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I just read Battlemage by Stephen Aryan. It is bad. I really feel bad panning a creative work publicly because I know what goes into their creation, but after buying the book because I'd seen it on a couple of lists of good modern fantasy, I feel like I have to warn others. The writing is simple to a fault--to the point that it actually distracts from the story with elementary exposition that reads almost like a kid is telling you a story. "This was happening because of that. Also, so-and-so did not like that because they have this opinion." It would have been fine for a younger audience, if it weren't for the violence, profanity, and gore. And there are just bizarre faults that one would think that an editor would catch, like, "She put on the mask and lifted the hood." What mask? When you say, "the mask," surely you've mentioned a mask before, right? Nope. "Lifted her hood," would be fine--hoods are common enough, after all--but using "the" suggests that it's a specific hood that has recently been mentioned. It wasn't. If there was anything original about the story, I would forgive those faults, but there wasn't. The magic is fueled by "the Source," which, when drawn on, enhances ones senses. Draw too much, and you can burn yourself out or die. Sound familiar? It does if you've read The Wheel of Time. But what I explained is about all there is to it, so it's not like it's similar to WoT's magic, with some variation. It's like WoT's magic, with far less detail. You've got a bunch of standard characters--a grizzled old veteran soldier (he ends up secretly being a god of some sort, but that potentially interesting twist isn't enough to redeem anything about the story), the titular Battlemage who really doesn't have anything much to distinguish his character, the princess who overworks herself as her father's spymaster and is unexpectedly raised to queen when he dies. And, no, I'm not sorry for posting spoilers without warning. You shouldn't read this book. Cliches abound, including a tribe of black people who wear bone jewelry and only loincloths for clothing, like a racist African stereotype. Their magic is a little bit different because of their connection to the land. *eyeroll* All characters are written such that their actions rarely ring true, even though it's not clear what their personalities are really supposed to be (though the author will occasionally flatly tell you, "This character's personality is like this because of that."). The average score on Amazon is 4.4 stars. Do not be fooled. Those reviews had to be left by family and friends of the author. Anyway, I'm reading Deadhouse Gates now. My package from Better World Books, via abebooks.com, arrived today, so I've got lots of Malazan ahead. Less than 50 pages in, and hardly even grasping much of what's going on with the new characters and locales, I've already derived far more enjoyment from it than from all 469 pages of Battlemage.

Yeah, a little while ago, I was like, "You know, there's so much more that is obviously going to happen in this world. The Seanchan, what comes of Rand after his resurrection in Moridin's body, his children, Perrin's role as an uber-lord..." So I figured I'd hunt around for fan fic. After the first 50 Asmodean-never-died alt-universe tripe-fests, I gave up. If there's good stuff out there, I'd like to read it, maybe, but I'm just going to have to let someone else hunt it down for me.

I'm finally reading The Malazan Book of the Fallen. I started Gardens of the Moon a couple of years ago, but I gave up because I was not getting into it at all. If memory serves, I tried reading it immediately after finishing The Wheel of Time for the second time (this being about five months after I finished reading it the first time). It was just the wrong time to try to get into the series, in every possible way. Also, since my first attempt, I checked this out, and it gave me some context for the whole story. The first time I tried to read GotM, it was like, "Okay, there are a bunch of different characters that I don't like at all, and I have no idea what any of them are talking about, ever." Keep in mind, I read a good 400 pages of the book, that first time. I did give it a chance. It's just that the tone was all wrong for my headspace, coming out of a WoT reread, and having no clue what was happening really didn't help. I think I'm just past where I stopped on the first attempt, but really, I've been engaged from the start this time.

Yesterday, I ordered books 2-10 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen. It costs less than $40. For those of you unfamiliar with abebooks.com, I recommend you check it out. When I was in college, I'd buy the books for my classes there. I always got old editions and had to solicit help in completing my assignments (page numbers never match up, etc.), but I'd save hundreds of dollars every semester.

I've been rather slowly rereading Lightbringer, since the 4th volume comes out on the 25th. I reread The Black Prism a while ago, then started The Blinding Knife but kind of forgot about it and moved on to other stuff. I picked TBK back up last week or thereabouts and just started over. Now I'm on to The Broken Eye. I still haven't managed to read the Abhorsen trilogy. I'm not sure why I can never quite get into it (it's all circumstantial: every time I start, I read the beginning, then get sidetracked by things in life that take me away from my reading, and then just don't feel like going back to it when I go to pick up a book again).

Keep in mind, what Zahel is playing might be the "real" way to play Tarachin, and the version that the Returned play is an enlarged version that is meant to emphasize their supposed divinity.

I should clarify what I meant here. I don't have a problem with the LotR adaptation. I like it a lot. It is, however, the only major example of a successful high fantasy movie in the 21st Century, when SFX technology began to catch up with the kind of vision one sees in fantasy novels. While people can (and do) quibble about the definition of "high fantasy," it is generally accepted that LotR is the major prototypical high fantasy story. Much of what has come since owes some kind of debt Tolkien, even if it is a reaction against his writing rather than an homage (or ripoff, depending on one's point of view and/or the work in question). So that's what I am unhappy about. In literature, the subgenre that was more or less founded on Tolkien's work has grown well beyond that early vision, but for films, an adaptation of that founding story is the best we've got. I know that I'm being reductive in the way I'm casting LotR's importance to the high fantasy genre. The Worm Ouroboros is much older than LotR, and the roots of high fantasy can be traced back thousands of years, really. But when I talk about modern high fantasy (and, again, here there can be some disagreement over what that really entails), it isn't entirely inaccurate to say that "post-Tolkien" is probably an adjective that applies in some way, even if that might make Steven Erikson mad. And we've come a long way since LotR was written. Even The Belgariad, which I would say is nowhere near as good as LotR, builds on the fantasy conventions that Tolkien established. So, in that sense, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, Sleeping Beauty, Excalibur--none entirely qualify as high fantasy. You've got myth and legend and fairy tales adapted in such a way that it draws very much from high fantasy set dressing, but remains anchored in its roots--at least in my reckoning. I do really love most of those movies, but they're not quite in the same subgenre as LotR. And that's what I really want to see--fantasy movies that exist in a fully realized world that is not just Earth+magic or whatever.

Wait, what are we talking about? I was on TV Tropes...

Yeah, definitely. I think that was most evident in the latest volume, but it may also be that it just seemed more that way to me because I read The Great Ordeal immediately after completing a Wheel of Time reread, which is pretty far at the other end of the spectrum in terms of grimdark sensibilities (in that it has none). In fact, it's nearly an example of the aforementioned Ye Goode Olde Day trope.

Yeah, that's true of medieval history, but I don't know that Bakker is among those authors who think that the only appropriate reaction the prevalence of the Ye Goode Olde Day trope is to go full Dung Ages. It seems more like the historical period he's aiming for is a couple of thousand years earlier (which, to be fair, still probably wasn't as bad as all that). Also, despite the issues with the way he portrays women, I think that criticism of that portrayal often overlooks the fact that some of it is intentional as part of his critique of religion. The women in the story literally are imbued with less righteousness than the men. The path to damnation is more slippery for them, and they have less value as human beings in a spiritual sense. This is because the gods have decided that it is so (they are obviously supposed to be evil). It explicitly says that, too (I think it was in The White-Luck Warrior, but I can't remember). I think that the point there may be that, while actual history was not as bad for women as he portrays it, if the actual historical view that the gods (or God) elevated men above women spiritually were a true fact of the universe, then things would be that bad. Now, I'm sure we could veer off into a discussion on how accurate his views of the Abrahamic faiths' appraisal of women's value is. However, regardless of where one comes down on that subject, I don't think that Bakker is wholly ignorant of the doctrinal arguments. I think his response is just, "No. Screw you. You're saying men are better than women, and no flowery words or logic-bending arguments will make it any less ugly. I'm going to show you just how ugly it is." One can disagree with his stance, to be sure, but I wouldn't say that it's invalid. I didn't remember the part where the sranc wear floppy forehead phalli, but, well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I love John Carter. I've seen it a bunch of times, and it's one of those movies that I'm happy to put on when I know I'm probably going to doze off and maybe half wake up a couple of times to sort of register that there are four-armed aliens and airships swooping around. Like Star Wars, it's another science fantasy movie, rather than straight high fantasy, but it's good. I wish that there were more really good high fantasy movies. There really are almost none. No, I'm not forgetting about LotR; I just wish that an adaptation of the first major high fantasy work--the model for a lot of subsequent work--wasn't the best example of a fantasy adaptation. I was really rooting for Warcraft to be a huge success so that we might see more high fantasy stuff out there, but of course, that didn't happen. I honestly kind of like Warcraft, but I can't in good conscience call it the perfect fantasy adventure movie.

Well, normally, I'm none too pleased with that sort of thing, but it's not often used as a cheap way to motivate other characters and usually seems to work for the series. I think that it's there for its own sake--to be horrific because it is horrific, and we should be horrified. In part, the series is a statement on how real human history contains such atrocities, and the historical periods that are used as models for so many more lighthearted fantasy settings would have been rife with them. And, of course, it's a none-too-subtle critique of religion (particularly the Abrahamic faiths), with the implication being that the supposed heroes of the faith would have in fact been brutal men whose actions would be obscenely irredeemable in the reckoning of most modern people. That said, the rape orcs really don't have any historical analog and may be just a touch over the top...

The Second Apocalypse is really, really good. I love it. The philosophical tangents are practically the main attraction, for me. I don't normally like anything so relentlessly grim, but it's just a really good series.

That bothered me for so long. I kept going through increasingly unlikely hypotheses for why it happened that, and I just knew that nothing I was coming up with made sense. When it was revealed, it was such a big bomb drop for me.

I've started to read The Abhorsen Trilogy a couple of times, and it just was never quite the right time and I moved on to something else before making it past the beginning. So maybe this time will be it, and I'll actually read it. I'm at one of those points where I don't really know what I want to to read and have trouble getting engrossed in anything. I just finished The Republic of Thieves, which seems to have taken forever, even though I was really interested in the book. The Gentlemen Bastards books had previously seemed like standalone adventures, with each volume being a sequel to last but not dependent on it the way each volume in, say, The Wheel of Time is on the last. However, The Republic of Thieves starts to bring some of the connective tissue that makes the series part of one big story, especially at the end. This naturally made me extra interested in the series, but alas, it is now unclear when the next volume is coming out. Oh, well.

Are you talking about the Gollancz version of the Arcanum Unbounded cover? That looks like it could be a representation of a scene from Sixth of the Dusk--not a terribly accurate one, all things considered, but it fits.

Wow. Seriously. ...

I've tried to read The Gentlemen Bastards a couple of times and kept getting distracted after the first few pages of The Lies of Locke Lamora. I could tell that I was going to like the series, but I just never managed to get into it. Well, I'm up to page 345 in Red Seas Under Red Skies, so I guess it finally took. Definitely a good series, and I probably chose a good time to get into it, since the next book drops next month.

It's a novella, but it's a pretty long one. It basically is a standard story, but it is tied to the first Mistborn trilogy and would probably make very little sense if you hadn't read that. It will be in Arcanum Unbounded too.

That's not how it works, though. In all but the rarest of circumstances, people's souls are going to move on very shortly after death. The Vessel of the Shard on their planet doesn't have to help them move on, but some of them do. I would think it very unlikely that a Splinter would adopt this role, but I guess it isn't entirely impossible. Even so, they couldn't just do a quick 15-minute catch-up session every 24 hours.

I predict that the prologue will not be from Dalinar's perspective. It will still be that same scene, but it was Szeth's POV in Kaladin's book and Jasnah's POV in Shallan's book. Now, we know that both of the characters who got POVs for the the prologue in the first two books will get books in the future, but I don't know if we should trust to this pattern to hold. It could, though, because, even though not all of the 10 main characters were at the scene, it makes the most sense for the back 5 to have a different prologue scene. If that is the case, I would say that Eshonai seems like a solid candidate for the POV (I don't specifically remember whether or not she was there, but I think she was part of the party). That would fill in a lot of information. Of course, if Brandon wants to start to really reveal things (and one should never put it past him), Shallash would be an interesting choice. As for characters who are not among the 10, I could see Sadeas being interesting. Considering what we know right now, I would say that it wouldn't be very interesting, but I don't doubt that something we never saw coming could change that. It might be an interesting way to open, following his death at the close of WoR. I dunno. I think Eshonai is most likely.

I think we may see some of what you hope for, but we definitely won't see all of it. Adolin being born? Likely. Getting his first toy sword? Unlikely. Renarin's sickness? Maybe something about that. The boys hearing about their mother dying? Possible, but Dalinar's reaction is more important to telling his flashback story and will get more detail. Adolin winning his Shardblade? I'd say probably not.

I suspect that we will see the boys, since Dalinar's visit to the Nightwatcher almost has to be in his Oathbringer flashbacks, and Adolin and Renarin obviously would have been born by then. I think it just makes sense for them to appears at least once. We should get some notion of how Dalinar treated them as children. His sons are surely part of his story. Now, as to the topic at hand, it seems pretty clear to me that Adolin has some kind of history with Jenet. It may have just been a gag thrown in to illustrate how just about every woman who knows Adolin has a grudge against him for his thoughtless behavior towards them in the past. I'm hoping that we find out why she's so angry at him, though. She doesn't seem the type to be a former romantic interest, but it would be interesting if she was. Adolin at first came off as a bit of a ladies man, but as WoR went on, it seemed more like he was just a young man who didn't know what he wanted in a relationship accidentally hurting women as he tried to find out. It would be nice to see his some of his former romantic interests turn out to be very different from the shallow noblewomen we see him courting before Shallan's arrival. I don't see her becoming any kind of major character, but she could be an interesting minor one.

Some of the lyrics are in Icelandic, but a good deal of their songs don't actually have any real lyrics. They just sing sounds that sound like words but have no actual meaning. So depending on the song you're listening to, chances are, no one has a clue what they're saying.

I was just thinking about Jasnah this morning and her potential place in Oathbringer, and something occurred to me about the structure of the books. I suppose we could have a lengthy discussion about just how much the structure of each volume will echo that of the last and whether or not that restricts the flow of the story. Personally, I would argue against the idea that a rigid structure is unnecessarily restrictive (for this series, anyway); rather, a rigid structure helps keep a massive series from going off the rails, and the length of each volume prevents it from being unnecessarily restrictive. But that's all beside the point. So, we've certainly all noticed that Szeth's opening scene in TWoK was retold from Jasnah's perspective in WoR and can probably expect another such retelling in Oathbringer. However, it is posible that there is an end-of-book "rhyme," so to speak, that has not become obvious yet. If I'm not just imagining that, then Jasnah's reappearance at the end of WoR might echo Taln's at the end of TWoK. If they are intended to be parallel scenes, then it is also possible that Jasnah's presence in Oathbringer will be similar to Taln's in WoR. I, for one, expected more to be made of Taln in WoR, coming out of TWoK. I wasn't disappointed by the way his character was handled, but it also wasn't what I expected. Now, similarly, the end of WoR made me think that Jasnah coming back will be a huge deal, but maybe she will hardly be a presence at all. Just a thought.