Blog Archives
Marq and the Queen Fish
Martha Cinader’s Marq and the Queen Fish is a compact seaside fantasy that brings questions about fairness into a vividly imagined coastal town. Its setting, Mara, is a community built from mud, driftwood, and seashells, where the blue-haired Marans live under the control of the wealthy Florkers. Marq, a young dishwasher with a talent for drawing fish, is tired of rules that keep his people working hard while others enjoy the beach. As old stories about the Queen Fish begin to feel newly relevant, his questions take on fresh urgency. Cinader gives this world enough salt, sand, kitchen heat, and ocean shimmer that you can easily picture yourself walking its cobbled streets.
Marq is an appealing guide because his frustration has such recognizable roots. He wants answers, feels embarrassed by the features that make him stand out, worries about his mother, and carries the hurt of his father’s absence. His blue hair, which rises and moves when he gets angry, gives those feelings a wonderfully visible form. There’s humor in his attempts to keep it hidden, but there’s also something touching about a boy whose emotions refuse to stay tucked away. His exchanges with the elusive, playful Amber bring energy to the story, while his uneasy friendship with Stewart, a Florker boy, makes trusting someone a complicated choice. The boys’ conversations are especially engaging when each assumes he understands the other’s life and then has to think again.
The book’s most distinctive idea is that listening can change your understanding of the world. Songs, family stories, handmade objects, and the sea itself all carry knowledge that deserves attention. Cinader connects that idea to the Marans’ treatment, their relationship with ocean life, and the difference between enjoying beauty together and collecting it as private wealth. The food, music, jokes, and everyday work give these themes a place in the community’s daily life. The storytelling has the cadence of a tale told aloud, with recurring sayings and comic officials whose names advertise their priorities. At times, the repeated warnings and explanations slow the momentum, and some dialogue states the lesson quite directly. Still, that openness suits the book’s fable-like style and makes its concerns accessible.
I’d recommend Marq and the Queen Fish to older children and young teens who enjoy magical creatures, seaside adventures, and stories about standing up to unfairness. It would also work well as a shared read with a parent, teacher, or librarian, since its short chapters leave plenty of room to talk about friendship, prejudice, responsibility, and caring for animals. Adults who enjoy fairy tales with social and environmental concerns will find something to appreciate here, too. The book’s charm comes from the way its imaginative details serve its human questions: who gets heard, whose stories survive, and how you decide what deserves your loyalty. Marq’s impatience, the community’s resourcefulness, and the strange possibilities of the sea make those questions worth following.
Pages: 94 | ASIN : B0HM9JR8JD
Power and Exploitation
Wolf Warrior follows a wild shepherdess as she travels through dangerous kingdoms and magical realms while confronting exploitation, political conflict, and powerful forces that test her growing role as a leader and protector. What draws you to the fantasy genre?
What drew me into the fantasy genre was the magical creatures, like dragons and unicorns, and magic systems. My favorite types were shape-shifting, summoning, healing, divination, and elemental control. Each rule is fascinating and can be dicey if it falls into the wrong hands.
The villains manipulate and control creatures, while Clara works to build bonds with them. Was that contrast intended as a larger commentary on power and exploitation?
No. This kind of story was just the plot point I’ve enjoyed in previous films and fantasy stories that involve the battle against corruption.
Healing is a major theme in Wolf Warrior. What does healing mean within the magical and emotional world of the novel?
Healing means that while the painful memories won’t go away, you’re able to move on from them. The magical healing just means removing the physical injuries and making sure the soul is intact. However, when it comes to the emotions, empathy is the biggest key!
What can readers expect from Clara and the Beast Heart series going forward?
Clara will slowly begin to take on the role of leader, but she’s also going to encounter some friction with King Helios and Almathia because both have gone through a difficult loss. As for Lady Maroona and the remaining children, I’ll be working on their origins.
However…Lady Maroona’s and Clara’s battle is far from over!
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Beast Heart Series: Wolf Warrior
Erin Tunney’s Wolf Warrior, the second book in The Beast Heart Series, is an expansive fantasy adventure that pushes Clara’s story far beyond the personal struggle that first defined her. Clara is still the Wild Shepherdess, bonded to the wolf Onyx and the unicorn Lotus, but she’s becoming something larger: a mediator, fighter, healer, and increasingly reluctant leader. The novel moves from the Selkie kingdom beneath the ocean to pirate ships, frozen Harpy settlements, Sand Dwarf territory, and volcanic caverns filled with Hellhounds. Along the way, Clara gets pulled into a conflict involving Queen Sedna, the mysterious Leviathans, human mages, and a trade in Selkie pelts that reveals just how deeply exploitation runs through the Human Kingdom. The setting is especially fun when Tunney lets the strange creatures take center stage. Selkies change forms underwater, Leviathans communicate through the sea, and magic behaves almost like a living ecosystem. The result is a fantasy world that feels busy, dangerous, and genuinely inhabited.
What gives Wolf Warrior its strongest identity, though, is the way it treats bonds as a form of power. Clara’s abilities revolve around Life Threads, and Tunney keeps returning to the difference between connection and control. The villains force animals and other beings into obedience, manipulate their threads, and treat living creatures as resources. Clara becomes powerful by doing almost the opposite. She listens, repairs, cooperates, and gradually learns that some problems are too large for one person to solve. One of the most telling moments comes after the battle with High Mage Fathma. Clara has already won, but she refuses to consider the job finished while Queen Sedna is dying, so Clara, Wave, Quartz, Orion, and Aquental work together to reconstruct Sedna’s damaged Life Threads. That idea carries into the later restoration of Iridescent, where memory, affection, and Quartz’s love become part of the healing itself. It’s an earnest approach to magic, and it makes Clara’s compassion feel like an active skill.
Tunney writes with a direct, highly visual style, particularly when monsters, battles, or magical transformations are involved. The underwater sections have glowing cities, enormous shadows, strange fish, coral structures, and creatures that can shift from beautiful to frightening within a few sentences. The later Hellhound material gets darker, with captured souls, animal experimentation, and Duke Averance’s disturbing attempts to merge domesticated beasts with magical creatures. There’s a lot happening throughout the novel, and that abundance becomes part of its personality. Alliances change, characters are captured and rescued, old enemies become potential allies, and new pieces of the Beast Heart mythology keep appearing. The emotional register is just as open. Clara cries, panics, gets angry, falls in love, makes mistakes, and gets physically battered by the consequences of her choices. The lighter exchanges with Twitch, Helios, Quartz, and the animals help keep all that danger from becoming monotonous. I especially liked how the developing romances sit alongside the larger political story instead of replacing it.
Readers of Tamora Pierce, especially her Immortals books, may recognize something appealing in Clara. Like Pierce’s Daine, Clara’s relationship with animals and magical creatures gradually changes how she understands both power and the societies around her. Tunney takes that idea in a particularly political direction, building Clara into someone who can connect species and kingdoms that have spent generations fearing one another. By the end of Wolf Warrior, she’s beginning to see herself differently too. After surviving betrayal, war, and the corruption of people she was raised to respect, Clara looks at herself as a warrior, a survivor, and someone capable of leadership. She also recognizes that the conflicts she’s uncovered are much bigger than one kingdom, while the epilogue opens the Beast Heart mythology even further through Hazel and her own hidden connection to that power. Wolf Warrior feels like the point where The Beast Heart Series grows from Clara’s individual story into a much larger fantasy about alliances, inherited hatred, freedom, and what kind of person deserves to wield power.
Pages: 340 | ISBN : 978-1806932689
What If You Could Start Over?
One Chance follows a middle-aged man haunted by the consequences of his own choices who is offered an unexpected way out through a doorway leading him into a world of giants, witches, and enchanted objects. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
I think it started with the idea that if I could live my life over again, would I do anything differently? I think most people have that thought from time to time, and the main character exemplifies an extreme of that. It’s not just that he would change one thing or another, but that he would change the person he was. From there, the book explores ideas around why people make the decisions they make and ultimately become who they are as people. Finally, can we change and start over, or are we trapped by our place and circumstances? The challenges and obstacles he faces in the story, although pure fantasy, in many ways can be related to the challenges we face in everyday life.
Why did you choose a middle-aged protagonist instead of the younger heroes often found in portal fantasy?
One of the main issues for the character was a life filled with regrets. He had regrets about decisions he had made, possible life paths that he had not taken, and even regrets around the very person he had become. Those character issues fit much better with an older character with a lifetime of mistakes rather than someone younger. As he goes through the portal, he becomes young again, a change that is far better appreciated for an older character. I think the theme of starting over and becoming someone new wouldn’t have made as much sense with a young protagonist.
How long did it take to build the world of Wisteria before you began drafting the novel?
I actually started by developing the characters in the story and an overall theme. After that, I developed the general storyline and the first couple of chapters. The bulk of the world-building happened as I was writing the story. I wrote the storyline I had outlined and essentially built the world around it as I wrote. So I really didn’t start building the world until after I began drafting the novel.
What do you hope readers discover about themselves while following Chance’s journey?
In the story, Chance faces a lot of obstacles to becoming the person he wanted to be. Of course, the outward things included traps, monsters, and villains threatening him, but the greater obstacles came from within himself. He faced selfish temptations, old habits, personal vanity, and good old-fashioned fear. I hope readers would recognize that those same challenges exist in our own world, in different forms, but the greater barriers to growth and success are the ones we create ourselves. He’s only truly able to acknowledge those personal challenges and move forward when he fully lays down his own desires in order to become the person his friends needed him to be.
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What he finds there is a world in crisis, with danger around every corner. He meets two friends who each have a unique power, and together they’re given a quest to save everyone from impending destruction. They will have to overcome monsters and villains as they are pursued by a legendary bounty hunter. Can Charlie and his friends overcome dragons, giants, and magic spells to save mankind? Can he overcome old habits and become the person that he’s always aspired to be?
Understanding Yourself First
The Holding follows an energetic nine-year-old and his older sister, the mysterious connection between the two, their dreams, the animals around them, and the private places where they feel most at home. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The book started off as a gimmick; a hastily created YA type thing that my own kids might find funny, based on an inside joke and a family mythology about the relationship my own kids have. After reading the first few chapters (initially drafted with AI), I realised I didn’t want it to be that at all, and undertook the literary, fully realised work that it is now (written mostly by me, although some initial language from the first draft remains). At the core, it is a selfish attempt to provide an alternate reality for my kids, where they learn to love each other the way I hope they will one day (and Dad gets to watch).
Simon and Anna live close to one another but often struggle to understand each other. What interested you about that dynamic?
As above, the kids in the story started out as exaggerated versions of my own munchkins, although they drifted substantially from that as the book was written. I wanted to explore the nature of the kind of love that can only be made in the young, and how the searching for it is often an exercise in understanding yourself first. There is so much ‘what you should be’ and ‘what is best’ instruction in the world for young people these days, and I think it gets in the way of accepting what you actually are sometimes; giving Simon and Anna a journey toward each other, through experiencing themselves, was me imagining a future for them that I hope comes to pass.
Auggie brings both humor and wisdom to the story. What does he see that the human characters miss?
I love Auggie because she is not confused, or challenged, or searching like most of the other characters are in the book; she knows what she is already, she knows where she fits in, she knows her role and, in the end, knows what to do when things seem hopeless. The humans are in their own heads, but she gets not to be, and in not-being, sees much that passes the humans by. I should mention that Auggie owes much to the character of Mottyl in Timothy Findlay’s wonderful book Not Wanted On The Voyage, which I read at a formative time, and always carried around with me; Mottyl might be the most human character in the whole book, despite being a cat, and it was a pleasure to experience the world of The Holding through Auggie’s (and Gracie’s) noses as a result.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
My next project is still a way off, but it will investigate more adult themes as opposed to the young ones at the heart of The Holding; without being able yet to say how, I know it will explore overcoming isolation as a grown-up, and the kind of things that pull us in and push us out of it. As mentioned above, The Holding is an AI-Assisted novel initially conceived as a joke, before taking it seriously. Before this book, I would never have thought I could be an author, and to be clear, I do not yet feel I deserve that title, despite having written most of The Holding and having deeply altered the early work I did not incept. What The Holding taught me, though, is that I CAN be an author. I look forward to learning what a fully analogue experience feels like, and to the comfort that will bring with the word author (I use writer, or creator now).
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Loving your sibling is hard.
Simon is nine. He moves through the world as an outgoing creature of the moment, heart on his sleeve, sometimes too loud, sometimes too much. Anna is thirteen — guarded, watchful, sharper than she lets people see, and quietly drowning in the social blood-sport of grade eight. Time is not on their side. The love they do not share can only be made in the young, and they are growing up-and-out of their smallness. Unseen at the edges of the frame, something outside themselves is trying to bring them together. What they manage — or fail to manage — between themselves will register far past the small horizon of a Canadian childhood.
The Holding is a tender, strange, deeply felt novel about the everyday work of finding, and holding on to each other.
This book is AI Assisted
The Weapons We’re Born With
Brett O’Brien’s The Weapons We’re Born With, the first book in the Currents of War series, is an ambitious epic fantasy about people discovering that the identities assigned to them don’t have to determine the lives they lead. The story unfolds across a world being consumed by imperial conquest, magical warfare, political ambition, and rapid technological change. Its many viewpoint characters initially seem to occupy separate stories: Shara is a street child whose forbidden magical ability forces her into hiding, Marysa is a Resistance fighter struggling with leadership and grief, Callum is an artificer trapped inside the imperial war machine, and EM4022 is a manufactured soldier beginning to develop a conscience. Their paths gradually converge around a conflict involving the Current, an authoritarian order of Nightshades, ancient powers, experimental weapons, and a dragon whose captivity has consequences for the entire world.
The novel’s greatest strength is its cast. O’Brien gives each major character a personal struggle that reflects the book’s larger questions about freedom and responsibility. Shara wants safety and belonging, but her natural connection to the Current makes an ordinary life impossible. Callum has spent years helping the Empire function, and his story asks what resistance looks like when someone realizes that their talent has been serving a cruel system. Marysa is physically formidable, yet her most meaningful battles involve trust, loss, and the pressure of leading others. EM4022’s transformation is especially compelling. Its early chapters use cold designations and tactical calculations, but small acts of compassion gradually break through its conditioning. Watching EM4022 become Ronin turns the familiar artificial-being-seeks-humanity storyline into one of the book’s most emotionally satisfying arcs.
The world is large, colorful, and full of ideas. Different nations, faiths, magical traditions, military ranks, spirits, machines, and political factions give the setting a sense of history beyond the immediate plot. The Current works particularly well because it’s both a source of power and a reflection of character. People draw from it differently, and their abilities often reveal how they understand themselves. O’Brien also combines fantasy and technology with confidence. Swords, spirits, airships, artificial soldiers, fission weapons, and industrial machinery all belong to the same world without feeling randomly assembled. The final sequence beneath Mount Pyra brings these elements together in a chaotic, cinematic climax involving collapsing tunnels, divided loyalties, desperate sacrifices, and the release of a dragon. The action is easy to picture, but it remains grounded in the characters’ choices.
Readers of Brandon Sanderson, particularly those who enjoyed Mistborn, will recognize some appealing similarities. Both stories center on resistance to an oppressive empire, feature carefully structured supernatural powers, and follow characters from very different social positions as they become part of a larger rebellion. O’Brien also shares Sanderson’s fondness for intersecting plots and explosive finales. His approach, though, feels more openly influenced by modern ensemble storytelling. The viewpoint shifts are frequent, and the book sometimes reads like a season of prestige fantasy television, cutting between soldiers, rebels, rulers, scientists, and fugitives as a crisis builds. That scale gives the story energy, though the number of characters and unfamiliar terms can make the early chapters demanding. Once the connections become clearer, the broad structure starts to feel purposeful.
The Weapons We’re Born With is ultimately a story about choosing what to do with power, whether that power comes from magic, knowledge, authority, physical strength, or the ability to create life. Its title becomes more meaningful as the characters confront the difference between what they were made for and what they decide to become. The ending resolves the Mount Pyra conflict while leaving the war, the dragon, and several personal reckonings in motion, so it works as both a climax and a clear beginning to a larger saga. O’Brien has built a crowded but engaging world populated by people worth following, and the novel’s strongest moments come when spectacle gives way to compassion, grief, or quiet defiance. It’s a bold opening volume with the momentum and emotional foundation to support a much bigger story.
Pages: 566 | ASIN : B0H8Y8H18M
The Rishi Trilogy
The Rishi Trilogy, by Mark Miller, is an illustrated children’s fantasy adventure that combines magical travel, family relationships, humor, and gentle lessons about responsibility. The collection follows Rishi, a curious boy from Wellington, New Zealand, whose life changes after he meets King Montamahilla, the warmhearted gorilla ruler of Gorillia. A glowing staff connects their worlds and eventually gives Rishi and his friend Kiri remarkable abilities, but its only instruction is simple: “Use it wisely.” That idea gives the three-book collection a clear foundation while leaving plenty of room for safaris, experiments, international travel, soccer matches, and royal surprises.
The first story, Rishi and the King, has the cheerful rhythm of a children’s travel adventure. Rishi meets the King during a parade, watches his doctor father help him recover from an illness, and receives an invitation to visit Gorillia. The royal banquet and African safari create an energetic introduction to the series, especially as Rishi encounters flamingos, crocodiles, lions, giraffes, and elephants. Miller tells the story in Rishi’s casual voice, so his excitement, nervousness, and occasional confusion feel natural. King Montamahilla’s fondness for songs, green bananas, grand entrances, and affectionate hospitality also gives the book an appealingly playful personality.
In The Wisdom of the Staff and Kiri and the Cousins, the series grows into a children’s magical adventure about curiosity and good judgment. Rishi and Kiri test the staff by ripening apples, producing a few coins, communicating through television screens, transporting luggage, and eventually carrying their families across oceans. Their experiments are fun, but they also reveal the emotional intelligence at the center of the trilogy. A wish involving Kiri’s absent father carries more weight than a wish for money, and the children gradually learn that genuine needs, thoughtful intentions, and patience matter. The later trips to Canada and Paris expand the story without losing its family focus, while Kiri’s emerging ability to understand and repair the staffs makes her an especially interesting partner for Rishi.
The book’s many illustrations give this picture book a bright, cinematic quality. The parade crowds, glowing green staffs, palace banquet, wildlife encounters, cozy family rooms, Paris landmarks, and packed soccer stadiums help younger readers follow the action and provide visual pauses between sections of text. King Montamahilla is particularly expressive in the artwork, whether he’s greeting a crowd, singing with his staff, imitating Rodin’s The Thinker, or appearing at someone’s front door. Overall, The Rishi Trilogy is a friendly children’s fantasy series with the scale of an international adventure and the warmth of a family story. Its strongest moments come from watching Rishi and Kiri discover that wisdom isn’t a power the staff gives them. It’s something they build together, one choice at a time.
Pages: 116 | ASIN : B0H4M9LB57
Real-Life Inspiration
Alice and Agapogo is centered around a brave and stubborn girl whose escape from a witch takes her into a mysterious underworld on an adventure involving ancient Miners, prophecies, and betrayal. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This is the second book in Alice’s adventures. At the end of the first novel, the witch forces Alice into the Underworld.
From a writer’s point of view, that opened an entirely new world. Legends about mysterious underground civilizations appear in mythology, folklore, and classic fantasy literature. I wanted to bring to life my own Underworld with its own history, forgotten people, and ancient secrets.
But the setting itself was not the most important part of the story. The real question was: what would Alice do if she had only two choices? Stay in a safe place and wait for whatever fate had prepared for her, or leave that safety and walk straight toward danger.
Alice is scared, but she never gives up. When she realizes that even the witches fear the Dragon, her decision is: “Then I’ll find the Dragon.” That determination in the face of fear became the driving force behind the entire novel.
Alice’s relationship with Bella and Lola gives the story much of its emotional warmth. Were the dogs inspired by real-life companions?
Yes, there was a real-life inspiration, with an amazing girl and two huge dogs who absolutely adored her.
I decided to write a few stories about her adventures with her dogs. That became my first book, “Alice, Cricket and Two Dogs”.
In the second book, the three of them are still inseparable.
Cricket stands out among a cast filled with witches, dragons, and other fantastical beings. What makes Cricket such an important part of Alice’s adventure?
Cricket is the point at which the cosmos enters Alice’s story. The mysterious Lens transforms an ordinary insect into a being with extraordinary intelligence and the ability to read thoughts.
No one notices him, and that is precisely his strength. Cricket is the first to discover that Matilda intends to steal Alice. He speaks to the dogs, whispers a warning into Alice’s ear, and pulls her out of the witch’s grasp. A creature small enough to disappear in the grass changes the course of Alice’s life.
Later, Cricket becomes the invisible link between Alice and Agapogo, and ultimately defeats the Almighty. In a world of witches, dragons, and monsters, the smallest creature possesses the greatest weapon: knowledge.
Agapogo is both protector and friend. How did you imagine this remarkable creature?
I spent a lot of time in British Columbia near beautiful Okanagan Lake, where the legend of Ogopogo is part of what gives the lake its unique character. When you stand on the shore and look out over its waters, it is easy to imagine that a mysterious ancient creature lives somewhere in the depths.
It became the starting point for Agapogo, and I changed the name slightly as a nod to the legend. But in the novel, Agapogo is far more than an underwater serpent.
Alice manages to uncover his secret, and that discovery becomes one of the key moments in the story.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am currently working on a dark fantasy novel for adults. Its working title is Angel.
At the same time, I am also writing the third book in Alice’s adventures. At the end of the second book, Alice returns to an ordinary school, and her family moves to another city. But can a girl who has survived such extraordinary trials simply settle down and live the life of an ordinary schoolgirl? The working title of Alice 3 is On the Trail of the Miners.
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But the Underworld is far larger and far more dangerous than Alice could have imagined.
Beneath the forests and lakes stretches a vast subterranean realm of enormous caves, dark tunnels, underground waterways, and abandoned cities built long ago by the mysterious Miners — a vanished people whose secrets were never meant to be uncovered.
The Sanctuary soon proves anything but safe. When Alice discovers that the witches have already spread their traps into the hidden world below, she makes a desperate but necessary choice. Alone with her dogs, she journeys deeper into the Underworld, hoping to find the Dragon feared by the witches themselves.
Instead, she encounters something unexpected — Agapogo, an ancient underwater Serpent.
While searching for the Dragon, Alice learns that the vanished Miners called Dragons Tael Morh. The name is strangely familiar… and when she finally remembers why, nothing will ever be the same for Agapogo.
Deep in the Underworld, Alice awakens the impossible—and finds the key to defeating the witches.
