Tiffany Aching – Discworld Series Review
Victoria Hooper
Recently, we heard the news that Wee Free Men, the first in the Tiffany Aching series of Discworld books by Sir Terry Pratchett, is going to be brought to film…
Victoria Hooper
Warcraft – Movie Review
Based on the video game series by Blizzard and its tie-in novels, Warcraft (alternatively titled Warcraft: The Beginning) is a fantasy film directed by Duncan Jones, released in 2016. Azeroth,…
Mash Up edited by Gardner Dozois
Mash Up is a short story anthology edited by Gardner Dozois, in which authors take famous first lines from literature and weave completely new stories from them, all with a…
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember – Video Game Review
King’s Quest is an episodic adventure game, heavy on story, featuring puzzles and challenges along the way. It’s a reimagining from developer The Odd Gentlemen (published under Sierra) of the…
Plot Holes and How to Fix Them
whWhatever kind of fantasy you’re writing, sooner or later you’re going to come up against the dreaded issue that can bring your whole book to a screeching halt. That is…
A Guide to Banking in Fantasyland
This article may contain mild spoilers – though not what I would consider story-breaking spoilers – for The Folding Knife by K.J. Parker, Making Money by Terry Pratchett and Best…
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…
Genre of the Impossible
For a while now there has been an emphasis on realism in our fantasy, which has created some exciting new stories and series, including some personal favourites. However, as the…
Thinking About Food In Fantasy
Food is an essential part of life, but it’s also so much more than just sustenance – food is power and politics, culture and setting, pleasure and identity. Food will…
Top Ten Fictional Pirates
Avast, matey! Talk Like a Pirate Day be coming up, so pull up a barrel and help yerself to some grog as I be running through a list of my…
Fantasy Influences: Ancient Greek Mythology – Part One
When we think of typical fantasy, we tend to imagine a setting influenced by western medieval ideas, complete with knights, horses, longswords and dragons. However, there are much deeper, older…
The Romance of Fantasy
Romance isn’t a word that we usually think of as being inseparable from fantasy; some people enjoy love stories with their fantasy and others vehemently object to them. But romance…