All posts filed under: Fantasy posts

What I love about writing… #writing

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picture from en.wikipedia.org What do I love about writing most? Well, it’s the same things that made me such an avid reader in the first place.  Books have the ability to transport us to new worlds, or periods of time that are otherwise completely locked away from us.  The immersion can be so deep from a novel that we can imagine every step that any given character makes, and it is bringing those same characters to life that is the greatest joy for me as a writer. A book needs to be well written and full of descriptive passages, as they play an essential part in setting a scene and giving the writer’s world depth.  But it is the characters within that world, their hopes, wishes, loves, and desires that will make the story come to life.  When constructing a character for a novel, you want to be able to really get under their skin, understand all their passions and frustrations, their strengths but equally their weaknesses.  Only then can you understand how they will …

Julian May, The Many Coloured Land….more fantasy than Sci-fi #greatreads #books

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Okay!! I know what you’re thinking! How can you call this a fantasy novel? This is surely Sci-fi, after-all it starts in 22nd century Earth?  Not only that, the plot includes two exiled warring alien races.  Surely Sci-fi right?  Well no, not really, and that’s because the Saga of the Exiles series, which starts with The Many Coloured Land, actually reads far more like a fantasy novel than anything else.  That’s because the advanced technology of the 22nd century has given Earth’s inhabitants the ability to create a time portal back to Earth’s Pliocene Era (basically six million years ago, long after the dinosaurs but before the arrival of man).  The time portal is a one way trip, so only the 22nd century’s discontents, disenfranchised, and the odd criminal are willing to make the journey, seeking a technology-free wilderness on the other side. What they find instead is the exiled warring alien race, users of powerful mind powers, who have also cast aside the advanced technology that took them to our world. The wilderness of the …

Half a King by Joe Abercrombie, a different kind of hero

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In most fantasy novels we have become quite accustomed to heroes with impressive physiques, great with a blade or bow, probably good looking too.  There is nothing wrong with that, one of the great things about fantasy writing is that we can escape to other worlds, where an early grave is often only avoided by our heroes’ physical prowess.  However, there are other ways to be remarkable, and sometimes it’s refreshing to find someone who survives through their wit rather than their brawn. That’s the case with Joe Abercrombie’s new ‘Shattered Sea’ series, which starts with the novel ‘Half a King’.  The lead character, a prince of a ruling family, has been born with one withered arm and a malformed hand.  As he lives in a warrior society, where a man’s worth is judged by how adept they are with their weapons, he suffers the scorn of his peers and his stern father.  But our character has assets that the others don’t, a sharp mind and resourceful spirit. I won’t go into the plot in …

Not an ordinary fantasy trilogy – Robin Hobb, The Soldier Son Series

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I mentioned this series when I wrote my post on Wednesday, and since then I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot.  The Soldier son trilogy isn’t for everyone, and I know some people who were never keen on it as it was a big departure from Robin Hobb’s other books set in the Three-Kingdoms, or those on the Live Ships and Dragons of Bingtown.  The Soldier Son novels, despite being works of fantasy, are set in a relatively modern world with rifles and guns, and Hobb develops an unorthodox main character from that which you’d normally expect from a fantasy series.  However, these novels strengths are that they cover a lot of issues that we would recognise from our own world, and really make you think about our own perceptions to those same issues. I don’t want to give too much away, but the conflicting issues in these novels are between the progress and development of the modern world on the one-side, and the traditions and magical beliefs of a land that is coming …

Great Borderlands and frontiers in novels – Part 1 : Fantasy

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For the past week and a half I’ve been staying in a small cottage up in the wild hills of Northumberland, one of England’s two counties that lie on the border with Scotland.  Evidence of previous animosity between the two countries are all around, not just with Hadrian’s Wall that runs through the borderlands, but in the number of castles and fortified buildings that lie festooned over the countryside.  My own cottage that I am staying in still has arrow slits in the outbuildings, a relic from its past when the inhabitants needed to defend themselves from the periodic raiding parties from the Scottish North. This has made me think about borderlands in literature, and what a great location they are to set any novel.  Obviously history is full of hostile frontiers, and next week I will go through a few of those and show some examples.  But equally this works well for fantasy novels, and here are just a few great examples of fantasy novelists that have used this topic so well. Mordor, Middle …

The City – Stella Gemmell

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It had taken me a while to purchase this novel, and get around to reading it.  David Gemmell, Stella’s late departed husband was one of my favourite authors, so I’m not sure why it had taken me so long, surely I should have been eager to buy it as soon as it came out…but I didn’t. I think the reason why was in case I was disappointed, and then the final link to her husband’s great writing would be gone.  But I shouldn’t have been so reticent, Stella Gemmell has proved with her first solo novel, The City, that she is a writer in her own right now, and I won’t hesitate to purchase more novels from her in the future. Stella Gemmell has previously worked with her husband on many different projects, and finished David Gemmell’s last trilogy on Troy posthumously, so I knew I wasn’t dealing with a novice when I picked up her novel.  However, with her previous work I was never quite sure where her influence started and his ended, but …

Five types of Battle!

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There are many different ways to write a fantasy or a historical novel, but if you’re looking for a climatic finish, a great battle at the end is hard to beat, and it fits in nicely to both genres.  Here are five types… The Siege.  I love castles, great fortresses of stone with arrow slits and murder holes, battlements festooned with banners.  A great setting for a defiant group of defenders to hold out against overwhelming odds – and for an added bonus you can arm your attackers with a whole arsenal of siege engines: Huge trebuchets, deadly bolt throwers, fearsome battering rams, crafty siege towers. The Set-piece. Rows of soldiers, resplendent in their burnished armour, lined up rank upon rank, the pride of a nations strength standing proudly in the sun awaiting the enemy to approach.  Only for them all to lie dead by the end of that same day – the tragic loss that comes from man’s ambition.  To successfully describe a set-piece well will require the author to have a grasp of …

Transformation – Carol Berg

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I’ve been looking forward to writing this about this novel because Carol Berg is one of my favourite fantasy authors, and I don’t think she gets nearly enough credit for the fantastic stories and characters she creates. I emphasise the characters, because that is the strength of Carol Berg’s writing, her characters – and as far as I am concerned, that is the secret of good writing. Carol Berg’s main character in this novel is Seyonne, a slave in the employ of Prince Aleksander, a ruler of a feudal regime that presides over an Empire that has been swallowing up neighbouring states, including Seyonne’s own sixteen years before. The past sixteen years of slavery hangs heavily on Seyonne, as he had once been a leader of his people, and now he finds himself enforced to work for Prince Aleksander as his personal secretary. The two characters couldn’t be more contrasting. Seyonne, is thoughtful, deliberate, and his moral compass remains intact despite the years of demeaning and degrading service he’d undertaken as a slave to the Empire. The …

‘Lion of Macedon’ and ‘Dark Prince’ by David Gemmell

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Where Fantasy and History blend. For those of you looking for a comprehensive and detailed history of Ancient Greece followed by Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Persian Empire you might find this series not exactly what you were expecting.   I think when Alexander starts fighting alongside Centaurs in a parallel world, this would steer you off the path of generally accepted mainstream history taught in most universities and schools…well, at least in this world. However, that’s not the point of these novels, and as with a lot of books written by the sadly departed David Gemmell, he is fascinated by the concept of parallel lands similar to our own but imbued with magic.   This series focuses on the personalities of Alexander, his father Phillip, and in particular their General Parmenion.  It is the story of Parmenion that Gemmell’s tale is based, with him being brought up in Sparta in their fighting tradition under the harsh military regime of that land.  Any fans of the film 300 will love this part of the story as …