In Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House the unlikely place of New Haven, Connecticut is one of the world’s centers of magical power.
Read moreThe Power of Place in Leigh Bardugo's "Ninth House"
Cover art for Ninth House (Flatiron Books 2019)
Pryia Sharma's "Ormeshadow": A Review
Ormeshadow book cover. Image description: a golden “O” floats above the a photograph of seaside cliffs. Cover Design by Henry Sene Yee. Photo from Shutterstock.com.
You won’t want to miss the latest from Priya Sharma. Ormeshadow is a quick read that packs an emotional punch.
Read moreUrsula K. Le Guin: A Retrospective
Ursula K. Le Guin. 21 October 1929 – 22 January 2018. Photo by Eileen Gunn.
Le Guin dreamed whole realities that forced us to reexamine assumptions we took for granted, and to see new ways forward.
Read more"The Reluctant Queen": Durst's Woodland World Comes of Age
In the second book of Sarah Beth Durst's The Queens of Renthia fantasy series, an ordinary woman finds that to save her family she may first have to save the world.
Read moreManic Pixie Dream Girl: The Queen of Blood
Think fairies are cute? Not when Sarah Beth Durst gets a hold of them. These woodland sprites have a bite. Only one woman will be able to keep these wild things under control, will it be our hero?
Read moreThe Heroic Ideals of "The Grace of Kings"
In praise of complicated heroes in Ken Liu's epic fantasy.
Read moreDenver Comic Con 2016: Enthusiastic Cosplayers and Nervous Writers
The ambitious cosplay of devoted fans, contrasted to the quiet insecurities of blockbuster writers.
Read moreRoger Zelazny: Pioneer of Genre-Blending and Bending, and his Lord of Light
Zelazny's works are essential speculative fiction classics and represent an important step in the evolution of science fiction and fantasy. He mixed various genres to produce entertaining, trail-blazing, genre-bending fiction.
Read moreRules Are For Fools - Evidence: Patrick Rothfuss's THE NAME OF THE WIND
The Name of the Wind (2007), by Patrick Rothfuss
At more than a quarter million words, Patrick Rothfuss's first book of the Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy, THE NAME OF THE WIND, defied the rules for a first novel and not only got published but debuted at #11 on the New York Times Best Seller list. In October 2015 it was optioned by Lionsgate for a movie, TV series and video game. How did he do it? A far-out Jedi mind trick? CH Lips has some ideas.
Read moreThe Power to Choose: Neil Gaiman's The Sleeper & The Spindle
Neil Gaiman dreams up a new version of the classic Sleeping Beauty story in his The Sleeper and the Spindle, illustrated by Chris Riddell.
The Sleeper & the Spindle is a richly illustrated modern fairy tale that blends the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White into an almost unrecognizable retelling. Neil Gaiman has tackled the subject of sleeping and dreams before, but what he hasn’t done previously, is concoct a fairy tale retelling that speaks directly to children as much as adults, with veiled Grimm-like warnings about the trouble with misbehaving. In this retelling, though, the ones misbehaving are the elders.
"The Buried Giant": A Quest to Remember
Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, The Buried Giant, follows an elderly Briton couple, Axl and Beatrice, as they travel through a vaguely Arthurian landscape of ogres, pixies, and a mist that makes everyone forget—which, given the generations of bloodshed between Britons and Saxons, may not be such a bad thing. Unbound Writers Lisa Mahoney, Theodore McCombs, CS Peterson, and Mark Springer debate whether the novel is, you know, good.
Read moreThe Rapunzel Complex
Amanda Baldeneaux, CS Peterson and CH Lips got together to discuss recent retellings of the Rapunzel story and muse about why so many women get locked in towers when we write fantasy.
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