Fantasy
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Imagine Magic! In Defense of Fantasy Literature
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.” ― Dr. Seuss Fantasy has been a part of…
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How to Make a Land: The Magic of Literature in Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land
This review contains spoilers. With The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman has completed one of the most sophisticated fantasy series of recent times. Written carefully…
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Hopelessly Hobbited: A Tolkien Addict’s Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies
One last time. These words, though spoken by Thorin as he prepares to lead his company of dwarves into the Orc-Dwarf-Elf melee, also speak clearly…
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The Magic of Dual Art Forms in Howl’s Moving Castle
This piece contains spoilers. Whether it’s character depth or stylistic choices, the book most often surpasses the movie. Naturally, this is because there is…
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The One Nerd to Rule Them All : Why The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is Definitely Worth Your Time
Too rarely do we find a story that so unabashedly loves the speculative genres as The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. As a jaded…
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Believing Make-Believe: an Interview with GoT Visual Effects Artist Neil Safeer Ghaznavi
My enthusiasm for speculative fiction is very much rooted in its ability to make impossible things believable. For someone like me, to conjure the fantastical…
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Grad School or Dragons? Thoughts on Why We Love Speculative Fiction
There is something about lovers of speculative fiction that is different from the lovers of strictly garden-variety fiction. You cannot compare the passions of a…
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Winter Wonderland? Gethen and Narnia: the Lands of Perpetual Winter
I recently went on a cruise to Bermuda. It was awful. This was partially due to the incessant swaying of the boat, the boredom that…
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A Good Land for Myths
Throughout Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel American Gods, many different characters state that “America is a bad land for gods.” The novel argues that when many…
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The SPECtacular Irish Mythology and Imagery of The Secret of Kells
There are about a million reasons to watch the 2009 animated film The Secret of Kells. It has all of the things a good Irish…
The Spectatorial 