Jun 27
There’s no doubt the Harry Potter series of books is one of the world’s most popular fantasy epics, transcending age, nationality, and socioeconomic status. Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, which I reviewed here, features a similar series called Simon Snow as a plot element, Simon Snow being a boy wizard at an English boarding school for magic. …
Jun 26
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell St. Martin’s Press, 2013 I had high hopes for Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl when I bought it, but because of disappointments with other YA books, I tempered my expectations. But it turns out I didn’t need to. I enjoyed Fangirl every bit as much as I’d hoped I would, and then some. …
Jun 08
Nothing is quite so deliciously freeing as caving to your instincts. For centuries, shapeshifters have personified our impulse to bow to our animalistic nature. From lycans to skin-walkers and everything in between, shapeshifters give us a chance to connect with our inner-selves and celebrate our intriguing differences, our passions, and ultimately our humanity through their …
Jun 06
Inspired by a thread on the useful AbsoluteWrite Water Cooler forums. Magic can be used for a lot of things, but rarely in a story is it mentioned for cooking… and Medieval cooking often sorely needed it. Here are some randomly-generated food-related items to have fun with. Food-related Magic Items Nose of the Chef: This …
May 30
When writing fantasy, which is a genre that must be larger than life, your villains should be larger than life, too… and that means an evocative name, something to let the reader know they are, indeed, the villain, in whatever made-up language or naming system you’re using. Let’s look at a few. In the Harry …
May 29
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adepemi Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015 Tomi Adeyemi’s West African fantasy Children of Blood and Bone is one of the most talked-about YA releases of 2018, scoring the author a seven figure movie deal. Reviews have been gushing, but is it worth all the …
Apr 25
Anne McCaffrey wrote a long-running series of books about the backward planet of Pern and its giant, telepathic dragons used to combat “thread” – an invasive space spore that filtered down from an adjacent orbiting body — by burning from the air with their fiery breath. Pern had a pseudo-Medieval culture and the dragons a …
Apr 11
Sometimes a dungeon master, or an author or game writer, wants to toy with their characters. Not in a life-ending way, but just to vex them a little. The following items do just that. Cursed Magic Items Spoon of Canine Mucous: Any food this item touches turns into dog drool. Iol-Del’s Unlucky Siphon: This flexible …
Apr 05
Next were borne round dishes of carp, pilchards, and lobsters, and there after store enew of meats: a fat kid roasted whole and garnished peas on a spacious silver charger, kid pasties, plates of meat’s tongues and sweetbreads, sucking rabbits in jellies, hedgehogs baked in their skins, hogs’ haslets, carbonadoes, chitterlings, and dormouse pies. — …
Apr 04
In The Worm Ouroboros E.R. Eddison dazzles the reader with innumerable exotic and fantastically named people, places, and things. Unfortunately, they don’t all adhere to a consistent linguistic base, and no less a luminary like J.R.R. Tolkien criticized the author for this. Some character names sound Latin, such as Laxus, Corinius, Corund, and Corsus. Others …
