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WoGF Review: Hild by Nicola Griffith
Alix Heintzman (alixheintzman) recently earned herself a graduate degree in history from the University of Vermont, and has circled back to her Old Kentucky Home with her partner Nick Stiner. She spends her time semi-desperately repairing the abandoned house they just bought, writing history high school curriculum, and reading fantasy books. She reviews books on her blog, The Other Side of the Rain, and is a staff reviewer at Fantasy Literature.
Nicola Griffith’s Hild: A Novel is something rare. It’s a historical fantasy, but it’s not a magical adventure, a bodice-ripper, a military drama, or even a political thriller. It’s not the kind of book you dive into and finish a day later and forget almost immediately. Hild is a whole world with a taste and texture of its own. It lingers.
The story is a fictionalized (but not fantasized) vision of the early life of Hilda of Whitby, a slightly obscure 7th century English saint. The plot clings to the trailing skirts of a young girl who becomes the seer to a medieval King. Amid a sea of old English names and places (Ǽthelfrith, Ealdwulf, Caer Loid, Hwicce), Hild uses her influence and intelligence to navigate the choppy waters of politics and war. It’s a slow, beautiful story full of winter evenings by the hearth and long rides through the countryside and sudden spurts of violence. It’s simultaneously about the huge, grinding ways that cultures change, the depth and complexity of the past, and a young girl making her own way.
In the spirit of full confession, Hild is not technically fantasy. There’s no magic performed in the story. Merlin doesn’t stroll in halfway through and have a magical showdown with Morgan le Fay, and there aren’t any dragon sightings or wood sprites or Faeries spelled with an ‘e.’ Hild’s own magic as a seer is a combination of artifice, mystery, and her own fierce observational intelligence. But it does feel like fantasy, and not just because we’ve been hardwired to expect sorcery whenever we see a sword.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 Official Trailer!
So, is it weird that a hairy old man like me is stoked to see this? Cause I am. What do you think?
WoGF Review: Among Others by Jo Walton
Stephen Poltz (spoltz)‘s love of anything SF and Fantasy was inspired by his childhood heroes Carl Sagan and JRR Tolkien. Oh yeah, and by watching cheesy ‘50s sci-fi movies on a black and white TV. He got a book-reading-reboot when he met his partner, Jacob, a voracious reader from a family of hard-core, genre fiction enthusiasts. After seeing a display of Hugo Award winning books at his local bookstore, Steve became obsessed with reading all the winners. Now, when not QAing software, learning Polish, or finding new books to read on WWEnd, he writes reviews on his blog It Started With The Hugos…
It’s great that a Hugo winner is a book about a science fiction fan. The attraction to science fiction, for many of us, begins when we’re young, feeling outcast, different, or otherwise disenfranchised from the mainstream. We find it a solace, a place where we can believe that there’s something else out there, something better, something more real than our cruel reality. The main character of this story is one of these fans, a teenage girl whose turns to SF to escape from the cruelty and craziness in her life.
Morwenna has a crazy, abusive mother from whom she’s escaped, an alcoholic father who she’s just met, and goes to a private boarding school where, of course, she doesn’t fit in. She is also the surviving twin of a car crash caused by her mother. However, she finds her peace in SF, and has read an unbelievable amount of SF and fantasy, mostly by some of the most esteemed and prolific authors. To her joy, she also finds an SF book club at her local library. She gets to do a little growing up through new relationships she forms with the members of the club as well as with other book lovers.
One other thing, Mori can do magic and can talk to the faeries. She spends most of her time protecting herself against the bad magic of her mother. She is originally from Wales where she often spoke with faeries. Now living with her father in England, she can see them, but doesn’t have much interaction with them.
WoGF Review: Debris by Jo Anderton
Guest Blogger and WWEnd member, Rob Weber (valashain), reviews science fiction and fantasy books on his blog Val’s Random Comments which we featured in a previous post: Five SF/F Book Blogs Worth Reading. Be sure to visit his site and let him know you found him here.
For my twelfth and final read for the Women of Genre Fiction reading challenge I selected Debris (2011) by Jo Anderton. It is a first part in the Veiled Worlds trilogy. The second part, Suited, has been published last year while the third part Unbound is scheduled for sometime next year. I got a whole bunch of Angry Robot titles last year for a bargain price and this was one of them. It has been lingering on the electronic to read stack for quite a while now. I even meant to read it earlier in the year for the reading challenge but every time some other book managed to sneak in first. Fortunately for Anderton I ran out of books by women I haven’t read anything of before last month so the last slot is hers. As usual with Angry Robot publications, Debris is a book that is hard to put into a specific genre. Their strategy to look for books that are different has given us a number of very good novels but also some that don’t work that well. Debris works for the most part but it is not the most challenging read I’ve come across this year.
Tanyana is one of Varsnia’s most important architects. Her supreme tallent in handing the pions, the force that drives most of Varsnia’s society, has placed her at the very pinnacle of her field, in control of one of the most talented circle of pion manipulators. When working on another magnificent construction, two inspectors show up to monitor the work. Promptly, something goes awfully wrong. Tanyana and her circle are attacked by a type of pions she has never encountered before and the whole collapses around her. She is seriously wounded in the accident and when she regains consciousness she is discredited, in debt and has lost her talent to see pions. Tanyana has lost everything that defined her life.
WoGF Review: Heartwood by Freya Robertson
Wendy B. (nightxade): My brother introduced me to science fiction, fantasy and comics when I was barely out of diapers and LeVar Burton encouraged my love of reading throughout my youth. If my love of reading is the only legacy I can pass forward to my little geeklings, I would be a very happy mom. (If they pick up my love of gaming, writing and their dad’s love of cooking, too, then that would be even better!). Now I happily share my bibliophilia with my fellow bibliophiles at bibliosanctum.blogspot.com.
Peace between the people of Anguis is tenuous. In a last ditch effort to fix this, leaders from all realms gather together, but the peace talks are interrupted when mysterious and powerful water warriors attack, stealing the heart of the Arbor, the tree that is at the centre of all things.
After a lengthy discussion with a friend about religion in fantasy, reading Heartwood was very timely for me. The Arbor is the central figure in Robertson‘s pantheon, and she takes the time to carefully present how the different characters and realms feel about their religion and how those views change as the story progresses. The Militis defends the tree with their lives, but the loss of the Pectoris (the holy tree’s heart), cuts some of them more deeply as it is a failure of their duty as well as an attack on their beliefs. Meanwhile, others take a more realistic view with their beliefs and some are even disturbed by the Arbor itself.
Nonetheless, when the Pectoris is stolen, all must work together to get it back and the journey they each take is both external and internal as they come to terms with their beliefs and with their personal struggles. However, this is where the book falters somewhat. To save the Arbor, five Nodes must be discovered and activated some how. This is conveniently discovered during the water warrior attack and disclosed in detail as new information is recited from long hidden tomes that shake the foundation of the practices surrounding the Arbor’s care. Robertson’s gaming influence becomes obvious as groups head off on their respective Quests. She does a great job of keeping the groups separate and unique, but the process of discovering the hidden tomes and the respective Nodes lacks subtlety.
Interstellar Teaser Trailer
Not a lot of footage from the actual film, but it sure looks ambitious.
Mirror City Timelapse is Wicked Cool
This video is just cool so I wanted to share. It’s kinda sci-fi-ish don’t ya think? I found this one via Colossal which is one of my favorite sites.
Fantasy Manga 101: Claymore
Glenn Hough (gallyangel) is a nonpracticing futurist, an anime and manga otaku, and is almost obsessive about finishing several of the lists tracked on WWEnd. In this series on Fantasy Manga Glenn will provide an overview of the medium and the place of fantasy within it.
Back in the introduction blog, I said that the usual order of things was for a manga to get an anime adaptation and not the other way around. This has a gatekeeper effect, promoting what is deemed the best manga. (Best in this case does mean things like what sells the best and what can generate the most money from the anime and from the merchandizing.) But it still means that high quality manga out of each new crop is recognized.
Paradoxically, I’d say that 90% of the time, I will see the anime first and then go back to the manga. So this gatekeeper effect is key to finding new manga. It makes the flood far more manageable. With Claymore, I saw the anime
first and then went back for the manga.
And to my chagrin forgot about it.
Fast forward three or four years and I rediscovered both. I’d originally read what was available of the manga online. This time I bought the series and regot the anime. I am intensely hooked. My opinion went from “it’s ok” to “my god, what was I thinking, not getting this, not paying more attention to this”. I’m so glad I went back for a second look.
Godzilla Teaser Trailer
This is looking surprisingly good. But what else would you expect from the director of Monsters?
The Pretender: Rebirth Winners!
The Pretender: Rebirth contest has just concluded and we’ve tallied up our contestants. We had 130 re-tweeters and 33 blog posters which is a new record for one of our contests not to mention a new record for comments in a blog post. Well done, everyone! We put all those names into a spreadsheet and, using a random number generator, we picked our 5 lucky winners:
The Pretender: Rebirth Winners:
celina kyle
@FaithParker
zeezowee
@zeezowee
#TroublesAreHere
@montanaphantom
Yael
Karen
@kar328
Congrats to all our winners! If you are one of our prize winners please send your full name and snail-mail address to us at “info [at] worldswithoutend [dot] com” so we can send you your prize right away. Be sure to mention The Pretender in your email so we know which prize you’re claiming. If you’re not one of our winners I’ll bet Steven and Craig would love it if you bought a copy for yourself. Just saying.
Our thanks to creators Steven Long Mitchell and Craig Van Sickle and all the folks at ThePretenderLives.com for making this contest possible! Perhaps we’ll be able to do this again when The Pretender: Saving Luke comes out next year!
