Fantasy Book Swap

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Ali Baker and a guest discuss children’s fantasy fiction. The guest chooses a favourite for Ali, and Ali chooses a complementing contemporary book. Jokes and the occasional swear word may ensue. Please contact https://www.instagram.com/fantasy_book_swap_podcast/, @alisonbaker01 on BlueSky or https://www.facebook.com/Fantasybookswap. Ask questions, make comments and join in the discussion!

Episodes

4 days ago

Ep 52: Team Binabik with Stewart Hotston

4 days ago

Stewart Hotston is the chair of the BSFA.

Stewart’s choice: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams (First in the Dragonbone Chair trilogy. It is 5 1/2 cm deep.

You can see the original cover on Tad Williams’s website

Ali’s choice: Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa. It is considerably less thick.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M. R. Carey. A novel about a child, but not a children’s book.

Aliette de Bodard’s essay On Motherhood and Erasure. Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes is one of the few fantasy books where a mother is the protagonist. Catherynne M. Valente’s excellent The Refrigerator Monologues addresses the phenomenon of fridging women characters as a plot device and motivation for male superheroes.

Stewart recommends Richard Swan, David Wragg and Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle for interesting takes on mythology and folklore.

Wuxia such as Monkey adapted from Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en. Zen Cho’s novelette The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water.

Historical C-dramas are very big on yearning glances. Stewart is currently watching Veil of Shadows.

Stewart recently read The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson.

The most challenged books.

The CLPE’s Reflecting Realities report demonstrates that the number of children’s books with protagonists of colour published in 2025 was lower than in previous years. Stewart wrote a blog about representation and the Clarke Awards.

EasterCon is the British SFF fan-run con that travels around the UK. Next year it is in Glasgow!

Find Stewart online! Website, Bluesky, Nerds of a Feather. Read Project Hanuman.

Saturday Apr 11, 2026

Ep 51: A snake out of water with Emily Tesh

Saturday Apr 11, 2026

Emily’s choice: Briar’s Book/ The Healing in the Vine by Tamora Pierce

Ali’s choice: A Snake falls to Earth by Darcy Little Badger

Darcie Little Badger's website

EasterCon- the annual British fan-run Science Fiction and Fantasy convention

Emily was on a panel celebrating the centenary of Anne McCaffrey

Scholastic Book Fairs are still going!

Tamora Pierce’s books have been challenged and removed from libraries. Attempts at censoring reading are rising in the UK. If you want to read to support authors, please bear in mind that LGBTQ+ authors and authors of colour are more likely to be under threat of having their books removed from libraries and schools. See the list of books removed from Lowry Academy in Manchester where a librarian has lost her job and is unlikely to work with young people again. For more information on the effects of book banning on authors, listen to this episode of Our Opinions Are Correct with Maggie Tokuda-Hall.

Food in SFF- Dr Fiona Moore cooks recipes from SFF cook books so we don’t have to. She found this recipe for cherry tarts inspired by Alanna: The First Adventure.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones has been nominated for several awards. Stephen Graham Jones is also a Native American (Blackfeet) author who writes mostly in horror. I also really enjoyed Monoquill Blackgoose’s To Shape a Dragon’s Breath.

Darren Chetty’s ‘You can’t say that! Stories are supposed to be about white people!’ from Nikesh Shukla (Ed) The Good Immigrant. This book was published by Unbound, which has collapsed.

The amazing Petronella Breinburg, who was born in Suriname, not the Caribbean.

You didn't hear it from me, but Emily's website is https://emilytesh.net/ and you can follow her on Bluesky @emilytesh.net.

You should definitely listen to Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, though.

Thank you as always for listening, sharing and engaging!

Sunday Feb 22, 2026

Ep 50: Demon horses and ghost dogs with Anna Smith Spark

Sunday Feb 22, 2026

Anna’s book choice: The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner

Ali’s book choice: Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend by Lizzie Huxley-Jones. Sadly, I have just found out that Knights Of publishers have gone out of business, so Vivi’s trilogy is out of print. Hopefully you will be able to find them at online second hand book stores.

Find out more about Anna Smith Spark

The Bread Horse by Alan Garner- front cover. Boneland, which I intend to read.

The Ceffyl Dwr, the wild hunt, Afanc. Rhianna Pratchett’s podcast on British mythology, Mythical Creatures, discusses water demons in episode 3.

Herne the Hunter. Herne features in The Box of Delights by John Masefield, Silver in the Tree by Susan Cooper and (foreshadowing!) Tad Williams’s Memory, Shadow and Thorn series.

Angharad Golden-Hand. Rhiannon. Epona, the Celtic horse goddess, who has nothing to do with Sulis/ Aquae Sulis/ Bath.

Hobby Horse- a May Day tradition, originally associated with Morris dancers. The Mari Lwyd is a Christmas tradition, first referenced in the early 19th Century.

Gelert the wolfhound; of course Gelert's grave isn't real.

Nina Beachcroft, an excellent children’s author of spooky stories. Anna discusses Cold Christmas, which is the name of a hamlet in Hertfordshire, Nina Beachcroft’s home county- and mine, though I grew up near Watford rather than Hertford.

The Stephen Collins cartoon on Netflix exposition

Nancy Drew, The Chalet School- there are 58 books in the original series, but it was incredibly difficult to read them in order in the 1970s and 1980s! I encountered the wonderful Scrivener’s Books when in Buxton for Novacon. It’s a wonderful place, and that perfect shop for stumbling over that elusive third book in an out of print series!

I remembered Pat O’Shea’s The Hounds of the Morrigan and Aliette de Bodard on Motherhood and Erasure in speculative fiction- Aliette talks about this blog on the Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast.

Seanan McGuire’s wonderful The Wayward Children series