It is with a certain sadness that I learned of Anne McCaffrey’s passing. I have not read any of her novels, but my mother, who introduced me to Science Fiction and Fantasy and greatly encouraged and nurtured my love for the genres, is an enormous fan. This loss means that the Fantasy and Science Fiction community is now a poorer place than it once was, though enriched greatly by McCaffrey’s contributions to our beloved literature.
RIP, Anne.
My friends, sometimes you have to be careful what you ask for. When I first started talking to Aidan about a guest post on A Dribble of Ink, I thought of a couple of subjects that seemed easy at the time. The first was about the differences between writing a Book 1 in a series vs. its sequel. The second was about finding the sweet spot in terms of the number of POV characters for an epic fantasy. The first one was pretty easy to knock out, because it was more about relating my experiences over the course of writing the first and second novels in my trilogy. This second one, though, has been a tough nut to crack.
Why? That’s a fair question, because let’s face it: on the surface this question is easy to answer. How many POVs do you need? However many the story needs to tell it effectively. While I believe this to be true, it’s also about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. It doesn’t really illuminate the choices that have to be made with respect to POV, so I think what I’ll try to do is examine the question using two epics I’ve read recently.
On the one extreme, we have George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. How many POVs does Martin have now? A few dozen between A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, which really comprise a single novel broken up geographically (as opposed to breaking a large novel up temporally). Had anyone told an editor twenty years ago that they were going to start a series in which the novels would expand to twenty POV characters, they would have been laughed out of New York. And yet, here it is, a masterful story with a scope about as wide as you can have in fiction.
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From the press release:
Bella Pagan, Senior Commissioning Editor at Tor UK, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, has acquired world rights to the first two volumes of a fantasy series by Mark Charan Newton. The agent was John Jarrold.
The first book in a series provisionally titled DRAKENFELD introduces the eponymous hero, an investigator. The series is set in a fantasy world, but will appeal to fans of historical mysteries. In this opening volume, Lucan Drakenfeld is called home after the death of his father – but is immediately thrown into the investigation of a royal death. He also finds that his father’s demise is not as clear-cut as it at first appears…
Pagan said ‘Mark writes compulsive adventures set in utterly convincing new worlds – he’s a terrific writer. I couldn’t ask for a better start to my new position at Tor UK than this first deal’.
And Mark’s own thoughts on Drakenfeld:
A little more? It’s very much a fantasy novel, but equally a crime novel, with a locked-room mystery at the heart of it. Whilst I’ve dabbled with the odd crime sub-plot before, it was mainly a pastiche – Drakenfeld is much more committed to the crime genre, perhaps along the lines of the CJ Sansom novels. (It needs to be rewarding for readers of both genres.) The world is very much a classically inspired setting (Ancient Rome in particular), and there virtually no weirdness. I’m also really enjoying writing the Drakenfeld novel, much more so than any of the previous series, and especially the locked-room element: the impossible crime.
The most divisive and recognizable element in Newton’s writing isn’t necessarily his weirdness (though that’s certainly an aspect that separated Legends of the Red Sun from the many more traditional Epic Fantasies that flood store shelves), but more for his slippery, interesting prose that draws comparisons (whether apt or not) to other ‘weird’ authors like Mieville and and Vandermeer. Newton’s prose fits perfectly with the weird dystopian fantasy world explored in Legends of the Red Sun, lending atmosphere and a unique voice to his novels. I’m not convinced, though, that this style of prose would work so well in a more traditional Fantasy/Crime novel that has ‘virtually no weirdness.’ It will be interesting to see if Newton adopts a new voice to compensate for this change of tone, or if the echoes of his ‘weird’ lineage permeate the new work.
Either way, I’m a fan of Newton’s work and love the idea of him changing gears and working on something entirely new. Drakenfeld is currently slated for release in 2014, though Newton hints that there might be a possibility of a 2013 release.
Via Deadline:
Asa Butterfield, the 14-year old title star of Martin Scorsese’s 3D film Hugo, has been offered the title role in Ender’s Game, the Odd Lot Entertainment adaptation of the Orson Scott Card science fiction novel.
The kid looks the part. He’s small and has intelligent eyes. Plus, Scorsese casting him as the lead in Hugo certainly lends credibility to his casting chops and ability to hold his own as the star of a big budget film. It’s all just rumour now, however; but it’s fun to speculate.
The first thing you’ll notice, of course, is that the title Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s latest novel is El Prisionero del Cielo (or The Prisoner of Heaven, for those not versed in Spanish, like myself), which points to the novel and its author’s Spanish heritage. I’ll certainly post the English cover when it is finally announced (as I’m sure it will be, given the enormous success of its predecessor, The Shadow of the Wind).
Luckily, thanks to Mihai at Dark Wolf Fantasy Reviews, we also have a translated synopsis for the novel:
Barcelona, 1957. Daniel Sempere and his friend Fermín, the heroes of “The Shadow of the Wind” are back on a new adventure to face the greatest challenge of their lives. Just when everything begins to smile on them, a disturbing character visits the Sempere’s bookshop and threatens to reveal a terrible secret which lay buried for two decades in the dark memory of the city.
Zafon has been upfront about his plans to write four novels based around The Cemetery of Lost Books, first discovered by reader in the author’s first adult novel, The Shadow of the Wind (REVIEW), each of which stands alone while adding to an overall narrative arc. Zafon followed The Shadow of the Wind with a prequel, The Angel’s Game (REVIEW), which followed an almost entirely new cast of characters and was set several decades earlier. I expected that trend to continue with the third and fourth volumes in the tetralogy, but instead of a new set of characters, we’re returning to Daniel Sempere, the immensely likeable protagonist on The Shadow of the Wind. The Angel’s Game was a fine novel, but suffered from many issues that its predecessor did not; hopefully the return of familiar faces and storylines will help Zafon return to the form I expect of him.
