Fantasy-Faction Turns Five!

Fantasy-Faction began as Marc Aplin’s way to geek out about the fantasy books he’d discovered way back in 2010. His first adventure into the world of fantasy was The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. He could not believe that a book could put you through so many emotional states and have you care so deeply about characters, epic stories, and vividness of the non-existent.

He next picked up Peter V. Brett’s The Painted Man due to the similar cover, and once again, he flew through the book and was stunned by all the same things. He realized that the feelings fantasy novels could give you and the places they could take you weren’t exclusive to one or two authors, but were provided by all good work within the genre.

But experiencing these feelings alone was not satisfying enough. He wanted to share them with other people. The grin that you take on as you read about a character as cool as Durzo Blint. The pain in your heart as Scott Lynch kills some of your favorite characters. The jaw dropping moments you have whilst reading prose as beautiful and poetic as Mark Lawrence’s. The suspense you feel as you wait for the thirteenth book in a series to arrive. The mob-mentality you become a part of as you demand George R. R. Martin hurries up and finishes ASOI&F or while you tell the rest of those ungrateful gits to shut up and let him take his time…he wanted to share it all.

In November 2010 he started this website to encourage people to read what we, our staff members and editors, consider good books capable of giving readers the feelings discussed above and to investigate the genre in an academic and enjoyable way through articles. Our job is to help readers find which books will rock their world through reviews and author interviews. The articles are a way of investigating how this awesomeness is achieved or how, as an author, you may achieve the same effects. We have never had an interest in telling readers, “This book didn’t do anything for me.” There are plenty of other sites that do that.

Why the name Fantasy-Faction? A faction is a grouping of like-minded individuals. Five years later our faction is part army, part family, 100% lovers of fantasy books. We are now one of the largest fantasy communities on the web and it’s all thanks to our amazing contributors and our loyal Factioners.

In addition to an incredible amount of sustained hits, we’ve held Fantasy-Faction events in London’s top bookshops, been awarded the Reddit’s Fantasy Site of the Year award, were nominated for the British Fantasy Award (twice), the World Fantasy Award, and were the only genre site to reach the Goodreads Independent Blogger Award Finals.

We’ve also published The Fantasy-Faction Anthology. A collection to celebrate the fantasy genre’s amazing diversity, which was written by a combination of genre giants and previously unpublished authors. In the future we hope to publish more books, have a yearly fantasy award, many more Fantasy-Faction events, and even a convention!

I’ve been here since December 2010, back when the forum was small and Marc ran the front page by himself. He took me on as a contributor, then a forum admin, then an editor. Though I think a couple of those I got tricked into. 😉

This site has helped me with my writing, introduced me to amazing authors, great friends, and amazing authors who are also great friends. I never imagined the site would get this big or become such a big part of my life. And I hope it continues to grow and we continue introduce many others to the worlds of fantasy we discover every day.

So for those of you who’ve stuck by us since the beginning and those of you who are just joining us, thank you! We couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to share our love of fantasy with!

Happy Birthday Fantasy-Faction! May you continue on until our to-be-read piles are empty!

– Jennie Ivins (with apologies to Marc for stealing some of his bio). 😉

P.S. Make sure you get a slice of cake before you leave. It’s Neapolitan dragon flavored!

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