Tag: Fantasy

Posted on
by

Wheel of Time Book 11: Knife of DreamsI finally talked myself into reading New Spring, the prequel novel to Robert Jordan’s interminable long-running Wheel of Time series. It’s actually a very interesting character study of young Moiraine, and much more engrossing than the last two books in the series have been—perhaps because I don’t expect it to advance the plot.

Anyway, I’ve spent the last week thinking, “I really ought to see if there’s any news on Book 11.” I finally remembered it when I was in front of a computer, and discovered that Knife of Dreams has just been finished, the cover announced last week, and the book is scheduled to be released on October 11.

I came into the series when Book 8, Path of Daggers was the latest, and Winter’s Heart was released during the year it took me to read the series up to that point. I really liked books 1 (once it got going), 4, and 5, and book 2 still managed to keep me up for hours trying to finish when I really should’ve just gone to bed. The problem is that after book 5, he stopped writing novels, and started writing a novel. A really long one that spans multiple books. (Seriously, how long can he drag out the Faile kidnapping story?)

Posted on
by

[Cover]Also in comics news, the nine-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere begins in June.

The basic premise is this: In urban areas, we tend to tune out the homeless to the point where we don’t even see them. What if we really don’t see them? What if there’s another world, just slightly out of sync with this one, where the rules are all different. (JMS used a similar springboard for Midnight Nation, but took it in a completely different direction.) There’s poverty, and scavenging… but there’s also magic, and honor, and a society with its own strange codes. The story follows everyman Richard Mayhew as, through a simple act of kindness, he slips through the cracks from London Above to London Below. In order to get back, he has to help a mysterious girl named Door on her quest to find her family’s killers and honor their legacy…and escape the assassins tracking them both!

It’s hard to guess how well this will work. Neil Gaiman’s comics and prose are both fantastic (in every sense of the word). Comic book adaptations of his prose, though, haven’t been nearly as good. The writers have a tendency to preserve too much of the text, and it gets bogged down in narration. It happened with “Murder Mysteries,” with “Only the End of the World Again”, and with “The Price.”

Neverwhere has two advantages, though. It started life as a TV script (he only wrote the novel because he realized that budget limitations and producer interference would prevent them from doing the story “right”), and TV, like comics, is a visual medium. And with nine issues, there should be plenty of room to show, not tell, the story.

Posted on
by

Last week, Sci Fi Wire announced casting for Earthsea*, a 4-hour miniseries to air in December. This was promptly lost amid all the cries of “Why the frell is Sci Fi picking up the Farscape miniseries?”

(Trying to keep this spoiler-free for those who haven’t read the books…)

As I understand it, they are only adapting the first two books. This in itself is odd, as the original trilogy is essentially one work about Ged’s life – youth, adulthood, and age – and key events in his life’s quest. Additionally, the books serve as a travelogue, and by the end of the trilogy you’ve seen nearly every part of the Archipelago. When originally announced (three years ago!) in May 2001, they planned to adapt all three novels*, and announced it as a 6-hour mini when Philippa Boyens was attached to the project* in August of that year. Well, we’re only getting 4 hours, and there’s been no mention of Boyens at all in the last two press releases. (I imagine if she were still on board, they’d be shouting about the Oscar-winning screenwriter.)

Presumably someone declared they were only getting 4 hours, and they decided it would be better to give full time to two books than chop up all three.

Casting includes Shawn Ashmore (Bobby/Iceman in X-Men) as the young wizard Sparrowhawk, Danny Glover as his master Ogion (from book one, A Wizard of Earthsea, and Kristin Kreuk as his opponent/ally Tenar (from book two, The Tombs of Atuan).

Glover sounds like a good choice, and Ashmore should do well at least as the younger Ged. I’ve never actually watched Smallville, so I’m not familiar with Kreuk’s acting.

What’s interesting about this casting is that they’ve (sort of) reversed the races of Tenar and Ged. Earthsea is set in an island archipelago not unlike the South Pacific, and the people tend to look like Pacific Islanders, with skin ranging from light brown or red to dark brown. Tenar’s people are considered unusual for having very light skin (and sometimes blond hair, though Tenar’s is black). When she becomes known outside her homeland, they call her the White Lady. Ged is often described as having red skin. It’s probably a business decision to maximize viewership, since there is a prevalent notion that films with minority leads are geared toward that minority. [Edit: I regret that this didn’t make me angrier at the time, rather than just reacting as “huh, that’s weird.”]

Anyway, I’m straddling the line between cautiously-optimistic and cynical. Hey, if nothing else, knowing the series was finally on its way prompted me to pick up the books again.

Look in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section for Ursula Le Guin.

*In 2009, when SciFi changed their name to SyFy, they dropped all their old news articles. Fortunately, archive.org has most of them.

Posted on
by

Miss two weeks and they pull the rug out from under you:

…the cast, crew, writers and producers of Angel deserve to be able to wrap up the series in a way befitting a classic television series and that is why we went to Joss to let him know that this would be the last year of the series on The WB

At least the WB had the decency to let them know in time to do some sort of wrap-up, unlike the way certain other shows were treated by channels that shall not be named.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the offbeat has to make way for the mainstream. I don’t care if the WB puts up some new “reality” show, as long as I can find the kind of shows I like to watch. With so many hundreds of cable and satellite stations available, you’d think there’d be room for shows like VR.5 and Crusade.

Still, Angel managed five years, which is pretty damn respectable – especially in the modern era of cancelling shows without even airing half a season.

Joss Whedon sums up the perils of producing anything that strays too far from the beaten path:

“Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I took the road less traveled by
and they CANCELLED MY FRIKKIN’ SHOW.
I totally shoulda took the road
that had all those people on it.
Damn.”

Posted on
by

J. Gregory Keyes has fast become one of those authors whose work I will pick up knowing nothing more than who wrote it. I enjoyed his work in the Babylon 5 and Star Wars universes, but after reading the four novels of The Age of Unreason and these two, I can say I’ll definitely be picking up The Briar King when it comes out in January.

Now, The Age of Unreason is probably Keyes’ most well-known work to date. (If the title doesn’t sound familiar, chances are you’ve heard of the first novel, Newton’s Cannon). It takes place in an alternate Eighteenth Century in which Isaac Newton discovered the key to alchemy, transforming the world with new technology… and setting off an arms race of sorts. What begins as an alternate history becomes an epic battle for the future of the world, and ultimately of humanity itself.

While I’d recommend someone curious about Keyes’ writing start with Newton’s Cannon, I’d like to call attention to his earliest published novels, The Waterborn and The Blackgod, collectively known as The Chosen of the Changeling.
Continue reading →