The Letter for the King is based on a novel by Dutch author Tonke Dragt and, according to IMDB, filmed in Czech Republic and New Zealand. (I thought I recognized the Southern Alps from Peter Jackson’s LotR films!)
Apart from what Tor.com has to tell, I don’t know anything about the series except that it reminds me of The Shannara Chronicles (both in the good and the bad). Of the writers I know nothing; of the cast, I’ve only seen two of the adults (David Wenham, Andy Serkis), so neither helps me decide whether it might be worth tracking down. Anyone know anything interesting about this project?
The series will be available on Netflix March 20, 2020.
Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.
This photo project is an older one, but due to the buzz generated by The Witcher screen adaptation it might be of interest.
(FYI: I can’t find a webpage dedicated solely to the project, so what I know mainly comes from an article at Design You Trust.)
Polish photographer and graphic designer Marcin Nagraba collaborated with designer Agnieszka Osipa to create a photoshoot entitled Pagan Poetry. Stylistically it can be described as Slavic fusion meets myth, fantasy, or Baroque. Osipa’s outfits certainly are out of this world—just check out the three examples below!
Nagraba’s personal Facebook page states he’s a “Former Photographer at Marcin Nagraba – Photography & Art”, so it sounds like he will not be continuing this project. Osipa is active, however, and she’s posting new work on Instagram and Facebook.
I remember reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising pentalogy in a Finnish translation as a child. This summer I read them all in the original English. I didn’t remember much of them at all, just impressions, and was struck by how much more simplistic the story was than I’d thought.
There was only one section in the whole 1,000+-word tome that the present-day me reponded to:
“We [Old Ones] have delivered you [humakind] from evil, but the evil that is inside men is at the last matter for men to control. The responsibility and the hope and the promise are in your hands—your hands and the hands of the children of all men on this earth. The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always there, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.
“[…] and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, in all its beauty and marvellous joy.”
– Merriman in Susan Cooper’s novel Silver on the Tree
The novel this quote comes from, Silver on the Tree, was originally published in 1977. I wonder whether World War II and/or the fear of atomic power might have been behind this paragraph? For me, however, it clearly applies to the current climate crisis.
Cooper, Susan. The Dark Is Rising: The Complete Sequence. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, p. 1079.
Image by Eppu Jensen
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
Writing on the patch 8.2.5 story for the World of WarcraftBattle for Azeroth expansion, Robert “Bobby” Davis blogging at Kaylriene puts into words what I’ve long thought: while I understand the need for a company to put the best positive spin into talking about their own products, Blizzard really needs to stop deluding themselves about the quality of their storytelling. Here’s Kaylriene on the topic:
“Saurfang says what I’ve thought about the writing of this story the whole time – the faction conflict is stupid and outdated, because Blizzard tries to pretend there is a depth and nuance to it that doesn’t exist in their writing. The Horde are villains, outright – every time this cycle comes about, the Horde does something awful and atrocious that pushes the world into conflict, the Horde leaders who suddenly have conscience about it reject the action and rebel, we storm up to Orgrimmar to depose whomever the despot is today, and then we move on until the next time it happens. He makes clear in-lore precisely what I’ve felt about the faction conflict the whole time – it was set dressing that no longer serves a meaningful purpose.” [emphasis added]
I’m not inclined to be generous to a story that repeats the same gimmick ad nauseam. Granted, you don’t need to look farther than our own human history—and not very far at that—to find nigh-endless faction conflict. But this is supposed to be fantasy, a genre that can have anything happen.
It’s been years since I logged back to WoW for the story—these days I play for completely different reasons than following the plot du jour. Not being a PvPer the faction conflict never was a big draw to begin with, but it used to have at least somewhat interesting turns.
Now, I also understand the difficulty of a rotating team trying to keep up with past writing, storylines, character arcs, details, all of it. There is, however, a lot to be said for storytelling, continuity, and proactive quality control, especially in case of a billion(!)-dollar tech company, lest you end up looking rather like an incompetent fool.
Redemption in Indigo was Karen Lord’s first published novel. It won a number of awards and nominations, including the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
“Paama’s husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents’ home in the village of Makendha, now he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—the djombi—who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.”
Redemption in Indigo has been called a contemporary fairy tale, a mix of Caribbean and Senegalese influences (chapters 1-3 are based on the latter), and a story of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit, complete with trickster spiders.
I found Redemption in Indigo intriguing and refreshing. Since it pulls from such different traditions than my native northern Finnish ones, I did occasionally have to consciously stop and adjust my expectations (like I did when I was reading Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death).
Anyway. Paama’s humor was a delight, slightly sarcastic at times, and I’m definitely a fan of well-crafted sarcasm (like Jane Austen’s). Her bit-of-a-dumbo husband Ansige cannot control his appetite, with consequences bordering the ridiculous. Lord also made some interesting structural choices which nod towards oral storytelling traditions.
The most enjoyable feature of the novel, however, was how seemingly small scale beginnings (a wife walking out on her husband) actually turned into life and death siatuations, and, yet, that wasn’t turned into a DRAMATIC OMG IT’S THE END OF THE KINGDOM / EMPIRE / WORLD (again)TM story like so many western fantasy novels tend to be. Lord’s subtle telling just rolls smoothly on, forcing the reader to pay attention. I had more than one “Wait, what?” moment… Which, to be explicit, is a good thing!
ICBIHRTB—pronounced ICK-bert-bee—is short for ‘I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Read This Before’. It’s an occasional feature for book classics that have for some reason escaped our notice thus far.
Another adaptation of the hugely successful tv series Game of Thrones is out. Embroiderers at the Ulster Museum and the Ulster Folk Museum produced a 77-meter long textile in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Originally the embroidery depicted events, locations, and story from seasons 1 through 7, but in June 2019 further panels depicting season 8 were due to be added.
While we loved the production values for the show and the intricacy of the writing, we stopped watching after season 3 due to the upsetting amount of violence. I do confess, however, that this project really tickles the textile history geek part of my brain!
Recently we rewatched The Hobbit trilogy, which made me—again—root around looking for Dwarf-ish music. This time, though, I went wider and also included cover versions of melodies from all of the six Peter Jackson movie soundtracks.
Northrend has some of my favorite areas in World of Warcraft. I love the music in Grizzly Hills, and both Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra have nice, varied environments. (Then again, Northrend also has one of my all-time non-favorites, too: Icecrown. So dark and spiky and empty, brr. But I digress.) Whenever I level a toon through Northrend these days, I visit all three zones, and pick and choose the rest as mood strikes me.
One of the Howling Fjord quests never gets old: Let’s Go Surfing Now lets you ride down an impossibly tall cliff standing on top of a flaming harpoon bolt. I took my Dark Iron Dwarf through there last night:
Whee! 😀
Of Dice and Dragons is an occasional feature about games and gaming.
Three and a half years ago, I spotted a tidbit about an Odysseus movie being in development. Since then, I’ve kept an eye out for more news.
There still is an IMDb entry for the movie, and it still lists the project as “in development”. Nothing significant enough to warrant further publication seems to have happened, however.
I don’t know whether the ancient world mini-boom has officially busted, or whether there wasn’t enough money, or what. It sounded like an interesting project, though. Perhaps it still has a chance.
Co-Geeking 