Category Archives: Fantasy

300 and Its Sequel Rise of an Empire Reflect the Respective Virtues of Sparta and Athens

Posted on December 20, 2022 by H.P.

The best thing about finally watching 300: Rise of an Empire after noticing it on HBO Max was that it spurred me to rewatch 300. That sounds like damning with faint praise and it kind of is. Rise of an … Continue reading →

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Rings of Power Redux

Posted on October 20, 2022 by H.P.

I finished season one of Amazon’s The Rings of Power show adapting material from the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.[1] I also did two other things since my last post on the show that affect how … Continue reading →

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Review of Against All Gods by Miles Cameron

Posted on September 30, 2022 by H.P.

Miles Cameron’s epic fantasy is an auto-buy for me at this point (I am still working my way around to his historical fiction and science fiction).  His Traitor Son Cycle and Masters & Mages series are two of my favorite … Continue reading →

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Recap and Review of the First Two Episodes of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Posted on September 6, 2022 by H.P.

Did I watch the first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime (Rings of Power from here on out) on Thursday evening as soon as they dropped?  Well, I tried.  I didn’t … Continue reading →

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Daughter of Redwinter is Too Generic to Get Over the Hump from Good to Great

Posted on June 30, 2022 by H.P.

Another week, another new series from one of my favorite new writers of the last decade.  Last week it was Brian McClellan with In the Shadow of Lightning, this week it is Ed McDonald with Daughter of Redwinter.  McDonald’s Raven’s … Continue reading →

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Brian McClellan has done it again with In the Shadow of Lightning

Posted on June 21, 2022 by H.P.

Brian McClellan’s opening salvo in his latest series, In the Shadow of Lightning, didn’t immediately grab me.  The opening scenes, which take place some nine years before the events in the bulk of the novel and setup Demir’s character arc, … Continue reading →

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Throwback SF Thursday: The Black Company by Glen Cook

Posted on February 24, 2022 by H.P.

Glen Cook’s The Black Company was a milestone work that had an outsized influence on the fantasy genre.  Which is probably why Tor decided to reissue it (as a handsome trade paperback with a bland cover) for their “Tor Essentials” … Continue reading →

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Vintage Science Fiction Month: Conan the Valorous by John Maddox Roberts

Posted on January 20, 2022 by H.P.

I’ve said before that John Maddox Roberts is neck-and-neck with Robert Jordan for best writer of Conan pastiches, but that he gets Conan better than any other writer of pastiches I have read.  Conan the Valorous helps firm up my … Continue reading →

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Vintage SF Month: A Fighting Man of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posted on January 13, 2022 by H.P.

Goodreads used to give you nifty little pie charts divvying up your books read in a year by genre or however you categorized your books in shelving them.  Google (as Google does) discontinued the tool they used to generate the … Continue reading →

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Book Reader Looks Back at Season 1 of The Wheel of Time on Prime

Posted on December 31, 2021 by H.P.

What Friday would be complete without a Wheel of Time post?  I’m not quite ready to give up on writing about the show yet.  I recapped and reacted to each and every episode in basically real-time, but an episode-by-episode analysis … Continue reading →

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