Monthly Archives: March 2012

Review

Review of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

By Aidan Moher March 28th, 2012
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games

By Suzanne Collins
Trade Paperback
Pages: 384 pages
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: 09/14/08
ISBN: 0439023483

EXCERPT

Oh, The Hunger Games. The first volume of Suzanne Collins’ world-beating trilogy first dropped onto my radar a few years ago, when the online sphere was abuzz with the release of Mockingjay. I battled the tide of popular influence for years, but with the recent release of the film, and needing a quick divergence from the doldrums of my current reading habits (do Robert Jordan’s books ever end?), I figured it was time to join the masses. I’m a slavering Harry Potter fan and can’t resist a good YA book, especially when they’re a national phenomenon (and don’t involve sparkling vampires), for long. I started The Hunger Games on a Saturday morning and, after a few grudging distractions and a night of sleep, I finished it Sunday afternoon. I turned the final page feeling thrilled and confused, satisfied and emotionally drained. And, ultimately, conflicted.

First off, I haven’t read Battle Royale, the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami, or watched the film, which shares strong similarities with The Hunger Games, so I can’t make comparisons there or suppose on how Collins might have been influenced. She says she had not read the novel or seen the film before beginning work on the series and I will take her word for it.
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News

Why the Wheel of Time is so long, an infographic

By Aidan Moher March 27th, 2012
Why the Wheel of Time is so Long

Because I didn’t annoy Wheel of Time fans enough last week, I thought I’d try again this week. I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through The Fires of Heaven, so, if this were a venn diagram, I’d be right where “Visiting every city ever mentioned” crosses over with “Men not understanding women” and “Women thinking they understand men, but getting it completely wrong,” with a bit of “Actual plot development” thrown in for good measure. I suppose, though, that this could point to nearly any part of any book between volumes 5-10, so…

EDIT: I should make it clear that I didn’t create this pie-chart, just found it somewhere in the depths of the Internet (meaning, probably Pinterest.) Credit goes to the original creator.

EDITEDer: Thanks to my wonderful reader, Aaron, we have an artist, the lovely Jenn L. from the now defunct Tor.com Wheel of Time Facebook page.

News

Harry Potter eBooks finally available

By Aidan Moher March 27th, 2012

Harry Potter eBooks now availableAfter years of impatient clamouring, Harry Potter fans can finally read about the Boy Who Lived on their favourite eBook devices. The books are now available in several eBook formats and range in price from $7.99 to $9.99 and are available for purchase through the Pottermore Store. The entire collection can be purchased for $57.54, which works out to about eight bucks a book. Not too bad.

Most interesting, though, is the way the books behave once purchased through the Pottermore store. The Verge has details:

Once you create a Pottermore account and buy a book (the first three are $7.99 each, the final four $9.99 each), you can download it up to eight times in any format you choose. The Wall Street Journal notes that each retailer gets a cut of the sales, but Apple’s iTunes Store is notably absent — you’ll need the ePub version if you want to read in iBooks.

Once you assign your purchase to a service (we tried an Amazon Kindle purchase), it behaves just as any Kindle book does. You can download it as many times as you want to your Kindle, it shows up with all other purchased books, and works on any device that Amazon has an app for (including the iPad). We also downloaded the ePub version and easily synced it to our iPad; it opened in iBooks without issue. These digital rights felt pretty reasonable to us — you could assign a copy to each of the four supported services, download an ePub copy, and still have three downloads remaining.

In a way, this round-about DRM is frustrating and being locked into purchasing the books through Pottermore is an extra step in the process, but, on the flipside, I appreciate that once a book is purchased, it’s available for download in multiple eBook formats and usable across various devices. Nothing’s more frustrating than known that each Kindle book I buy is locked into the Kindle platform and won’t be available (without some elbow grease), should I ever choose to use an eBook reader that doesn’t support .mobi files. It’s also nice to know that readers will, essentially, be able to share the book amongst friends and families more easily than most eBooks.

The Verge is also impressed with the quality of the eBooks:

The ebooks themselves are nicely formatted, with original illustrations intact, but there’s no bonus material here — though the WSJ notes that “enhanced editions” will video and audio content will eventually follow.

I’m not really one to care much for “bonus material” in eBooks, but I’d make a very generous and slavering exception for the Harry Potter series. I can’t wait to see those “Enhanced Editions” down the road.

Videogames

Mistborn: Birthright announced for XBOX, PS3, and PC

By Aidan Moher March 26th, 2012
Mistborn: Birthright logo

The full press release:

Little Orbit revealed today that they will be bringing best-selling author Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy series Mistborn to games late next year for PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, Windows PC and Mac.

Mistborn is set in a dark world of ash, mist, and gothic fantasy creatures, dominated by a seemingly immortal villain known as the Lord Ruler. It also follows individuals who use a powerful rule-based magic system known as Allomancy that allows them to temporarily enhance their physical and mental abilities by ingesting and “burning” flakes of metal. Those who have the ability to burn a single metal are called Mistings, and those who can burn all metals are known as Mistborn.

The upcoming RPG video game will feature an original storyline created by Sanderson, set several hundreds of years before the first Mistborn novel, and will focus on a unique combat system that puts Allomancy into the hands of gamers. Players will suit up as Fendin “Fiddle” Fathvell, an arrogant young nobleman who must quickly master his newfound Allomantic abilities before forces at work can destroy his entire family.

“I’m a huge fan of the series, and I cannot wait to get this into the hands of gamers,” said Matthew Scott, CEO of Little Orbit. “Between the distinctive magic system, the story twists Brandon has planned for the game, and the rich depth of character skills, we’re creating something very unique for players to enjoy.”

Sanderson is no stranger to video games. He recently completed story development on the Infinity Blade II video game including the accompanying Infinity Blade: Awakening novella. In between writing his popular Mistborn and Stormlight novels, he is also finishing work on the final novel in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. Sanderson has been labeled “one of the most popular new fantasy writers to emerge in the last ten years.”

“As an avid gamer, I’m extremely excited by this opportunity,” said Sanderson. “The chance to write the story for a Mistborn game while working with a team of talented developers is, quite literally, living a dream.”

I caught some hints of this when I had dinner with Sanderson a few months ago, though I suspected at the time that the announcement would come from from Chair Entertainment, a division of Epic Games that is responsible for Shadow Complex (based on a universe created by Orson Scott Card) and Infinity Blade, a popular iPhone/iPad series that Sanderson has been involved with (including a novella he wrote set in the universe, bridging the stories between the two games). I’m unfamiliar with Little Orbit, the publishers of Mistborn: Birthright and, given their meagre 48 ‘Likes’ on Facebook, I expect you are, too. Mistborn: Birthright is being developed by Game Machine Studios.

The Mistborn universe is ripe for a videogame adaptation, so let’s hope that this relatively unknown development team can do justice to Sanderson’s creativity and vision. It makes sense that they’d choose to develop this game as a ‘prequel’ to the novels, allowing gamers to explore the Mistborn world that they’re familiar with from the first novel, The Final Empire, rather than what it has become in The Alloy of Law, and Sanderson’s involvement in the creation of the storyline is encouraging. What do you hope for from the game?

Mistborn: Birthright is set for release in Fall, 2013 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Mac. For more information, visit the official website of Mistborn: Birthright.