Book lovers dream (fantasticfiction.co.uk)

Member Name: kelr101

Product:	fantasticfiction.co.uk
Date:	21/08/06 (1325 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent resource of authors and literature database

Disadvantages: Only links to Amazon and Abe Books for purchasing

To me, the written word is a form of escapism. Escape from the menial day to day tasks, escape into a fantastical world of mystical characters and realms, escape into a world not directly known to myself. Because of my passion for reading I often find myself seeking new authors, or searching for the many novels written by a singular person. To this day I had never found a site true enough to reflect an authors complete works, let alone in chronological order. Then I found a minefield of information in the website “Fantastic Fiction”.

Fantastic Fiction is an incredible resource database containing information on over 180,000 books and 9,000 authors. Within its huge catalogue is information on new and old authors, literature that have won awards, bibliographies on authors and direct links to purchase books.

The home page of Fantastic Fiction has three search engines:

Browse Authors - This allows you to click on any alphabetical letter which in turn will take you to a comprehensive listing of all authors with the surname commencing with that letter. From this is a short listing of popular authors whose names once clicked, takes you directly to their author page.

Search Authors – Typing in either the first name or surname of an author will generate a search listing, from which you can either sort by Author Name (based on surname) or popularity of the author.

Search Books – This searches on keywords, and once a search listing has been generate, can be re-organised by either Popularity, Book title, first published or Author surname.

Generally I search for books using the Browse Authors, and from here explore further, but occasionally I have searched using the keyword section, for example searching for the keyword “enchantment” provided a list of over 100 book titles.


Alongside the search engines Fantastic Fiction also promotes new and upcoming (generally 2-4months in advance) books on its homepage. Currently the hardback section is shown on the homepage, with a link adjacent for paperback versions.

These promotions tend to have six key books on display, links to other new authors and cover the following genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller, Romance, Mainstream, and Historical.


The home page of Fantastic Fiction also has links to the following sections:

1. Awards – Links to various literature awards including “The Booker Prize”, “The Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year”, “Whitbread Prize” and “Dagger Awards”. Each link provides a brief description of the award in question, and a listing of the books that have won the award in chronological order.

2. New Books – Provides a listing of the books that have been released in the current month, or you can change this to 3 months prior or 3 months later to see proposed releases. The books can be sorted by Hardback, Paperback, Book Title, Release Date and Author.

3. Coming soon – Provides a listing of the books due to be released in the coming months. This currently stands at 754 books, and can also be sorted into your relevant categories.

4. Most Popular – This section covers the 1000 most popular books. I assume this is based on either sales, or the amount of clicks each page has generated. This list does change quite frequently though, but does provide inspiration if your looking for new authors to try.

5. Top 250 Authors – This is a relatively new section, and shows the most visited author pages over the last 30 days. Currently James Patterson is at the top of the list with 5,708 visits, followed by Nora Roberts 5,126 visits and Laurell K Hamilton 3,734 visits. You can narrow your search here by genre.

6. Series – Here you can find series that have been contributed to by more than one author. For example, “Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators” which have 44 books in the series, or “Best American Short Stories”. If you are looking for series by individual author you would need to consult that author’s page direct.

7. Years – Another relatively new section that provides information on a particular year. For example in 2003 there are details on “Authors who dies during 2003”, “2003 Lifetime Achievement Years”, “2003 Best Novel Awards”, “2003 Best First Novel Awards”, and “2003 Best Collection Awards”. This section actually provides quite valuable resource material.


The key component though to “Fantastic Fiction” is the detail on each individual author’s page. For example whilst searching for JK Rowling, a wealth of information was provided. This consisted of a short excerpt about the author, New and Forthcoming books, Series (in chronological order), Non-Fiction series, Non-Fiction, Awards, Books about JK Rowling, Links to websites (official websites are generally listed here), and books that JK Rowling supposedly recommends. Another key component to the author’s page is a listing of other authors that visitors to JK Rowling’s page have also visited. This can generally provide quite a useful inspirational guide, and lead you to authors that you may never have heard of before but share a similar genre of style of writing to the author in question.

Fantastic Fiction is certainly an incredible fountain of information for those who are such like-minded about literature. Author pages are complete and bursting with information regarding an author’s books and series. The fact that the books are listed chronologically has always been a godsend, especially to someone who always has to read books in order.

The website is a free resource, and has never received any complaints from me. I have discovered authors I have never heard of before, such as Jim Butcher, an American author whose books centre around the skills of a detective wizard, and Posie Graeme-Evans, an author whose work is very similar to that of Philippa Gregory, and of the same era.

Through each authors page you have the ability to select a particular book, which then leads you onto purchasing options from either abebooks, Amazon.com or Amazon UK. Unfortunately these links don’t open in a separate browser, but that’s an enhancement Fantastic Fiction may consider in the future.

In summary, for a literature fan, I would easily recommend Fantastic Fiction as an excellent resource item.

Summary: A fantastic resource for book readers