Harry Potter is a global cultural phenomenon. It started with what became the most successful book series in history (more than 600 million sold). Then, it transformed into one of the highest grossing film franchises (with a take of upwards of 12.75 billion Australian dollars for the eight movies). Further, the theatrical production Harry Potter…
Your Monster is one wild, romantic, vengeful ride – Beauty and the Beast never looked so good. It’s about an aspiring actress who gets treated shamefully and then finds the most unlikely of awakenings. Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera) has been with her writer/director boyfriend Jacob Sullivan (Edmund Donovan) for five years. She’s helped him to…
Warlords of Wyrdwood is the second book in RJ Barker’s Forsaken trilogy. It does what all good middle books do: broadens out the world that readers were given hints of in book 1 – Gods of the Wyrdwood – deepens and complicates the relationships between the main characters and antagonists and sets everything up for…
Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather) brings a re-imagined Roman Empire into modern times in his passion project Megalopolis. He proposes that the American Republic is not all that different from old Rome and then asks whether it will fall victim to the appetite for power of a few? Coppola began developing Megalopolis in the early…
Imagine your older self visiting to give guidance on how to live your best life. Writer-director Megan Park (The Fallout) tries it out in the quirky comedy My Old Ass. And it works a treat. Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) has just turned 18 and is full of life. She can’t wait to leave behind her…
Revenge is at the heart of the dark fantasy romance, The Crow. This is a remake of Australian Alex Proyas’ 1994 film of the same name. Both movies are based on the comic book series by James O’Barr. This time, Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) is in the director’s chair. Eric (Bill Skarsgård)…
Lots of great speculative fiction books involve steam trains. Some highlights of this China Mieville’s Iron Council, Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express. And of course, being steam driven, trains often feature in pretty much anything written in the steampunk sub-genre. Sarah Brooks’ debut draws on some of this but also on…
Veronica Roth has well and truly broken out of her YA phase with some recent releases that challenge genre tropes, like Poster Girl and Chosen Ones. Her latest novella When Among Crows is more down the line urban fantasy but is no less enjoyable. In it, Roth draws on the mythology of Poland and its…
Fantasy and science fiction novels often use an ongoing war as the central driving narrative force. In Premee Mohamed’s new book, The Siege of Burning Grass, two rival powers have been at war for years – the Varkal and the Med’ariz. Both forces are hungry for new territory, have absorbed smaller countries into their domains…
Leigh Bardugo draws on her family history to deliver a fascinating historical fantasy The Familiar. Bardugo showed in her Grishaverse books (aka Shadow and Bone etc) a willingness to draw on traditions outside of the general North Western European traditions for her fantasy. The Familiar takes readers to sixteenth century Spain shortly after the defeat…
