About

Fantasy Book News is a site years in the making. I’ve been reading fantasy novels just about as long as I can remember. I started reading fantasy novels as a child with the “Choose your own Adventure” series, but was quickly on to the meatier Lone Wolf series, tearing through the first 17 or 18 books in the series in my pre-teen years. Joe Dever, the author of the Lone Wolf series, contributed to the development of an AD&D setting based on the Lone Wolf world, and I was quickly caught up in the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels. I have an autographed copy of The Halfling’s Gem by R.A. Salvatore that I got when I was thirteen.

Also around the time my young mind was filling with stories of the fantastic, I was learning everything there is to know about computers. My father bought us an Atari 800 and I started working with with computers from a very young age. I’ve been working in the web design and development fields since college graduation, and this site is built with my skills learned as a professional web designer and developer.

I believe that one of the reasons I enjoy reading fantasy novels so much stems from the fact that I spend much of my day immersed in technology, honing my skills with the latest and greatest web technologies. It is nice for me to have an outlet for a complete departure from the modern world, and return to a time when things were simpler. Unlike many fantasy fans, I don’t have much of a taste for science-fiction, and I believe my job has something to do with this.

So, it is with great pleasure that I welcome you to my online home, to share a joy that for me started in childhood and has continued into adulthood. I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on current and classic fiction, and invite you to join the community and voice your opinion on the books I review in the comments section.

Contact

If you’d like to get in touch with me, feel free to drop me a line at jpell185[at]yahoo[dot]com.