Monthly Archives: February 2012

News

An Aside | New Synopsis for THE BROKEN ISLES by Mark Charan Newton

By Aidan Moher February 13th, 2012

The Broken Isles by Mark Charan NewtonVia the Pan Macmillan website:

War spills into the Boreal Archipelago, as two rival cultures bring their eternal battle into this adjacent realm.

Fresh from a military victory, Commander Brynd Lathraea plans to rebuild the city of Villiren, where he is confronted with a dilemma. There are friendly forces who have no other choice but to live alongside his own people, and their numbers will be required to fight in the looming conflict. The commander turns politician as he seeks to build bridges and embrace mysterious new technologies to further his ambitions. However, many in Villiren are sceptical of aliens coming to their city, tensions run high, and even the dream of a peaceful future brings with it inevitable clashes of beliefs.

Meanwhile, Villjamur has been destroyed. A vast swathe of refugees from the legendary city are now on the run from an immense alien presence in the sky. Villages are being cleared and people are dying en masse. And Inquisitor Fulcrom finds himself at the helm of an operation to aid the refugee exodus to the coast, but it’s a race against time before this threatened genocide is complete. Ancient civilisations line up on the field of battle. Exotic creatures and a possible god walk alongside citizens of the Empire. As the Legends of the Red Sun series draws to a close, there will be one final and immense conflict to decide the fate of multiple cultures forever.

The Broken Isles concludes Newton’s Legends of the Red Sun tetralogy, which reminds me that I still have to read the third volume, The Book of Transformations, especially since I enjoyed City of Ruin (REVIEW) so much.

Are you looking forward to the concluding volume of Newton’s series? What do you think of the first three volumes?

News

An Aside | No TV series for Lev Grossman’s THE MAGICIANS

By Aidan Moher February 9th, 2012

The Magicians by Lev GrossmanSome unfortunate news from Grossman this morning:

So January is the beginning of what — in the accursed, eternally burning nation of TV-land — is known as pilot season. That’s when the networks pick some of the series they have in development and greenlight them, meaning they’re actually going to cast and film a pilot episode.

It’s an exciting time. Except if your series doesn’t get greenlit.

The Magicians show was not greenlit.

[…]

From here the way forward for the show gets rockier, obviously. We’re going to take the script to cable networks. We’re also going to renew talks on the feature-film side. I can’t say I’m bitter about it. I wouldn’t have played my cards differently — we got exactly the right people and exactly the right script. It would have been incredible. It still will be, if we can get it to go somewhere else.

But no question, it’s a big disappointment. We had a really good shot this time, and it didn’t work out.

Disappointing news, no doubt. I’m usually not interested in seeing my favourite novels translated into the television medium (anyone remember that terrible Dresden Files show?), but there’s something about The Magicians that makes me wonder whether it wouldn’t work pretty well here. Brakebills seems like the perfect setting for a episodic show set at a magicians school. It’s doubly disappointing after you read John Scalzi’s comments on the script:

I laid my hands upon the spec script for The Magicians, the proposed television series based on Lev Grossman’s “Magicians” series of books. What’s more, I read it. And without revealing anything about it, because I don’t believe in spoilers and also I don’t want the horrible Television Ninjas to come for me in the night, I can say the following:

1. I would totally watch the hell out of this show;

2. I have a strong suspicion I wouldn’t be the only one.

With luck, we’ll have more news on the adaptation, but things aren’t looking good. More than anything, I appreciate Grossman’s great candor through the whole process and I’m sure I ‘m not the only fan sharing in his disappointment this morning.