Pages Tagged “Fantasy”
Reviews
- 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
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)
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)
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
- 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
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
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)
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.
Blog Posts
- HP8
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was an impressive ending to the series…but what impresses me most is that it actually finished.
- Comic-Con Quotes: Twisting Genres
Authors China Mieville, Naomi Novik, Scott Westerfeld, Daryl Gregory and more discuss mixing things up with books that defy classification.
- Comic-Con Quotes: Epic Fantasy
Fun quotes from fantasy authors Brandon Sanderson, Christopher Paolini, Patrick Rothfuss, Megan Whalen Turner, and Brent Weeks.
- Finished The Gathering Storm (Wheel of Time) – It’s Good
The first book of the 3-part conclusion to The Wheel of Time lives up to its promise. It may not be 100% Robert Jordan, but it’s the next best thing.
- Wheel of Time Finale: 3-Book Split
The last Wheel of Time book is so massive it’s being split into 3 volumes. I’m half annoyed, but it doesn’t surprise me that it needs that many pages.
- Waitaminute
Listening to “Into the West” (end credits song from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King). Lyric, “Across the sea a pale moon rises.” It’s all about crossing the sea into the west to go to elf heaven. Presumably the speaker is standing at the Grey Havens, waiting for the ships to arrive and […]
- Links, from the Astronomical to the Surreal
The Value of Space Exploration, via Phil Plait. Neil Gaiman on The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, a painting by a madman that’s inspired its share of stories. And from Comics Worth Reading, our WTF entry for the day: Paradise by the GoPhone Light. It’s a commercial done in the style of a music video, featuring […]
- The Born Queen
We’ve both finished reading The Born Queen, the conclusion to Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Yesterday we spent the day reading in tandem on the couch: I read book 3, Katie read book 4, and finished within an hour of each other. Determined to catch up, I read 100 pages last night […]
- The Race for Eslen
After working my way through The Briar King in bits here and there, I made time for The Charnel Prince. I finished the second book Tuesday evening, and I’m currently 100 pages into The Blood Knight. Meanwhile, I’ve been talking about the books (Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone) a lot, trying not to drop spoilers in case […]
- No Time for the End of the World
Well, my copy of The Born Queen has arrived via UPS, and I’m nowhere near finished re-reading the first three books of Greg Keyes’ The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. I’d hoped to start at the beginning of March, but I was in the middle of the Trade Pact books and wanted to finish that […]
- Completing the Series
Yesterday I finally had time to finish reading To Trade the Stars, the final book in Julie E. Czerneda’s “Trade Pact Universe” trilogy. Now I’m ready to pick up The Briar King again, since the final book of Greg Keyes’ fantasy quartet, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, comes out at the end of the month. […]
- Golden Compass, Tin Man
Saw The Golden Compass. Enjoyed it a lot, though it felt very rushed, and I think it would have benefitted from having the actual ending instead of cutting it off early. Here’s hoping they do well enough in the long run to greenlight the next film. Now I can re-read the books. Also watched Tin […]
- Legality Links
Organization for Transformative Works – dedicated to protecting the expression of fan fiction, fan art, etc. (via Naomi Novik) Open Standards, One Web, and Opera – Just why are standards important, anyway? (via Opera Watch) Speaking of Opera, their EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft has been making waves. Responses at CSS3.info, Web Standards Project, Slashdot […]
- Fantasy Feuds
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 […]
- Temeraire Flies Again
I 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 […]
- Spam from the Third Age
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 […]
- Stardust is Good
Went 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: […]
- Waiting for the Wizard
I walked over to the nearby Barnes and Noble at lunch just to see whether anyone was lined up for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
- Fantasy Film Follow-Up
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 […]
- Fantastic Films?
2007 looks to be a good year for fantasy adaptations, at least of books I’ve read. What I’ve seen of Stardust (Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess) looks great. I’m psyched up for His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman)—and I’ve got to say I’m glad they’re doing each book as its own movie, instead […]
- Offline in Crotheny
Sorry I haven’t posted much here lately. The main reason is that I’ve been re-reading Greg Keyes’ Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series before picking up The Blood Knight. (I’ve also been spending time at the Comic Bloc Forums discussing the Flash relaunch.) Re-reading The Briar King and The Charnel Prince both followed the same […]
- Variations on a Theme
I read Shadowpact #2 last night. So far the book does read better than Day of Vengeance, probably in large part because Bill Willingham can set his own schedule instead of the must-be-6-issues policy of the Infinite Crisis lead-ins. One of the villains struck me as familiar, though: an albino swordsman with a magic sword, […]
- Technicolor Wheel
The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good. I wasn’t sure how well Robert Jordan’s writing would translate to the medium, and of course a lot of details are lost, but Chuck Dixon has done a good job adapting the story, and Mike Miller’s art is incredible. The book opens with […]
- The Wheel Turns
I 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 […]
- Neverwhere 3.0
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 […]
- Well, that sucks.
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 […]
- Book Review: The Waterborn and The Blackgod
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 […]