Guy Gavriel Kay is perhaps the most famous writer of what I call “historical” fantasy – that is, fantasy fiction set in a world nearly indistinguishable from our historical own with characters and storylines modeled after actual history. In Sailing to Sarantium, he brings a fictional version of 6th-century Byzantium to life in the first…
Jeff Wheeler has dominated the bestseller chart for historical fantasy for a while now. He does not write historical fantasy in the sense of a story set in the real, historical world, like my novel, Enoch’s Device, or D.B. Jackson’s Thieftaker series. Instead, Wheeler writes what I call “historical” fantasy, much like Guy Gavriel Kay….
I read very little science fiction these days, but at the end of last year, while getting over COVID, I decided to re-read Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain. In doing so, I quickly discovered there’s a sequel to the novel, though it’s not written by Crichton, who passed away in 2008. Here are my thoughts…
Amazon’s bestseller list for fantasy fiction has long featured books by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, all about his now-famous character called The Witcher. For years, I passed on those books, but once Netflix brought The Witcher to TV, I decided I had to see what all the hype was about. It still took a while,…
I was never a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft. I’d known about his fictional mythology surrounding Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones since the first edition of Deities & Demigods, but I never got around to reading any of his works until much later in life. What I didn’t know at the time was how…
Ever since I discovered the connection between Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot and his Dark Tower series, I’ve always been intrigued by King’s second novel. But I never got around to buying the book until BookBub ran a featured deal this fall. I snapped it up and dove into ‘Salem’s Lot just in time for Halloween….
When I read all of Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels in the early ‘80s, The Fortress of the Pearl was not part of the story. It wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1989, but I missed it. I only learned about it when I began re-reading the Elric books as part of my recent foray into…
One gracious Amazon reviewer recently described Enoch’s Device as “like The Da Vinci Code but set in 997 AD.” I appreciate the comparison. Enoch’s Device is filled with religious mysteries that stretch deep into the past. But there is also a fantasy element to the book, along with an epic scope designed to make it…
When Amazon chose The Lost Queen by Signe Pike as its Editor’s Choice for Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, I knew I needed to read it. What I discovered was a book with few fantasy elements but compelling characters in an infrequently explored period that made for a satisfying historical fiction read. Amazon ranks the…
It’s been six years since D.B. Jackson’s last Thieftaker novel, Dead Man’s Reach, and boy, have I missed going back to Colonial Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution! But the wait is over now that Jackson has published a trilogy of novellas titled The Loyalist Witch. The Witch’s Storm is the…
My journey with Uhtred of Bebbanburg has finally reached its end with War Lord, the thirteenth and final book in one of the greatest historical fiction series of all time. I began my foray into Cornwell’s The Saxon Tales back in 2005. Thirteen books later, I’ve followed the life of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, one of…