Hello everyone and welcome to our latest guest post for the 7th annual Self Published Fantasy Blog Off! I have been working on reaching out to each of the authors who have landed in our batch of books for the competition to see if they would be interested in being interviewed or contributing a guest article in an attempt to drum up a little extra excitement for their book and (hopefully) get to know them a bit better. And now, Christopher Matson joins us today with a few great tips on writing historical fantasy and a brief overview of the genre!
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Series Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl (#1 – #4) by Matt Dinniman
Guest Review: Path to Villainy: An NPC Kobold’s Tale by S.L. Rowland
Review: A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine
A Memory Called Empire is Arkady Martine’s debut novel and first the author’s Teixcalaan series. I am here to tell you this book is a phenomenal read! There are so many aspects of it that are enjoyable that I cannot wait to rant them all. Let’s go!
Servant of Smear — Neurodivergence in Fiction
Hello all, and welcome to this week’s article for FanFiAddict’s series on Neurodivergence in Fiction. I cannot understate how appreciative I am for the overwhelming amount of support and enthusiasm I have seen for this series of mine; thank you! For the next several months we will be bringing you a guest post every Wednesday from a neurodivergent author. This will hopefully highlight some of the challenges that come with writing for a largely neurotypical audience, while also giving valuable insight to the craft itself and providing a window into the neurodivergent experience — at least through the lens of fiction.
Author Chat – Robert V.S. Redick
Review: Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine
Alison Stine’s Road Out of Winter is one of those rare books that hits the serendipitous sweet spot of right time, right place, right mood—right everything. Almost. It’s a fairly short read, so I fired up my Kindle and went for it, pulled the trigger, ‘cause why not? A couple of days blurred past, and Stine pulled me through a story of rural landscapes full of climate-wrought confusion and dread, human nature’s ugliest sides, heartfelt friendships, physical and mental adversity, and, to my pleasant surprise, genuine hope.
Review: The Coward (Quest for Heroes #1) by Stephen Aryan
Aryan’s character development is masterful. His worldbuilding is expansive and immersive as all fantasy worldbuilding should be.
Cover Reveal Blitz: Truth and Other Lies (The Nine Worlds Rising #1) by Lyra Wolf
Review: Skyward (Skyward #1) by Brandon Sanderson
Some reviews or taglines in the covers mention the non-stop action and amazing plotting of the book and yes, there is that too! But the characters and the growth (and losses) they experience through this book made me put the novel at the top of my favorites. Sanderson nailed the human part of going through such a crisis as an impending alien invasion, and enhanced it with crazy spaceship fights, crazy-yet-funny AI and a world of characters and a planet we truly want to know more beyond this first novel. I literally had to take a breather after I finished this book, something that never happened before. It touched me deeply, as if I knew Spensa and lived Detritus’ struggles against the Krell with her, as a friend. For me, Skyward opened a door to the possibility of living a book on a deeply emotional plane, something I’ve never experienced before.
Review: Jade City (The Green Bone Saga #1) by Fonda Lee
“I’ll make an offer you can’t refuse”; those are the words echoed and mocked in so many movies. But they originated in a little book called “The Godfather” by Mario Puzzo in the late 60s and became a movie phenomenon. When I read “Jade City”, those words came to mind as this book is very much an organized crime novel. And if you add the touch of magic included in the story, from the Jade driven powers the characters have, it feels very much like gangster Urban fantasy.
Review: Spec Ops Z by Gavin G. Smith
I generally tend to love zombie books because I’m such a huge fan of the genre. I am especially happy when it is more focussed on zombie/human conflict rather than the human/human conflict many books fall into. Therefore I was over the moon with Spec Ops Z. Not only is it very much about zombie/human conflict, and not only that, our main characters become zombies themselves. Thinking, intelligent zombies who hunger for human flesh but can control themselves. It’s a twist on a genre I love so much.