Inside Game of Thrones

Update : a third teaser was released today! Even better!




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HBO posted a sneak preview of the upcoming preview they will show on December 5th about the show. I can't wait!

Inside Game of Thrones Preview

The Black Company review

The Black Company is the most memorable work of prolific author Glen Cook. The series span more than 10 books (with more coming up) and several short stories. The first appearance of the mercenary company was in 1984 with the eponymous title (now in omnibus). Cook's name has been printed on the covers of so many books, I could not let him stand in my shame list any longer. Moreover, since his famous band is considered to be an inspiration for the Malazan marines of Steven Erikson, I had to oblige.

The Black Company is caught in a stalling situation in the city of Beryl. When a mean for them to get out of their commission present itself, they jump into the wagon. However, this offer came from one of the Taken, ten great wizards corrupted by the Dominator long ago who were restored to life by the Lady. Their new commissioner will take them back north and use the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar to restore lost grounds in the Lady's empire struggle against the Rebel, a group of 18 wizards waiting for the return of the White Rose to dethrone the Lady. Within the company, Croaker, the physician and analyst is recording the undertakings of the Black Company.

First off, let's get to the basics. The narration is set with a first person perspective, that of Croaker. That's a narrative mode I like a lot but it presents some difficulties. The protagonist doing the recounting must be one hell of a compelling character. The last attempts at this that I read and found successful were Jemisin's The 100th Thousand Kingdoms and Bledsoe's Eddie LaCrosse novels. So, as was the case with those two, Cook skillfully created in Croaker a character I understood and cheered for, the perfect standard bearer for the company from which I would have liked to hear the tale.

However, there's another aspect that you have to consider, the continuous presence of this character at the key scenes. In the end it was predominantly justified, but at times, I was struggling with the fact that Croaker, a physician and writer (but still a fighter), was chosen for some missions. I understand that the author had to put him on the front lines but it was occasionally stretched a little too far.

The accounts depicted here stand as epic fantasy with a significant touch of military fantasy (with mercs, it's almost a pleonasm). The company may be named "Black", they stand in the grayish area of the moral spectrum, and in fact they are probably completely outside the spectrum. Let Croaker explain the group :

Every ruler makes enemies. The Lady is no exception. The Sons of the White Rose are everywhere....If one chooses sides on emotion, then the Rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honor: freedom, independence, truth, the right....All the subjective illusions, all the eternal trigger-words. We are minions of the villain of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.
There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.
We abjure labels. We fight for money and indefinable pride. The politics, the ethics, the moralities, are irrelevant.

The lovingly cynical storytelling is not completely encompassed by a rich world. There are some lacks in term of world building and the magic system remains vague. More often than not you can't really grasp the political situation of the lands visited by Croaker. It was not a turn down for me since the heroes bonding and experiences and the general plot felt more important than the locations in which the events occurred.

The physician is surrounded by a great cast from both sides of the coin. One-eye and Goblin, two childishly fighting wizards (creating some funny stuff for the characters but not for the reader), Raven a dangerous and reliable companion and his young protégé Darling and the more than mysterious Lady and her voice changing delegate Soulcatcher to name a few. The relationship and personality of the mercenaries is the soul of the book. Add to this the naming choice and I can understand that Erikson was influenced by this and I found myself thinking of the Malazan marines often enough while reading the book. I think Cook created or strengthened the whole myth of mercenary groups we get to see these days.

If you're looking for an open-ended fantasy novel presenting a dark setting seen through the eyes of a cynical escapist in the mist of a sympathetic bunch of misfits banded together to create the most shady mercenary company to beat all the odds, then Cook's series will be you're best bet.

Although I own the omnibus and the stand alone original novel, I decided to give The Black Company a try in audiobook. The narration was done by Marc Vietor who did an excellent job. His coarse and gruff voice was a perfect match for Croaker and most of those lovable mercs. The length of the audiobook is 11 hours while the novel stand at 320 pages (217 in the Chronicles of the Black Company). As you can see below, the original cover was pretty awful but Tor corrected the situation with the various omnibuses of The Black Company, with stunning covers by Raymond Swanland.

The Black Company review score :

Characterization............. 9 /10
World building............... 7.5 / 10
Magic system................. 7.5 /10
Story.............................. 8 / 10
Writing........................... 8 / 10

Overall (not an average) 8 / 10

Enjoy!

Glen Cook Wiki page

The Last Page review

The Last Page is the fantasy debut novel of Anthony Huso, a video game designer who finally got published. This is the first book of a duology, finishing with The Black Bottle, currently in revision but without a release date. Simply put, this is clearly the best fantasy debut this year for your host.

The young Caliph Howl will be the new High King of the duchy of Stonehold. Having just finished his years of study at the university of Desdae, he's now running away from his duties to search for Sena, his new-found love when he is taken back to Isca by agents of his own government. The Howl heir's rule will start with a nation shattering civil war, where he will have to learn quickly how to lead a country. Meanwhile, his missing love, a Shradnae Witch, will resurface with a single purpose in mind, opening the mythical Cisrym Ta, a book containing glyphs with power beyond that of a god. She will challenge their relationship in order to accomplish the sacrifices needed.

How can I define the genre in which The Last Page would feel at home? From what I have read before, it's been labeled as a mixed influence of steampunk, new weird, dark fantasy and more... I would summarize this list by stating that the book is Chemiostaticpunk-fantasy. Alright, that's not helping much but since chemiostatic energy is one source of power in the world created by Huso, it's a small pun as good as any of those epithets. In conclusion, suffice to say that The Last Page is quite unique.

The book is the tale of two unlikely lovers, initially enticed to each other by feelings which are not mutually corresponding, excluding the carnal pleasure. They can't really stay together neither can they live without each other. As two genuinely different protagonists, I loved both sides of the coin. Caliph is an insecure young man taking his task at heart. He manages to rule with sincerity while not being afraid to undertake difficult projects. Surrounded by betrayal, he will harden to the role step by step. That's the kind of character growth I usually hunger for.

His counterpart (and the other main PoV) is more of a straightforward strong woman without much inhibition. She's focused on her goals and will do everything that is needed to achieve it, creating emotional scenes and making me empathic to their passionate conflict. In this instance again, I think Huso nailed it right. Throughout the tale, Sena stays true to this.

However some of Caliph surrounding cast personalities stir slightly toward being stereotypical. His war counselor, butler and spymaster fit in this category but that last one is still one hell of a personage. This insignificant fault is erased by a plenitude of imaginative presences, from ghosts to jealous witches.

Aside from a character driven story with every element you would hope for, I have to praise Huso's writing. This is probably the aspect of the novel that makes it stand over the crowd. In connection with the enriched world building comes a complete new set of creative and complex vocabulary elements and pronunciations and a brilliant technique in term of prose. The author writing is precise with short paragraphs full of clever adjectives and metaphors. A feast for the fan of stylistic devices.

I appreciated mostly the short inspired descriptions during the moments of contemplation and the more active pieces. Some passage are also memories recounted in some sort of "screenplay-third-person" way. Those are somewhat a bit harder to follow but they separate the past moments effectively.

The skies can be traveled by zeppelins and chemiostatic power replace steam but there's more to it than steampunk clichés. A quantity of delightful weirdness is apparent in a doppelgangers race, witches than can summon some kind of god creating an eerie vastness of parallel universe and in the new soul base energy source stolen from another civilization. The author world is also full of distinct cultures of the past and the present. Even though we only get some glimpse of territories outside of Stonehold and more precisely Isca, I could feel the richness of the people history, myths and technological evolution. My immersion in this amalgam of imaginativeness was complete.

I have one tiny reserve about one situation toward the end of the novel (don't worry, I won't spoil anything). One of the characters eventually uses magic in a kind of omnipotent way. While the evolution of that person in that field was handled perfectly so far, in an instant, it felt too much convenient. However I have to admit that help from some weird spirit was delivered but it wasn't really justified in my opinion.

I have not found a novel to which I could compare The Last Page. This is certainly a very good conclusion. The novel stands at 430 pages, with as I'm sure you'll agree, a beautiful cover art (by Phil Holland) and two nice maps of the duchy of Stonehold and the city of Isca.

Let's finish with an insightful quote from the book that could almost be metaphorically applied to our own society :

Rather, the newest religion in the north was a revival of monotheism: the worship of self. There was no guarantee of purchasing friends or love or fame or happiness but hawkers sold facsimiles at a fairly going clip. As a result in the city, varietal masturbation sold far, far better than sex.

The Last Page review score :

Characterization............. 9 /10
World building............... 9.5 / 10
Magic system................. 9 /10
Story.............................. 9 / 10
Writing........................... 10 / 10

Overall (not an average) 9 / 10

Enjoy!

Anthony Huso page

Deas' The Warlock's Shadow cover art

Stephen Deas posted the cover art (not final is seems) for the upcoming follow-up to his YA fantasy series The Thief-Taker's Apprentice, The Warlock's Shadow. I think that the image chosen with the hooded figure is nice but the blue filter applied might be too much to my taste. Moreover, as Stephen stated, the lettering for the title might need some work.

Kick ass moment #10

It's been a while since I posted one. While reading this passage in Towers of Midnight, I could only grin. I don't consider this as a spoiler, but if you haven't read the book yet and you prefer to read every nice moments in the book and not as an extract on the web, stop here.

I've read that some readers felt like this was too much over the top for Mat, but I disagree, that's the way Mat should have written that letter...

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Your Royal Bloody Pain in My Back,

We're bloody waiting here to talk to you, and we're getting angry perturbed. (That means angry.) Thom says that you're a queen now, but I figure that changes nothing, sense you acted like a queen all the time anyway. Don't forget that I carried halled your pretty little backside out of a hole in Tear, but you acted like a queen then, so I guess I don't know why I'm surprised now that you act like one when you really are a queen.

So I'm thinking I should treat you like a bloody Queen and send you a bloody letter and all, speaking with high talk and getting your attention. I even used my ring as a signet, like it was paper proper. So here my formal salutation. So BLOODY STOP TURNING ME AWAY so we can talk,. I need your bellfounders. It's bloody important.

--Mat

p.s. Salutation means greeting.

p.p.s. Don't mind the scratched out words and bad spellings. I was going to rewrite this letter, but Thom is laffing so hard at me that I want to be done.

p.p.s. Don't mind me calling your backside pretty. I hardly ever spent any time looking at it, as I've an awareness that you'd pull my eyes out if you saw me. Besides, I'm married now, so that all doesn't matter.

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson - Towers of Midnight

Kick ass moment #9
Index

The Cold Commands excerpt #2

We're slowly nearing the publication date of the second opus in the fantasy world created by Richard Morgan, The Cold Commands. If everything goes well, the book should be released in April 2011. Richard posted a second work in progress today. The first excerpt was centered around Ringil and this one is focused on Egar. Here's the link, and a glimpse :

He found the pawn shop easily enough – there were several on that stretch of the An-Monal road, but only a couple offered rooms above. Counting the time spent to climb one of the staircases in the dizzying Kiriath architecture and then walk the Black Folk Span across, the whole search took him not much more than an hour.

The pawnbroker, a wiry old man with a patched eye, bought the line about family the same way the Lizard’s Head publican had. He waved Egar through musty gloom and out again to the shop’s backyard. Rickety outside stairs went up the wall above them to a row of doors under the eaves.

“Second room,” he said wheezily. “Tell him I’ll need him tonight.”

Egar went up the stairs. Laid knuckles on sun-bleached wood a couple of times.

“Fuck do you want?” someone bellowed, in bad tethanne.

Sounds like a hangover in there. Egar grinned and called back through the door in Majak.

“Is that any way to talk to a brother?”

Sudden quiet. He thought he heard the creak of someone moving off a cot. Sensed the weapon lifted stealthily from its resting place against the wall.

“Harath? Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here, son.”

The voice behind the door came back, matching Egar’s change of tongue.

New poll - E-books

First in the order of business, let's return to my last poll for a closing statement. Among the hot subjects around the blogosphere and more specifically Twitter in the last few month was the idea of diversification in our reading choices. The question went like this : "Should we diversify our reading choice?". And the results were as such :

No - stick to the niche we love - 38%
Yes - read more older books - 22%
Yes - read more outside of usual genre - 5%
Yes - both outside genre and older books - 33%

This split in the votes kind of reveal only two elements for me, it's clearly a very personal choice and not something that's growing as a trend (speaking of choosing to read outside genre or older books) and we tend to stick to our beloved fantasy lit!

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My next interrogation is about a totally different subject. The popularity of e-books is growing (ok, sadly also in the case of pirated e-books) and even though the industry is having some trouble adjusting to it (mostly so when compared to other types of new digital media in the last decades), it doesn't always seem to be a hugely successful trend, but it is. Amazon e-books sales tripled in the first half of 2010. Audiobooks have been around for much longer and their integration seems to have gone way more smoothly. However I'll stop the comparison with audiobooks now since I don't think it's fair because I can't imagine audiobooks as a mainstream digital media in the same sense as e-books.

Another proof of the fast emergence of e-books is the news that The New York Times presented today. They will start ranking e-books sales as they do for physical books. It's coming up next year with fiction and non-fiction.

Then there's piracy. While writing this post and looking for some information, I stumbled upon this interesting take on e-book piracy by Adam at The Wertzone. He looks into some possible solutions and eventually comes up with the example of Steam for the computer gaming software. It could be a good idea. So far, aside from making some e-books go free or maybe a fall in prices, not much seems to help with the legal sales against piracy. Maybe they could go with something like the digital copies for the Blu-Ray/DVD movies and add an e-book version to the physical books we buy. It could help grow the legal fan base of e-books with low costs for the readers...

Anyway, we know it's coming and we will all be caught up in it eventually. The pricing is still a problem, for the e-readers and for the e-books themselves and the availability is not perfect. In the coming years, these elements should not be a big problem. UPDATE : DRM is also a big issue I forgot to add to the list. The multiple versions of DRM restrictions for e-books is also an important turn-off for many people. In that case, I'm not sure if we will see a solution soon...

So then, I would ask you a simple question : When do you think you'll start reading e-books and what is keeping you from reading them now? Ok, that's two questions, so let's make two polls :

When do you think you'll start reading e-books?

- I already do
- Never
- In the near future
- Not until a couple of years

What is keeping you from reading e-books now?

- I already read e-books
- The price of the books
- The availability
- The price of the e-readers
- The loss of physical book feeling
- DRM

As for myself, I think it won't be until a couple of years and it's mostly because of the loss of the feeling I get when holding a physical book, I simply like it too much. Even though a e-reader could be something way more practical when thinking about carrying books, mostly so against a good old epic fantasy doorstoppers. Moreover, I'm still a little cold about the price of these e-readers and the implementation of DRM.

So, what about you?

The Heroes final (again) uk cover

A final cover with more blood was posted back in August, but it was not really final. This time it's final, as much as final can be. What changed? The blood mostly...

And as Joe puts it on his blog : "even more spectacular stunning wraparound-o-vision"

Round of covers

I missed a couple of titles in last weeks but I'll catch up with this post. The blogosphere has been full of new covers and without further comments, let's get to it.

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Let's start with my personal favorite fantasy artist in the last years, Kekai Kotaki. One of his work came up with the release of Peter Orullian short story, Sacrifice of the First Sheason (a tale set in the same world as the coming-up title The Unremembered). Tor.com posted the story here. Here's Ketai work :

Next up is some of the artist recent covers, mostly for D&D books. I particularly like the "steel" dragon for Misericorde :

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The next one was unveiled first by Mihai at Dark Wolf's Fantasy review and it's again a tremendous work for a french release, Canticle by Ken Scholes. The artwork is by Marc Simonetti. I really ought to post my French cover exploration (I promised to do it when I finished by German covers explorations 1 and 2....). Here you go :

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The Tor cover art for Ian C. Esslemont third Malazan novel, Stonewielder was already released. However, Pat at the Fantasy Hotlist posted the PS Publishing limited edition artwork by Edward Miller. I still prefer the one for Tor.

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Finally but not the least, Sam Sykes' Black Halo "controversial" cover art (follow-up to Tome of the Undergates which I can't seem to keep on top of my reading list... soon, soon!). I put the word controversial but it's mostly in term of art style preference. As for myself, I found the cover for ToU to be kind of nice (although a bit too reminiscent of Drizzt or Geralt) and I think that the idea to come back with the same character is a good choice. However I'm not 100% sure I like the result... it's not bad and I could say that it's a kind of kick-ass fantasy cover art but there's something that nags at me. I think it's the fire, looks too much "photoshoply perfect" for me. At least it got people talking! Anyway, here it is and thanks to Mad Hatter and Amanda at Floor to ceiling books for the heads up.

Damn spoiler

Beware readers of Towers of Midnight! I was not aware that a glossary could be such a source of spoiler, you've got here one angry reader!

Ok, I was not eagerly waiting for the revelation of Asmodean's killer that much but still, the possibilities and all the myths or I should say theories surrounding the mysterious killer got to me eventually. I would not have bought one of those T-Shirts with the phrase "I killed Asmodean" but man, how could they put the feat of killing him in the description of the killer in the glossary of the book???

Maybe it's not that much a big deal but I only wanted to read some entries to refresh my memory a bit and now, without having finished the first few chapters, I know who killed him. The only less disturbing aspect of this is that it was not that big a surprise for me.

Anyway, I simply wanted to share and to warn you future reader!

50 000

Reached 50 000 pageloads on the blog today!

It's a nice milestone me thinks! :)

Thanks guys!

Furies of Calderon review

The Furies of Calderon is the first book in the traditional style fantasy series The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. The author is mostly known for his urban fantasy novels, the Dresden Files, with wizard Harry Dresden. I have not read any Dresden Files books, mostly because I'm not a big fan of urban fantasy, but having read good comments on Butcher's high fantasy series (spanning 6 novels which are already all out), I decided to pick it up in audiobook format.

Tavi was supposed to herd the sheep. Unfortunately, while trying to get them back with his uncle Bernard, he stumbles upon a Marat scout. The barbarians coming back to the valley of Calderon forebodes ill tidings. In Bernardholt, Isana, the water-witch aunt of Tavi, the sole boy without a fury, is taking care of some precarious business. In the west, the cursor Amara and her mentor Fidelias are looking into a rebel army force on behalf of the First Lord of Alera, Gaius Sextus. All of their path will cross, joining them in a battle that will determine the sake of the people of Calderon and maybe that stability of all Alera.

Furies of Calderon is a typical fantasy novel set in a roman-empire era like world, with the addition of furies, beasties controlled by their crafters. If you put aside those aspects, that hopefully mostly help define the book in a unique way, you could say that the first book of the Codex Alera will appeal to fan of the old days. I mean the stories with a charming farm boy probably destined for more but with an handicap that refrain his expectations. To name a few I could say something in the line of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn or David Eddings' The Belgariad.

Nonetheless, the furies inhabiting Alera and the different kinds of witch-crafters add some significative benefits to the story without being overused. Tavi is the best example since he is furyless but can still function well enough in this dangerous world where even the elements of a storm come alive in the form of furies. Butcher created unique beasts for most of the characters but the way the protagonists use their guardians abilities to manipulate even the feelings of others is a nice asset to the story.

Isana and her counterpart Odiana have great scenes where they use their abilities as water-witch for extreme healing, to debilitate an opponent or to communicate with someone a great distance away. Beside those two, most of the cast is also shining when driven to extreme and finding ways to use their skills to eliminate a threat in a world full of betrayals (but not that much surprises...). The only people ineffectively exploited are the Marat, aside from an episode where Tavi and a Marat youth try to extract some special mushrooms from a valley infested with spider like creatures.

Unfortunately, I struggled hard with one part of the book. On two close events, an assault against a fortified city is depicted with too much details and for an overly long period of time in comparison with the rest of the story. Moreover, one of the main protagonist, completely disappear for several chapters even though his PoV was one of the most recurring and captivating. There's really a big problem of synchronization between his storyline and the others, resulting in a missed alternation of characters PoV, drowning the hype that could have been generated during the most important part of the tale.

Satisfyingly, Butcher writing is flowing nicely with a special attention to the thinking process of his characters. They contemplate the situations and take the time to speak about it. It slows the pace a bit but still, I appreciated the author skills. Regrettably, some villains (I think it's fair to call them that even though Butcher tried and mostly succeeded in explaining their motives and making them believable) have the bad habit of talking about their plans and deeds instead of simply giving the final blow.

Just a last comment about the ending. Have I mentioned that the book is traditional fantasy? Well the ending is kind of traditional too. The best comparison I can come up with is Star Wars : The Last Hope. It's nice sometimes to watch the protagonists receive honors in front of some glorious leader!

Technically, I found the Orbit books cover to be pretty generic and the Ace Books (second one) cover to be simply ugly. The physical book stands at 512 pages and the audiobook is close to 20 hours in length. It's read by Kate Reading, who I grew to love as the feminine part of the Wheel of Time audiobooks. After a couple of chapters, I was able to finally completely let go from a weird WoT feeling, and I enjoyed Kate reading (sorry bad pun) quite thoroughly.

Furies of Calderon review score :

Characterization............. 7.5 /10
World building............... 7 / 10
Magic system................. 8.5 /10
Story.............................. 7 / 10
Writing........................... 7.5 / 10

Overall (not an average) 7.5 / 10

Enjoy!

Jim Butcher page

New acquisitions

The first of them could put Sam Sykes book down (can I wait to read a WoT book?) and the other one is from one of the best debut this year (two novels in one year is a good start for a new author).

Thanks to Tor and Orbit books.

Enough said, let the pic do the talking :