Fantasy at Kelson Reviews Stuff

Agatha All Along ★★★★★ The best Marvel TV I’ve seen since the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Solid cast, with Sixth Sense-level twists that grow organically over the course of the show.

The Bard’s Tale (reboot) ★★★☆☆ While I liked the attitude and metatextual humor, it was annoyingly linear when compared to the original series.

The Bard’s Tale IV ★★★★★ This is the game Might and Magic IX wanted to be. A classic party-based quest in an immersively detailed world. Only, you know, playable. Plus amazing music!

Beauty and the Beast (2010 Tour) ★★★☆☆ San Diego, 2012
The simpler staging & costumes work well enough, but the big numbers suffer from the smaller cast.

Beauty and the Beast (3D Theatricals) ★★★★★ Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center, 2016
An elaborate production by a local company with great performances from the leads, and a surprise understudy.

Belle’s Dreams of Adventure I never thought Belle gave up her dreams of adventure. I figured she had one, and gained the opportunity to have more. That’s why I hate the song ‘A Change in Me.’

Beowulf (in 3D) Impressive monsters and realistic animation. Better than 300, a bit reminiscent of the recent Lord of the Rings films.

Chivalry

Detailed calligraphy with a knight in armor and an old woman in a modern apron on either side of the holy grail.

★★★★★ Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran
Beautifully drawn and illustrated, a charming tale of Arthurian legend brought into modern times.

The Daughter of Odren ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
A small, stand-alone tale set in Earthsea, reminiscent of the folk tales glimpsed throughout the series. Betrayal, revenge, kindness, and power - and just living.

Doctor Strange ★★★★☆ Surrealism is the best part. Creative use of Escher gravity, portals, astral projection, time manipulation, incredibly detailed alterations to reality, and effects that make it all look incredible.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness ★★★☆☆ Not as bad as I expected, but the alternate realities weren’t as fun as the reality-bending in the first movie. And there was way too much reliance on the Idiot Ball.

Down Among the Sticks and Bones ★★★★★ Seanan McGuire
Creepy tale of twins transported to a world out of 1930s monster movies. Hangs together better than the first book.

A Dragon for William ★★★★★ Julie Czerneda
A welcome return to the world of A Turn of Light (though shorter!)

Dungeons & Dragons (2000 Movie) ★☆☆☆☆ So bad that the group of friends I was with started heckling the movie, and the rest of the audience joined in.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves ★★★★☆ To my shock and surprise, this D&D movie was actually good!

Earthsea (TV) Every once in a while I’m reminded of SyFy’s notoriously bad TV adaptation of Earthsea, and think, maybe I should watch it just once, like the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is not a review. This is why I still haven’t seen it.

Edward Scissorhands ★★★★☆ The film still holds up: the fairy tale music, the contrast between ‘normal’ suburbia and Edward’s home, and the tension between appearances and heart.

Every Heart a Doorway ★★★★☆ Seanan McGuire
A fast read with an intriguing concept that reverses multiple YA fantasy tropes.

A Game of Thrones (Book)

A rearing gryphon on a yellow background.

George R.R. Martin
I should have liked this book. I tend to enjoy big epic fantasy, but I just couldn’t get into this one.

The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time Book 12)

A man in late medieval/early Renaissance garb shakes his fist at the sky, revealing a long tattoo of a dragon wrapped around his arm. Behind him is a wooden building with a huge hole blasted in the side, and a woman in a similar-period skirt and bodice looks on.

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
Events move rapidly toward the apocalypse foretold in book one, and Sanderson shows he was a good choice to finish Jordan’s series.

Heroes of Might and Magic III ★★★★★ Possibly the high point in the turn-based strategy battle series.

The High and Faraway (Trilogy) ★★★☆☆ Greg Keyes
Not Keyes’ best work. Interesting concept and characters, but poorly edited and creepy (in a bad way).

Illuminations ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
Madcap magical damage control in a family of eccentric artist-magicians. Fun like A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive baking, but with a tighter story and better-defined characters.

The Illusionist For the first hour I couldn’t get past lead characters being colossally stupid, but the ending totally made up for it.

The Last Unicorn ★★★★★ Peter S. Beagle
Whimsical and melancholy tale of the last unicorn’s quest to find others of her kind. Well drawn characters and story, very much a classic.

Might and Magic IX It’s interesting and immersive, but some of the game and UI design choices make it really frustrating.

Minor Mage ★★★★☆ T. Kingfisher
By turns melancholy and creepy, with a dash of sarcastic armadillo.

New Spring (Comic Book) #1

Character collage: Portraits of two women, looking downward to the left and right. Behind each is another woman standing, one regally in an elaborate blue dress with a necklace and hair ornaments, the other in a plain white dress. They are also looking away from the center. In front are three men standing, two in armor with swords drawn. The man in the center is holding up his sword, dividing the image in half. The man on the right is holding his sword pointing downward. The man on the left is wearing middle-ages-looking clothes and balancing the point of a dagger on a fingertip.

The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good.

New Spring (Comics): The Long Publishing Saga It’s taken a long time (and three publishers) to complete this adaptation of the Wheel of Time prequel, even though it only covered eight standard-sized comic books

Night Watch (Discworld) ★★★★★ Terry Pratchett
Time travel, barricades and a mix of humor and darkness in a rebellion with good cops, bad cops and time monks.

Norse Mythology ★★★★☆ Neil Gaiman
Entertaining, sometimes gruesome, sometimes funny and sometimes sad collection of stories about Odin, Thor, Loki and the other gods of Asgard.

Pebble and Wren ★★★★★ Chris Hallbeck
Hilarious and heartwarming tale of a girl and the monster who lives under her bed.

People of the Crater ★★★☆☆ Andre Norton
Standard fantasy rescue-the-princess adventure with sci-fi trappings, nodding vaguely toward Hollow Earth tropes.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End ★★★★☆ A lot of fun, if hard to keep track of all the double-crosses. Doesn’t require intimate knowledge of the previous films, just knowing who the major players are.

The Sandman - Season One ★★★★★ The Sandman has been brought to life. And it’s amazing.

Stardust (Movie) ★★★★★ Light-hearted fantasy adventure built around a love story, Stardust takes itself just a touch more seriously than The Princess Bride. Enjoyable on its own, and stays true to the heart of the book.

Summer in Orcus ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
A portal fantasy that answers the questions: What kind of quest would Baba Yaga send an 11-year-old girl on, and how can she save a world anyway?

Tin Man ★★★☆☆ The Wizard of Oz meets The Dark Crystal by way of 1930s scifi was fascinating as a concept, but they managed to make it dull and tedious.

The Tombs of Atuan

A woman and a man look behind them as they run from something out of view, rocks and rubble falling around them. The woman has dark hair and pale skin, and wears a simple cloak with a ring of keys hanging from her belt. The man has slightly darker and redder skin, though he looks more like a white man blushing than the copper-brown look he should have according to the text, and he carries a staff with a serpentine dragon carved aroiund the top.

★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
Still my favorite of the Earthsea books. There’s something fascinating about a labyrinth that you must traverse in total darkness, keeping a map and counting turns in your head.

Tune in Tomorrow ★★★★☆ Randee Dawn
A fun romp through backstage theater, mystery, soap opera, mythology, fandom and screwball comedy romance tropes. (whew!)

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
A collection of short stories from early in Le Guin’s career, spanning her first sale through the time when she’d begun to be recognized as a major force in the genre.

A Wizard of Earthsea

A drawing of a young man with reddish skin (though still lighter than it should be) and long black hair blowing behind him in the wind, holding a staff with a sinuous dragon carved round the end, stands in a tiny sailboat with eyes carved on either side of the rudder. He wears a blue cloak lined with fur that conceals his torso and one leg, a red scarf or hood thrown back over his shoulder, fur-lined boots, Waves crash around him, and swirling light reaches from his outstretched hand toward the spine of the book. If you look closely at the spine, you can see that it cost $3.95 at the time.

★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earthsea series is one of my regular re-reads. It starts here, with the tale of how a goatherd grew into a wizard in a world where magic is woven through everything from the poorest village to the greatest palace. How he released a terrifying evil in his youth, and how he sailed the world seeking how to make up for his mistake.

A Wizard of Earthsea (Graphic Novel)

A painting, either watercolor or a similar style. Seen from above, a lone figure stands on a sandy beach, holding a staff. His shadow stretches back toward the ocean, toward the bottom of the image, widening and losing its shape as it crosses the line of foam and falls on the blue-green water beyond it. The land and sea are almost, but not quite, evenly split, with a curving line of wet sand running across the middle of the cover.

★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin and Fred Fordham
Fordham’s watercolor-style art is absolutely gorgeous. The adaptation plays to the medium’s strengths, allowing the visuals to tell the story when possible, keeping Le Guin’s prose when needed. Wide seascapes, rocky coasts, forested landscapes, people (not whitewashed!) and dragons…

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking ★★★★★ T. Kingfisher
A fun and original take on the teenage wizard genre. With an immortal carnivorous sourdough starter named Bob.

The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
The original two stories set in Earthsea, before Le Guin wrote the novels. Each stand-alone, each interesting both in itself and in seeing what the series and its themes grew from.

Xanadu (Stage Musical) ★☆☆☆☆ Segerstrom Center, 2009
The stage musical of Xanadu is a silly, self-aware parody that revels in its camp. I really liked about 10% of it. The rest, not so much.

Reviews Tagged “Fantasy”