But It's a Dry Heat

Archive for the ‘Fantasy’ Category

Itty-Bitty Nazgul

Revisiting an old cartoon. The old version…

And the new version…

The original definitely has its charms. But what’s funny is that even though I thought my horse-drawing skills were good back then, they’ve definitely improved in the years that followed. And, a solid year of doing figure-drawing studies also improved my hobbit drawing ability.

Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“After that, I need to watch a good movie about ships,” says my husband, popping Pirates of the Caribbean in the DVD player.

That being Chronicles of Narnia, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Granted, if one were trying to clean one’s palette with a good nautical movie, one would reach for Master and Commander. But Voyage of the Dawn Treader sets the bar so low, Pirates is a masterpiece of seafaring authenticity.

Confession. I’m not a fan of the Narnia series. I know—gasp!–fantasy writer heresy.  It would seem that every fantasy writer lists the Narnia stories as the beloved childhood tales that shaped them into the writer they are today. If by “shaped,” you mean “don’t write boring-ass allegories,” then yeah, I too was shaped.

The only book I’ve read in the series is (more…)

Son of a Witch

A caravan traveling through an isolated part of the Land of Oz comes across a corpse.  This isn’t the first they’ve seen on their journey, but the others have been “scraped,” the faces of the dead removed with surgical precision.

Except this body isn’t dead. Yet.  Though badly beaten, Liir Thropp, a young man who may or may not be the son of the infamous Elphaba Thropp, Wicked Witch of the West, is still alive.  The caravan delivers him to a convent where he is coaxed back to health by a mute young woman name Candle.

His recovery, seen through the eyes of Candle and the maunts (nuns) of the convent, is juxtaposed with (more…)

The Spirit Thief

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron is terribly derivative.

And therein lies its charm.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a massive reading slump, slogging through my pile of library books, finding mild entertainment, but no real joy. But The Spirit Thief, with its unabashed “D&D gaming session put to paper” approach is an awful lot of fun.

The novel’s protagonist, by the author’s own admission, is a D&D character concept. Eli Monpress, the thief protagonist, is cut from the mold of many a TSR novel, as are his companions, Josef, the warrior, and Miranda, the wizard (spiritualist). The only non-archetype is Nico, the demonseed within (more…)

Deconstructing Stupid

Ah.  Just another day on the Internet.  Where I learn, once again, that my husband must be gay*, because the person that he married can’t possibly be a woman. (*Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.)

For your consideration, I bring you this, proof of my defective girl status:

The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

This charming little bit of misogyny and sexism, sadly, was scribed by a woman. The target of her ire, the HBO adaptation of G.R.R. Martin’s absolutely fabulous, A Game of Thrones.

Look, Cupcake, I get it. You don’t like the show. Fine. As someone who (more…)

You Gorgeous, Golden-Eyed Bastard

As always, I’m late to the party.  Today is International Raistlin Majere Day!

Had I known, I would’ve donned my best red cloak for the morning dog walk with the greyhound.

And alas, this is Friday, my day off, so I can’t do this:

2. Laugh softly and menacingly throughout your performance review. When your supervisor brings up your problem with authority, whisper, “Bow only in reverence, never in subservience.”

Raistlin is the ultimate tortured hero. Mo’ betta than that whiny, sparkly, pretender, Edward Cullen.  Fans of a certain certain boring-ass, fantasy epic will no doubt call me vapid for loving the series, but many hours of my youth were spent reading and re-reading the Dragonlance series.  See, Raistlin was what Thomas the Unbelievably Boring could never be.  Likable.

(The last two sentence proving my point.  My hatred of a critically acclaimed book, is so totally about its fans.)

But Raistlin rocks.