Yearly Archives: 2009

Review

Review | Storm Front by Jim Butcher

By Aidan Moher April 21st, 2009
Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Storm Front

Author – Jim Butcher

Paperback
Pages: 320
Publisher: Penguin Putnam (Roc)
Release Date: April, 2000
ISBN-10: 0451461975
ISBN-13: 978-0451461971

Blame my girlfriend for this review, for I didn’t make up my mind about Jim Butcher’s debut novel, Storm Front, for myself, she did. The conversation started while we were laying in bed, with me debating whether I should jump into the sequel, Fool Moon or another novel, by a different author.

‘You must really have loved that book,” she said.

‘Huh?’ I said, turning to her.

‘That book, with the Wizard, you loved it.”

‘Uh, I did?’

‘Sure. You haven’t stopped talking about it since you finished yesterday.’

I thought about it for a second and realized she was right. I had been talking about Storm Front almost non-stop since the day before, when I hadn’t even finished it yet. I didn’t really realize it, but I did love Storm Front despite the problems it had. And you know why? It’s just plain, ol’ fun.
Read More »

Cover Art

Cover Art | A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks

By Aidan Moher April 20th, 2009

Taken from Terry Brooks’ Official Forum:

A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks

Princess Mistaya Holiday hasn’t been fitting in too well at Carrington Women’s Preparatory. People don’t seem to appreciate her using her magic to settle matters in the human world. So when she summons a dragon to teach a lesson to the snotty school bully, she finds herself suspended. But Mistaya couldn’t care less – she wants nothing more than to continue her studies under Questor the court magician and Abernathy the court scribe. However, her father Ben Holiday, the King of Landover, has rather different plans in mind for her. He thinks he’ll teach her about perseverance and compromise by sending her to renovate Libiris, the long-abandoned royal library. How horribly dull. But before long, Mistaya will long for the boredom of cataloguing an unfeasible number of derelict books – for deep within the library there lies a secret so dangerous that it threatens the future of Landover itself …

I love it. Simple, I suppose, but the colours really seal the deal for me. Steve Stone’s artwork can be hit or miss when it comes to Fantasy covers, but this one works for me. Much better than the bland UK Cover art.

Or maybe it’s just my inner Terry-Brooks-fanboy coming out. What do you think?

News

An Aside | New J.R.R. Tolkien novel coming in May 2009

By Aidan Moher April 19th, 2009

Tolkien Library (and found via the Westeros Forums) is reporting that a new novel by the author of The Lord of the Rings will be published in May of this year.

HarperCollins is to publish a new book by the late Lord of the Rings author J R R Tolkien. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, edited and introduced by Tolkien’s son Christopher, will be published in hardback in May 2009.

The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and ’30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the Fall of the Niflungs.

David Brawn, the publishing director of HarperCollins UK, said: “It is an entirely unpublished work, dates from around the early 1930s, and will be published – all being well – in May this year. Otherwise the clue as to what the book will contain is in the title – THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN. You will surmise from this that it is not a Middle-earth book, but we are confident that Tolkien fans will be fascinated by it.”For those who are wondering about it, I can already tell that this new edition will not be illustrated by Alan Lee; but have not been confirmed who will be the illustrator.

Christopher Tolkien edited Tolkien’s most recent title The Children of Húrin in 2007.

Further details about the contents of the book will be revealed closer to publication.

As someone who grew up on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but loves the world and characters a lot more than Tolkien’s actual writing, I can’t say that this is a novel I’m going to jump on. Still, it’s an interesting look at Tolkien and the influences that led to The Lord of the Rings.

It will also be interesting to see how this is marketing, considering it’s not a traditional prose novel and, likely, won’t appeal to many of the fans of Tolkien’s most famous works.

Much more information about the novel can be found HERE.

News

An Aside | News on The Hobbit movie

By Aidan Moher April 18th, 2009

Empireonline.com has some interesting news about the upcoming movie version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit:

We’ve known for a while that Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro’s eagerly-awaited adaptation of the Lord Of The Rings prequel, The Hobbit, would comprise two movies, due in December 2011 and 2012. But the make-up of those two movies has been up for debate… until now.

We spoke exclusively to both Del Toro and Jackson for our birthday issue, and they told us the latest, which is…

“We’ve decided to have The Hobbit span the two movies, including the White Council and the comings and goings of Gandalf to Dol Guldur,” says Del Toro.

“We decided it would be a mistake to try to cram everything into one movie,” adds Jackson. “The essential brief was to do The Hobbit, and it allows us to make The Hobbit in a little more style, if you like, of the [LOTR] trilogy.”

So there you go. The second film will not, as had previously been suggested, a film that will bridge the 60-year gap between The Hobbit and the start of Fellowship Of The Ring.

We’ve known for a long time now that The Hobbit was going to be split up into two movies (hey, movie companies like money, who knew?), but it’s nice to know that they’re switching focus back to The Hobbit. One has to wonder whether two movies isn’t too much to cover the events in The Hobbit, but when one considers how dense the novel is in action (every chapter is, essentially, a short story with its own arc), I trust that Del Toro and Jackson have the integrity and talent to do it justice.

At least it’s a better alternative to them trying to write an unnecessary sequel about Aragorn trying to hunt down Gollum….

News

An Aside | Dresden Files short story collection coming

By Aidan Moher April 18th, 2009

SFScope is reporting that Jim Butcher, the author behind the mega-successful Dresden Files has sold a short story collection featuring the likeable modern-day Wizard:

Jim Butcher sold an untitled Dresden Files short story collection to Anne Sowards at Penguin via agent Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The book, which will collect earlier short stories featuring characters from the Dresden Files series, will include some brand new stories, and is expected to be published in Autumn 2010.

Just in the middle of the first novel, Storm Front, this news couldn’t come at a better time for me! I have a hard time imaging how Butcher could write any faster than he already does, considering Storm Front itself is so quickly paced it almost reads like a novella.

Looking forward to it.