A Dribble of Ink

With the first two books in the Acacia Trilogy, Acacia and The Other Lands, David Anthony Durham has created a vast and engrossing canvas of a world in turmoil, where the surviving children of a royal dynasty are on a quest to realize their fates—and perhaps right ancient wrongs once and for all. As The Sacred Band begins, one of them, Queen Corinn, bestrides the world as a result of her mastery of spells found in the ancient Book of Elenet. Her younger brother, Dariel, has been sent on a perilous mis­sion to the Other Lands, while her sister, Mena, travels to the far north to confront an invasion of the feared race of the Auldek. Their separate trajectories will converge in a series of world-shaping, earth-shattering battles, all ren­dered with vividly imagined detail and in heroic scale.

David Anthony Durham concludes his tale of kingdoms in collision in an exciting fashion. His fictional world is at once realistic and fantastic, informed with an eloquent and dis­tinctively Shakespearean sensibility.

Another Epic Fantasy that looks to be wrapping itself up quite nicely in three volumes, all released at a reasonable pace. I haven’t yet read The Other Lands, so I can’t suppose too much about the synopsis here, but, damn does it make me want to get to finishing Durham’s series.

Tentative release date for The Sacred Band is October 4th, 2011.

Via Iceberg Ink:

Sure, they’re not in costume, and they’re missing a certain surly wizard, but it’s fun to see Bilbo alongside his motley crew of dwarves. I’m just gaga over the casting of Martin Freeman. Perfect, just perfect.

“You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”

“Wow,” Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. “Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class.”

Name a more anticipated novel releasing this year? Tough, ain’t it? Whether you’ve read The Name of the Wind or not, it’s hard to get out from under the shadow cast by the looming release of Patrick Rothfuss’ long-awaited sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear.

In anticipation, Tor.com has posted an excerpt from The Wise Man’s Fear. Only a couple of weeks to go!