Fantasy books - Science Fiction World

Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand: an infernally good read

: 21 September 2011; Gerard Wood

If you’re familiar with Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy, you might be wondering why we’ve chosen to take a look at the first novel, The Amulet of Samarkand, some eight years after it was published. Our only defence is “better late than ...

Thrilling conclusion to Dora Machado's Stonewiser Trilogy

: 12 June 2011; Gerard Wood

Over the years we’ve received a lot of novels for review, and it’ll probably come as no surprise that many of them are for first time authors seeking some hard earned exposure. That’s something we can sympathise with and we do our best to read ...

Win a signed copy of Stonewiser: The Lament of the Stone

: 10 February 2011; Gerard Wood

The Lament of the Stone, the third and final chapter in Dora Machado’s refreshingly original Stonewiser series, will be available from 28 February 2011. We’ve followed the development of this fantasy series with great interest since the first ...

Review: A God Somewhere, by John Arcudi, Peter Snejbjerg & Bjarne Hansen

: 09 December 2010; Gerard Wood

It’s been almost 25 years since Alan Moore’s Watchmen exploded onto the comic book scene. With its three-dimensional characters, moral complexity and more realistic depiction of violence, Watchmen introduced a new paradigm for the superhero ...

Could Pittacus Lore's "I Am Number Four" be the next big franchise?

: 13 October 2010; Gerard Wood

If you haven't heard about I Am Number Four consider this a wake up call because the wheels of the marketing machine are spinning fast and picking up speed. Written by Pittacus Lore (if you can believe it, which you can’t), the novel was published ...

So Neil Gaiman is a Scientologist, you say?

: 08 July 2010; Gerard Wood

Almost any time we write anything about Neil Gaiman, you can be sure that someone will feel the need to post a comment “outing” the man as a Scientologist. While we have a fairly relaxed attitude to comments and will publish almost anything that ...

Review: Tom Strong Deluxe Edition Book 2 or how Tom Strong saved me from my own worst enemy

: 24 June 2010; Gerard Wood

It can’t often be said with anything like a straight face that the hero of a graphic novel has reached out from the page to touch the real world. But here I am with only the hint of a smile to state in all sincerity that Tom Strong saved me from ...

A review of Jane Slayre, a literary mash-up with bite

: 13 June 2010; Gerard Wood

I’m all for mashing up literary classics and reanimating them with some humour and a little horror. Fill their pages with vampires, zombies, mummies or androids, it does them no harm. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, ...

Farewell Robert Holdstock (1948-2009)

: 01 December 2009; Gerard Wood

Robert Paul Holdstock, British fantasy's leading light, died in London on 29 November, aged 61. He was struck down by a severe E.coli infection on 18 November and fought on in intensive care until Sunday. The thoughts of those of us who treasure his ...

Review: Tom Strong Deluxe Edition Book 1

: 13 October 2009; Gerard Wood

It's widely acknowledged that Alan Moore's Watchmen is responsible for introducing a gritty realism to comic books, in part through a more realistic depiction of violence and its consequences, but most importantly in terms of characterisation: ...