The Fantasy Hive - A U.K. Wonderland
A hub for all things fantasy (plus some SF). Book reviews, games, author interviews, features, serial fiction- you name it. The Fantasy Hive is a collaborative site formed of unique personalities who just want to celebrate fantasy. Btw, the SFF novel to the left by one of our members, Warwick Gleeson, was a "Top 150 Best Books" Kirkus pick in 2019.
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Welcome intrepid adventurers to Tough Travelling with the Tough Guide to Fantasyland! That’s right, we’ve dusted it down and brought back this feature (created by Nathan of Fantasy Review Barn, revived by our friends over on Fantasy Faction, then dragged kicking and screaming to the Hive). It is a monthly feature in which we rack our brains for popular (and not so popular) examples of fantasy tropes. Tough Travelling is inspired by the informative and hilarious Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones. Fellow bloggers are absolutely welcome to join in – just make your own list, publish it on your site, and then comment with the link on this article! This month…
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Apparently, there is an opposite to TL:DR (too long didn’t read) and it’s BLFU – Bottom Line First Up And so we bring you our new feature from our new reviewer Hil: to-the-point reviews for those of you in a hurry! The BLFUfer’s Guide To… THE WOOD BEE QUEEN by Edward Cox Ebbie Wren has a dead end job, in a dead end town and is in love with a girl who thinks he’s boring. At best. His only regular confidante is a homeless woman who dies and leaves him with an empty bag and a quest to do the impossible. Thus the story begins. The prose is beautiful and evocative, combining hints of Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones and Haruki Murakami. Ed Cox successfully weaves …
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“Anger became her habit, Neverland her defense.” The story of Peter Pan and Wendy is a classic that originated from the play Peter Pan, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up by Scottish Playwright J.M. Barrie, who is said to have written about the character of Peter (most likely) based on his older brother David, who died in an ice-skating accident the day before his 14th birthday. The play premiered in 1904 followed by the first written edition of that story as Peter and Wendy in 1911. I grew up loving Disney’s Peter Pan in form of the movie from 1953 as well as the book with all the other familiar characters and illustrations that hold a place with me as one of my most…
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K.W. Jeter is one of genre fiction’s pioneers, whose work crosses the boundaries of SF, Fantasy and horror. He coined the term ‘steampunk’ in 1987 to describe the novel he, Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock were writing, and his novels Morlock Night (1979), a sequel to H. G. Wells’ classic The Time Machine (1895), and Infernal Devices (1987) are early classics of the genre. He also wrote Dr Adder, written in 1972 but unpublished until 1984, which with its fascination with body modification and body technology and its use of transgressive sex and violence can be read as a precursor to the cyberpunk genre. Among his other novels are Farewell Horizontal (1989), a deeply origi…
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Writing is pretty much all Cyrus Bales has ever known. He started out as a filmmaker in his teens getting shortlisted at international festivals twice before he turned 18. In his twenties he turned to comedy; namely writing sitcoms, until taking a break for personal reasons. A sociological degree and award winning academic piece later he returned to his passion of writing. In 2018 his one off sitcom special inspired by Brexit was recorded at The Comedy Store then was brought back for another performance at the Windsor fringe due to popular demand. Ever since then he’s turned his attention to prose, gathering together his varied writing experiences to become what he alwa…
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Today the Hive is joined by Sammy H K Smith whose debut novel Anna came out from Rebellion publishing last month. Sammy H.K Smith lives and works in Oxfordshire UK as a police detective. When not working she spends time with her children, husband and pets, renovates her house, and inadvertently kills plants. A keen writer and lover of all things science fiction and fantasy, she’s often found balancing a book, a laptop, a child, and a cat whilst watching Netflix. Thank you for coming to talk to the Hive. Your journey into published author is somewhat unusual in that you started out as a publisher, with the small press Grimbold Books – voted Best Independent Pre…
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Women in SFF is just under two weeks away! As you may know, we’re super excited to be bringing back our Women in SFF feature this July. Here at the Hive, we love a photo challenge – as expressed by our annual contributions to the Wyrd and Wonder one! So, we thought it would be fun to come up with one of our own… We do have some rules. Well guidelines. Well, suggestions. Please have fun! And if this means interpreting the prompt differently to our suggestion, that’s fine! You don’t have to respond with a photo. If you want to take part, but you’re not on Instragram, or you can’t be bothered to faff about taking photo of books, blog posts are welcome! Or Twitter threads!…
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They say that in the Realm, the sea is in the sky… That’s right! Nils and I have returned with another Buddy Read, seeing as how we enjoyed our buddy read of For The Wolf so much! This time, we’ve read (and nattered about) the brand new novel from Edward Cox – The Wood Bee Queen. The novel is out tomorrow from Gollancz, and to celebrate there’s a blog tour so be sure to check it out! Somewhere in England, in a small town called Strange Ground by the Skea, Ebbie Wren is the last librarian and he’s about to lose his job. Estranged from his parents, unable to make connections with anyone except the old homeless lady who lives near the library, Ebbie isn’t quite sure…
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“Grandma says all fairy mythology comes from the same root, like religion. That it’s one big idea that gets pulled in different directions depending on where it ends up and who’s telling the story. The central beliefs never change, though. She says there’s a pattern at the heart of things, a hidden logic we don’t understand yet and maybe never will.” “How could something that did not exist, still exist? Was the angle between reality and illusion really so small?” Over the course of her previous novels, novellas and short stories, Nina Allan has established herself as one of the UK’s most talented authors, operating with ease across genre boundaries and with an unmatched…
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Scott Kimak is the bestselling author of the “I call him HIM trilogy. He is also a history teacher and Kung Fu master. He came up with the story “I call him – HIM” when he was a teenager but failed miserably to put pen to paper. It took nearly forty years for him to make a second attempt. This time the words flowed unrestrained. Mr. Kimak lives in Harlingen Texas with the love of his life Diana and their six annoying pets. Hi Scott, and welcome back to the Hive! Tell us about your new novel, The Angel of Death. Angelica and her companions rise from the ashes of the Battle of Houston, contemplating their next move. After their great victory, they should feel at …
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Happy Pride everyone! To celebrate, we thought it would be great idea to bring you another 5-Star Books in 5 Words feature – this time focusing on books with either authors or characters of the LGBQTA+ Community. Whether you want to celebrate Pride, or you want to diversify your reading, we highly recommend the following! Graeme It Trans Fantasy- ends Peter France and Pan Masochist you hot Spy/ grieve. Hook Courtesan Gender Parallel re-modelled worlds; silkpunk monsters political and drama magic Julia Diversity Murder, all mystery, around, magic, bloody adventure, brilliant gay! Scarlett Gothic Blo…
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To celebrate the release of The Righteous, the second part of Articles of Faith duology by David Wragg, Nils is here with a special interview with Vedren Chel and Lemon. What follows is a series of argu— we mean Q&As to get to know both characters better. If you want a quick reminder of what happened in book one or to read an excerpt from The Righteous, you can find both here. Hi Chel, hi Lemon, we’re so happy to have you on The Hive! How are you both? Chel: Hi, yeah, all right. A bit sore from a few injuries. Lemon: Wee Bear has a tendency to get the shit kicked out of him near daily, which must at least save on privy time. C: That really isn’t true. …
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Photo by Jamie Drew Kat Dunn grew up in London and has lived in Japan, Australia and France. She has a BA in Japanese from SOAS and an MA in English from Warwick. She’s written about mental health for Mind and The Guardian, and worked as a translator for Japanese television. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition, and Dangerous Remedy is her first novel. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @KatAliceDunn Welcome to the Hive, Kat Dunn. Let’s start with the basics: dazzle us with an elevator pitch! Why should readers check out Monstrous Design? My pitch: Necromancy, stabbing, gay yearning, duels, fake weddings, betrayal and love t…
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Published by: ACE Genre: fantasy / science-fantasy Pages: 368 Format: hardback The Girl and the Mountain’s release somehow slipped past me. I was aware of it in the back of my head, saw some lovely reviews singing its praises, but university demanded its pound of blood and I had to make Yaz wait a while. Then, first thing after I submitted my thesis, I went to my local bookstore and purchased the living hell out of the second Book of the Ice (bought along with a copy of Shadow of the Gods, yay). I read it in three sittings, this 370-page book, across six hours or so. Like its predecessor, The Girl and the Mountain flows like silk between your fingers, the flow of its …
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We’re super excited today to share with you an excerpt from THE RIGHTEOUS, the second part of David Wragg’s Articles of Faith duology, ahead of its release on 10th June. Firstly here’s a quick recap of book one THE BLACK HAWKS, given to you by none other than Lemon! Be warned, there are spoilers for book one ahead! PREVIOUSLY . . . Aye, right, where were we? So our boys Rennic (aka boss) and Chel (aka wee bear, cub, dipstick) have got themselves locked in the dungeons below the old royal citadel, along with a whole bunch of hapless folk who thought they were on the verge of liberating the kingdom from your good old-fashioned tyrannical regime. I’d say executi…
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Christopher Buehlman (@Buehlmeister) is a native Floridian and author of the literary horror novels ‘Those Across the River’ and ‘Between Two Fires.’ He is the winner of the 2007 Bridport Prize in poetry, and the author of several provocative plays, including Hot Nights for the War Wives of Ithaka. Many know him as comedian Christophe the Insultor, something of a cult figure on the renaissance festival circuit. He lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. His first novel, ‘Those Across the River,’ was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for best novel in 2012. Welcome to the Hive, Christopher! Thank you! Congratulations on your release of The Blacktongue Thief! How does …
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Published by: Tor Genre: sci-fi space opera Pages: 560 Format: ebook Review Copy: Courtesy of NetGalley Shards of Earth is Adrian Tchaikovsky’s first bona fide attempt at a space opera, the opening to his Final Architecture trilogy, and one of the best science fiction books I’ve read this year. Tchaikovsky’s ambitions for this series are made clear early on—Shards opens with a story of cosmic struggle against an enemy so vast, even humanity’s most advanced weaponry does no more than pinprick them. The Architects are “moon-sized entities that can reshape populated planets and ships” (as per the Glossary) into crystalline sculptures of staggering and repulsive beauty. …
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WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
An Algonkian Success Story
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LGBTQ+ Psychological Fiction, Teresa A. Henderson, UNCHAINED
This is really well-written and a fascinating read, creating that sense of forbidden territory, which drives the reader to keep reading while feeling guilty for doing so. I did wonder about the age of the narrator. But more than that, what was somewhat confusing is that there are so many unnamed characters here, which is obviously a necessity since the protagonist does not know any of them but it does make things a little confusing at times. One suggestion would be to have Chris introduce by name the man who unchains the protagonist at the beginning of this, and then you can use his name.- debut
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Memoir | Adam Fout | Drug Seeking Behavior | First 500 words
As Pat said, the scene you draw here is vivid and interesting. I wonder if it wouldn't be more effective to have these characters, Fred and Jacky and Ella, converse in dialogue during the first few paragraphs so as to keep your reader "in the scene". They seem like fascinating characters, and even if some of what they say ended up being incoherent to the reader, it might be more effective at conveying what you want to reader than splitting the scene like this. They could either mention the time before, or say something that invokes the time before. And then after said dialogue, you could talk -
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New York Pre-Event Assignments - June 2021
First assignment: write your story statement. I Will Never Fall is a memoir about my 35 years of life and how I have grown and gotten through each challenge in life. Second assignment: in 200 words or less, sketch the antagonist or antagonistic force in your story. Keep in mind their goals, their background, the ways they react to the world around them. Antagonist: My mom, my dad, my half-brother who molested me, the bullies I faced throughout my childhood, my disease, my spending addiction, my eating disorder. Third assignment: create a breakout title. I Will Rise. -
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Remembering Janet Malcolm
Janet Malcolm and Katie Roiphe in conversation at NYU, 2012. Photo courtesy of Roiphe. In one of my last email exchanges with Janet Malcolm, in one of the darkest parts of the pandemic, she wrote to me, “I can only try to imagine the hard time you and the children are having. How can you not be stalled on writing? I wish there was something I could do to help.” Her response warmed me, elevating my state of general stagnancy into something almost socially acceptable. The idea of her in my house, helping with my son’s online schooling—his teacher was reading out “rat facts” during his daily for -
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Limited Time Deals!
Right now, Amazon is running their Kindle Daily Deals but also seven whole pages of “limited time” deals. They don’t specify for how limited these are, though my guess is that these are in preparation for Prime Day. House of Earth and Blood House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas is $2.99! We did two podcast episodes with Sarah over the pandemic and honestly, those episodes were so much fun to record. Ellen wrote a fantast -
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Tough Travelling: Fairies
Welcome intrepid adventurers to Tough Travelling with the Tough Guide to Fantasyland! That’s right, we’ve dusted it down and brought back this feature (created by Nathan of Fantasy Review Barn, revived by our friends over on Fantasy Faction, then dragged kicking and screaming to the Hive). It is a monthly feature in which we rack our brains for popular (and not so popular) examples of fantasy tropes. Tough Travelling is inspired by the informative and hilarious Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones. Fellow bloggers are absolutely welcome to join in – just make your own list, publi -
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Memoir | Adam Fout | Drug Seeking Behavior | First 500 words
@Adam Fout This is powerful and instantly draws you into the darkness that's all around. You have some vivid descriptions and characterizations. I have to preface this to say I don't write memoir.... but I would love to hear/see more of the protagonist's characterization in the opening scene. We see everyone around him/her but we still know nothing about the storyteller. About 3/4 the way through at "I wonder what they used to be like...." this takes us out of the scene - for three paragraphs the protagonist seems to be preaching - it's powerful statements and I love them - but maybe move it -
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The BLFUfer’s Guide To… THE WOOD BEE QUEEN by Edward Cox (BOOK REVIEW)
Apparently, there is an opposite to TL:DR (too long didn’t read) and it’s BLFU – Bottom Line First Up And so we bring you our new feature from our new reviewer Hil: to-the-point reviews for those of you in a hurry! The BLFUfer’s Guide To… THE WOOD BEE QUEEN by Edward Cox Ebbie Wren has a dead end job, in a dead end town and is in love with a girl who thinks he’s boring. At best. His only regular confidante is a homeless woman who dies and leaves him with an empty bag and a quest to do the impossible. Thus the story begins. The prose is beautiful and evocative, combining hints of -
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The Value of Friendship in Storytelling
You know how a realization about your storytelling can strike when you’re reading someone else? Of course you do. How about the kind of realization that makes you regret not having it sooner, so that you could have been taking advantage of it all along? You’re probably still nodding, right? Okay, how about one that’s so utterly obvious that you feel like an idiot for having never consciously utilized it before? How about a realization in regard to an aspect of human nature that is so elemental to each of us that we’ve all partaken in it since our earliest memories—one that is an essential par -
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10 New Books Coming Out This Week
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Laura Lippman, Dream Girl (William Morrow) “Lippman never stops twisting the plot into a deliciously intricate pretzel, right up to the jaw-dropping finale. This is both a beguiling look at the mysteries of authorship and a powerful #MeToo novel, but that’s only the tip of a devilishly jagged iceberg…” –Booklist Nicci French, What To Do If Someone Dies (William Morrow) “Crisply written, intelligently plotted and has plenty to say about the necessary selfishness of grief.” –The Guardian Joe -
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The Early, Wild, Exploited, and Sometimes Radical Days of the Comic Book Industry in America
The American comic book is inseparable from foreign policy, the great twentieth-century battles between capitalism and totalitarianism, and the political goals of the world’s preeminent military and cultural power. The history of the American comic book is a story of visual culture, commerce, race, and policy. These four fields are analogous to the four colors used to print comic books: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. They lie atop one another, smearing, blending, and bleeding to create a complete image. To separate them is to disassemble a coherent whole and to shatter a picture that in its -
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A Murder in Tiger Bay: How Nadifa Mohamed’s New Novel Revives a Decades-Old Tragedy
In 1952 a 29-year old Somalian man was hanged at Her Majesty’s Prison Cardiff in Wales by Britain’s best known public executioner Albert Pierrepoint. After a long drawn-out detention, a highly questionable police investigation, and a speedy trial at the Glamorgan Assizes in Swansea, Mahmood Mattan had been found guilty of murdering shopkeeper Lily Volpert in the then notorious Tiger Bay area of the Welsh capital. Despite arguments from his lawyers Mattan was refused leave to appeal by the Home Secretary. Forty-six years after Mattan’s execution, and 34 years after the death penalty was finall -
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Queer Crime Fiction: A Roundtable Discussion
I have discovered the secret to making a great roundtable: Alex Segura. If Alex is involved, or I get interested in a book by someone Alex has introduced me to, it’s a breeze to fill our imaginary table. This time I wanted to focus on the positives and negatives LGBTQ+ writers face. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we did the sex roundtable: if we rarely see any vanilla sex, then all of the other flavors are probably not being served either. Anyway, this came about because of PJ Vernon’s excellent new thriller, Bath Haus, and his enthusiastic participation at the aforementioned sex rou -
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Your Next Level Life Reader Review Event And Giveaway
Today, I am excited to announce the launch of a special reader review event with author Karen Arrington. Today, our readers are sharing their insights into her book Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, and Opportunity for Black Women in America. You'll have the chance to find more about this book―which won an NAACP Image Award in 2020―and more about the author, Karen Arrington, herself. Join us as we celebrate this book and this inspiring author. First, here's more about the book: If you’re a Black woman in business and feeling stuck or trapped by other people’s expectations of -
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Eclipse by Celia Lake
Squee Eclipse by Celia Lake May 5, 2021 Historical: EuropeanRomanceScience Fiction/Fantasy I came to Eclipse via these two tweets shared on Twitter. It was the second one which really got me. I love a good magical school story, but the Harry Potter books never quite worked for me. Eclipse, which promised a view from the staff room of a magical school in the 1920s, sounded like my catnip. (Also, the author’s page has a content warning t
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