fantasy – Page 105

Review of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien

Monday, November 14, 2005Friday, February 1, 2008 admin

Sir Gawain And The Green Knight
Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien; Read by Terry Jones
2 cassettes – 150 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Harper Audio
Published: 2000
ISBN: 0001053736
Themes: / Fantasy / Mythology / Arthurian Legend /

It’s Christmas at Camelot and King Arthur won’t begin to feast until he has witnessed a marvel of chivalry. A mysterious knight, green from head to toe, rides in and brings the court’s wait to an end with an implausible challenge to the Round Table: he will allow any of the knights to strike him once, with a battle-axe no less, on the condition that he is allowed to return the blow a year hence. At the center of the story of the challenge and its consequences is Arthur’s brave favorite, Sir Gawain.

*ALSO INCLUDED* ~An Essay By J.R.R. Tolkien
An introduction and background essay by the master himself, J.R.R. Tolkien regarding the translation and preservation of the anonymous fourteenth-century poem upon which this story is based.

Another mytho-historic tale translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, who was, as many forget these days, a professor of linguistics at Oxford. Another medieval scholar contibuted to this audiobook…. Though best known for his work with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Terry Jones lends not only his signature voice to Tolkien’s translation of the Arthurian legend but also his familiarity with the subject. Not just an internationally recognized comedian, Jones also happens to be a scholar of medieval literature. As such he is well equipped to flesh out the characters and voices of Tolkien’s text in an authentic way. The combination of the lilting verse and the audio medium bringing the absolutely right feel to the presentation, something that makes it quite clear that heroic tales were meant to be spoken aloud rather than simply read. Also of interest to Tolkien fans is the included essay by Tolkien on the translation. A hard to find audiobook but well worth the effort!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro

Wednesday, November 9, 2005Thursday, February 4, 2010 admin

The Quantum Rose
By Catherine Asaro, read by Anna Fields
1 CD (MP3) – 13 ½ hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Published: 2004
ISBN: 0786186232
Themes: / Science fiction / Fantasy / Romance / Space opera / Telepathy /

I’ve always been a big fan of math. I like the chumminess of commuting, associating, and distributing; the edginess of integrating by parts; and the sharp antiseptic sting of differentiating exponentials. In The Quantum Rose, Catherine Asaro brings the robust methodology of a table of cosines to romantic space opera. Like a seasoned mathematics professor, she begins by defining the variables: A fantastically beautiful heroine; her strong, handsome but brutish betrothed; and a mysterious stranger who takes a sudden interest in the heroine. She then lays out the equations for us: fear, mutual need, and strange loyalty between her and the betrothed; fear, mistrust, sexual attraction, and a hidden wound that must be healed between her and the stranger. From there, she manipulates the terms using standard algebraic operations such as nudity, well-meaning ignorance, revenge, treachery, self-sacrifice for the greater good, declarations of undying love, and first time sex so amazing it humbles those of us with decades of experience.

Asaro’s story-solving skills are honed to such an atom-splitting edge that only halfway through the book, she derives the main quantity of interest: True love. Not satisfied with so straightforward a proof, however, she dashes diligently on to lead us through a desperate, if leisurely (and admirably bloodless), rescue of an exiled royal family halfway across the galaxy. It’s all quite rigorous.

Never does Asaro skip a step. In fact, for the elucidation of the reader, she will often review a step several times to ensure we’ve understood each point before moving on to the next. She also provides enlightening chapter headings, which contain both a plain English title and a subtitle composed from quasi-quantum mechanical terms (for those hopelessly muddled by such clever cryptology, I’ll provide a clue: Substitute the word “person” for “particle” in these subtitles, and you’ll crack the code for over half of them). Thus, we are duly apprised of all developments well before they occur in the text. As a final touch, Asaro has defined most of the significant variables to be empaths or telepaths, which means we are never in doubt of what anyone in the story is thinking or feeling unless some misunderstanding is required by the plot.

Anna Fields adds to the proceedings by reading the text out loud for us. As an intriguing counterpoint to Asaro’s linear clarity, Fields adds a note of mystery by using female character voices that are quite similar to one another and by occasionally using the voice of one lead male to deliver the dialog spoken by another. The drunken mutter she maintains for the most prominent male throughout the entire length of the book also tends to soften the hard edges of understanding that sometimes seem too prominent for comfort.

The most exciting aspect of this audio book, however, is the medium it is recorded on. That MP3 technology allows nearly 14 hours of spoken text to be recorded on a single, handy CD is like a divine response to listeners’ prayers. There is only one nicely packaged jewel box to open–no snarling tapes nor floppy CD sleeves that produce obligingly but accept only grudgingly, the sound quality is excellent, and the production is clean. Maybe someday I will have the opportunity to actually enjoy an audio book in this format.

Posted by Kurt Dietz

Review of Knife of Dreams: The Wheel of Time, Book 11 by Robert Jordan

Wednesday, November 2, 2005Friday, February 1, 2008 admin

Knife of Dreams: Book Eleven of The Wheel of Time
By Robert Jordan; Narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer
26 CD’s – 32 hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Renaissance
Published: 2005
ISBN: 1593977654
Themes: / Fantasy / Epic Fantasy / Magic / Good and Evil / Demons / Dragons /

The eleventh installment in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, Knife of Dreams proves to be a fast paced and entertaining listen. This audiobook came as a welcome surprise after the last several novels in this series that tended to feel as though they were bogged down with a lot of useless detail and little action. There may be a movement forming of people supporting the cutting off of Nynaeve’s braid. Although, to be fair, she is now overly prone to “almost” yanking her plaited tresses instead of actually doing it. Other behaviors the movement may be interested in deleting from the text are the smoothing and/or arranging of skirts and shawls, sniffing, and Elaine’s new preoccupation with cursing Rand Al’Thor for her discomforts with pregnancy (after all, it takes two, right?). If these things were taken out of the text the world might be left with Wheel of Time pamphlet instead of the series.

Monotonous behaviors aside, Knife of Dreams came through in delivering resolutions to some of the subplots that have been hanging over the course of several novels. Jordan has breathed life back into his series with this book and regained the vitality of the earlier writing.

Kate Reading and Michael Kramer once again deliver fine performances reading the female and male characters respectively. This duo has narrated each book in the Wheel of Time series. The consistency in their character voices, intonations, and personality style demonstrate how well Reading and Kramer understand their characters and how familiar they are with the direction and emotional climate of the story. If you have been disillusioned with past installments of the series, give it another chance, this book is worth the time.

posted by Tricia

Review of The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 1: The Dunwich Horror and The Call of Cthulhu by H.P Lovecraft

Monday, October 31, 2005Sunday, July 17, 2011 Jesse Willis

The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft Volume 1: The Dunwich Horror and The Call Of Cthulhu
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Wayne June
3 CDs – Approx 3.5 Hours [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: 2005
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror / Gods / Evil / Mathematics / Dreams /

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

When Fantasy is inspired by science it can be especially powerful. H.P. Lovecraft built his mythos using the scientific concepts of his day. There could have been sensible talk of ‘other dimensions’ before the experiments surrounding the nature of light. And much of the alienness of his creations explicitly depend on such concepts in theoretical physics as non-euclidian geometry. With these concepts being in the air Lovecraft set out to plant a seed of churning fear with his fiction – turning the many unknowns science was uncovering into unspeakable horrors that lurk within the imagination. Combine this with Lovecraft’s dense and brooding prose and you’ve got something that no modern author could get away with. No modern author could, Lovecraft does. Audio Realms is starting to release the titles that make any classic fantasy fan salivate. Here in this terrific audiobook are two tales of horror that we declare to be SFFaudio Essential:

The Dunwich Horror is the tale of a backwater New England town with a devolving populace and one particularly strange family’s chronicle. It starts with two small things. The cataloguing of some mouldering old books and a disturbing birth of a new resident. These events are the begining of a new danger for the hamlet of Dunwich and possibly the Earth entire. What’s interesting here, as with so many early horror tales, is that Lovecraft creates evil not by revealing action directly but by atmosphere and appeal to our primitive revulsion reflex. Lovecraftian evil is not something created by moral degeneracy (though he does talk of that), but rather by sheer alieness, an atmosphere of ignorance and most of all a lurking dread.
I’m not sure it would make much sense to be an apologist for the Elder Gods who’d consume us without a thought – but what exactly makes them so evil? Since everyone who finds out has their sanity blasted we’re not likely to find out very soon.

The Call Of Cthulhu is a reconstructed tale. A nephew finds in the his recently deceased uncle’s study some strange documents. A young nephew discovers in his recently deceased uncle’s study some correspondences and notes, along with a mysterious and disturbing statue. It seems that several mysteriously similar cults worship of a being, who they call Cthulhu. A sea voyage eventually yielded a brush with an unearthly force. I won’t reveal any more of the plot, but I will say this, I think Philip K. Dick may have been inspired by this story for his novel Galactic Pot Healer. This creepy tale is perhaps the definitive Lovecraftian work. They even named a great role playing game after it. One suggestion, this one is pretty scary, you may want to wear brown pants while listening.

Narrator Wayne June’s voice will give you the absolute lurking creeps. His deep raspy voice is also used to good effect for all the narration, when he is infrequently called upon to do the voices of the damned he distinguishes between them well. This is the best Lovecraft adaptation to audio I’ve heard and more frightening than hell. For full effect a listener should turn down the lights, put on a good set of headphones, sit in a lonesome room with a view of the sea and pray that Lovecraft was just making all this stuff up.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Statement of Randolph Carter by H.P. Lovecraft

Monday, October 31, 2005Friday, February 1, 2008 admin

The Statement Of Randolph Carter
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Bill Mills
1 MP3 File – Approx. 26 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Renaissance E Books / REB Audio
Published: 2005
Themes: / Fantasy / Horror /

“Carter! for the love of God, put back the slab and get out of this if you can! Quick!–leave everything else and make for the outside–it’s your only chance! Do as I say, and don’t ask me to explain!”

An excellent introductory mini-biography of Lovecraft precedes the reading of this infamous short story of lurking horror. Written in 1919 and first published in 1920 The Statement Of Randolph Carter is one of the best ways to step into the terrible beauty of the Lovecraftian mythos. Told as a statement in monologue by the title character – Carter recalls to the gentlemen assembled around his hospital bed the singular incident that brought him there – an event so horrific it would likely blast the mind of the sanest man should it be witnessed first hand. Following the clues they found in the text of an ancient book from India two men discover a nameless horror entombed in the Earth. Bill Mills’ reading is truly eerie. There is a constant musical background during the reading – it doesn’t too badly hurt the production but I myself would have preferred a music-free reading. The Statement Of Randolph Carter is available now as a high quality MP3 through Fictionwise.com just in time for Halloween!

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of The Fifth Sorceress by Robert Newcomb

Thursday, October 27, 2005Friday, February 1, 2008 admin

Review

The Fifth Sorceress
By Robert Newcomb; Read by Simon Jones
5 CDs – 6 Hours [ABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 2002
ISBN: 0553713922
Themes: / Fantasy / Magic /

“It is more than three centuries since the ravages of a devastating war nearly tore apart the kingdom of Eutracia. In its wake, those who masterminded the bloodshed-a quartet of powerful, conquest-hungry Sorceresses-were sentenced to exile, with return all but impossible and death all but inevitable. Now a land of peace and plenty, protected and guided by a council of immortal wizards, Eutracia is about to crown a new king. And as the coronation approaches, the spirit of celebration fills every heart. Except one.”

Ya, mine! That’s mostly a joke, mostly. Overall this novel wasn’t terrible. I didn’t have my mind wander off too often, and whenever it did Newcomb would throw a shocking scene at it to bring me back. But I have a number of problems with The Fifth Sorceress:

1. It is yet another in the irrepressibly publishable world-saving magic fest novels. You know the kind where some editor says, “Wait I know, let’s tell another Tolkien story, but not do it as well.” Ya that kind.

2. The pseudo-mystic blood based magic system at the story’s core. This magic system has provenance which could have come straight from bullshit artist Madame Blavatsky. Untrue is not a possible criticism of fiction so I’ll just say “distasteful”. It might be possible or even interesting to tell a story like this straight faced, but it’d have to be with a damn impressive point to it. This didn’t.

3. Magic use. Generic and temporary bodily weakness seems to be the only consequence of the use of magic. Depressing in its unoriginality.

4. Women “of the blood” are always evil and men “of the blood” always good. So much for subtlety and complexity in gender relations. Newcomb could have done a lot more with his bifurcated magic system than making it bad girls vs. good guys.

5. The cookie-cutter world itself. Planets full of improbably named bodies of water and calcified quasi-medieval governments don’t do much for me – not after the 40 or 50th iteration of them anyway. Be more creative please.

Despite these problems there are some genuinely original and shocking scenes peppered throughout the novel and Newcomb handles these all well. Another point in its favor is that Newcomb doesn’t leave the reader hanging at the end, even though this is the first book in a series. Leaving us hanging is something he could have done in an attempt to get us to read the next installment in “The Chronicles of Blood And Stone” series. He leaves open the possibility for you to read on but doesn’t punish you by withholding an ending.

On the audio end, this is a fully digital recording so The Fifth Sorceress sounds phenomenal. But the real kudos goes to narrator Simon Jones (of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fame) who does a fine job keeping the aural end up. When he voices the hapless Prince Tristan he invokes his old Arthur Dent persona. The centuries old wizard named Wigg sounds like a more put-upon Gandalf and most of the females voiced by Jones sound either wicked or seducing or both at the same time – a neat trick. If you’re in the mood for a light listen The Fifth Sorceress may suit you. Overall I really can’t say I hated it. I credit this mostly to the abridger. The abridgement may, in fact, have made an hefty and mostly indigestible novel far more palatable. After all that can you believe I’m going to attempt the sequel?

Posted by Jesse Willis