Monthly Archives: May 2011

Review

Review | SHADOWHEART by Tad Williams

By Aidan Moher May 18th, 2011
SHADOWHEART by Tad Williams

Shadowheart

Author – Tad Williams

Hardcover
Pages: 672
Publisher: DAW Books
Release Date: November 30, 2010
ISBN-10: 9780756406400
ISBN-13: 978-0756406400

To really understand Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch series, and my ultimate appreciation of it, one must look back to the rocky road of the original conceptualization and execution of its first novel, also titled Shadowmarch.

First conceived as a television show described by Williams as “Hill Street Blues meets Babylon 5 meets Lord of the Rings,” then as a free online serialization, Shadowmarch went through many forms in its infancy. Readers were finally introduced to the story when Williams released Shadowmarch on his website as a free-flowing piece-by-piece novel — an avenue that’s not unusual for aspiring writers hoping to catch the eye of a publisher, but an odd move for an author as well established as Williams. Eventually, due to a lack of readers willing to pony up the cash necessary to read beyond the first five chapters, the project changed course again and was converted into a full-fledged, traditionally published series. At this time, Shadowmarch was heavily re-written, added-to and even saw a shift from present tense to a more traditional third-person past-tense narrative.

Unfortunately, and despite the heavy revisions, these serialized roots left their mark all over the early volumes of the series. Though enjoyable (and the novel that finally convinced me of Williams as a novelist, after several failed attempts to read his classic Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy), Shadowmarch felt much like a novel looking for a plot. Things happened, characters were introduced, a world was built, but it never quite felt like Williams knew where the road led or had an ultimate plan in mind for the series. The potential was there, the bones were there, but the series was searching for a proper heart and soul.
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Art

Art | A modern timeline of THE LORD OF THE RINGS

By Aidan Moher May 17th, 2011

From Blastr:

A modern timeline of THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Click for Bigger

I’ve confessed a few times about my love affair with geek culture crossing paths with modern graphic design. This timeline of The Lord of the Rings is no exception.

From Blastr:

This infographic, created by JT Fridsma and posted on Fast Company’s Co.Design, tracks the appearance and journey of each of Lord of the Rings’ main characters on a minute-by-minute basis. It also plots their courses on a map. The result is a sparse yet striking image.

In “reality,” it took J.R.R. Tolkien three books (plus appendices) to chronicle Frodo and friends’ journeys from Hobbiton to Mordor, which, according to more exacting fans, took five and a half months.

From the Fast Company’s Co Design website:

Okay, we admit it: Here at Co.Design, we’re Tolkien geeks. Like straight up read-the-Silmarillion-grew-up-playing-the-RPG Tolkien geeks. So it’s with a flutter of nerd love that we introduce today’s IGOTD, created by University of Florida student JT Fridsma: A minute-by-minute plotting of the various scenes and parallel plots in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation.

Like all good art, I’d love to print this out and stick it on the wall of my office. Lovely stuff.

News

Free Readin’ | NIGHTS OF VILLJAMUR by Mark Charan Newton

By Aidan Moher May 17th, 2011
Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

Thanks to the good folk at Suvudu, the first five chapters of Mark Charan Newton’s Nights of Villjamur (REVIEW) are available to read for free! Mark is a good friend of this blog (even if I make fun of his cover art) and I’m always happy to have an opportunity to endorse and promote his work. If you’re looking for Epic Fantasy that strays away from the traditional tropes of the genre, Newton’s your man.

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News

An Aside | 1,000,000 Thank Yous

By Aidan Moher May 16th, 2011

 

1,000,000

 

While I was away on my honeymoon, A Dribble of Ink passed 1,000,000 pageviews. A million. It seems like just yesterday that I was patting myself on the back for hitting 10,000 pageviews.

I don’t really know what to say other than ‘Thank you’ — to everyone who’s stopped by the blog even once, and especially those who come back time-and-time again and keep this little community alive. It’s a cliche, but I couldn’t keep things going without the support of my awesome audience.

Cheers to you!

Feature Article

Guest Post | John Ginsberg-Stevens on “Mind-blowing” Genre Fiction

By John H. Stevens May 16th, 2011
Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

“It is one’s own daydreams that provide the mythopoeic power” – Joanna Russ

Last week I was fortunate to be part of an SF Signal panel that answered the question: “What was the last genre book that blew your mind?” There were a variety of titles chosen, and most of the discussion focused on telling other panelists and the listener what made each book “mind-blowing.” The books included Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey, Paul Jessup’s Open Your Eyes, and Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief, each of which is a very different book from the others. As we discussed these books, I began to wonder how these books achieved this heightened status, and from there I began to contemplate the question: how does a work of literature “blow our mind?”

The concept that something can be “mind-blowing” is a recent one. The term became popular in the 1960s first to describe the experience of taking psychedelic drugs. As it proliferated in usage its application expanded, and eventually included anything that was startling or intensely affecting. It is now found in a variety of contexts, and has been used in fantastika in book titles, in discussions about the literature, and sometimes in relation to works that might not seem to fit the term. It is a term that relates to a type of encounter, but that is often subjective and used to communicate an intense personal experience to others in a way that sets them into a similar relationship to the source or effect that is “mind-blowing.”
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