Browsing all articles in Reviews.
Urskuul’s Reading Circle: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
Welcome all, to another edition of Urskuul’s Reading Circle newsletter. I would say, “another exciting edition”, but I fear I might be lying if I did. And I’d hate to mislead you. Especially if I misled you and I didn’t even get any monetary reward for it. Then, not only would I have lost your […]
Death Note – 2017 Movie Review
Death Note is a Japanese manga series created by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata about a teenage genius, Light Yagami, who one day finds a notebook capable of killing any person whose name is written. Choosing to use the notebook to rid the world of criminals, Light comes into conflict with the genius detective known […]
SPFBO3: The Next Five Fall
The Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off officially began on July 1st! In case you missed it, here’s what Fantasy-Faction has posted so far: Our announcement Introducing round one Cover contest winners The first five fall And of course you can keep track of everything relating to round one on the SPFBO page on Mark Lawrence’s blog. HUGE thanks to […]
The Silent Shield by Jeff Wheeler
Spoiler Warning: It is difficult to craft a review of the fifth book in a series without spoiling some degree of what has come before. I’ve done my best to limit spoilers to the first trilogy of Kingfountain books but if you’re looking to read the entire saga with little or no foreknowledge, go buy […]
Blackwing by Ed McDonald
Ed McDonald’s debut is an impressive tour-de-force of imaginative worldbuilding, gritty characterisation and absorbing writing. Ryhalt Galharrow’s story comes with the intimacy of a first-person point of view. McDonald gives his protagonist a voice as distinctive and world weary as Daniel Polansky’s Warden from The Low Town trilogy. Like the Warden, Galharrow is a soldier […]
Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane
And so we’ve reached the end of the line. Not for my writing for Fantasy-Faction, of course. That, hopefully, will carry on for a long time. No, I mean my reviews of the Young Wizards series, as this month I read the latest installment, Games Wizards Play. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone at this point […]
The Witchwood Crown by Tad Williams
Spoiler Warning: This is the third and, for now, final* installment in Fantasy-Faction’s Osten Ard retrospective. With the release of The Witchwood Crown, Tad Williams has returned to the land from which his greatest tale was born. What follows contains spoilers for the entirety of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and The Heart of What Was […]
Devil’s Call by J. Danielle Dorn
“On a dark night in the summer of 1859, three men enter the home of Dr Matthew Callahan and shoot him dead in front of his pregnant wife. Unbeknownst to them, the mother of this unborn child hails from a long line of women gifted in ways that scare most folks – the witches of […]
The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack by Nate Crowley
I first encountered the mad genius that is Nate Crowley via an article on Tor.com last year. In it, the author spoke of how the ocean inspired in him a sense of both wonder and dread; his morbid (and nightmare-inducing) fascination with this topic resonated with my own, and naturally I made a beeline for […]
HarperVoyager: ‘Coldmaker’ Announcement
A number of the HarperVoyager team (authors and editors) are over in Helsinki, celebrating WorldCon. They’ve been teasing us with pictures of a great event and selfies with George R.R. Martin… Check out this picture of Fantasy-Faction favourites Peter Newman and Emma Newman interviewing George R.R. Martin on a special WorldCon edition of Tea & […]
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – Book Review
When I kicked off the Fantastic Literature column, I mentioned that Hulu was producing a series based on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. And that television show has helped spur a renaissance around the 1985 book, with libraries seeing waitlists for the book run a mile long, and the iconic costumes popping up at state […]
Urskuul’s Reading Circle: The Management Style of the Supreme Beings by Tom Holt
Dear Members of Urskuul’s Reading Circle, This isn’t something I enjoy doing, but I have to remind you all that we do have rules that members are expected to follow. While you may think the rules appear arbitrary or unnecessary, there are good reasons behind all of them. Xerxes Law, our suspiciously, conveniently named resident […]
