Fantasy – Page 5 – Into the West

C. S. Lewis Reviews The Hobbit, 1937

A world for children: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (London: Allen and Unwin, 1937) The publishers claim that The Hobbit, though very unlike Alice, resembles it in being the work of a professor at play. A more important truth is that both belong to a very small class of… Read More »

Source: C. S. Lewis Reviews The Hobbit, 1937

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A small early birthday gift to myself on the 78th anniversary of this review, originally published in the Times Literary Supplement (2 October 1937), 714.

A Beauty, Sleeping or Otherwise

An excellent analysis of one of my favorite Disney classics, Sleeping Beauty, posted at Tor.com and authored by Mari Ness.

Some interesting tidbits:

First Disney feature filmed on 70mm (the 1950s version of IMAX)
Incredibly detailed backgrounds by Eyvind Earle – the equivalent to at least 60 multiple, massive fine art paintings.
Maleficent morphs into a dragon – one of their most magnificent creations, animated with rich, black and purple bitterness.

An Attempt to Unconfuse This Year’s Hugo Award Debacle

I’m not nearly as excited about voting in the Hugos this year as I was last year. I’ll get much more excited next year when World Con actually comes to my home town (or close to it) in Kansas City.

Meanwhile, if you need some help decoding what all the hullabaloo is about the Hugo Awards circa 2015, peruse IO9’s excellent article here.

History – Real and Fictional « L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2015/02/17/history-real-and-fictional/

Insights from Modesitt on believable world building.

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

The Current Economics of E-Books « L.E. Modesitt, Jr. – The Official Website

http://www.lemodesittjr.com/2015/01/16/the-current-economics-of-e-books/

For my aspiring and published author friends: observations on the ebook market by Modesitt

Posted from WordPress for Android via my Samsung smartphone. Please excuse any misspellings. Ciao, Jon

Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!

“Happy Birthday” to my Aunt Jan in Ohio. She’s shown between her two older brothers in the photo below taken a couple of years ago at my dad’s 70th birthday bash:

Incidentally, all of the above are born in the same month — November — as is my husband and my daughter-in-law. I’ve blogged about this before. Here’s a photo from their early days (circa 1953):

I have many fond memories of my Aunt Jan. I remembering spending a summer or part of a summer with my grandparents (her mother and father) in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was about six (circa 1970) and Jan was still in college (she was probably about 20).
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!”

Short Film: Nebula

This should bring a smile to your face and lighten your day:

[vimeo 105545337 w=500 h=281]

Book Review: Sword of Michael by Wynne (2.5 Stars)

The Sword of Michael by Marcus Wynne

2 to 2.5 out of 5 stars

Publisher’s Synopsis:

Marius Winter doesn’t walk the road of the shaman-warrior alone. He has powerful allies in the Other Realms and in ordinary reality. His spirit guides are a Lakota war-chief and medicine man, First In Front; Tigre, a powerful feminine spirit who appears as a white tiger; and Burt, a spirit raven who channels an old Jewish bookie from the Bronx.

Now Marius is targeted by a powerful sorcerer. In the battle for the souls of his friends and lover, he must storm the gates of the underworld and fight through the Seven Demi-Demons of Hell to the deepest dungeons to confront Belial himself.

My Thoughts:

I found myself skimming and skipping most of this book. The first two-thirds seemed your standard urban fantasy with a supernatural flare, demons and angels, the old Holy War, tied into or growing out of the Fall of Atlantis. The dialogue was forced and re-used one-liner clichés poorly. After about the sixth time I’d read a ‘one-liner’ I just about gave up. I forged on, but the ‘pay off’ didn’t pay as much as just felt off.

Continue reading “Book Review: Sword of Michael by Wynne (2.5 Stars)”