The Red Plains by G. R. Matthews
S. H. Paulus
Spoiler Warning: This review contains minor spoilers for The Red Plains. “Listen, Jiin-Wei, Taiji, I do not ask you what you can do or tell you what you cannot. Do…
Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
L. A. Young
Mark Lawrence is an author whose name gets lost within his stories. This is because his stories are so poignant and so ubiquitous that one could easily forget the name…
Monsters, the Monstrous, and Reclaiming the Other
Leo Elijah Cristea
Monsters—or, in the very least, the monstrous—show up fairly frequently in most speculative fiction. Whether under the guise of dragons and creatures from the deep (ocean or space) or by…
Writing Fantasy Saved My Mental State
Kellie Doherty
Fantasy is sometimes referred to as “escapism” and it comes in many forms—whether that be reading a novel, getting immersed in a movie, or even playing a video game. That…
As I Learn: How Your Story-Beast Moves
Gibril Kerefah
In the wild, lions live and hunt in prides. An adult male can weigh as much as 200 kg (mostly muscle), and an adult female can reach top speeds of…
Uncanny Collateral by Brian McClellan
Richard Marpole
Alek Fitz is a collection agent. Not the most pleasant or glamorous of professions. Especially when your clients are corporations controlled by supernatural creatures who aren’t interested in repossessing cars…
Worldbuilding Through Characterization
Aaron Miles
When somebody mentions worldbuilding the first thing you’ll think of is probably a lavishly detailed map, something filled with interesting geography, the locations of important cities, and maybe a dragon…
One Way by S. J. Morden
Jessica Juby
Frank Kittridge is a middle-aged convict, doing time for killing his son’s drug supplier. His wife has divorced him and moved away with their son; he hasn’t heard from either…
#SPFBO 5 Cover Contest
Overlord
Last year’s cover contest was splendid. Each of the ten bloggers nominated the top three covers from their batch before voting for their favorites from the final pool of thirty.…
SFF and Queerness – We Need To Do Better
We’ve just said goodbye to June, month of queer visibility and pride (and gender-nonconforming visibility and pride, too—which many people (but not all) feel belongs under the umbrella of “queer”,…
5th Annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off: An Introduction
David Zampa
Hello, to all the followers of the SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off) the competition that began with an idle thought in the shadowed recesses of Mark Lawrence’s mind and is now…
One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence
Toby Frost
In January 1986, 15-year-old Nick is told that he has cancer. He begins chemotherapy and struggles to maintain as much of a normal life as he can. But a girl…