Search Results for: brandon sanderson

The cure for Trilogy Fatigue: Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker

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Anyone familiar with the Mistborn series knows Sanderson is expert at spinning fantasy stories packed with memorable characters, crisply detailed settings, unique magic, and major helpings of intrigue. Lately he’s been feted as the writer continuing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. While I realize that from a purely professional standpoint, the deal was a no-brainer, I hope cleaning up the WoT‘s loose ends won’t keep this talented author from giving us more of his own marvelous work. Those suffering…

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Interview with an AI: High Fantasy

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In the first of an occasional series, I interview the Bing AI about high fantasy.  The AI’s responses have not been edited. What is high fantasy? High fantasy, also known as epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot. High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional (“secondary”) world, rather than the “real” or “primary” world. This secondary world is usually internally…

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Talking Tolkien: The Architects of Modern Fantasy, Tolkien and Norton – by Ruth de Jauregui

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Talking Tolkien is back for another installment and Ruth de Jauregui brings in another Fantasy giant, the great Andre Norton. Those DAW paperbacks are classics. Read on! The influences of J.R.R. Tolkien and Andre Norton fill the world of speculative fiction and, while the genre existed before and after both authors, their works have forever shaped new authors and the flow of the modern fantasy novel. Tolkien forged the modern rendition of the epic journey tale that has its roots…

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Future Treasures: Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

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Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson (Tor.com, June 28, 202) Eddie Robson is the author of Hearts of Oak, which we discussed enthusiastically here back in October 2020. His latest, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words, is a locked room mystery featuring a murdered alien, his occasional ghost, and an alien language that leaves humans drunk. Linda Codega at Gizmodo calls the book “a darkly tongue-in-cheek comedy,” and Publishers Weekly proclaims it “a memorable exploration…

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Gizmodo on November’s New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books

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Covers by Kieryn Tyler, Adam Auerbach, and Timothy Truman We’re getting close to the holiday season, and you know what that means. 2020 will finally be over. But also! Many of us will have enough vacation time to catch up on our reading. The new flurry of November releases hasn’t made that any easier. What we need is a roadmap to the most interesting destinations in this publishing wilderness. Something like Cheryl Eddy’s comprehensive list of November New Sci-Fi and…

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In Defense of Corum, Elric’s Brother-from-a-Vadhagh-Mother

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The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (Berkley, 1971). Covers by David McCall Johnston. Wow, I don’t think I could agree less with a column. Michael Moorcock is one of the tower giants of sword & sorcery and New Wave SciFi; a member of early Conan fandom who by 16 was a published author and editor, and has spent 64 years writing a vast body of work. Most of this work chronicles snapshots of his Multiverse, and the struggles of the…

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: No One Suspects the Spanish Inquisition (Wasn’t That Bad)

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G. Willow-Wilson author photo by Amber French for SyFy.com Since this column began this year, we’ve looked at the visual continuity of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (and why, ironically, it does a better job of wordlessly telling the sweep of Middle Earth’s history than Tolkien’s millennia-long, cultural stasis does), authenticity (and lack thereof) in The Witcher, and talked about the commonalities and differences of historical fiction and fantasy with several, excellent authors who work in both arenas. Along…

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Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Lambs and Lizardmen

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The Ring-Sworn Trilogy by Howard Andrew Jones: For the Killing of Kings (Feb 2019), Upon the Flight of the Queen (November 2019) and the forthcoming When the Goddess Wakes (April 2021) A bit of prologue and some full disclosure to the Gentle Reader The purpose of this column has been looking at the challenges of historicity vs. fantasy in the process of world-building; well at least when the fantasy in question is trying to be either realistic or set in…

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The Magic of the Black Earth

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The Book of the Black Earth (Pyr Books). Covers by Jason Chan Six years ago, when I was conceptualizing a new fantasy series, I spent a lot of time thinking about the setting world. And I knew from the start that one of the primary building blocks would be the magic system. For those of you who have read my Shadow Saga trilogy, you no doubt realized that magic played a big part in the events, especially in the second and…

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Create Your Character Backstory with Style: Call to Adventure from Brotherwise

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I attended Gen Con for the first time in roughly fifteen years this year, and let me tell you, it was an experience. Wandering the massive Exhibit Hall — which quite literally took me three full days  — drove home for the first time just how truly enormous the modern board game market is. 50,000 excited attendees packed the halls and pathways connecting over a thousand vendor booths, displaying thousands of new releases and tens of thousands of games. It was so…

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