Welcome to The Fantasy Hive – a hub for all things fantasy. Book reviews, games, author interviews, features, serial fiction – you name it, we’re working our arses off to provide it!

The Hive is a collaborative site made up of unique personalities who just want to celebrate fantasy – and to have fun while we’re doing it, dammit. Our official tagline – ‘Fantasy, together’ – embodies our shared goal, which is to unify fans of speculative fiction through shared enthusiasm and appreciation of the genre. (You can also find us doing this on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.)

Want to contact us via email? Just head over to this page. Want to meet the team? Keep reading!


Meet The Hive!


Bethan Hindmarch

(Editor-in-Chief)

Down on the South West coast of Wales is a woman juggling editing, reading, writing and parenting. Maybe if she got her arse off Twitter for long enough, Beth might actually get more done. Surrounded by rugged coastline, dramatic castles and rolling countryside, Beth loves nothing more than shutting her door on all that and curling up with a cuppa and a book instead. Her favourite authors include Jen Williams, Anna Stephens and Joe Abercrombie; her favourite castles include Kidwelly, Carreg Cennen and Pembroke.


Nils Shukla

(Assistant Editor/Instagram Empress)

Nils is an avid reader of high fantasy & grimdark. She looks for monsters, magic and bloody good battle scenes. If heads are rolling, and guts are spilling, she’s pretty happy! Her obsession with the genre sparked when she first entered the realms of Middle Earth, and her heart never left there! Her favourite authors include; Tolkien, Jen Williams, John Gwynne, Joe Abercrombie, Alix E Harrow, and Fonda Lee. If Nils isn’t reading books then she’s creating stylised Bookstagram photos of them instead! You can find her on Twitter: @nilsreviewsit and Instagram: @nils.reviewsit


T. O. Munro

(Top Reviewer/Pontificator/Unseen Academic)

T. O. Munro works in education and enjoys nothing more than escaping into a good book. He wrote his first book (more novella than novel) aged 13, and has dabbled in writing stories for nearly four decades since then. A plot idea hatched in long hours of exam invigilation finally came to fruition with the self-publishing of ‘Lady of the Helm’ – first in the Bloodline trilogy – in June 2013, followed by ‘Wrath of the Medusa,’ ‘Master of the Planes’ and ‘The Medusa’s Daughter’. Find him on twitter @tomunro.


Jonathan Thornton

(Reviewer/Interviewer/All-Round Brainbox)

Jonathan Thornton is from Scotland but grew up in Kenya, and now lives in Liverpool. He has a lifelong love of fantasy and science fiction, kicked off by reading The Lord Of The Rings and Dune at an impressionable age. Nowadays his favourite writers are Michael Moorcock, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Patricia McKillip and Ursula Le Guin. He has a day job working with mosquitoes, and one day wants to finish writing his own stories. You can find Jonathan on Twitter at @JonathanThornt2.


Kat

(Reviewer)

Kat is not so secretly a very small troll hoarding and devouring books in the South West. She works in education and has played her part indoctrinating the youth of today into Dungeons & Dragons. Unsurprisingly, weird and wonderful creatures feature heavily in her favourite books, but she’s also partial to court intrigue, heists, and a good old-fashioned grumpy-sunshine dynamic. You can find her @verysmalltroll across the usual social media sites.

 


Cat Treadwell

(Reviewer)

Cat is a non-fiction (so far) author and professional Pagan Priest/Chaplain living in Derbyshire. She hates writing bios.
Ok, seriously: Cat’s been a bookworm her entire life, with a special place in her heart for ‘genre’ fiction. She managed to complete an English degree while maintaining a love of Shakespeare, Gothic fiction and imagination in general, and is absolutely thrilled with the amount of amazing modern fantasy, scifi and horror emerging into the world in these crazy times.
She lives with her husband, one black cat and two crazy border collies. Please send snacks and coffee.

 


Vinay Vasan

(Reviewer)

A consultant turned banker, Vinay hides his true occupation as a reader behind mundane daily activities.
Based in Bangalore, India, Vinay’s interest in fantasy is a by-product of the rich Indian mythological stories he was exposed to as a child. He read Lord of the Rings and the rest is history.
Action, world-building, snarky characters & witty dialog make up for Vinay’s blend when it comes to fantasy & some of his favorites authors include Jim Butcher, Robin Hobb, GRR Martin, Joe Abercrombie among others.

Abigail Stevens

(Reviewer)

Abigail double majored in English and French at UC Santa Barbara and completed an MPhil in Medieval Literature at Oxford University. As much as she loves exploring new places, she is tired of moving, having gone from California to the UK and now living in Boston. She writes about pop culture and travel and produces a newsletter on these subjects in addition to writing for Screen Rant and undertaking other freelance projects. In between all this, Abigail is listening to Taylor Swift and Florence + The Machine, rewatching old cartoons, reading new fantasy books, or going to a drag show in Boston.


Lucy Nield

(Reviewer)

Lucy Nield PhD Candidate, University of Liverpool. 

Twitter: @lucy_nield1 Instagram: @lucy_dogs_books

Lucy Nield grew up in Wales but now lives in Liverpool. She is a PhD student in the Department of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests surround animals in speculative fiction, ignited by Paolo Bacigalupi’s ‘The People of the Sand and Slag.’ She is one of the organisers for the annual Current Research in Speculative Fiction conference at the University of Liverpool, where interdisciplinary researchers come together and present their research on SSF. Lucy’s favourite writers are Bacigalupi, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin and Adrian Tchaikovsky. Her day job is in HR, but she loves to read, write and teach fiction.

Lucy is an organiser for the University of Liverpool Current Research in Speculative Fiction Conference and she is co-editor of the Ariadnes Thread Journal. You can find Lucy on Twitter

 


 

J.L. Brown

(Reviewer)

J.L. Brown has been in love with books ever since reading the Boxcar Children. Once determined to be an editor, they were part of many First Reads programs and attend numerous book conventions. A change of career path (as happens when in college) led to graduate school, where they study neurological diseases, but they continue to read voraciously in their non-existent spare time. They live with a green-cheeked velociraptor who has the run of the house and has an appropriate fantasy-themed name. All-time favorite books include Sunshine by Robin McKinley, The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss and Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey.


Scarlett

(Reviewer)

Scarlett is an avid reader and world traveler. Her earliest childhood memories growing up in Germany are filled with fairytales and castles. As an adult, she developed an interest in all things history and has mingled it with her love for reading fantasy a few years ago. She is especially fond of timelines as well as epic / low fantasy reads. Scarlett has been blogging about books across genres since 2018 but always finds her way back home to the fantastical. When she isn’t reading, she enjoys family time, running, hiking, and traveling. You can find her on Insta and Twitter @ReadzandRunz


Hil

(Reviewer)

After being told “I don’t think that’s likely, do you?” by the careers advisor when she declared that she wanted to be a forensic scientist, Hil settled in South Wales and mainly lurks on Twitter instead. When not wrangling kobolds, or disrupting cultish shenanigans, she enjoys reading fantasy and old-ladies-solving-unlikely-murders-in-sleepy-villages type books. Reading? Nah, devouring. Omnomnom. Easily persuaded by tea and/or cake, as long as it lacks anything that could even remotely smell of bitter almonds…


 

Dorian Hart

Dorian Hart grew up in Narnia, Prydain, Middle Earth, etc. as much as he did in the Philly suburbs. He somehow leveraged a creative writing degree from Wesleyan U. into a 20-year career as a video game designer (Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock, Terra Nova, System Shock 2, Thief, Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich, BioShock, Card Hunter). He became a novelist and stay-at-home dad several years ago, and has written and self-published the first two books (The Ventifact Colossus and The Crosser’s Maze) of an eventual five-book epic fantasy series. Dorian wrote the interactive SF adventure “Choice of the Star Captain” for Choice of Games. While he suspects he’s far less witty and talented than the other members of the Hive, he would probably beat them all at ping-pong.


LEGACY MEMBERS:

A. Z. Anthony

A.Z. Anthony is best known for his genre-warping fiction whose popularity commonly crashes global markets. Also, his humility. When he’s not hammering away on a keyboard writing fiction, he’s hammering away on a keyboard writing for The Fantasy Hive.

 


G.D. Penman

(Agony Aunt/Actual Wizard)

G. D. Penman is the author of more books than you can shake a reasonably-sized stick at, including series like Witch of Empire, Savage Dominion, Deepest Dungeon and The Last King.

Before finally realising that the career’s advisor lied to them about making a living as an author, G. D. Penman worked as an editor, tabletop game designer, and literally every awful demeaning job that you can think of in-between.

They are a veteran of the battlefields of Azeroth, Lordran, Tamriel and Thedas, but they left their heart in Baldur’s Gate.

Nowadays they can mostly be found writing fantasy novels and smoking a pipe in the sunshine.

They live in Dundee, Scotland with their partner, children, dog and cats. Just… so many cats.


Shona Kinsella

Shona Kinsella is a Scottish fantasy author who lives on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond with her husband and three children. She is the author of Ashael Rising (Unbound, 2017), Petra McDonald and the Queen of the Fae (Fox Spirit, 2018) and Miranya’s Oath (an illustrated web serial). You can find out more about her work at www.shonakinsella.com and she loves talking to new people on Twitter www.twitter.com/shona_kinsella


Sean Sheehan

Sean Sheehan likes fantasy because, being non-fiction, it immerses the reader in a fabricated lie and yet, at its best, it conveys truths. Books like Pullman’s  His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust  and the fiction of Ursula Le Guin are his top reads. Sheehan also writes about photography for Lens Culture and The Eye of Photography.

 


James Latimer

(Reviewer)

James Latimer is the curmudgeonly alter-ego of a mild-mannered civil servant. When not lurking around the internet, he’s usually reading or writing fantasy fiction. His corporeal form resides in South West England with a very forgiving wife and very demanding cat.


Rebekah Teller

Rebekah Teller grew up in the wild backwoods of southern Missouri. Raised by crawdads and water gliders, she became fascinated with communication at an early age. Her lifelong quest for love and chocolate motivated her to assimilate into human culture, which she steadily began after discovering graphic design. One day, while stumbling through a cave barefoot, she rescued a lost storyteller, who ensnared her heart and taught her to speak. She needs fantasy in her life to feel like a real person and her favorite reads are dark fantasy indie books.


 

Asha Hartland

(Reviewer)

Asha is a book blogger, editor, and author assistant who hasn’t taken her nose out of a book since the day she learned to read. She likes her fantasy warm, comforting, and full of courtly splendour; throw in a good masquerade ball, some amazing female characters, and a hot wizard or two, and she’ll be hooked. Find her (and her ridiculously fluffy cat) on Twitter  @cat_book_tea

 


David Tierney

(Reviewer)

An Irish ex-bookseller living in Liverpool, David spends his time writing, reading, or wandering aimlessly through parks and woodlands.

Currently, he is writing a novel as part of a Creative Writing PhD at the University of Liverpool which explores non-human animal communication, but previously, he lived in the Shire and Lothlorien before moving to Arrakis and Gethen. Accompanied by a large cup of peppermint tea, he will happily read almost anything, especially if it focusses on nature and the nonhuman.

You can find him procrastinating on Twitter @writedavidwrite or on Instagram @thattierney


Kitvaria Sarene

(Admin Assistant)

Kitvaria Sarene has been a bookseller and purchaser in Germany since 2003.

Due to eyes that refuse to do their job correctly, audiobooks are her preferred format. Her obsession with, uhm… love of books … only grew over the years, just as her love for fantasy and sci-fi did! Especially interested in indie publishing and discovering new talents, she has been a judge for SPFBO ever since 2018.

She reads every subgenre and style of fantasy, as long as it’s not overly romantic. While kissy books are fine, she just doesn’t have any pations for “the feels” herself. You can also find her in plenty of other bookish places


Kai Greenwood

(Hobbit Wrangler)

For the last twenty years I have lived and worked within a stone’s throw of J.R.R. Tolkien’s old stomping grounds in south Birmingham.

The influence has rubbed off.

I love myths, ancient forests, and misty ruins and its no surprise that I have never fallen out of love with the works of Alan Garner, Ursula Le Guin and Tolkien.

You can find Kai on his website or on Twitter @LostDunedan


 

Martin Summerfield

(Reviewer)

Martin Summerfield is from Liverpool. His love for fantasy started after his brother got him into The Belgariad after primary school teachers thought he couldn’t read, when he just needed glasses. It all snowballed from there into Roger Zelazny, Neil Gaiman and Tad Williams and got a bit out of hand. He writes his own stories that he hopes to publish some day soon. He also illustrates and once made his own tarot deck as a gift to his wife.


THE ORIGINAL FANTASY FIVE:

 


Laura M. Hughes

(Queen Bee)

Laura founded The Fantasy Hive in 2017; her sanity has been steadily disintegrating ever since. She works as a freelance editor and author beneath the grey, pigeon-filled skies of northern England, and has also written articles for Fantasy Faction and Tor.com. Her first LitRPG novel, God of Gnomes, was released in 2019 under the pen name Demi Harper.

 


 

Mike ‘Everest’ Evans

(Co-Founder and Top Contributor/Overachiever)

Mike ‘Everest’ Evans is a Security, Intelligence and Crisis Management consultant by day, and reader, reviewer and aspiring writer by night.

Day to day is a mix of natural disasters, war & terrorism, geo-political instability, crime, corporate espionage, and most recently cyber warfare – stopping them, not being involved in them, or so he claims. Having worked in ‘Intelligence’, were he to write a book he’d not be short of experiences to draw from, though the security services might have a thing or two to say about that.

Mike can be found on twitter @MikeEverestEvs and on his personal site.