After a two week diversion, I’m back with the fourth post in my six part series on The Top 5 Clichés in Fantasy Fiction. On the surface, today’s cliché has Tolkien to blame. Ever since the first orc crawled out of Mordor in his 1954 novel The Fellowship of the Ring, these misshapen beasts, in…
This week’s “beginning” comes from Chapter One of Greg Keyes’ The Briar King, the first book in his The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series. In my view, this a compelling opening passage that quickly hooks the reader: Aspar White smelled murder. Its scent was like a handful of autumn leaves, crisped by the first frost…
Following the release of Death of Kings, I started re-reading some of the earlier novels in Bernard Cornwell’s fantastic series, The Saxon Tales. (You can read my review of The Last Kingdom, the first novel, here.) The books are set in England during the reign of Alfred the Great, who defended the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against…
The trailer for Season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which will air in April 2012, was released this week (you can watch it here). Season 1 was fantastic and, from the trailer, Season 2 looks equally promising – as it should be since it depicts A Clash of Kings, the wonderful second novel in…
I’ll admit, I’m excited for the release today of Death of Kings, the sixth novel in Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Tales series. I wrote about the first book in the series, The Last Kingdom, back in September. For those unfamiliar with the novels, they’re about the Vikings’ attempt to conquer England in the Ninth Century….
With the latest draft of my novel put to bed, I’ve started researching my next work. This one involves Vikings, so for the foreseeable future, I’ll be immersing myself in a world of dragon-prowed longships, Norse gods, fierce warriors, beer, and plunder! All of which calls to mind my favorite novels about Vikings. While I’ve…