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David Gemmell Legend Awards Shortlist & Lunchtime Thoughts
It’s my lunch break and I’m sat here looking over the David Gemmell Legend Award shortlist. It’s truly great to see that in just a few years of the Gemmell’s being set up the three awards that it comprises have become some of the genre’s most sought after. Why? Well, firstly, to make the longlist you need to have been nominated […]
Creating Shanghai Sparrow. Guest Post by Gaie Sebold
The germination of a novel is a peculiar process. It seemed particularly so, for me, in the case of Shanghai Sparrow. When I first considered the possibility of a steampunk novel I had only written two short stories set in steampunkish universes, both of which I’d enjoyed doing, both of which had a rather sepia-soaked, […]
Faeries and Folklore – Part One: An Introduction
We’re going to talk about faeries. For the purposes of both my sanity and authenticity, leave any and all notions of Disney’s Tinker Bell at the door. Tinker Bell is a pretty fiction dreamed up in order to invite little girls to dress in frilly gowns that glitter and sparkle in the sun. Faeries are […]
Children’s Fantasy: Eight of the Best – Part One
I do not write for children, but entirely for myself. Yet I do write for some children, and have done so from the beginning. This wonderful, contradictory statement comes from Alan Garner, who merits a place – at least in my mind – at the high table of children’s fantasy literature. Garner continues: Only recently […]
In Defence of the Chosen One
One of fantasy’s most commonly mocked tropes is the chosen one. This makes sense; it’s also one of fantasy’s most recurring tropes, and there are a lot of very good reasons why it can feel like a clichéd or even lazy feature. However, I don’t think the chosen one narrative is always negative; in fact, […]
Dunk and Egg Collection Announced
Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hadn’t seen, read or at very least heard of A Game of Thrones… However, the stories of ‘Dunk & Egg’ – The Hedge Knight (1998), The Sworn Sword (2003) and The Mystery Knight (2010) – are far less well-known – mainly because they’ve been buried in genre […]
“Silver Linings” by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris
Last month the newest edition to Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris’ Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series was released. The latest installment, Dawn’s Early Light, features Braun and Books on their next assignment, which brings them to the United States to investigate a series of nautical and aerial disasters. If you’ve not gotten a chance to […]
The Shadow’s Curse Cover Reveal
I’m hoping that many of you have had the opportunity to read and enjoy one of 2013′s very dest debuts, The OathBreaker’s Shadow by Canadian fantasy author Amy McCulloch. If you didn’t, the story is set in a world where you tie a knot to secure any promises that you make. Should you break these promises you […]
Survey of Fantasy Subgenres – Part One: High and Low Fantasy
A big hello to Fantasy-Faction readers! I’m happy to be a new member of the Fantasy-Faction staff and would say thanks for the great opportunity. As my first series of articles, I’d like to present and discuss subgenres of fantasy. The definitions and boundaries are subject to opinion. I’ll present what seems correct to me, […]
Michael J. Sullivan on why he is jumping from Fantasy to Sci-Fi
Some of the most fun I’ve had reading novels over the last few years have come as a result of Michael J. Sullivan. His novels aren’t huge, epic, Game of Thrones type novels – but rather a throwback to when fantasy didn’t take itself so seriously and the primary aim of the book was simply […]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: What it Means to be a Female Hero
It’s been nearly eleven years since the end of the cult TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer but after all this time it remains a significant contributor to fantasy history. The show is lauded as ground-breaking, not necessarily for its overly original speculative fiction elements but ultimately because the development of character, combined with a […]
Have we made Dragons and Demons too cute and cuddly?
To celebrate the release of Stephen Deas’s The Dragon Queen coming to paperback, we have for you today a very cool article on the emasculation of dragons in contemporary fantasy writing and why – in Stephen’s opinion – this is a bad thing, taking away from the ‘formidable or dangerous’ beasts that have featured in stories over […]
