. The type of vampire that does not want to talk about their feelings or act like the average tween, but instead wants to wear lace frills...
There are all types of fantasy from the high to the low, but for some fans it can be tricky to enjoy one type or the other. For someone interested in starting to read low fantasy they may be turned off by the violence and darkness that this part of the genre emits. On the other hand, high...
What is the fantasy genre? It is not just one thing. You can have elves and orcs battling against the backdrop of high wizardry, but you can also write something simpler. Low fantasy is getting so low that it starts to feel like alternative medieval history. Like why write about real history...
Find the latest Fantasy book reviews here. Fantasy as a genre can be very difficult to define but is usually said to encompass stories set in an alternative reality based on imagined fantastical elements like magic or the supernatural. This is the defining difference between science fiction and fantasy, science fiction deals with elements that are theoretically possible while fantasy deals with the improbable or impossible.
Fantasy can be most commonly associated with sword and sorcery stories however the genre can include contemporary (Harry Potter) and humorous (Tom Holt) tales. Fantasy, science fiction and horror can occasionally overlap and generally the term used to describe these novels is speculative fiction.
Fantasy fiction can trace it's roots all the way back to ancient mythology, especially Homer's Odyssey which was written in the 9th century BC. Homer's Odyssey chronicles the fictional adventures of a hero returning to Ithaca after the capture of Troy. The earliest surviving English text of fantasy origins is the poem Beowulf which dates back to 700 AD.
The most recognisable to modern audiences is perhaps the Legends of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. These stories have been told many times from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (around 1485 AD) to T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) and Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle (1987).
The series that could be said to bring fantasy into the mainstream has to be Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara series, written in 1977 it was one of the first modern fantasy books to become a new york times best seller. Since then this has been repeated by David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Terry Good Kind and Terry Pratchett.
Here you can find fantasy book reviews from the big name authors to the self published and independant, it's the story that's always the star here.
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