Posts Tagged: Del Rey

News

Peter V. Brett completes The Daylight War

By Aidan Moher September 18th, 2012
The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

Peter V. Brett announced today that he has completed The Daylight War, the third volume in his Demon Cycle series. He comments on the experience:

When you work on a single project for three years, though massive ups and downs in your personal life and equally massive ups and downs creatively, it is a strange feeling to be done. There were times I never thought the day would come, hurdles in the story I never thought I would surpass.

He follows this by speaking directly about The Daylight War, at what fans can expect from the novel, and beyond:

Is The Daylight War better than The Warded Man or The Desert Spear? That is not for me to decide. It is very different in spirit and intent than those other books, intentionally so. I have grown as a writer and changed as a person over the last few years, and the book reflects that. When I start writing the same book over and over, then it’s time to worry.

But if I cannot say it’s better, I can say that it is the best book I could make it. I cut no corners, skipped no hurdles and took no shortcuts. This is clear in some ways from the sheer size of the book: 254,000 words (5% longer than Desert Spear, and close to 3x the size of your average genre book).

But it’s more clear in the content. Daylight War explores the characters of the Demon Cycle in a new light, adding depth to the world and weight to their actions. If Warded Man was a book about fear and Desert Spear was about opposing cultures struggling to find common ground, Daylight War is, as my editor put it, “a book about relationships”.

And some of them, I think, will surprise you.

[…]

The next book in the Demon Cycle series is tentatively titled The Skull Throne. There has been a working file for that book for over a year, with the stepsheet currently at 84 pages, spelling out in great detail the 21 key chapters of the book’s story arc. Doubtless more will be added, but I already have a clear skeleton to start from.

Given my thoughts on The Desert Spear, I’m a little concerned to be hearing the bolded comments from Brett. I felt that The Warded Man (which I quite liked) balanced nicely on the line of being an character-heavy narrative with just enough gut-wrenching action and magic to keep things interesting. The second volume expanded the relationship side of the story, quite dramatically, and suffered from poor pacing and some self-indulgent bloat. It also didn’t help that I felt that those relationships are the weakest part of the series, taking a back seat to Brett’s exploration of magic, his world-building and action. The Daylight War seems poised to continue along this path. Of course, I was something of an outlier in my opinion, so Brett’s legion of fans are surely salivating at the idea that this is his longest novel yet.

And, despite these reservations, I find myself looking forward to sinking again into Arlen’s story, especially given the events at the very end of The Desert Spear, which speak of major changes coming to Brett’s series. I’ll give the novel a fair shake when I get my hands on it.

The Daylight War will launch on the week of February 11th, 2013.

News

Terry Brooks’ The Elfstones of Shannara coming to a TV near you?

By Aidan Moher September 11th, 2012
The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks

Sonar Entertainment has acquired the rights to author Terry Brooks’ bestselling fantasy series “Shannara” and is partnering with Farah Films to produce a television series based on the books.

[…]

“Terry has created a rich world of characters and stories that have entertained millions of readers all around the world for a quarter of a century,” Farah said. “He has a built-in fanbase that is bigger than those for even the most recent hit book series, like ‘The Hunger Games.’ We’re very excited and proud to have the opportunity to partner with Terry in adapting his great work for the smallscreen.”

“Terry Brooks appeals to a huge and diverse cross-section of audiences throughout the world,” Till added. “There is an enormous desire to see ‘Shannara’ brought to life for television. We know this is going to be a terrific series that will both delight longtime fans and attract legions of new devotees.”

As always, I advise rampant skepticism and sheltered expectations at announcements like this. The Elfstones of Shannara has been optioned before, with a script written by Eldon Thompson, a Fantasy writer himself, and that turned into nothing but vapor and hot air. Still, Shawn Speakman, webmaster and friend of Brooks, expands with more details and some of his own thoughts on the news, which are encouraging:

There are some great things about this. In this situation, Terry is a partner, given a level of creative control that assures any adaptation is done to his vision. We also have Game of Thrones on our side. The show has been wildly popular in the episodic television format and we hope other networks might be interested in Shannara for the same reasons Thrones works. Not to mention giving eight or ten episodes to tell the grandness of Elfstones will ensure a faithful adaptation of one of the masterpieces of fantasy literature.

Terry also feels Elfstones is the right place to start. Sword mimics LOTR for the first third of the book whereas Elfstones is originally riveting from the start and also has the strong female characters Sword entirely lacks. If this gets greenlit into production and becomes a hit, the next likely place for Season 2 would be The Wishsong of Shannara.

The success of Game of Thrones is an easy reference point to point to, and has likely opened the doors for other Fantasy adaptations, like Brooks work, but I think there are a few key differences that make the comparison unfair towards The Elfstones of Shannara. Read More »

Review

Review of Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks

By Aidan Moher August 14th, 2012
Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks

Wards of Faerie

by Terry Brooks
Hardcover
Pages: 384 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Release Date: August 21, 2012
ISBN-10: 0345523474
Buy: Book/eBook

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a moderator at the Official Terry Brooks Forums, a role which I take seriously and indicates my level of fandom for Brooks, but which has not coloured the following review.

In my review of Bearers of the Black Staff, the first volume of Brooks’ The Legends of Shannara duology, his most recent published work, I wrote:

[T]he real meat of Bearers of the Black Staff is in the familiar elements that begin to rear their heads. The Trolls, a race that’s played a maligned roll in many of Brooks other novels, are the stars of the show here, and much of their history is revealed to the reader, for the first time in the series. Their origin story, involving characters from The Genesis of Shannara is heavy-handed and would have been better left hinted at, but this is something Brooks fans should be used to by now. Astute readers will also begin piecing together hints of the Knights of the Word and their eventual transformation into the Druids that manipulate the world in later Shannara novels.

Ultimately, though, these familiar elements are also the novel’s (and Brooks’) weakest link. Terry Brooks has a vocabulary that he’s built up through his career. Not a vocabulary in the sense that you’d find it in a dictionary (though his prose isn’t exactly a bastion of variety, it’s serviceable and easy to read), but rather in elements, archetypes and plot devices that he uses to construct his stories. There’s next to nothing in Bearers of the Black Staff that we haven’t seen before in any of Brooks’ previous novel.

This dissatisfaction extended into the sequel, The Measure of Magic, and grew, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth as a longtime Shannara fan. I didn’t review The Measure of Magic, for fear of just repeating the exact same points I made in the first, with only a small measure of irony. Fast forward a year and I approached the release of Wards of Faerie with no little amount of trepidation. Since Brooks concluded The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara 10 years ago, with the exception of Armageddon’s Children, I felt disappointment with each of his novels, from mild to severe. Where was the Brooks I fell in love with as a boy, first discovering Fantasy? Was he gone? Or was I simply grown up, better read and unable to appreciate the type of fiction that Brooks writes? Read More »