About This Blog

This blog is around 18 months old now, maybe 20 months. While traffic has steadily increased over that time, the biggest jump has been in the last 6 months (especially after all the Brent Weeks related posts last fall). Seeing that I have picked up a few new readers, I thought it might be a good time to reiterate what I do here on the blog.

First...I mostly concentrate on epic/high/heroic fantasy. The stuff by Terry Brooks, Joe Abercrombie, Pat Rothfus, Brian Ruckley, Brent Weeks, etc. I pretty much read that type of fantasy exclusively. While you might see me review an occasional urban fantasy, it will be pretty rare. So, if you have been here a couple of months and wondered why I don't review the latest urban fantasy or paranormal romance, that is why. You also won't find any sci-fi reviews. You might, in the future, see me review a comic fantasy every now and then, as I keep threatening to review some Tim Dorsey, Donald Westlake, or Carl Hiaasen books. But again, mostly you will find me reviewing traditional epic fantasy, because that is what I love to read. Also, i read purely for entertainment, not for the challenge. So some books that a lot of "critics" like (like The Prince of Nothing), don't work for me at all. Yeah, they might be well written, but if I have to work too hard to follow the story, I'm not enjoying myself and hence won't enjoy the book (so that explains my reading style, too).

My reviews themselves are all over the place, stylewise. Sometimes I write a "traditional" review, sometimes I list the stuff i liked and didnt like in bullet format, sometimes I write multiple reviews as I read the book..you never know. Lately I have been favoring the "normal" review.

If you visit the actual blog, instead of viewing it in a reader, you will notice a sidebar on the right that has a title of "Links to Fantasy Reviews Around the Web( By Author Last Name) - 1014 Total Links of 495 Books". This is the review index you see me mention sometimes in my posts. A year ago, after our daughter was born, I didnt have a lot of time to read. So, I had the idea to start creating a resource that would link to all the reviews on the blogs I follow. I thought folks might like having a one-stop resource for finding fantasy reviews. Thus, the review index was born. Right now there are links to 1000+ reviews covering 495 different fantasy books. Most all of these reviews are hosted by my fellow bloggers, and the index covers all reviews from the last 3 years on the blogs I follow (and 3 years happens to be when the review blogging really started in earnest). If you are looking for a review of a fantasy book, and dont like to rely on Amazon, check the index. At least one of my fellow bloggers has probably reviewed the book. New reviews are added almost every day, keeping the index as current as possible.

I have also recently started posting a "Review Link-Up" almost daily. The idea was to so something similar to Sci-Fi Signal's daily posting. But, since the focus of this site is reviews, I thought my daily posting would be to highlight reviews from around the web. While my site focuses mainly on epic fantasy..in the link-up, I'll post pretty much any type of review posted by the 30-40 blogs I follow. And if a review happens to be epic fantasy, it also gets added to the big review index. I'm always looking for new fantasy blogs to follow, so let me know if I am missing one you like.

You will most likely see a weekly "New Releases" posting. I have compiled a big list of books coming out over the next several months, so each week I'll post the list of books due on the shelves that week. This list will include non-epic fantasy titles.

Other occasional items on this blog: author interviews (which I hope to increase), giveaways (my twist is that I ask the winner to agree to review the book they won), rants, and ebook news.

That's pretty much it. This post was a bit longer that I had thought..sorry about that! Hope it helps you understand what you can expect from this blog, and clarifies what I do here.

If there is something new you would like to see, please let me know. My email adress is bossfan2000 at yahoo dot com

Finally...thanks to all of you who follow this blog regularly or irregularly. While some bloggers blog for themselves, I blog to help promote epic fantasy. I really like the fantasy genre, and want to do whatever I can (however small) to help readers find new books and authors. So..thanks for giving this blog some of your time each day/week/month. I honestly appreciate it!

-jeff