On The Trail Of Evil – A Look At Villainous Main Characters
Aaron Miles
The skies have darkened and night has come to the world. Thieves and assassins skulk in every shadow, waiting for their chance to strike. Ruthless politicians claw their way up…
classic SFF
Dragonlance – Thirty Years Old
Geoff Matthews
“Evil turns in upon itself.” Very rarely has a truer phrase been written so simply and we’ll come back to that later. The Dragonlance Chronicles first appeared in bookshops thirty…
The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard
Nick Clark
Long before ‘cli-fi’ was a thing, long before the issue of climate change had really impacted on popular consciousness, there was J G Ballard’s The Drowned World. Ballard’s 1962 debut…
The One Tree by Stephen Donaldson
John Cowell
Any of you read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Fantasy royalty? Seminal work? They are an unusual series of books. In a good way. A saga, really, nearly forty years…
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Alister Davison
Tim Powers may be familiar to many as the author of the novel On Stranger Tides (on which a Pirates of the Caribbean movie was based), but to me he’s…
Titus Groan: A Clash of Generations
James Davies
I suppose this novel, the first of what was intended to be a lengthy series unfortunately cut short by Mervyn Peake’s passing, can be hailed as a rarity. It is,…
Forgotten Male Fantasy Authors Of The 80s
Editor’s Note: Due to the lack of women writers on this post, Fantasy-Faction has posted a similar version focusing on women writers who readers of today may not have heard…
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Travis Anderson
The idea of reviewing a known classic was quite daunting. There’s less to worry about when reviewing a newly released or few months old novel, as there are not yet…
What Makes This Book So Great? by Jo Walton
Eric Christensen
I want to begin my review of What Makes This Book So Great? where Jo Walton ends the book: comparing literary criticism and talking about books. Walton doesn’t like being…
Fantasy: The Blueprint of the World
Lucy Hounsom
Fantasy sinks its figurative talons into us all. Its origins are ancient, with roots in the epic Icelandic Eddur and Old English poems like Beowulf. It owes a debt to…
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
A. E. Marling
If you’re interested in the history of Middle-Earth then The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien will surprise and delight you. Not every reader of The Lord of the Rings will love…
Foundations of Fantasy: Beowulf
Ryan Howse
More than any other genre, fantasy tends to examine ancient epics. Whether it’s the study of archetypes and ectypes, or a historical understanding of narrative itself, or simply a desire…