Fantasy Book Swap

Ali’s choice: The Borribles by Michael de Larrabeiti

Taj’s choice: The Blackthorn Branch by Elen Caldecott

Ebbs and Flows by Tajinder on Ragged Edge Productions’ website

Taj’s episode of Zog: The Great Gnome Games

Ali’s  article on The Borribles, Punk and Protest can be read in this edition of Vector, the BSFA’s journal. 

SUS laws

Media mentioned in this episode

The Warriors  

Assault on Precinct 13

The Tribe

Mad Max: Beyond the Thunderdome

You can use the TfL Walking website to follow the route from Angel to Farringdon that Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger walked to Fagin’s den. 

Three Men in a Boat and The Wind in the Willows are two classics of leisurely life on the river. Former guest Sandra Bond’s Three Men in Orbit relocates Jerome K. Jerome’s characters in space!

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The Snow Spider by Jenny Nimmo

Elidor by Alan Garner

Aru Shah and the End of Time I thoroughly recommend Sarwat Chadda’s Ash Mistry series as another brilliant use of Indian traditional stories for children’s fantasy.

The Mahabharata and Ramayana are key texts that are the basis of spiritual practices that originated in India

Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symonds Roberts

Taj’s webpage at Lancaster University

My Buy me a coffee link buymeacoffee.com/alibaker68e 

Annie’s choice:The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts 

Ali’s choice: The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge

A short piece by Willo Davis Roberts on writing mysteries for young people

Annie has just got back from Finncon where her husband, multiple  award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky was a guest of honour. Rosebud is an excellent bookshop. If you’re ever in Helsinki you should definitely visit.

Annie talks about Xan Van Roojen, a South African writer who lives in Finland, and their use of music while writing.

My vote for a new National Anthem: Disco Inferno

I listen to a lot of Philip Glass music when writing. It calms my brain. This is the beginning of his opera Akhnaten, which I was lucky enough to see staged in Leeds in the mid-90s.

The Girl with the Silver Eyes reminds me of Escape to Witch Mountain, a Disney live-action film.

Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin

Shockingly I misremembered the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice. I will retire my English Literature degree. In  my defence, I'm a Victorianist.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 

My earworm this week: Mean Green Mother From Outer Space from Little Shop of Horrors

Alnwick Castle Poison Garden

Maelstrom LARP

The Coral Bones by EJ Swift has been on my TBR list for an embarrassingly long time.

You can find out more about Annie and her research here and hear some of her music on Adrian Tchaikovsky and Emma Newman’s Starship Alexandria podcast, where Adrian and Emma take it in turns to select a favourite piece of speculative fiction and discuss it. 

Fantasy Book Swap has recently been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Society award!  Thanks so much to anyone who nominated. 

Elen’s choice: A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley

Ali’s choice: The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes

Elen’s recently-published text book: Writing for Young People: Critical Readings and Discussion on Craft

Alison Uttley’s diaries were published in 2009

The history of the Babington plot

Books mentioned in this episode: Charlotte Sometimes, Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Borrowers, Tyger. The book by Joan Aiken that I couldn’t remember is In Thunder’s Pocket.

We didn’t talk about the awful adaptation from 1978. You have been warned.

Elen’s book The Short Knife won the Tir na n’Og award in 2021. Hear her reading the chapter and talking to Nikki Gamble here.

Elen teaches at Lancaster and Bath Spa universities. She is one of the managing editors of Leaf Journal on writing for children. You can follow her on Bluesky and Instagram.

Fantasy Book Swap has recently been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Society award!  Thanks so much to anyone who nominated.

 

 

Hello friends! Fantasy Book Swap has been nominated for a British Fantasy Society Award for Best Audio- Non-Fiction. The others in the shortlist are:

Breaking the Glass Slipper, a previous winner and Hugos nominee

The Folklore Podcast, hosted by folklorist and author Mark Norman

Uncanny, a BBC podcast hosted by comedy writer and performer Danny Robins, investigating supernatural happenings. 

It is an honour to be on the shortlist with such amazing creators, some of whom I hope to meet at the awards at FantasyCon in October!

Chris’s choice: Mossflower by Brian Jacques

Ali’s choice: The Spick and the Span by Pil Van Martin, longlisted for the Carnegie award

Mossflower cover art for the 1989 Red Lion edition by Pete Lyon

Castaways of the Flying Dutchman by Brian Jacques

Robin Hood and Maid Marion

Warrior Cats by Erin Hunter. I met Cherith Baldry, one of the Erin Hunter writers, at Glasgow WorldCon.

Alex Rider by Anthony Horowitz; Young James Bond by Charlie Higson

I made a recipe from the Redwall cookbook

A journal article by Christopher Quah Wai Kheong and Anita Harris Satkunananthan on othering in Outcast of Redwall

Professor Dimitra Fimi ‘Was Tolkien really racist?’

Cluny the Scourge.   The first two episodes of the Redwall cartoon series feature Cluny.

Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

Marvel: Damage Control was a limited series of comics, a TV show was in development but never made. The Superhero Clean Up Squad was a comedy series from 2015.

The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness is the story of the other students of the high school infested by zombies and vampires, not the chosen ones; the ones who just want to graduate before school blows up again.

Check out Bona Books

Follow Chris on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/chrismccartney.bsky.social

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.

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!

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

Robert's choice: The Marvellous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Ali's choice: Wynd book 1: The Flight of the Prince by James Tynion IV and Michael Dialnyas

Robert is 1/4 of wonderful Bona Books! The Wrath Month kickstarter is still open for stretch goals backing.

Return to Oz (1985) trainer here: relive your childhood trauma!

I still can't find the Arena documentary, but here is a PBS one

Robert's favourite Oz retelling is Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Mine is Was by Geoff Ryman

Pride is a wonderful film about solidarity and intersectional identity

Boom! Studios comics

For other episodes on "race/ ethnicity" in fantasy, check out this episode with Russell Smith; for queerness in fantasy, this one with Juliet Kemp. 

Follow Rob on Bluesky and Instagram

Bona Books' Instagram 

Follow me on Instagram for gorgeous images from Wynd and more!

Ep 48 Shownotes

 

Sandra’s book: The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater

Ali’s book: The Wild Robot by Peter Brown. It’s also a film

The Politics of Fantasy by Brian Attebury

Catherine Crumb on her bicycle

Nicolas Bentley’s illustrations

Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories

Murderbot by Martha Wells. It’s also a TV series

The Martian by Andy Weir

Tik Tok by John Sladek

Peter Brown’s website

Sandra is not a dog groomer from the US

Thanks as always to Steve Vapour Trails for production support. Why not go and give his radio show a listen?