Browsing all articles tagged with dragons.
The Legion of Flame by Anthony Ryan
Spoiler Warning: This review contains spoilers for The Waking Fire, the first book in Anthony Ryan’s Draconis Memoria series. There is a scene in the second chapter of Anthony Ryan’s second novel in the Draconis Memoria, The Legion of Flame, in which Lizanne Lethridge, spy for the Ironship Trading Syndicate, is called before the board […]
Magic, Mutants, and Machines: The Nifty Bits Reviews
Are you tired of reading lengthy, critical reviews that leave you even more confused about what to read next? Daniel Potter’s Nifty Bits – brief summaries of his past month’s reading – are the perfect remedy! Steal the Sky by Megan E. O’Keefe is a prelude to a high skies adventure-story. The plot, world, and economy […]
Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan
The fifth – and final – of Lady Trent’s memoirs is a difficult beast to review without lurching firmly into spoiler territory, both for the preceding books and for the plot of this one. So, in order to set the scene for this review, the next paragraph will contain brief spoilers from the previous entry. […]
In the Labyrinth of Drakes by Marie Brennan
The fourth book of an ongoing series is a troublesome prospect. Stagnation and repetition are potential pitfalls, and there is no doubt that Marie Brennan totters on a precarious ledge at times during In the Labyrinth of Drakes. Isabella, not-quite-yet Lady Trent, certainly has to deal with many of the recurring themes from the first […]
Monthly Short Story Winner: Breaking The Fourth Wall
Most of you are familiar with the term “breaking the fourth wall”. It’s mostly done in children’s books (like Grover in Sesame Street’s The Monster at the End of this Book), comics (see above) or movies (comedy movies mainly) and means usually a character becoming aware of their fictional nature, directly addressing the reader and/or […]
Why I Don’t Like Dragons
First, a confession: the title of this article is a little bit sensationalist. The truth is, I don’t actively dislike dragons. I don’t go around hating them and huffing and puffing at books with dragons on the cover, and films with dragons in the trailers. My feelings towards dragons is closer to an indifference. They […]
Where do you get your ideas from?
Sometimes out of the mouths, well hands, of babes and sucklings it seems… It’s a question many writers dread and I think it’s because it’s so hard to give any sort of concrete answer. Mostly. I mean, they come from anywhere and everywhere. They pop into your head unbidden (inspired by something you’ve seen or […]
The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan
In the first book of this new series, Ryan introduces readers to a fascinating world where nations have been replaced by companies, and the most precious resource available is the blood of a drake, which can be used by Blood-burners to fuel their magic. Similar to the way that different metals provided different skills in […]
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Colchian Dragon
This is the second instalment of a series in which we explore some of the lesser-known creatures and monsters found in Classical mythology, as many of these fantastical beings have similar counterparts in today’s modern fantasy literature and film. It’s my hope that giving more “screen time” to some of the unique creatures from ancient […]
Kojiki by Keith Yatsuhashi – Cover Reveal & Excerpt
Here on Fantasy-Faction we have hosted many a cover reveal. Of those covers a good deal of my personal favs have been from Angry Robot Books. Today’s reveal is no exception. But before I get ahead of myself, why don’t we take a look at the summary for today’s novel: Kojiki by Keith Yatsuhashi. Every civilization […]
The Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan
When writing memoirs, or indeed anything, it seems essential to cluster events thematically, throwing away all the boring bits in the process (such as laundry and visits to the bathroom) to tighten the story into something resembling a plot. The first two volumes of Isabella Lady Trent’s fictional life story, A Natural History of Dragons […]
Chinese Dragons
Since we’ve looked at both the origins of our scaly friends, and their purported racial types, it seems wholly on course to take a jolly meander off the beaten path and explore an entirely different nest of dragons. Dragons feature in most world mythologies, and whilst some traits are similar and their appearances closely resemble […]
