Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Too damn depressing

One of the reasons I stopped watching Game of Thrones.

To me, fantasy is about wonderment, fantasy should be fantastical. But GoT, and the books it is based on do away with both. That's the problem I have with those kinds of deconstructions (never mind the political BS that motivates most if it...) By deconstructing something down to it basic components in order to address whatever part if it is deemed objectionable, all too often one ends up destroying the very things that made it work in the first place. What's left is a dark and angst-sodden piece that is not very wonderful and has little in the way of the fantastical, and is just depressing to watch or read.

Good rule of thumb: when something is lauded by the critics as being a "brilliant subversion of" of its subject matter, avoid it as the post-modernist POS it likely is.




Friday, October 4, 2013

Quick pick me up...

Just the thing to brighten a bad day...

Anvil of Crom




From NPR - "Republic of Thieves"

From NPR (when did they start reading fantasy?)

Either you want to be dashing thief Locke Lamora, or you wish he loved you the way he loves his boon companions Jean and Sabetha. It's the delightfully tangled relationship between the three of them that takes center stage (sometimes literally) in Scott Lynch's latest Gentleman Bastard book, The Republic of Thieves.
If you're new to the series, it began back in 2006 with The Lies of Locke Lamora, a swashbuckling fantasy saga set in a multilayered world with a vague resemblance to Renaissance Europe. Locke, Jean and Sabetha are all orphans, raised in the criminal underworld of their Venice-like city of Camorr, and trained to be the creme de la creme of thieves. Mysterious redhead Sabetha is largely absent in the first two volumes; away on training missions or just missing. We mostly hear about her through Locke, who's desperately in love with her. Jean, the stalwart muscle man, mostly puts up with the drama. Mostly....
 Took him long enough to put it out...