Happy Lord of the Rings Day
I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost…
11 posts
I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost…
After US troops withdrew from Afghanistan after two decades in 2021, the Taliban returned to power. In its oppressive regime many groups of people, but especially women, girls, and minorities, have lo…
War is on all our minds these days. There is a war happening in Ukraine and something barely resembling a war (because it’s a genocide) in Gaza. Governments have been fond of casting our collective re…
Happy Lord of the Rings Day. :) About a week ago, I began rereading book 7 of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. This followed my realisation earlier this year that I had somehow lost the ability…
The first piece of very-popular epic fantasy fiction I read was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth saga, which, among many things, reminded me how much the American and British writers of ‘high fantasy’ ow…
A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you! (Previous editions: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014) Every year I pen a commemorative piece about Lord of the Rings, and share something about the books and films t…
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building. World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnece…
The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series exhibited a rabid yet desirable iconoclasm, through which its author Steven Erikson elucidated every trope of epic fantasy and then shit on it. I came out…
On this day, let's read a chapter or two from the trilogy and remember what an enlightening experience reading the books was.…
The LotR trilogy made for the first modern great epic fantasy, its guiding light so very bright that even those who came after struggled to match its success.…
March 25 is Lord of the Rings Day. Why do I remember the date?…