I remember seeing the trailer 20 years ago and being instantly reminded of the animated movie from my childhood!
I believe that´s what they want to do with their “Lord Of The Rings” series as well…
I´m no expert, but I know of Dark Knight Returns (which is about elderly Batman) and Batman Year One (about the early days of his crimefighting career).
I opted to give the former a try since that seems the more interesting. I´m also curious about Killing Joke since that´s by Alan Moore and said to have a big influence on the making of Tim Burton´s first Batman movie (still my favourite to this day!)
What I´m mostly looking forward to is the unique artstyle that Dave McKean has applied to Arkham Asylum:
I used to re-read the early books quite a lot, just to get a refresher before a new one came out. But at some point it just was too much and I read the last couple books with whatever I could remember. And my attempt at a complete re-read in English stalled at book 4 or 5. The one thing that came of the re-reads is that I totally changed my opinion about which characters I liked and which I disliked. Mat and Nynaeve came out way on top, but unfortunately former was totally botched by Sanderson. As so many other things.
Same here. I guess I wouldn’t want them to look like the characters on the Tor hardcovers either, but that’s a bit of a disappointment. And it sort of continues with the general look of places and the architecture from the trailer.
Regardless, I’ll give it a try. In the worst case, I’ll stop after the first episode, like with GoT.
Haha, me too. I must have read part 1 and 2 about 5 times by now.
Same here! Not back then, but I think that is just me having grown up/old and getting the subtleties in motivation now. Perrin was and stays my favorite though. In the later books, Nynaeve strangely regresses from being the balanced level-headed character in the first few to a more one-dimensional character. It’s like Jordan just inserts some braid pulling as a deus ex machina whenever he was out of inspiration on how to let her respond or react to almost any event. Egwene changes from one chapter to another from being an uncertain girl to a master schemer. I would have liked Jordan to have used all those thousands of pages to more gradually evolve the characters from A to B.
Most of the books suffer from resetting after a climatic buildup at the end of the previous book. I get that, but honestly I don’t think anyone is reading book 7 or 8 without having read the previous ones, so we don’t need reintroducing all the main characters again each time over the first two to three hundred pages with nearly no progress in the different story lines.
But I am not giving up this time - I am going to find out how the story ends (and if my guess was right).
Those are quite bad and inconsistent indeed, despite all being painted by the same person.
For me Michael Whelan absolutely nailed it on Tad Williams’ books.
I wish they would just hire more of these classic illustrators for film or tv show design. Like how Moebius did almost everything in the 80s or how Peter Jackson hired almost every classic Middle Earth Illustrator (except the Brothers Hildebrandt curiously enough). I´m guessing they´re all saving money since these “name” illustrators probably cost too much or just want their own union people or something.
I loved the look of the new Dune but it really could have done with some colour in a few departments. They should have gotten Chris Foss, that would have been different.
Just finished Project Hail Mary by Weir, dude who wrote The Martian. Not sure why I read it since I found The Martian to be a pretty dull affair. Anyway I liked it a lot. Fast-reading, fluffy scifi. More interesting than The Martian, I thought.
I’m catching up on some Sci-Fi, lately. Not too long ago I read Stanisław Lem’s The Futurological Congress, which initially is rather humorous but gets pretty dark before long. And before that his more lighthearted Fables for Robots and The Cyberiad, which reminded me a lot of the Star Diaries, just not quite as funny.
Yesterday I’ve started with Solaris, and that seems to be a completely different beast compared to all those other stories.
The Star Diaries were very funny indeed. Still I thought that german mini series from a few years back was tonally way off. It was good enough on its on but for an adaptation it was a bit too free for my taste.
Oh yes it is. Very dark. But on a whole I think it´s one of the best Sci-Fi Novels ever written. Even if most of the focus is actually on psychological horror (many entries in that particular genre seem to have taken their cues from that it seems). And the Soviet movie is a classic in its own right. Really good adaptation.
I HIGHLY recommend this series. It is true there’s a lot (I believe it’s up to 35 volumes not counting reprints, crossovers, and special one-shots) but it is definitely worth it.
Meanwhile, all the talk about the complexity of the Wheel of Time series made me curious enough to finally look up something else I loved but have been out of for a while: the Xanth series by Piers Anthony. I’m almost afraid I did so. There have been nearly 30 new books released, one EVERY YEAR, since I stopped reading. One of these days…
Thanks, I actually meant to go back here to single it out, because I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would!
I wholeheartedly agree. Up to recently I just knew him as an occasional background characater on the Ninja Turtles, but on its own the stories are just made with so many loving care for details of japanese history and the character development is really strong just within a few short story arcs even. I can absolutely second this, highly recommend reading the stories about Miyamoto Usagi and his friends. Really enjoyed it a lot!
Finished the first book this year, Fall of Babel, which concludes the series of 4. Not without leaving the door wide open for an eventual sequel, but at least the story so far is wrapped up neatly, and in a rather surprising fashion.
I’m not a big fan of steampunk, but I found the Books of Babel verged far enough from the staples of the genre, with plenty of wild and imaginative ideas and a kafkaesque world comprised of the 64 floors of the namegiving tower, that the existence of various clockwork contraptions became quite bearable. What also stood out to me were the characters. While pulling off some herculean deeds, they all came with their flaws and failures and had to undergo quite the ordeal over the course of their journey. I’ll take those anytime over untroubled and omnipotent heroes.
The ending was aptly appropriate: hopeful, but not overbearing. And did I mention surprising!?
Oh yeah, I saw that the game is sometimes just labeled “Samurai Warrior”. From what I´ve seen of it (I think I may have tried it too for a bit) it´s actually a pretty accurate representation of what the stories feel like.
Meanwhile my next comic book reading will include:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Color Classics Vol. 1
Batman Arkham Asylum. A Serious House On Serious Eath (because the art looks amazing)
Superman The Golden Age Vol. 1 (because it´d be nice to see where it all started for superheroes)
Read Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone (in its rather fresh German translation). It’s a book I’d have likely passed by, had I not run into the author before.
Well, I’m glad I did, because that’s Fantasy like I’ve never seen before. Its world feels like a neoliberal version of the 19th century, where Necromancers doubling as lawyers battle it out in the court room (or over dinner in a fancy restaurant). I was also quite impressed by a chain-smoking side character, who, over the 2 or 3 days the plot covers, needs no match or other implement to light his next cigarette. I love troubled souls, and that’s definitely one.
Now the only question that remains is: wait until the next installments get translated, or go for the originals (and ruin the look of the bookshelf with mismatching volumes)?
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