REVIEW: The Midnight World
The world is darker, stranger, and more dangerous than you could possibly know. More malicious than you’d ever dare to believe. There are dark forces at work, just beyond the edges of your perception...
REVIEW: The Last Blade Priest by W.P Wiles
One of the latest publications from independent SFF house Angry Robot is The Last Blade Priest by Betty Trask Award winning author W.P. Wiles. The Last Blade Priest is Wiles’ fantasy debut. It is...
How to Make a Grimdark Setting
I’m a huge fan of Andrjez Sapkowski’s The Witcher novels. While most fans are familiar with the series through CD Projekt Red’s video game trilogy, the novels are an excellent grimdark series of their...
Understanding Dystopian Fiction in the Age of Political Correctness
Recently, Blade Runner 2049, as did the original film, has come under fire from some media outlets as being misogynistic, depicting women as unequal to their on-screen, male counterparts. These outlets aren’t entirely wrong....
Review: The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan
The Waking Fire is Book One of the Draconis Memoria, a new fantasy series from the author of the acclaimed Raven’s Shadow series. The setting owes a debt to steampunk but, unlike traditional steampunk,...
Is Bigger Really Better?
In the fantasy genre, across novels, movies and games, there’s a tendency to go big. We’ve got a brand new world to explore, with fantastic beasts, powerful magic and unique cultures, so we have...
Interview: A Beer or Three with Jesse Bullington
This quarter we sat down for a beer or three with Jesse Bullington to discuss Alex Marshall and The Crimson Empire, drugs, inspiration, world-building, and (of course) beer. We even slipped in a question about Jesse’s...
Creating a Grimdark World
Somewhere between the incredible detail of J.R.R. Tolkien’s worlds and the slapdash efforts of films such as 10,000BC, which famously had snow turning to jungle turning to desert, lies a happy place. A place...