New fantasy fiction series launches on Kindle Review by Rhiannon Daniel

The Science Fiction genre is dying, according to fiction watchers. So what are people reading? Well, apart from celebrity biogs and cookery books, it seems the Future Fantasy is going some of the way to replacing Sci-fi.

Jeniche of Antar, (currently out on Kindle,) by Graeme K Talboys, is one of the latest. I've probably been through the collections of four or five FF authors in the past ten years or so, and have watched the niche grow myself.

I really like this book, with one or two reservations, naturally, they are mostly writer nitpicks about structure and the balance between characterisation and action, but overall it's a romantic, romping, yomping fast paced and absolutely beautifully described journey with a nice twist in the end, followed by a final mystery that leaves you wanting more. Job done.

Graeme's powers of description are more than just evocative, it's rare to read a book where complicated chase and battle scenes are so well drawn. As I said I did have to fill in the gaps myself a bit to engage fully with the five or six main protagonists as real, three- dimensional beings, but to be fair, as a female reader, I find with male writers this is often a challenge, I hope Graeme would take this as positive feedback especially as it appears that most of the market for this subject matter is dominated by women!

This isn't a long book, it's a perfect length for the subject matter, once absorbed I found I was making the pilgrimage myself, it was nice to be immersed, and there's real congruence in Jeniche, a lot of future fantasy books lurch into surreal too much for me.

It has all the ingredients: action, philosophical challenge, spirituality, mystery, struggle of good over evil, great descriptions of terrain and, especially as the fascination of the fantasy for me is always the context of a civilisation existing at some point in the future following a global catastrophe – in Jeniche it's called the 'Evanescence' – following which humanity has rebuilt but only at the developmental level of 14th or 15th century Europe. I don't know exactly why this is always such a fascinating notion, there are probably sociological reasons but it's a very popular fantasy, probably kicking off in earnest around the time of the Mad Max movies.

There's the current obsession with getting back to basics, a romanticised idea of a pre-technological society, thoughts about a real possible global conflagration and the outcome, all of which thread through much of literature, movie and games themes right now, so it's pretty clear that this interest will feed the growing future fantasy genre, too.

Graeme pulls it off for me. He manages that difficult blend of creating content that makes some kind of sense empathically, while drawing a completely different civilisation recognisable as a cohesive, organic and complete environment.

"There are more fantasy successes, and a constant wave of new writers who are being heralded as the next big thing." according to lit blogger Mark Charan Newton. "It seems readers can't get enough of fantasy fiction."

Since we're reviewing a book loosely in the genre, it's worth looking at how hardcore readers are buying in to what is currently a bit of a double edged book market. Reading for pleasure, especially among boys, is at an all time low.

Conversely, the advent of e-book readers has given the cultural import of reading a boost, although looking at the cost of Kindle downloads, not a great deal of financial nourishment. Hard to tell if this is due to recession or cultural shift, time will tell.

Newton agrees that it's partly because more women than men read books. Women read much more Fantasy fiction, especially Dark Fantasy, than SF. Increasing rates of change in science and technology are also making it more difficult for anyone writing near-future SF to stay ahead. And literary fiction is starting to pinch SF ideas. Jeanette Winterson, Toby Litt and Margaret Atwood have all taken SF motifs and commercially adapted them.

New readers have been primed on the books and films of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings.

There will always be a hard core of Star Wars, Trekkies and Dr Who fans but if the evidence is that fantasy books are overtaking the genre, Graeme K Tallboys deserves to be a well regarded exponent of the form.

Graeme K Talboys was born in Hammersmith, London. In between teaching in schools and museums, he has written nine works of non-fiction, eight of which have been published on museum education, drama, and matters spiritual. He has written twelve novels.

Rhiannon Daniel is a former journalist and writer, psychotherapist and rock musician.