Feature Article

Article | My Favourite Blogs of 2011

By Aidan Moher January 5th, 2012

Every year, I like to gather together some of my favourite bloggers/fan writers and give them some extra exposure. If you’re voting for the Hugos, consider these bloggers/blogs for the ‘Best Fan Writer’ and ‘Best Fanzine’ awards!

My Favourite Blogs of 2011

Staffer's Musings, edited by Justin Landon

Staffer’s Musings, edited by Justin Landon

Landon’s blog is new to the scene, but in the nine months he’s been around, he’s become one of my favourite voices in the community. He’s funny, but manages to use that sense of humour to eloquently and convincingly articulate his opinions and insights (even if I don’t always agree with him). He seems to post a new review each day, and he’s begun to interview authors. I expect big things of Landon in 2012. Plus, he looks like this.

Some posts of note:

His blog: http://staffersmusings.blogspot.com/
His twitter: @jdiddyesquire
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Feature Article

Article | My Favourite Videogames of 2011

By Aidan Moher January 4th, 2012

Aside from reading, I spend a lot of my downtime playing videogames. I always have, I suspect I always will. Here’s a list of my favourite videogames published this year, a few I missed out on and one that’s so special that I had to include it, even though it came out in 2010.

Honourable Mentions

Ghost Trick: Phantom DetectiveGhost Trick: Phantom Detective, published by Nintendo

It’s stylish and funny, has a labyrinthine storyline that never peters out even as it gets more and more twisty, more and more zany, and the animations are some of the best in the genre despite being on hardware that’s almost seven years old. It does everything right and deserves more attention.

Super Mario 3D LandSuper Mario 3D Land, published by Nintendo

Clever bite-size levels make this the best 3D Mario game since Super Mario 64. What more needs to be said?

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Feature Article

Article | My Favourite Novels of 2011

By Aidan Moher January 3rd, 2012

Another year, another list of great novels. I don’t read widely enough to declare a ‘best of 2011,’ so instead here is a collection of my favourite novels published in 2011, starting with honourable mentioned (in no order) and capped off with my favourite novel of 2011, which might come as a bit of a surprise.

Enjoy!

Honorable Mentions

Shadowheart by Tad Williams

SHADOWHEART by Tad WilliamsShadowheart is, essentially, one enormous climax. The pacing is frenetic (for a Williams novel…) and the author fills every nook and cranny of the novel with feverish action, enlightening observations on the plot or characters and enough twists and turns to keep fans of the series happy. It’s always bittersweet to see a series come to an end; as fans, we are always eager to find out what happens to our heroes and heroines, but, equally, we don’t want them to ever leave our lives. Perhaps the greatest thing I can say about Shadowheart is that through four long volumes of a story, Williams convinced me to care utterly for his characters and there’s a hole now in my life where they once lived. Few story tellers can do that. Williams does it with alarming regularity.
Read my full review of Shadowheart by Tad Williams.
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News

Free Readin’ | THE WINDS OF WINTER by George R.R. Martin

By Aidan Moher December 29th, 2011
THE WINDS OF WINTER by George R.R. Martin

The king’s voice was choked with anger. “You are a worse pirate than Salladhor Saan.”

Theon Greyjoy opened his eyes. His shoulders were on fire and he could not move his hands. For half a heartbeat he feared he was back in his old cell under the Dreadfort, that the jumble of memories inside his head was no more than the residue of some fever dream. I was asleep, he realized. That, or passed out from the pain. When he tried to move, he swung from side to side, his back scraping against stone. He was hanging from a wall inside a tower, his wrists chained to a pair of rusted iron rings.

The air reeked of burning peat. The floor was hard-packed dirt. Wooden steps spiraled up inside the walls to the roof. He saw no windows. The tower was dank, dark, and comfortless, its only furnishings a high-backed chair and a scarred table resting on three trestles. No privy was in evidence, though Theon saw a champerpot in one shadowed alcove. The only light came from the candles on the table. His feet dangled six feet off the floor.

“My brother’s debts,” the king was muttering. “Joffrey’s too, though that baseborn abomination was no kin to me.” Theon twisted in his chains. He knew that voice. Stannis.

And so it begins. It’s a Theon chapter (who starred in many of the best chapters from A Dance with Dragons and the series, for that matter.) It’s probably one of the few tastes we’ll get of Westeros for the next few years, barring the next Dunk & Egg story and other excerpts from The Winds of Winter. Enjoy it. Savour it.

Review

Review | THE TIGER’S WIFE by Tea Obreht

By Aidan Moher December 21st, 2011
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Tiger’s Wife

By Tea Obreht
Trade Paperback
Pages: 368 pages
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 01/11/11
ISBN: 0385343841

EXCERPT

The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past — the schools and dormitories of its youth, army barracks and tenements, houses razed to the ground and rebuilt, places that recall love and guilt, difficulties and unbridled happiness, optimism and ecstasy, memories of grace meaningless to anyone else — and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. For this reason, the living bring their own rituals to a standstill: to welcome the newly loosed spirit, the living will not clean, will not wash or tidy, will not remove the soul’s belongings for forty days, hoping that sentiment and longing will bring it home again, encourage it to return with a message, with a sign, or with forgiveness.

As a book reviewer, I’ve read many novels that were easy to write about, easy to critique or praise because they’re definable and have recognizable strengths and weaknesses. I’ve read several novels that I enjoyed so little that I felt the reviewing them would add little to the overall genre discussion beyond some shit slinging. I’d sit at my keyboard, trying to formulate a balanced, constructive argument for and against the work, and stumble again and again. And then there are novels on the knife’s edge of perfection, that are so joyous and heartrending that to speculate on them, no matter how effusively, would be to mar their beauty. Stardust by Neil Gaiman is one such novel for me. The Tiger’s Wife is another. There’s magic in this novel and I recommend it with every ounce of my passion for literature.