The Amulet of Samarkand (Bartimaeus Series #1)

From The Time Machine to Kirk and Uhura‘s unprecedented kiss, speculative fiction has long concerned itself with breaking barriers and exploring issues of race, inequality, and injustice. The fantastical elements of genre, from alien beings to magical ones, allow writers to confront controversial issues in metaphor, granting them a subversive power that often goes unheralded. On this, the […]

Footnotes in fiction are a tricky business. Handled poorly, they can be the bane of a reader’s existence (1). But in the right hands and the right circumstances, footnotes open up entirely new narrative possibilities (2). Footnotes can add context, build lore and history, introduce new characters, misdirect where desired, or even just make you […]