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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Hearken mortals, for your better now speaks. Tis’ I, Ulesorin the Green, master of the forbidden art, genius without compare, dweller in the tower of many scrolls and Aunt of your Agonies, returned once more to resolve such petty concerns as plague you. *** Greetings Ulesorin. I am sitting in a public toilet cubicle and I have realised too late that there is no toilet roll. I am unlikely to be rescued as my wife will assume I’ve gone to the pub and will not notice missing for some days. What do I do? Yours faithfully, The Lonely Man. *** Of all the requests that I have received from your world for guidance, I must admit that this is the first that has left me ent…
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Welcome to this month’s Top Picks! Every month, we’re going to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month. Somehow, it’s the end of another month already! A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part! Nils: Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson I read two absolutely fantastic fantasy books this month, one of which was The Bitter Twins by Jen Williams, which made me laugh and sob in equal measures! However, I also read Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson and with its stunning worldbuilding and c…
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As some of you may know I am currently undertaking a creative writing PhD with the catchy title Navigating the mystery of future geographies in climate change fiction. This involves reading and watching a lot of climate change fiction (cli-fi) and the Fantasy-Hive have kindly given me space for a (very) occasional series of articles where I can share my thoughts and observations. In a future hammered by climate change and drought, mountain snows have turned to rain, and rain evaporates before it hits the ground. In a fragmenting United States, the cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas skirmish for a dwindling share of the Colorado River. But it is the Las Vegas water knives …
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Izumi Suzuki – Hit Parade of Tears (2023, translated by Sam Bett, David Boyd, Helen O’Horan and Daniel Joseph) “Hey, it’s pretty common these days. Some psychologist just wrote a book about that. There are tons of people out there experiencing the world like they’re fictional characters, living out their lives with no backstory until somebody – a voice or another character – comes along to fill in the blanks.” “Then again, all human beings are just actors. Everyone’s a fake. It’s one thing if you’re aware of it, but some people seem convinced the role they’re playing is the real them. They’re the worst.” Long-time readers will know that when Verso published Terminal Bo…
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As some of you may know I am currently undertaking a creative writing PhD with the catchy title Navigating the mystery of future geographies in climate change fiction. This involves reading and watching a lot of climate change fiction (cli-fi) and the Fantasy-Hive have kindly given me space for a (very) occasional series of articles where I can share my thoughts and observations. They want the burning to stop. She wants hers to begin. And the political assistant sitting opposite her has it in his mysterious green eyes, doesn’t he? The promise… But are they for real? And where is that group of climate change “activists” leading her she has just joined? Is something that…
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“We all want things it would be better not to want,” the cat says. “We pursue them anyway, don’t we?” Kelly Link’s uniquely wonderful and unusual short stories have established her as one of the premier voices of Weird fiction and fantastika. She is known for her skilful blending of the magical and the uncanny into an otherwise recognisably realistic present day world. Her new short story collection White Cat, Black Dog (2023) is themed around fairy tale retellings. Over the course of seven stories, Link radically reconfigures stories both familiar and obscure. The stories in this collection sometimes veer quite far from the originals, but Link manages to capture the bon…
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Today, we’re delighted to bring you an excerpt from Herald of the Black Moon by Stephen Deas, which is due to be released 25th April 2023 from Angry Robot. This is the much-anticipated final instalment in his Black Moon trilogy. The Black Moon trilogy is all hijinks, shenanigans and high adventure, following the loveable Seth, Myla and Fings as they get themselves in and out of sticky situation. In this final book, the trio work to untangle a web of secrets and uncover the truth in a world balancing on the brink of destruction. Here’s the official blurb: The Wraiths have raised an army of the dead. An army of the living is marching on the throne. Caught in the middle…
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Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, Humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts – who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible. I finis…
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Wesley Chu is the #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of twelve published novels. Chu is an accomplished martial artist and a former member of the Screen Actors Guild. He has acted in film and television, worked as a model and stuntman, and summited Kilimanjaro. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Paula, and their two boys, Hunter and River. Welcome to the Hive, Wesley. Congratulations on your UK publication of The Art of Prophecy. Can you tell our readers a little about it? What can they expect? Hi Fantasy Hive, thanks for having me! I’m honestly not great at hand-selling, so I’m going to tell you what this book means to me. The Ar…
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ANYONE WHO HAD A HEART Gareth L. Powell The composer Burt Bacharach is quoted as saying: They put a label on my music. They called it ‘easy listening’. I don’t think my songs are easy listening. I don’t think ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ is easy listening. As a science fiction author, I totally get where he was coming from. Often, we write about the most serious of subjects without half our audience noticing because, as Bruce Sterling observed, “We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.” A spoonful of sugar, as Mary Poppins sang, often helps the medicine go down. Descendant Machine is my tenth novel, …
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The Mountain in The Sea Ray Nayler Insta: @raynayler @wnbooks Twitter: @raynayler Fear: How have the monsters learned to speak? Called “One of the up-and-coming masters of SF short fiction” by Locus, Ray Nayler’s critically acclaimed stories have seen print in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Vice, and Nightmare, as well as in many “Best Of” anthologies, including The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction. His story “Yesterday’s Wolf” won the 2022 Clarkesworld Readers’ poll. In the same year, his story, “Muallim” won the Asimov’s Readers’ Award, his story “Father”, in French tran…
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From visionary author C. T. Rwizi comes the epic journey of four people on a distant planet who face the ultimate test of loyalty, friendship, and duty in the rising tide of war. A corporate aristocracy descended from Africa rules a colony on a distant planet. Life here is easy—for the rarified and privileged few. The aristocrats enjoy a powerful cybernetic technology that extends their life spans and ensures their prosperity. Those who serve them suffer under a heavy hand. But within this ruthless society are agents of hope and change. In a secret underwater laboratory, a separatist cult has created a threat to the aristocracy. The Primes are highly intelligent, manipula…
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“That said, you must understand that this is a tale about people who are both what they seem and not what they seem. Simultaneously. A story of contradictions. In other words, it is a story about human beings.” With the release of The Lost Metal, the final book in Mistborn era two, I thought my time cruising the Cosmere would come to a pause until the next Stormlight Archive instalment would be released. It seemed Brandon Sanderson had other plans, rather big ones. Welcome to the Year of Sanderson, a year where fans are treated to four secret projects which the author had been working on during the lockdown. As most people are aware these projects began as exclusive …
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Rachel Pollack (1945-2023) The Fantasy Hive was saddened to hear of the passing of American science fiction and fantasy author and trans rights activist Rachel Pollack, from lymphoma. Pollack was a pioneering trans activist who helped to draw up the first trans manifesto, a well-respected expert on the tarot and occult practices, and a remarkable and original writer of novels, short stories and comics. Her passing is a great loss to all the communities she was a part of, and the Hive’s thoughts are with her family and friends at this difficult time. Pollack published her first genre short story ‘Pandora’s Bust’ in 1971, and her first novel, the space opera Golden Vanity …
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Nev Bourne is a hotshot programmer for the latest and greatest tech invention out there: SavePoint, the brain implant that rewinds the seconds of all our most embarrassing moments. She’s been working non-stop on the next rollout, even blowing off her boyfriend, her best friend and her family to make SavePoint 2.0. But when she hits go on the test-run, she wakes up the next day only to discover it’s yesterday. She’s falling backwards in time, one day at a time. As things spiral out of control, a long-lost friend from college reappears in her life claiming they know how to save her. Airin is charming and mysterious, and somehow knows Nev intimately well. Desperate and intr…
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“Perhaps the future is a joke, after all, and they should stop taking themselves so seriously.” “Absolute power is its own weakness. It is in its very illusion of invincibility that it reveals itself to be vulnerable. The Virtuals believe they have built a fortress. They think the Analogs incapable of breaking its walls down. I’m about to prove them wrong.” Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s The Ten Percent Thief (2023), previously published in South Asia as Analog/Virtual (2020), is a modern speculative fiction masterpiece. A mosaic novel set in near-future Bangalore, which following the collapse of nations has been taken over by Bell Corp and renamed Apex City, The Ten Perc…
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There is, perhaps, a particular gravity about libraries that attracts speculative fiction authors. From the great library of the Unseen Academy, with its fearsome books and even more fearsome and athletic librarian, to Kvothe’s Alma Mater and its mysterious four plate stone door, fantasy libraries are places of magic and peril. Henry, the chrono-divergent protagonist of Audrey Niffenberger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife worked in a library. The stacks (or shelving as you might more prosaically call it) were perfect for concealing his chronologically challenged nature which would unexpectedly pluck him into the past leaving only a pile of clothes behind. And what of Dr Who, …
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Welcome to this month’s Top Picks! Every month, we’re going to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month. Somehow, it’s the end of another month already! A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part! Nils: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs I had three contenders for my favourite read of the month—Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky and The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry. I’m choosing Ink Blood Sister Scribe because I was absolutely blown away by how…
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She was at my side suddenly, her face in the gloom small and round, and tipped up to watch me closely. She narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you remember, Charlie?’ What do you (an anything-but-horror reader) do when one of your favourite auto-buy authors brings out a horror book? Well I can’t vouch for what you would do, but I dove right in. Was there still everything you enjoy about Jen Williams’ writing? Yep, shenanigans and malarky aplenty! Did you end up loving it? Absolutely! Did you read it before bedtime? Not a chance, and I recommend you don’t either. Jen Williams’ latest novel Games for Dead Girls is a crime thriller with heavy folk horror elements. It reminded me a l…
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“Harry squared his shoulders. “I am now going to step into the wardrobe,” he told her. “I will, shortly after, step back out of the wardrobe, which is, after all, just a wardrobe. And then you can go tell the goddamn world that Underhill is just in books and I am not their free ticket to fantasyland.” Have you ever wanted to step into your favourite fictional world? Middle Earth, Earthsea, Narnia? Well just imagine if you could… Meet Harry Bodie, a children’s BBC presenter, one who is failing at his job and pretty much all other aspects of life. Harry wants to be taken more seriously, he wants a big role, a more serious and prestigious acting career. Well, when Ha…
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This review does contain spoilers I’ve long been a big fan of the Wayward Children books, and think that most of them, including this one, make for a great jumping-on point. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t provide something of an introduction to the world and how it works before reviewing the book itself, so I’ll promise to keep it short. The books focus on teens returning from Doors to other worlds to our own more mundane world and on them struggling to adapt back in our world, or finding their Door back to whatever land they were first spirited away to. The Doors are always inscribed with the message “Be Sure,” and are catered to the child’s personalities or needs…
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Jade Song is an art director, artist, and author of CHLORINE (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2023), their debut novel about a swimmer-turned-mermaid, lauded by Publishers Weekly as “visionary and disturbing.” Other writing is published in Teen Vogue, The Missouri Review, and various literary magazines. Website: jadessong.com Instagram: @jadessong Twitter: @jadessong Purchase Chlorine from an independent bookstore Welcome to the Hive, Jade. Firstly, congratulations on your debut, Chlorine! Firstly, how does it feel to have your book out there in the wild? I grew up an avid reader and still find immense solace in stories—books are my best friends. It’s just an honor…
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Anna Smith Spark is the author of the critically acclaimed grimdark epic fantasy trilogy Empires of Dust described by The Sunday Times as ‘Game of Literary Thrones … the next generation hit fantasy fiction.’ Anna lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in Classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English Literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the poetry website www.greatworks.org.uk. Previous jobs include petty bureaucrat, English teacher and fetish model. Anna’s favourite authors and key influences are R. Scott Bakker, Steve Erikson, M. John Harrison, Ursula Le Guin, Mary Stew…
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Long ago bright, luminous magic poured freely through schisms around the world, in the shadows mages roamed in their numbers secretly bringing miracles to those who most needed it. Yet in 1912 magic has all but disappeared, schisms have closed and new ones have become rare to find, the world has become a darker place. However for one sixteen year old girl, magic is all she has ever known. Biddy lives on the mythical island of Hy-Brasil, just off the coast of Ireland. This is the last place where wild magic runs freely, an isolated place hidden to the outside world, where only Biddy, a mysterious magician called Rowan and his rabbit familiar Hutchincroft, live. Biddy was s…
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“Blood. Herbs. Somebody here had a book. Somebody here was doing magic.” Emma Törzs seamlessly meshes together fantasy, thriller and dark academia to bring us a spectacularly spellbinding debut. Buzzing with atmospheric prose, charismatic characters and a cryptic plot, Ink Blood Sister Scribe sumptuously bleeds magic from every page. We follow Joanna and Esther, two estranged half-sisters who must protect their family’s collection of magical books as their ancestors for generations have done. However, where our story begins Joanna and Esther have been separated for several years with hardly any contact with one another. Joanna lives in their family home in Verm…
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