This article originally appeared on Tor.com. Hello there, and welcome to The SFF Rival Academy! We’re thrilled you’ve enrolled in our educational program for youngsters of the generic magical/scientific arts. Did you know a courageous avatar of pure goodness will be joining you this year? How amazing! They may draw all manner of evil entities…
Continue reading ➞ Every Young Hero Needs An Archrival: Do You Have What It Takes?
This article originally appeared on Tor.com. Places have power. In science fiction and fantasy, they have actual, magical power more often than not. SFF settings are often big by necessity. Locales need to hold entire casts of characters, sweeping civilizations, the flora and fauna flourishing in myriad biomes. Most settings function as they’re meant to,…
Continue reading ➞ Five SFF Settings That Feel Like Characters
This year, our cadre of Quill To Live writers decided to do individual posts in a “Media That Moved Us” series. The only rule: no books! We have plenty of those! Instead, we want to ruminate on the things we watched, played, and experienced that made an impact on us. When I thought about the…
Continue reading ➞ Media That Moved Me: Stories Within Stories
That’s a wrap, folks! Brandon Sanderson closed out Mistborn era two with an explosive climax. Not only that, but The Lost Metal is by far the most Cosmere-aware book he’s released to date. With that in mind, I encourage you to steer clear of this review if you aren’t already deep into the Comsere’s many…
This review’s subtitle might throw you off if you haven’t read any of the Skyward series yet. Head to my review of the first book if you count yourself among the confused. For those of you who are caught up, we now turn to Cytonic the third installment in Brandon Sanderson’s high-flying, space-faring romp. Cytonic…
Brandon Sanderson’s Cytoverse, in which the Cytonic series takes place, just got a whole lot bigger. Starsight follows Skyward with another epic space adventure. There’s a lot to love in Starsight but the book suffers from some classic foibles. After discovering The Krell are humanity’s galactic babysitters, Spensa and her plucky flight crew bust through…
It’s been a while since my last outing into the Stephen King universe. This October, I read Misery alongside a friend to entrench myself in spooky season. King didn’t disappoint, laying out a personal and harrowing tale of a writer trapped by his number one fan. Misery isn’t a beast of a novel—my copy clocked…
What’s a Brandon Sanderson fan to do after he’s all caught up on the Cosmere? Read Brandon Sanderon’s other books, of course. That’s how I found Skyward, a pleasant surprise of a book that explores ideas better left out of Sanderson’s Cosmere. I finished Rhythm of War some months ago, and I wanted some Sanderson…
What an odyssey this has been. I ventured into the Dreaming months ago, aiming to finish the Sandman saga before the Netflix adaptation came out. Now, here I am, 11 volumes deep. This will be the last of my Sandman reviews. Though I do intend to read The Dream Hunters and Overture at some point,…
Continue reading ➞ Sandman Volume Eleven: Endless Nights – And Now I Slumber
This post originally ran on Tor.com. There’s a lot to be said about the intersection of fantasy and the insanely large pantheon of anime content, to put it mildly. Today, I’d like to focus on Death Note and its smart, if a bit on-the-nose, use of a hard magic system to tell its story. My anime sample size…
Continue reading ➞ Death Note Is The Perfect Beginner’s Guide To Hard Magic Systems
