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 [...]
Posts filed in Evilness
I once heard a translator of fantasy novels claim that there was no evil in the Harry Potter books, because there was no supernatural Supreme Evil in the books, unlike such fantasy as The Lord of the Rings and otehr Epic Fantasy. To this I reply that evil lays in consequence, and to a lesser extent in intent. If a deed hurts someone when it could be avoided (and sometimes when it could’t, too), it’s evil. When you do something with the intent of hurting someone, it’s evil. Easy as pie. Probably too easy. :P
Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!
In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]
Some things I suspect I believe to be true
About eighteen months ago now, I realised I’m a materialist; I believe that everything in this world is matter, that there is no such thing as spirit, that what others might perceive as “spirit” can be explained materially. And for some thirteen, fourteen months, my Christian flatmate Håvard has challenged me on this.
To him there [...]
“Global English” is rubbish
“Given the stress that is laid on spelling by prescriptivists, and the existence of so many dictionaries which provide standard spellings for English words, it is perhaps surprising that there should be any variation in spelling within standard varieties. But there is. Some of this variation is variation between varieties. More often, though, there us [...]
A Near-Vomit Experience
The maggot cheese and the boiled duck fetuses nearly caused my supper to exit my body via the nose.
Oh, and check out the mock lutefisk ad.
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 [...]
Ullr, the onion of war!
From Wikipedia’s kenning article:
Bárum Ullr, of alla
ímunlauks, á hauka
fjöllum Fyrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýja
meldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs of folginn
Simply based on meaning, i.e. without kennings, the passage runs: “Accursed King Harald! We carried gold in our arms during all of Hakon’s life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in [...]
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, [...]
2007-07-31 — Quote of the Day (This one goes out to my man Loki! ;D)
Di findes, der fnyser af klæ’er å overfladisk pynt, der synes d’er spilt tid og anstrængelse, æd ville tæ’ sig gåd od for ændre. Enkelte hevder sogar, æd de æd forskønne sid ytre peger på betænkelie personlihedstræk som forfænglihed, hovmod, fælskhed. Di ved ige vor fejl di tæ’r; som om loslid eller smægløs bekledning sko’ [...]
Diabolical spam
It’s not even 48 hours since the last time I deleted all the spam comments the spam filter has filtered out for me, and yet, this.
Dalek!
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple of days now, but haven’t found the time for it until now. And while the immediacy of the post’ll be lost, compared to what it’d been if I’d written it when I should have, I feel it has to be said:
I’ve used to make fun [...]
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home, part III
Whoa.
And when I was done, Queen’s “You Take My Breath Away” was next in line in my WMP playlist. How’s that for a coincidence?
Half-way evil Willow.
A Angel-Buffy(in-nurse-costume)-Spike dream landscape with barbed wire.
Fi fa fucking fum.
“Ladies and other ladies… the indescribable Rosenberg.” - Xander.
“Well, this is really unimpressive. One attack by the undead and Renee has [...]
2007-04-18 — Quote of the Day — Or, That Paladin Spirit
My flat mates and I just finished a DnD session.
We continued the campaign we’ve been playing since Febuary or something, in which we’re a bunch of (good aligned) unlikely heroes on a quest to save the world from the evil Dwarven Necromancer Nirki (who, by the way, my character has hugged once, and begged for [...]
Lord of War
You know, I suspect I might be an easily awed person. Either that, or I am extremely good at selecting books, comics, TV shows, movies and what have you, which awes me. Because just in the last month or so, I’ve been moonstruck by some cultural product so often, that I should have become a [...]
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It — AS5×22 Not Fade Away
That’s it. The end. And what an end it was.
By the time Angel said, “Well, personally, I’ve always wanted to slay a dragon,” I was sobbing — half laughing with joy, half crying from grief. Where the ending of “Chosen” just left me with a general feeling of relief and joy, where the only things [...]
Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clone
A.k.a. Haydn Christensen. Whose horrible acting is the most prominent attribute of this movie. In fact, Håvard and myself spent much of the movie making fun of this helpless young fellow (I believe I at one point commented on the striking resemblance between his mouth and an anus), and bemoaning what a total jerk Anakin [...]
VM2×22
That has got to be the most traumatic season finale I’ve ever seen. This one is a dangerous rival to BS5 and AS5, and I doubt I’ll get much sleep in the three hours remaining before I have class.
Damn, I gotta start downloading season 3 soon.
“Have you ever quoted Shakespeare with your beloved in a dark theatre hallway?” — AS3×13 Waiting In The Wings
I gotta admit I was somewhat flabbergasted when Loki listed this episode as one of his 25 favourites, because I just remembered it as a mediocre episode with a lot of dull ballet. Man, was I wrong…
This one’s awesome from beginning to end. All the way from the first scene, where Wes confides to Cordy [...]
Ha ha!
If you google for yayz0r, you get a hit on Loki’s Sensible Nonsense already at the first page. And what awaits on the second page? You guessed correctly: Another Loki-hit.
Mwahaha! I am contaminating his non-blog with annoying brat-speech!
Oh, and I’m changing the name of the category “Yay!” into “yayz000000r” or something moronic like [...]
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