Tag Archives: genre: fantasy

A Feast For Crows

fiction July 12, 2014 Leave a comment

So I made my way through the fourth book of George RR Martin’s epic fantasy series.

I have had trouble evaluating each book as a book because, unlike Harry Potter, there doesn’t seem to be much that distinguishes one book from another (at least through the first three books). Scheming/politicking, fighting, wandering around in the woods on or off horseback, rinse, repeat.

The biggest difference in A Feast For Crows is that we see some different character view points, the most awesome of which is Cersei, who progressively deteriorates through the book into a paranoid lunatic. By the time the book ends, she has been arrested on all kinds of charges, but prior to that was coming up with ways to kill everyone but her immediate family members minus Tyrion, who she is trying to kill actively.

AND SAM GOT LAID! HOORAY!

That said, new character view points at this juncture are troubling. It’s not that Martin is introducing new characters, but a lot of this is beginning to feel like filler. I’m not one of those people who likes to tell authors how to do their work, and I don’t expect any author to cater to any of my demands except that they entertain me with their story, but this series is very long and doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. In fact, if what I read is true and the real conflict of the series is humans vs. the white walkers, not humans vs. other humans, we’re nowhere near this conflict at all. The white walkers haven’t even made that many appearances. They’re barely mentioned by anyone who isn’t on The Wall or beyond it.

Martin’s writing pace also isn’t what you’d call speedy. It was 5 years between A Storm of Swords and A Feast For Crows and 6 years between A Feast For Crows and A Dance With Dragons, which my mom still complains about, and he seems in no rush to get The Winds of Winter out any time soon. 3 years since the last installment, there is still no publishing date (or even a vague estimate) for the next. While it is tasteless for fans to speculate about Martin’s health and obnoxious to demand he be writing instead of doing other things, it IS irritating to wait the better part of a decade between volumes. He complains that fans are afraid he’ll die before he finishes? WHAT ABOUT FANS, GEORGE? THEY MIGHT DIE BEFORE YOU FINISH. Anyway, yeah, he’s touchy about people who ask he write faster.

Plus, there are rumors that maybe there will be MORE books (rather than the planned seven).

So maybe I’ll be 40 when they’re finished. Sigh.

Anyway, yeah, while A Feast For Crows was good, I continue to have reservations about the series as a whole. I will, of course, hold off final judgment until the series is over, but while I’ve enjoyed the political intrigue thus far, it’d be nice if we had some indication of where this series is going.

new ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ movie trailer

fiction October 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Originally, I didn’t see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie by choice. I was about 13 at the time, and my mother dragged me along with her. I didn’t really want to go, but went anyway. She said that I “owed” her for all the crappy movies she’d taken me to through my life because she didn’t actually want to see any of them, she was just being a good parent.

So, I saw the movie with her because guilt is one my family’s biggest motivational tools. I really liked the movie, and was mad that it didn’t conclude the story. I was even upset to find out there were TWO more of these films, and downright distressed when I discovered that they were coming out one and two years from that point.

I decided to read the books, and started The Hobbit the next weekend.

The Lord of the Rings movies are epic, and I mean that in two ways. They are epic in the most literal sense: they are extremely long movies. The other way I mean it is in size and scope: there are very few movie adaptations of books that cover as much rich material as the LotR movies do with JRR Tolkien’s huge fantasy.

The Hobbit films were rumored to be coming out not long after the original films, but the buzz about them didn’t pan out until much later. I reread it in preparation of its release (at the time rumored to be in 2009) but it turned out I wouldn’t have had to reread it until 2012. It was good that I did, though. I’d made up my own ending to the book, apparently, and read an entirely different ending than the one I remembered.

Anyway, the film: I didn’t expect The Hobbit films to happen with all problems, like the screen writing and directing changes, and I was a little nervous about what I was hearing: The Hobbit being stretched into three films didn’t sound like it was possible, or was necessary, since they were ADDING material.

Well. ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ really put my mind at ease. It was just as good as the original LotR films, and I really enjoyed some of the stuff they added. I had also forgotten how much I missed having a movie that covered the size and scope of the original films. Movies that cinematically beautiful and that complex don’t come around a lot.

The new trailer for the second film, ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ came out recently, and I’m really excited about it. Check it out:

The only thing so far that’s a little off-putting? I always pronounced the dragon’s name, Smaug, as ‘Smawg’ not as ‘Smoug’. ‘Aw’ as in ‘awful’ and not ‘ou’ as in ‘ouch’, if that makes sense. But I think I’ll be able to overlook it! 😉

Happy Hobbit Day!

fiction September 22, 2013 Leave a comment

September 22 is Hobbit Day. Hobbits are some of my favorite fantasy creatures 🙂 This graphic is a year old, but useful on how to throw a Hobbit Day Party. Enjoy!

hobbit day party

new Harry Potter-verse film series

fiction September 15, 2013 Leave a comment

As everyone has probably heard by now, J.K. Rowling is making her screenwriting debut based on the ‘textbook’ she wrote – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – which originally appeared in her Harry Potter novels.

Along with Quidditch Through The Ages, Rowling originally wrote Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to benefit the British charity Comic Relief.

As a Potterphile, I’m super excited about this. There’s so much room to play in the Harry Potter universe, and this will be fun! Some of the my favorite things about Harry Potter are the mythological creatures she uses/creatures she makes up.

Anyway, yeah, I’m super excited about it! I hope they skip the acromantulas and focus more on chimeras or something.

A Storm of Swords

fiction September 2, 2013 Leave a comment

I finished A Storm of Swords some weeks ago but life got in the way of my commenting on it ’til now. Here we are.

Ho-ly. SHIT.

Spoilers, people-who-only-watch-the-TV-show.

A Storm of Swords totally made up for the wandering through the woods that A Clash of Kings was. I knew about the Red Wedding and Joffrey’s death, but Joffrey’s death was particularly satisfying, since I think he might be the most hated character in books and on television of all time.

Reading the Red Wedding was particularly bad. It was uncomfortable, mostly because you had the distinct feeling that something was wrong. Walder Frey was too accepting of their apology, things were going too well. The worst part is what they did to Grey Wind. I love the direwolves.

I really liked Tyrion killing his father, and I couldn’t believe Shae betrayed him. I mean, I can, but I didn’t entirely understand how she was discovered. I did feel bad about Bronn leaving, though.

But his father’s death amused me. Finding out that Tywin Lannister did not shit gold was not something I really needed to know but was great all the same. Additionally, I was pretty sad Tywin is gone, but since his main use for me was to tell off Joffrey, once Joffrey was dead it didn’t matter.

Poor Tommen though! He’s going to become a huge target. I like him, he’s a cute kid, so I’m hoping for the best for him.

I also enjoyed that Tyrion tried to protect Sansa from the worst of Joffrey’s and the rest of his family’s cruelties. I might have said this before, but I’ve heard the claim that the TV show really favors Tyrion and makes him look good, but I haven’t found that book!Tyrion is much different than TV!Tyrion, except that we know what’s going on inside his head, but maybe I’m just one of those horrendously jaded people who never really thought that what was going on inside of Tyrion’s head was any different than what was going on inside anyone else’s. He’s smarter than most, not less willing to survive.

One of my favorite parts of reading these books (up until this point) has been comparing the TV adaptation with the books. The relationship between Jaime and Brienne has not disappointed in either adaptation. I thought maybe the TV was overdoing it, but it’s almost exactly the same and I immensely enjoy my favorite duo’s adventures on the page as much as on the screen. The whole thing with the bear? Love it.

Arya is one of my favorite characters in the series, but I feel like she is wasted a lot, wandering through the woods. Her relationship with the Hound in the book is far more developed than it is on TV, and I really like it much better. While she is always secretly scheming to kill him, she never actually goes through with it, and when she finally gets the opportunity, she doesn’t do it. The Hound himself has become a fascinating character – while he claims that he protects Arya (and earlier, Sansa) for money, he never actually gets around to selling them off. What’s even more interesting is that he seems to express remorse to both of them, which is strange, since he spends a lot of time claiming he doesn’t care. He seems to both like and despise Sansa, and he seems to understand Arya better than most people understand Arya.

I’m sad Arya’s relationship with Gendry is over. I thought maybe that wouldn’t be the case, but unfortunately, it is.

Jon’s story with Ygritte is finally done. That took entirely too long. I’m amused at Jon’s shock that he’s been selected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Seems like Winterfell is, indeed, a thing of the past.

Bran’s storyline also needs improvement, as far as I’m concerned. Lots about dreams, not much about anything else. I did like the story the Reeds told him about his father, his uncles, and his aunt at the tournament. Lyanna Stark is the catalyst for everything that happened before the series takes place, and I’d like to know more about her, but  given everyone who knew her is dead, that doesn’t seem likely.
One aspect I’m finding the TV series is really neglecting (as far as I’m concerned) is the Stannis – Davos – Melisandre side of things. On the TV side, I understood nothing of it, now at least I get what’s going on. Melisandre is a lot less annoying in print. I don’t think it has anything to do with the actress, and more to do with the fact that they don’t really explain clearly on TV what’s going on, so all she does is lurk and say things that sound scary.

Finally: Daenerys. Does anything ever go wrong for her? At any point? Yeah, her husband died and her baby died, and since then she has been Mary Sue-ing her way through the East. I hear things start going south for her in A Feast For Crows, which is good because I don’t buy that a 14 year old is going to conquer the world without any problems. I’m also amused how the TV show glossed over that whole thing with her and Jorah Mormont. I guess that’s one thread they decided wasn’t important.

As I said, I finished this book some time ago, but life got in the way of my updating this blog about it. I was in the middle of another book, but it was a sequel that hasn’t captured me anywhere near as much as the original, and so I’m putting it down. I haven’t started A Feast for Crows, and for the moment I think I’m going to move on to The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King.

The Gunslinger

fiction July 5, 2013 Leave a comment

Two of my friends and my mother have read ‘The Dark Tower’ series by Stephen King and loved it, and since I needed a break between ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ books, I started The Gunslinger, the first book of the series.

Now, I was in a beach house for four days about two weeks ago, and I have to say I blew through The Gunslinger in record time. Even for me. I don’t know how I got through it so fast, although it’s not very long.

The one thing everyone did tell me about The Gunslinger is that I should be patient. It doesn’t make a ton of sense in the beginning. There are more questions than answers, but what is made very clear is that there is one guy, the Gunslinger, chasing another guy, the Man in Black, who seems always to be one step ahead.

We get some of the Gunslinger’s history, as well as some of the history between him and The Man in Black. I found the whole thing very compelling, particularly his relationship Jake (and how he ultimately betrays Jake to catch the Man in Black).

You begin to realize that the Gunslinger is in a universe other than our own. It’s similar, but not exactly the same, and that there are other universes out there that can be traveled between (and dying in one doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve died in all of them).

How to travel between said universes isn’t made clear, but that’s part of why the Gunslinger is chasing the Man in Black and has something to do with The Dark Tower, which seems to be the point at which all the universes are connected.

Right now, the genre of the series seems unclear. It seems a dark sci-fi/fantasy/horror series, and I can’t wait to see how the series continues. Since King considers ‘The Dark Tower’ series his magnum opus, I expect big things.

So far, beyond this book, I’ve read It and some short stories by King, and my mom says a lot of his books borrow from this series. I don’t consider King an incredible writer, per se. His writing is average in terms of expression and beauty of prose; however, he’s a hell of a storyteller. I got sucked into The Gunslinger within the first few pages and read the whole thing in three days. I would have finished It much faster, but that book involved my two biggest fears – spiders and clowns – so I had to keep putting it down and kept having nightmares about a clown with pointed teeth that was out to kill me.

I’ve bought the next book, called The Drawing of the Three, which is supposedly more like a regular book than like reading a comic book, at least according to my friend.

But The Drawing of the Three will have to wait, at least until I’m done with one of the two books I started. I’m currently in the middle of both A Storm of Swords (the next book in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series) and Blue Magic, the sequel to Indigo Springs, by A.M. Dellamonica.

A Clash of Kings

fiction July 1, 2013 Leave a comment

I finished George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings about two weeks ago.

I really enjoyed it.

My favorite part of it was the ongoing plotting of Cersei and Tyrion against each other, but I was super happy that this book explained why Melisandre supported Stannis, which either wasn’t made clear in the HBO adaptation or I didn’t pick up on it.

The Battle of Blackwater Bay was also really great. The books have really made me like Davos better. He doesn’t get enough screen time in the TV adaptation to really get to know him, and I thought having the battle from his perspective, rather than Stannis (which is where I thought he was going to go with it) or just Tyrion and Sansa.

I also liked Sansa a bit more in this book, actually showing some strength rather than being a little mouse. The Hound’s fascination with her has always interested me, but I still don’t get the point of their bizarre interactions, which mostly include him yelling at her for being nice.

On TV, I feel like Jon Snow’s plotline was easily one of the least interesting, and that continues as I read the book. The whole thing with Ygritte bores me to death, and honestly, enough of the Wildlings. I liked Qhorin Halfhand, and was sort of pissed Jon had to kill him. I like Jon, but his storyline is killing me. Best character north of the Wall: Ghost.

Daenarys trip to Qarth ended less spectacularly in this book than on TV. On TV, she locks Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own empty vault as punishment for being a lying douche, but here one of her dragons just burns down The House of the Undying. Unless this is part of the third book that I haven’t gotten to yet, I was a bit disappointed with how this went down.

Catelyn Stark continues to be both tremendously wise and seriously dumb. I don’t understand how she figures out all the right pieces and all the right things, and somehow manages to do the dumbest possible thing EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

Bran’s story isn’t very interesting in this book except for how he’s a Warg and doesn’t know it. At least he wasn’t murdered as Theon claimed. I hate Theon a lot. He’s both more sympathetic in the book and more completely a bitch. I almost feel sorry for him, because I know what’s about to happen to him, but…eh, you did this to yourself, dude.

Arya is probably my favorite character in this series, and I love her relationship with Jaqen H’ghar so I can’t wait for the point in the series where that comes full circle. I know from Wikipedia she eventually joins The Faceless Men, but I hope she meets Jaqen again (and that her skills as an assassin help her get revenge in Westeros).

Finally: I always thought Renly Baratheon was an idiot and man, he really is. He has no legitimate claim to the throne except people like him. He’s so hilariously dumb about the whole things that I’m sort of glad he gets murdered.

I’ve started A Storm of Swords and the TV show has covered up to the first half of that book, so I’m excited I’m finally going to read something I haven’t already seen on TV. Looking forward to it.

Alternate ‘Game of Thrones’ House Mottoes

fiction, humor June 15, 2013 Leave a comment

My friends and I were discussing Game of Thrones (books and TV show).

For some reason, I find the series – books and TV show – a lot funnier than I think they’re meant to be. So much of it is so deadpan, I just laugh.

My friend was complaining about the Starks who, while being the only “good guys” in the series, are too dumb to survive. “Honor before reason,” as he said.

So I started coming up with alternate house mottoes.

House Stark: Honor Before Reason (not entirely my idea)
House Baratheon: Sibling Rivalry Gone Awry
House Targaryen: Incest – Bad For Dogs, Worse For People
House Lannister: We Barely Like Each Other…Except Jaime. We All Like Him
House Greyjoy: Our Last Male Heir Got Himself Castrated
House Tyrell: Pretty And Prickly (alternate alternate motto: Every Rose Has Its Thorns)
House Bolton: We’re Sadists
House Tully: Just Edmure And A Zombie
House Frey: We Lack Originality And Foresight

Fun stuff. I can’t stop giggling, but I don’t know if it’s because these are actually funny of it’s because it’s the middle of the night, I’m tired, and I just think they’re funny.

On one more ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ note: popuptee.com is selling some pretty awesome shirts of various houses – Stark, Baratheon, Greyjoy, Lannister, and Targaryen – for only $12.99 + free shipping. Other shirts include a White Walkers shirt, a Night’s Watch shirt, and a “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die” Cersei quote shirt. Hurry though! There’s only about 38 hours left before the sale is over and they won’t be available anymore!

I bought a Stark shirt and a Baratheon shirt for myself, as well as a Lannister shirt as a gift for a friend of mine. I like them a lot. I sort of want to see if when I put on the Stark shirt I am killed instantly (just struck by lightning or hit by a truck), and I like the Baratheons a lot for no reason I can actually give you. Robert was one of my favorite characters, but I have no idea why. He just seemed so cuddly when he wasn’t raging at Cersei or talking about killing Targaryens.

Susan Pevensie and Other Wicked Girls

fiction May 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Some of the most interesting writing in the world to me is new takes on old things, or applying a certain type of critical lens to a piece of writing, and literary criticism in general.

(You know you’ve grown up a lot when you enjoy literary criticism.)

Anyway, one of my favorite things to read about is classic characters from another perspective, or apply a critical lens to the way male authors portray female characters. A classic example is Susan Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia. Her family dies in a train crash and she is lost to Narnia because she becomes, from the sound of it, a normal adolescent girl who is interested in boys, clothing, and makeup.

C.S. Lewis himself says of Susan:

The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there’s plenty of time for her to mend and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end… in her own way.

I don’t like the whole implication that girls who grow into women and discover sex can’t get into Heaven if they don’t somehow save themselves from all their sin. A lot of pro-Narnia blogs will say that Susan is preventing Susan from getting into Narnia but the argument is sort of weak, in my opinion.

Since the publication of the Narnia books, a lot of writing has cropped around the character of Susan who is left to face the world without her family. It’s implied that Susan survives the crash, having not been there. One of the more prominent tales of Susan post-Narnia collection is Neil Gaiman’s ‘The Problem of Susan.’ It’s a short story about a Professor Hastings (who sounds very much like a grown up Susan Pevensie) dealing with the trauma of losing her family while be questioned about the Narnia books.

Where is this going? The final destination is a poem (or possibly a song), written by Seanan McGuire (who wrote ‘The Newsflesh Trilogy‘), which I love, called ‘Wicked Girls‘ which captures so perfectly and embraces that old boys club stigma that girls who challenge societal patriarchy are bad girls.

Wendy played fair, and she played by the rules that they gave her;
They say she grew up and grew old — Peter Pan couldn’t save her.
They say she went home, and she never looked back,
Got her feet on the ground, got her life on its track.
She’s the patron saint priestess of all the lost girls who got found.
And she once had her head in the clouds, but she died on the ground.

Dorothy just wanted something that she could believe in,
A gray dustbowl girl in a life she was better off leavin’.
She made her escape, went from gray into green,
And she could have got clear, and she could have got clean,
But she chose to be good and go back to the gray Kansas sky
Where color’s a fable and freedom’s a fairy tale lie.

Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,
Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf.
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free.
So do as you like — we’re determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves.

Alice got lost, and I guess that we really can’t blame her;
They say she got tangled and tied in the lies that became her.
They say she went mad, and she never complained,
For there’s peace of a kind in a life unconstrained.
She gives Cheshire kisses, she’s easy with white rabbit smiles,
And she’ll never be free, but she’s won herself safe for a while.

Susan and Lucy were queens, and they ruled well and proudly.
They honored their land and their lord, rang the bells long and loudly.
They never once asked to return to their lives
To be children and chattel and mothers and wives,
But the land cast them out in a lesson that only one learned;
And one queen said ‘I am not a toy’, and she never returned.

Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,
Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf.
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free.
So do as you like — we’re determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves.

Mandy’s a pirate, and Mia weaves silk shrouds for faeries,
And Deborah will pour you red wine pressed from sweet poisoned berries.
Kate poses riddles and Mary plays tricks,
While Kaia builds towers from brambles and sticks,
And the rules that we live by are simple and clear:
Be wicked and lovely and don’t live in fear —

Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,
Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf.
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free.
So do as you like — we’re determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves.

For we will be wicked and we will be fair
And they’ll call us such names, and we really won’t care,
So go, tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes,
There’s a place they can go if they’re tired of chains,
And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost,
But we’ll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost —
We won’t take our place on the shelves.
It’s better to fly and it’s better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves.

A Game of Thrones

fiction May 14, 2013 Leave a comment

I read A Game of Thrones this past month. The whole experience has been a saga.

I actually knew about George R.R. Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series before the TV show first started airing in 2011. My mom is a big fantasy reader, and since I was a child I’ve been regaled with tales of a Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Store in Manhattan that I’ve never been to and I think has since closed. An article from last August cites that “the first” science fiction book store has opened in NYC… the author probably doesn’t know this isn’t the first of its kind, but it’s obviously the first in long enough that the author isn’t aware that it isn’t the first of its kind.

Anyway, I’ve known about ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ for quite some time. My mom has been bugging me to read it for years, and my two best friends have as well. After about a year of yet another friend insisting I watch the show, I finally did, watching seasons 1 and 2 in quick fashion, since they were both out by the time I got around to it.

It’s a really good show.

So as the third season started airing, I decided that I was going to read the series. I finally got around to reading the first book, A Game of Thrones, this past month. Part of what held me up was the book’s size. My mom has them all in hard cover, and they’re enormous. When I was younger it was the length of the book that scared me off, but this time what I found so intimidating was the actual size of the copy of the novel. It’s not exactly a book you can carry around discreetly in your purse. It’s heavy and requires its own car seat.

I finally cracked and bought the five book bundle on Kindle for $40, which is $10 less than if I’d purchased them separately on Kindle or purchased the cheapest paperback editions.

My favorite part of the book is how much more detailed the story is for me now. I had to do a lot of background reading to help understand the show, while trying to avoid the really huge spoilers. It always helps me if I understand about the houses and their histories and stuff like that.

I get they couldn’t fit all that into the show, but I loved learning it in the book. It’s fantastically detailed and clear. I naturally expected the book to be more detailed, but I was a bit afraid that due to the show cutting a lot of stuff out/changing a lot of stuff or an author who writes particularly dense, uninteresting prose.

I really enjoy how Cersei is somehow even more unlikeable in print, although nothing matches my loathing for Joffrey.

The only thing I don’t like much about the book, and it’s a weird thing, but I can’t help it: the great detail Martin goes into when describing food and feast sequences. I don’t care what the lord commander of the Night’s Watch eats for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or what Robert Baratheon stuffs his face with, or the type of wine Tyrion prefers, etc…

And even if I do care about those things, I only care about them once. I don’t care about them described a billion times. Really, it might have been a billion times he went into it.

Still though, I really enjoyed this book. Eddard was way better, although I continue to mostly dislike Catelyn.

This might be one of those series that I have to evaluate as a series, because you get almost no answers to any questions in the first book. I do like the idea that the series will be that complicated, but it makes it hard to evaluate each book when you haven’t read all of them and all of them aren’t available.

I’ve started the second book, A Clash of Kings, but I’m in no rush to finish – the sixth and seventh books aren’t out yet, and George R.R. Martin can go 5 or 6 years…or more… without releasing one.

He better not die.