reviews

If you review the books you read, congratulations! This post is all about you and some of the many reasons why you rock. If you don’t review the books you read, don’t worry; this post is going to tell you why doing so is a good idea, and just how amazing you’ll be once you…

We’ve all taken something too far. A joke that stops being funny. An extra garnish overpowers the meal. And an extra installment that ruins the story. Star Wars prequel trilogy, anyone? And I hate to say it, but I think Robin Hobb might have taken the Fitz books too far when she wrote Assassin’s Fate.…

Sequels are tricky things. They suffer from anticipations and expectations. They promise more of what you loved, but there’s always a secret fear that the writer will have lost “it”, “it” being that magical touch that made the prior installments so good. Everyone has been crushed by a sequel at some point. Once you’ve experienced…

A Sorcerer Slain is a fantasy crime novel by Dave Sivers, the first in the Lowmar Dashiel series. I interviewed Dave back when he released the sequel and I must admit to making a terrible mistake: I didn’t read them sooner. “I just happen to be a…” I clutched some appropriate-sounding words out of thin air,…

If there’s one fantasy novel to rule them all, it’s Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It has such a far-reaching influence that it’s almost impossible to find any aspect of fantasy fiction that doesn’t owe the trilogy some sort of debt. But, despite that, I think Tolkien’s earlier novel, The Hobbit, is unfairly overshadowed…

A key element in many fantasy novels is larger-than-life characters. They could be gods, heroes, dark lords, or anthropomorphic representations of concepts. Such as Death. Terry Pratchett plays with all in his satirical Discworld series, but Death is by far and away his greatest success. It’s not unfair to say that Pratchett’s characterisation of Death…

Surprise, surprise, eh? Seems we can’t get away from Game of Thrones no matter where we go. But there’s a reason for that: it’s a very good fantasy novel. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his…

Quests seem as integral to the fantasy genre as eggs are to cake. But while I know at least one person who bakes without eggs, Robin Hobb didn’t break with tradition with her Farseer trilogy. But not only did she save the quest for the last book of the trilogy, it doesn’t feel like a…

I’ll miss Matt Smith. I make no bones about that. I’ve said before that he’s my favourite Doctor. He’s a young actor but played the Doctor very old. And very honest. Whether he was playing the Doctor’s childish glee, his bottomless rage or his unfathomable regret, you believed every moment. Smith never seemed to act.…