1926.
273 pages.
Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks.
Foreword by Neil Gaiman.
Where the rivers Dapple and Dawl converge is situated the small country port of Lud-in-the-Mist, capital of the free state of Dorimare. From here, the burghers send their trading ships out into the world, bringing back wealth to the upper strata of Dorimarite society. But Lud and Dorimare has [...]
Posts filed in Death
A natural part of life. Oblivion. Nothingness. Nada. Zilch. That’s my interpretation of it, in any case. No way to be sure before it happens, though, at least not under the current scientific paradigm. Maybe when religion and science get fused together, who knows?
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
2008.
536 pages (Gollancz Fantasy trade paperback).
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gaugin.
This being the opening quote of Last Argument of Kings, the concluding volume in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, one can perhaps perceive that this is a bleak affair. As I remarked in my reviews of the first [...]
Superhero Movie
Rather out of the blue, I ended up seeing Superhero Movie with a friend last night. And man, am I sorry. But I’ll get back to that. First, a plot synopsis.
Rick Riker is Peter Parker, only more (exaggeratedly) so and with more unmotivated and unfun slapstick accidents happening to him. He is in love with [...]
RIP Heath Ledger
For a pretty face, I always thought he was a good actor.
How to interpret a peculiar request
“‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his [...]
Valentine
Heh, one of my flatmates and I just spent the last couple of hours taking cheap shots at Valentine, a rather silly slasher movie from 2001.
A bunch of snotty girls have picked on a nerd all through elementary school, until they in 9th grade get the kid sent away to a mental institution by claiming [...]
Concerning Documentaries
I just watched an Australian documentary about Mullah Krekar (whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad), one of the founders of the militant, Kurdish, Islamist organization Ansar al Islam, and an asylum seeker in Norway. The guy whom the Americans tried to use to link Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden a couple of years [...]
2007-11-08 — Quote of the Day
“Some sixty years later the dispute between king and Church flared up again. This time it took the form of a quarrel between Henry II (1154-1189) [of England] and Thomas Becket [...] Just as in the case of the emperor Henry IV [of the Holy Roman Empire] and Pope Gregory VII, personalities played their part [...]
2007-11-07 — Quote of the Day
“The pagan barbarians had buried their most precious possessions with their dead. These possessions would vary, from the weapons of ordinary men and the simple bronze or copper jewelry which even poor women owned to the to the treasures of great warriors and kings, such as those superbly rich objects of Sutton Hoo, in Suffolk, [...]
X-Men: The Last Stand
I hadn’t watched this one since it was in theaters, so it was about bloody time I got around to it again. I guess I might have been postponing it for the last year or so because I wasn’t too impressed with the movie the first time I watched it. I thought they’d crammed too [...]
2007-09-30 — Quote of the Day
I snatch a time when I crouched outside the meadhall hearing the first strange hymns of the Shaper. Beauty! Holiness! How my heart rocked! He is dead. I should have captured him, teased him, tormented him, made a fool of him. I should have cracked his skull midsong and sent his blood spraying out wet [...]
Gudenes Fall
Gudenes Fall, by Cornelius Jakhelln.
2007, 428 pages.
Now, this might be a little weird. Gudenes Fall (The Fall of the Gods) is a book that most likely never will be translated into English, and yet, I choose to review it in English. But hey, my English is still worse than my Norwegian.
In the year 1000 AD, [...]
Movies Galore: A Summary
It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]
Issue 5 — The Chain
My immediate reaction to this issue, is that it is the best one this far.
Because while it lacks those “OMIGAWD!1 IT’S HER/HIM/IT/THEM!!!1″ moments, it was a beautiful and sad story, with elegant pathos and an endearing main character whose name we never even learn.
Quite a treat; if all the “short ones” they intend to stick [...]
Romeo + Juliet
For long periods of my life, I’ve nurtured a completely irrational dislike for the actor Leonardo di Caprio, a dislike probably rooted in my background as a male kid in the late 90s, when “Leo” was the dream boy of every girl, and the envy of every boy. And, as is so very often the [...]
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I finished the book five minutes ago, some 18 or 19 hours after I found it in my mailbox. I’ll try to review it, and I’ll do my best to do so without any spoilers, but for those who doesn’t want to know a godsdamned thing, I’ll hide it. Naturally, there will be spoilers for [...]
Noooooooooooooo!
Spoiler, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, page 385:
… and “Reaper’s Gale”.
”Reaper’s Gale”
by Steven Erikson.
Bantham TPB, 2007. 910 s.
It’s been three years since the Edur conquest of the Letherii Empire, and one year since the outlawing of Adjunct Tavore, the Bonehunters, and the rest of her army.
“Reaper’s Gale” has the same basic structure as all the other “Malazan” books. It starts out kinda slow, with a [...]
Seeing Red: A Case in the Study of Joss Whedon, Sadistic Genious
This has got to be one of the best worst minutes of television I have ever seen. Observe, if you will, these four moments:
1. Bliss, as Buffy and Xander make up and embrace.
2. Dread, as Warren appears, toting a gun.
3. Grief, and/or anguish, as a stray bullet from Warren’s gun penetrates Tara’s chest, and her [...]
Blog Challenge #… I honestly don’t know. Let’s call it “#1 after restart” (or just AR for short).
As can be seen from my blogroll, I intended to keep track of and participate in the Blog Challenge, but that never happened. So when Zhayena posted a new challenge at the NC blog, it didn’t take me long to decide to join.
The challenge is supposed be writing about a scene in a book or [...]
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