Via Blastr, created by Lucy Kinsley:
I could stare at this all day. Like many of you, I recently watched the eighth (sorta) and final Harry Potter film and my nostalgia for the series just skyrocketed. It’s great fun to be able to re-live the series through this fun image. The artist did a wonderful job of capturing the irreverence and charm of Rowling’s characters and magical setting.
Click on the image to see it in all it’s glory, be warned, though, it’s *huge*.
I still don’t think we need another Dark Tower novel, but… holy wow. Beautiful.
EDIT: Courtesy Suvudu, we now have a synopsis!
For readers new to The Dark Tower, THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE is a stand-alone novel, and a wonderful introduction to the series. It is a story within a story, which features both the younger and older gunslinger Roland on his quest to find the Dark Tower. Fans of the existing seven books in the series will also delight in discovering what happened to Roland and his ka tet between the time they leave the Emerald City and arrive at the outskirts of Calla Bryn Sturgis.
This Russian Doll of a novel, a story within a story, within a story, visits Mid-World’s last gunslinger, Roland Deschain, and his ka-tet as a ferocious storm halts their progress along the Path of the Beam. (The novel can be placed between Dark Tower IV and Dark Tower V.) Roland tells a tale from his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother’s death. Sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape shifter, a “skin man,” Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, a brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast’s most recent slaughter. Roland, himself only a teenager, calms the boy by reciting a story from the Book of Eld that his mother used to read to him at bedtime, “The Wind through the Keyhole.” “A person’s never too old for stories,” he says to Bill. “Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them.” And stories like these, they live for us.
As Wizard & Glass (the best volume of the series) was also a story-within-a-story… I’m kinda even more intrigued now.
As I ponder my own review of George R.R. Martin’s latest volume in A Song of Ice and Fire, I stumbled across this interesting blog that chronicles Stefan Sasse’s experience as he re-reads A Dance with Dragons, a novel that’s found enormous success commercially, but a very critical response from many readers. It’s similar to what Tor.com’s doing with Robert Jordan’s A Wheel of Time, but looks more critically and in-depth at the novel on a chapter-by-chapter basis. It’s my own opinion that A Dance with Dragons (and, to an extent, A Feast for Crows) is unfairly maligned, and analyzing the novel without any of the anticipation and expectations that are loaded upon a first read might give a clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses in the narrative.
You can find Sasse’s re-read project HERE and his original review of A Dance with Dragons HERE.
Not only is this a decent way to re-cap the novel, Sasse has some good point about the narrative and it’s place in the overall scheme of A Song of Ice and Fire. He’s nearly done the novel, now, and I’ll be curious to see if he goes back and gives a similar treatment to the earlier novels in the series.
Via Winter is Coming:
We have some exclusive casting news for you, the House Gatewatch faithful. British actor Patrick Malahide has been cast as Lord Balon Greyjoy.
[…]
This probably completes the casting for Ironborn speaking roles this season as it looks like Aeron and Victarion will be shuffled off to later seasons. Malahide looks to be a solid choice for the role, being an experienced character actor and one that tends to play the villainous roles. Balon isn’t a villain per se, but he definitely has an edge to him. As a Greyjoy fanboy, I approve of this casting.
For the rather small role he’ll play in season two of Game of Thrones, I don’t have much to say. Looks scary and angry enough.
I made some waves earlier this year when I posted my thoughts on the nominations for the 2011 Hugo Awards. Bottom line, it’s an old men’s club that rewards the same people too consistently, doing the entirety of the genre an injustice. The awards are exclusionary in their ruling (just look at some of the changes being made to force StarShip Sofa out of the ‘Best Fanzine Award’). In any case, here are the winners, plus some thoughts on a few of the sections.
Best Fan Artist
Winner: Brad W. Foster
Randall Munroe
Maurine Starkey
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne
No comment.
Best Fanzine
Winner: The Drink Tank, edited by Christopher J. Garcia and James Bacon
Banana Wings, edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
Challenger, edited by Guy H. Lillian III
File 770, edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa, edited by Tony C. Smith
Don’t recognize any of these names? That’s because they’re almost all (with the exception of the aforementioned StarShip Sofa) print or pdf ‘zines’ that you probably didn’t even know existed. Since my first complaints a few months ago, I’ve followed File 770’s blog with regularity, but none of the other publications have held my interest. Yeah, there’s some good writing there, but this category needs to change in a way that encourages people to also include online only publications (like this blog, for instance) in the voting. ‘Fanzine’ is an outdated term. If the ‘zine scene is afraid of the online/blog scene, perhaps we could all agree to create a new category at the Hugos that encompasses ‘Online Fan Publications’. This category needs to grow up and become more inclusionary, to celebrate all reaches of fandom regardless of whether it falls under the umbrella of ‘fanzine.’ Unfortunately, the old men’s club wouldn’t even know where to begin. The Drink Tank hasn’t won a Hugo before this year, which at least shows some progress being made, but perhaps it’s time for some of the mainstays (File 770, 6 wins, 28 nominations; Banana Wings, 5 nominations; Challenger, 14 nominations; though a case can be made for those with several nominations and no wins) to follow in the steps of John Scalzi and Clarkesworld Magazine (in 2012) and consider withdrawing themselves from nomination in favour of exposing new and exciting fan publications. There’s no harm in spreading the love, is there? But, hey, what do I know? I’m just a blogger.
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