Last year I reviewed Gideon’s Angel by Clifford Beal, an example of historical fantasy at its best, set in the seventeenth century during the English Civil War. This year, Clifford Beal released the prequel to Gideon’s Angel titled The Raven’s Banquet. The prequel sheds light on the early backstory of Richard Treadwell, the series’ heroic…
This has been a great summer for historical fantasy fiction. Yesterday, author Roberto Calas released The Scourge: Emaculum, the third and final volume of his Scourge trilogy, which reimagines a medieval plague like the Black Death as a zombie apocalypse. I really enjoyed the first two books in the series (which I reviewed here and here)…
Summer is coming! With Memorial Day weekend almost upon us, my daughter will soon be out of school and summer vacations are fast approaching, so this is the perfect time to make a summer reading list – and the perfect time to offer a summer reading list sale for Enoch’s Device! But first my…
I considered writing about the season finale of Vikings, which was fantastic for those who didn’t see it. But there’s scant time for blogging this week, so I decided to focus on the little glimpse we received in last Saturday’s Da Vinci’s Demons about the mysterious Book of Leaves and its potential Enochian origin. This was…
In the same weekend that Game of Thrones unveiled its latest shocking plot twist (for anyone who hasn’t read A Storm of Swords), Da Vinci’s Demons continued to weave its own elaborate tale. And once again, we’ve learned some intriguing tidbits about the cryptic Book of Leaves. Count Riario has his own theory about the…
Season 2 of Da Vinci’s Demons debuts tomorrow and the trailer makes it look damn good, so I’ve put together my list of five big questions going into the new season. There are some *spoilers* below, so if you haven’t seen the show, you may want to go to Starz On-Demand. The entire season is only…
Saint Patrick’s Day is one of my all-time favorite holidays, so today I’m re-posting an updated article from years past about Stephen R. Lawhead’s Patrick: Son of Ireland. I had little appreciation for the story of Saint Patrick until I began the research for Enoch’s Device. That novel begins in Derry and tells the story of two Irish monks…
This has been a crazy month so far if you’re a fan of television shows with historical or fantasy elements. I’m running out of time in the day to keep up with all the good TV airing right now, and we’re still a few weeks away from the biggest one of them all, the debut…
My meandering series on The Magic of Medieval Fiction moves into the Seventh Century, an era that is squarely within the Dark Ages as far as historical novels go. In fact, attempting to even identify novels set in this century proved to be a huge challenge. But maybe there’s a good reason for this. The…
This week, I was lucky enough to interview author L. Marrick about her new historical fantasy The Hallowed. I really enjoyed the novel, which is a unique prequel to the story of King Arthur and Merlin (you can read my review here). Welcome to the blog, Ms. Marrick, it’s great to have you here. Let’s…
I’ve been looking forward to The Hallowed by author L. Marrick for a long time. It’s considered Arthurian fiction, but takes place during the early years of the Fifth Century near the end of the Roman Empire. This had me intrigued. After all, the legends of Arthur place him at the end of the Fifth…