Asian Fantasy: SPFBO Edition
JC Kang
With Lunar New Year around the corner, I joined a group chat with SFPBO past and present finalists Rob J. Hayes (Never Die, 2019), Virginia McClain (Blade’s Edge, 2019), M.…
Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko – Translated by Julia Meitov Hersey
L. A. Young
Readers who enjoyed The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins must read Vita Nostra—the first book in the Metamorphosis series. If not,…
Books to Read in Fantasy: A Look at Lists
Geoff Matthews
Recently a question was asked in the Fantasy-Faction Facebook Group. This is that question and some of the reasons why its answer looks the same, every time the question is…
Fantasy-Faction’s Best Fantasy Books of 2019
Jennie Ivins
Hello Factioners! I hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season full of family, friends, food, and fantasy books! We spent a lot longer working on our Best Of…
Mark Lawrence Interview – The Girl and the Stars
S. H. Paulus
Today we are very happy to have back Mark Lawrence! Lawrence is the author of multiple bestselling series: The Broken Empire, The Red Queen’s War, The Book of the Ancestor,…
Figures Unseen: Selected Stories by Steve Rasnic Tem
Raymond K. Rugg
Figures Unseen by Steve Rasnic Tem is a collection of horror tales for grownups. Oh sure, if a reader really wants to find them, there are ghosts and werewolves and…
Year in Anime 2019
Rakib Ahmad Khan
2019 is coming to its end. Anime has reached new heights in popularity in the Western Hemisphere and now even popular streaming services like Netflix have taken up producing original…
God of Gnomes by Demi Harper
T. O. Munro
I first heard of LitRPG a little over a year ago—and my understanding extended only so far as it was a genre that in some way combined novelisation with role…
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Kellie Doherty
Have you heard of Becky Chambers? If you’re a regular reader of Fantasy-Faction, then perhaps you remember an article about her back in August 2018. Jessica Juby reviewed Record of…
The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence – Cover Reveal
Overlord
I first got my hands on work from Mark Lawrence back in 2011. He was pitched as the next George R.R. Martin (most authors are!). What I read wasn’t that.…
The War of the Worlds – 2019 BBC Adaptation Review
Toby Frost
Imagine you go to a concert to see a classic band perform their greatest hits. However, the band only performs some of their best-known songs, and many of those are…
On Character Agency
Aaron Miles
What will a character do next? What can they do next? These are the questions that drive the narrative of a story forward and determine what direction it will follow.…