Fantasy Worldbuilding – Build a Guild
B. Pine
In worldbuilding, there are many pieces that are outlined and developed before being incorporated into the big picture. Maps are drawn, nations are sectioned out, and the culture and overall…
The Villain With A Thousand Faces – Part One: Cardboard Cut-Outs
Stephen Deas
About The Author: Her Holiness the Dragon Queen Zafir, Speaker of the Nine Realms, has played both pro- and antagonist roles in her career as a fictional character. She is…
There and Back Again: A Novice Con-Goer’s Tale
Lucy Hounsom
Prologue No, I don’t live in a hole in the ground, but I do live in Devon, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the green and sheltered Shire. But even…
An Exiguous Exploration of Exposition in Expansive Epics
Faith M. Boughan
Thousand-page fantasy novels… a ten-volume series… appendices of historical detail… characters who feel the need to blow hot wind across the pages of every third chapter… what do these have…
Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
Joie
The YA trilogy that started with Shadow and Bone concludes with Ruin and Rising – with quite a few unhappy readers. Apparently, the uproar is over a relationship that didn’t…
Powder Mage Short Stories and Novellas by Brian McClellan
Richard Bray
For those awaiting The Autumn Republic, the third and final book in Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy, February 2015 feels as though it’s a long way away. Fortunately, McClellan has…
The Crippled God by Steven Erikson
Karl Wolfenden
The carriages have chugged up to the top of the roller coaster, and the anticipation has built for that first downward plunge into g-force turns, and yet, because you’ve been…
Medical Science reveals why Gollum & Smaug lost to Hobbits…
Overlord
So, this is a strange one! A paper appeared in this month’s Christmas edition of the Medical Journal of Australia with a theory as to why, in fantasy novels, the…
Final Fantasy XV Trailer… Oh. Wow.
I think it’s safe to say Final Fantasy was at it’s peak before it hit double digits. Around that time the series was well known as one of the finest…
Worldbuilding A Religion – Part Three: How Religion Shapes Characters
Rebekah Loper
In Part Two, we learned how religion can affect society and culture as a whole. But you can’t have either of those things without the individual people who comprise them,…
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Nicholas Schmiedicker
Max Gladstone’s Three Parts Dead is fantasy of a different flavor. Instead of taking our world and adding magic (such as Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files or Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops),…
Maplecroft by Cherie Priest
Liz Fellshot Ambrose
I love a good creepy story. I don’t run across them nearly as often as I’d like since all too often “creepy” gets mistaken for gross-outs and the unexpected bucket…