Tag: Fantasy

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Epic Pooh – Michael Moorcock on the state of fantasy literature, originally written in the 1970s but updated for the 21st century. The title comes from comparing the style of Lord of the Rings to Winnie the Pooh. I have no problem reading and enjoying both his work and Tolkien’s, and it doesn’t bother me that Phillip Pullman dislikes Tolkien’s work as well.

Hixie’s Natural Log: Evolution in the species “Companies” – Microsoft’s dominance of the industry has killed off or absorbed many smaller companies. Those that have survived are those with strategies resistant to Microsoft’s tactics. The article looks at Mozilla, Google, and Apple.

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Empire of IvoryI just found out that Empire of Ivory, the fourth book in the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik, came out today!

The series takes place in an alternate version of the Napoleonic Wars in which dragons exist, and are used in warfare. This results in an odd mix of naval battles and aerial dogfighting, with full human crews carrying bombs, guns, etc. Dragons bond with the first human they see (not telepathically, like in the Pern books, just emotionally), so captains in the Aerial Corps are given quite a bit of leeway—though the entire Corps is considered rather unsavory by the general public.

It focuses on naval Captain Will Laurence, who captures a French vessel just as an egg is ready to hatch. The dragonlet Temeraire imprints on him, and he is whisked away from the sea and into the world of air warfare. (Think of it as Master and Commander with dragons instead of ships.) During the first 3 books they go through training together, travel to China to discover Temeraire’s heritage, and find themselves called back to Europe in the thick of the war.

Our friend andrea-wot lent us the first three books last year, and we both really enjoyed them. In fact, Naomi Novik has joined the short list of authors whose new books I’ll pick up sight unseen (currently sharing that spot with Neil Gaiman and Greg Keyes), though for some reason I thought this one was coming out in October. I’m definitely going to be stopping by Borders or Barnes & Noble tomorrow to pick this up. If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend picking up the first book, His Majesty’s Dragon (in the US; in the UK it’s just called Temeraire) and giving it a test flight.

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I’ve held off on posting funny spam subject lines lately, but I just had to comment on this pair. First up:

Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken.

It’s a quote from Lord of Chaos, the 6th book in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series, The Wheel of Time. The next one is a bit less obvious:

If Lan was attempting jokes, however feeble and wrongheaded, he was changing.

I wasn’t sure about this one, since there must be other stories with characters named Lan, but Google Book Search found it in book 5, The Fires of Heaven.

I’ve seen lots of spam that used filler from The Wizard of Oz and other novels old enough to be in the public domain. Project Gutenberg and the like have been transcribing them, making free plain-text ebooks for years, making it easy to snag a couple of lines of actual English text.

In theory this should be harder to identify as filler than randomly-generated text. Continue reading →

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Stardust PosterWent out to see Stardust with a group of friends, and we all enjoyed it. People have been comparing it to The Princess Bride, and it’s an apt comparison: both are light-hearted fantasy adventures with a love story at the heart. Stardust takes itself a bit more seriously, though there’s plenty of humor.

The concept: Three groups of people pursue a fallen star (in this world, a woman). Tristran wants to bring the star back to impress a girl. The cruel princes of Stormhold are seeking the necklace she wears; the one who claims the gem claims the throne. The witch Lamia wants to cut out her heart to restore her own youth for another 400 years. Tristran gets there first, but has to bring her back without the more malicious seekers reaching her.

There’s swordplay, magic, betrayal, comedy, and romance. Michelle Pfeiffer throws herself gleefully into her role as the witch Lamia. Prince Septimus oozes slime as a cross between Prince Humperdink and Professor Snape. And Robert De Niro’s Captain Shakespeare is… indescribable. Charlie Cox as Tristran and Claire Danes as Yvaine (the star) manage to hold their own with the impressive cast of villains and supporting characters.

I was the only one of the four who had read the original novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, but for the most part I didn’t mind the changes. I did think the climactic battle got a bit overblown after a while, and I really missed one aspect of Una’s character which is revealed near the end of the book.

On a related note, it seems that in the last 3 weeks, the movie “adaptation” (and I use the term loosely) of The Dark Is Rising has been retitled as The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, probably reflecting how far it seems to have strayed from the source material.

Stardust does it right: change the details, or even the structure if you have to, to make it work in a different medium. But stay true to the heart and spirit of the book.

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I walked over to the nearby Barnes & Noble at lunch just to see whether anyone was lined up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows yet. At 1:00 there were two people sitting in front of the door with camp chairs, one with a book and the other with a laptop, but that was all.

It was nowhere near the level of the iPhone launch last month, but then there are many more places you can buy Harry Potter, and there’s little risk of the book selling out.

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Saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought it was better than the fourth film, and up there with Prisoner of Azkaban, though Katie liked Goblet of Fire better. The main thing I would really have liked to see more of: Hogwarts in rebellion. “It unscrews the other way.”

We agreed that the preview of The Dark is Rising looks terrible. It looks like they’re turning it into an action movie. Will Stanton with magic powers?!?!? It’s sad, since Christopher Eccleston seemed like perfect casting for the Dark Rider.

Saw a second preview of The Golden Compass, though, and it looks even better than the first one we saw. They could still screw it up, but I at least have high hopes for this one. The visual look is dead-on (which was my first reaction to the very first Fellowship teaser), and it looks like they’ve stuck with the book’s concepts.