Tag: fantasy

Countdown 2: Top 5 Fantasy Subgenre Reads

18 April 2022

Two weeks to go! The countdown to Wyrd & Wonder* 2022 continues. Wyrd & Wonder starts May 1, and I’m getting ready by posting some of my favorite Top 5s. This week, I’m sharing my Top 5 Fantasy Sub-Genre Reads

*Not sure what Wyrd & Wonder is? Check out this post first.

Fantasy is itself a subgenre that falls under the broad category of Speculative Fiction. Speculative Fiction is a broad literary genre encompassing any fiction with supernatural, fantastical, or futuristic elements and encompasses literature ranging from hard science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to horror to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern myth-making and more.

So maybe in that sense, Spec Fiction is a super-genre and Fantasy is a genre with a ridiculous number of subgenres. There really is no one definition of Spec Fic just as there’s no one singular list of Fantasy sub-genres. Some put science fiction under fantasy, some have science fiction as adjacent to fantasy.

Regardless, Fantasy has a lot of bandwidth to cover a wide swath of literature. And I’ve picked out my Top 5 Reads from various subgenres. You may agree or disagree on the category and that’s okay. Because in the end, who cares as long as we’re reading.

Continue reading “Countdown 2: Top 5 Fantasy Subgenre Reads”

Countdown 3: Top 5 Forest Fantasy Reads

14 April 2022

Three weeks and the countdown to Wyrd & Wonder* 2022 continues! Wyrd & Wonder starts May 1, and I’m getting ready by posting some of my favorite Top 5s fantasy reads. This week, I’m sharing my Top 5 Forest Fantasy Reads.

*Not sure what Wyrd & Wonder is? Check out this post first.

The traditional fifth anniversary gift is wood, and so Wyrd and Wonder is all about forest fantasy this year. (Hence the tree wolf.) This list celebrates all things forest-y, which covers a lot of ground from woodland settings to forest creatures, from a focus on trees to important wooden artifacts. But I’ve chosen to stay away from the most obvious answers, LOTR (Old Man Willow, Treebeard and the Ents, Trollshaws, and Mirkwood just to name a few as trees and forests play multiple roles in Middle Earth) and HP (Whomping Willow and the Forbidden Forest). And so here are 5 of my fave forest fantasy reads.

Continue reading “Countdown 3: Top 5 Forest Fantasy Reads”

Novel November

14 November 2021

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you know that I participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) every November. Every year since 2008 (14 years)! I wrote about it here in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

And holy fish nuggets, I’m wondering where the heck this year has gone, much less this month. Here we are (nearly) halfway through November. And I haven’t written one blog post about NaNoWriMo 2021!

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Imagining the Improbable (This Post Gets A Bit Academic.)

10 May 2020

I had a whole other post ready to go in continuing with this month’s fantasy theme. (In fact I have a couple.) But as I was writing, I realized some will discuss space, aliens, or other things that could be considered “science fiction” and not “fantasy.” And if you look back at my Wyrd and Wonder TBR, some of the books might be considered sci-fi. So I thought I’d step back and talk about what I mean when I say fantasy.

What is the fantasy genre?

That’s a question with many answers and no one consensus.

Continue reading “Imagining the Improbable (This Post Gets A Bit Academic.)”

Wyrd and Wonder TBR

2 May 2020

The fantastical adventure continues.

You chose to go into the dark, spooky forest. As soon as you step into the forest, you notice the air cooled instantly. The tightly packed canopy doesn’t allow enough sunlight to reach the forest floor, which also means there’s minimal flora or other underbrush that you’d typically see in a forest. The forest floor is covered with a strange, almost glowing moss that also seems to dampen the sounds. The scent of something (or many things) decomposing fills your nostrils. You look around but see no trace of humans or other beings.

You start along the narrow, winding path, occasionally stumbling over unseen roots. After walking for what feels like hours, you hear a small whimpering sound. Almost like someone crying. Walking toward the noise, you see a small cottage. You can tell the crying is coming from the cottage. You grip your small, rusty sword tightly.

Do you enter the cottage or keep going along the path?

Continue reading “Wyrd and Wonder TBR”

An Epic Fantasy Adventure

1 May 2020

You stand on a beach at the edge of a forest. Behind you, a vast lake but no boat. You can’t remember what happened or how you ended up on the beach.

To your left, the beach slopes up to a rocky cliff where a ruined tower sits. To your right, you see a cave with a sign warning of ogres. In front of you, a dark forest path. You have a small, rusty sword, a bottle with an unknown potion, and a walking stick.

Which way do you go?

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Summer ’18 Reading Challenges

18 June 2018

Somehow, someway, I have committed myself to 5 different reading challenges. That’s right. Five.

I blame Litsy (mostly).

I also blame Litsy for my exponentially growing TBR, so much so, that I put myself on a book buying ban earlier this month.

(Of course, I may have already broken that ban when I received an email today from Subterranean Press about a special edition of Kevin Hearne’s Hexed, book 2 of the Iron Druid Chronicles. I had already pre-ordered Hounded, Book 1, so I *had* to pre-order Hexed. Right?) Continue reading “Summer ’18 Reading Challenges”