Sections
Redemption’s Blade is a great fantasy novel that manages to smoothly transit between satire and pathos, subverting genre tropes to comic effect while developing anguished characters that find themselves lost in life.
The story begins when the great war for the fate of the world has already ended: the people have united and defeated the Dark Lord, here called the Kinslayer. It’s time to rebuild and move on, and the hero Celestaine, who delivered the final blow on the Enemy, is preparing to set on a new quest: she wants to get hold of a magical artifact capable of restoring the wings of an elven-like race broken by the Kinslayer.
After all, he may have been defeated and [...]
Spiderlight picks a classic fantasy story – the hero’s journey that revolves around the battle against a dark lord – and subverts it to shed light on how its tropes are rooted in a binary worldview. With strong characters and a great discussion on the dehumanization of the “other”, the novel, written by Adrian Tchaikovsky, offers a thoughtful and self-aware adventure.
Spiderlight shines when it’s working with different points of view and it starts by following the perspective of what would usually be considered a classic fantasy villain: giant spiders. In their eyes, men are painted in dark colors: they disrupt the natural order of the forest with their uncontrolled anger and [...]