So I’ve slowly been reading through all three hundred or so books that have been nominated for the Hugo Award, in order to figure out how I would vote for each year. It’s a useful exercise, not only for producing content for my writing blog, but for judging the evolution of science fiction and fantasy …
Continue reading “Faeries, Zombies, and Wizards: Dead Beat by Jim Butcher”
About midway through the third book in the Chronicles of Amber, I came to the realization that these books are the perfect length for me. They’re about as long and as fast-paced as a typical L’Amour novel, which is to say that they’re less than 200 pages and feel like they’re less than 100. If …
Continue reading “This is why I love shorter fantasy novels: Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny”
I have to be honest: before I discovered the Chronicles of Amber, I had all but given up on Zelazny as an author. All of his stuff that I’d previously attempted to read had won a bunch of major awards, and none of it appealed to me. I honestly couldn’t see what the big deal …
Continue reading “When to give an author another chance: The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny”
One of the first pieces of writing advice that I ever recieved, right alongside “never end a story with the words ‘it was all a dream’” and “never introduce the main character by having them look at themselves in a mirror” was “never write a story where the main character has amnesia.” Which struck me …
Continue reading “An Amnesia Story Done Right: Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny”
