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China Miéville continues to amaze me with his imagination. I had only recently completed the Iron Council , and didn't know which book to take off my shelf to read next. Iron Council left me on such a fantastic high, I didn't want to risk coming down fast with a disappointment. So for a couple of weeks, I didn't pick up a book. Then unintended trip to the local used bookstore by my work a couple of weeks ago, presented me with a new Miéville book: The City and the City . I started reading it that same day, on the way home, and I couldn't put it down. While I don't have much time for pleasure reading, I stole time and even pulled a couple of late nights on Friday and Saturday to find out where Miéville was taking me. I'll refrain from delving too much into the premise of the book, because I think part of the pleasure was the journey Miéville takes the reader on. If you'd like a well written review, head over to The Mumpsimus . I will tell you howeve...

In honour of his service to literature, Terry Pratchett will receive a knighthood from her royal poo-poo-ness in the new year. Way to go, Sir Terry! Folks, There are times when the phrase "Absolutely, totally, gobsmackingly, mindbogglingly amazed" just doesn't cover it, but I find that in the Queen's New Year Honours list I am now a Knight, for services to literature. This means that fans, while not calling me Sir, must now refrain from throwing things. Regrettably, no sword is included in the box. :) What more can a modest Knight say? Happy New Year, which on Discworld is the Year of the Pensive Hare.

I finished Terry Pratchett 's The Nation last night -- weeks after my wife had finished it, but not long after I had flipped it open on the bus, on the way to work one morning. Pratchett's books tend to be devoured in my house -- my wife, my daughters and me, where the addiction first got started. My wife and I picked up the Nation at Waterstone's on Sauchiehall Street, in Glasgow, when we were on holidays in Scotland. I think we got it before its North American release. We usually have to wait until after Christmas to read a new Pratchett book, since it's usually bought as a Christmas present for someone. Not this time around, however. The Nation is a departure of sorts for Pratchett. It's not a Discworld novel. It's set in a new world, very much like our own, but slightly askew. I'm not sure if the novel was intended for young readers, as it featured young protagonists -- but Pratchett doesn't do well writing for a young audience. If he...

I recently completed my second Charles de Lint novel: Someplace To Be Flying -- first published in 1998. I'm now going to have to find and read every de Lint novel. The man is an amazing writer. De Lint is a contemporary fantasy author, with his stories set in modern, urban settings. Someplace To Be Flying is set in his fictional city of Newford, and it's like every major North American city -- expect, around the corner, in shadows, the places hidden in plain site, magic is happening. In Someplace To Be Flying , that magic comes in the form of the First People -- the animal people -- those that were here before the world began; that saw the coming the humans and the changes they brought in the world. De Lint pays homage to Native American mythology in Someplace To Be Flying . He deftly crafts his prose around mythology that most of us will not be familiar with, but will seem more real than the overused Judeo-Christian mythology. The novel is quite an introspection, co...

I recently finished my first Charles de Lint novel -- The Blue Girl . I'm glad I had picked it up -- sometime ago, and just stashed it in the pile of books I had every intention to read -- eventually, someday. That someday came along recently, and I finished the book way too fast. It was a pleasure to read. Charles de Lint writes fantasy novels, in an urban, contemporary setting, weaving magic into the everyday world you and I wander through without a second thought. The Blue Girl is set in the fictional North American city of Newford, which I place in Canada, since de Lint lives in Ottawa. The protagonists are two 17-year-old high school girls, Maxine and Imogene, who meet for the first time in their final year of high school. Both are outsiders, not fitting into the cool kids crowd -- because they're too smart, and weird. Maxine is the smart one, cloistered by her mother and endures the bullying any nerd would be familiar with. Imogene is the weird one, new to Redd...

After reading Un Lun Dun , I took the other China Miéville novel I had off the shelf, and dived into it, reading it as I lurched every-which-way on the daily bus rides. King Rat was Miéville's debut fantasy novel, published in 1998 and it is quite unlike Un Lun Dun . To begin with, King Rat is not written for younger readers. It is dark retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story -- wherein many rats are drowned and children are kidnapped. In the Rat King , the Piper is the antagonist. He's evil incarnate, with the ability to make anything he wishes, dance to his tune, and do his bidding. Back in Hamelin, he drowned the rats that had invested the village, except the King, who managed to escape. Through time, he's tortured other souls, including Anansi , king of the spiders, and Loplop, king of the birds. In modern day London, King Rat, Anansi and Loplop are plotting revenge on the Piper, with a secret weapon, King Rat's son, the half-man, half-rat, Saul Gar...

I recently finished Un Lun Dun , by China Miéville . It's been a while since I sat down to read a book of fiction, and since I was going to be spending hours in a flight to China, I decided to take a book along to fill the void. I had picked up Un Lun Dun sometime ago, and its been sitting on my bookshelf, calling to me. Un Lun Dun is a fantasy novel, set in an alternate London -- unLondon, as it were. Miéville sets out to write an unfantasy novel. The setup has been used many times by fantasy authors. There's usually a prophecy of an outsider who travels to a far off land to save it from a menace. There is a quest. There are trials that will test the mettle of the hero. Lessons will be learned; sacrifices will be made. The hero will be fair -- the blonde-haired, blue-eyed type. The villain will be evil. The hero will triumph just in time, and there will be a happy ending. Forget the usual however. In Un Lun Dun , the hero is a heroine, and is not the one that h...

I saw Frank Miller's 300 last week. What a ride! The movie is based on the graphic novel by the same title, and was a no apologies live action rendition of the panels created by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley . The acting was superb, the story was a well crafted and the cinematography, simply out of this world. Greece from the movie was a Greece of the legends, when the gods walked amongst us mere humans. Make no mistake, this movie is not the stuff of the History Channel -- it's for the SciFi Channel. The movie was rated 18A, and so it should. The violence -- and when isn't there violence when you have 300, well-buffed, mostly naked (except of the leotards and capes) men shouting, sweating and wielding long spears, arranged against a well armed, uncountable throng -- was unstoppable. Hordes of attackers from the Persian empire threw themselves at the spears, swords and grunts of the Spartan heroes. There were monsters, immortals (who died), giants, muta...

Superman II - The Richard Donner Cut was released last year by Warner Bros. to coincide with the release of the new Superman movie. This cut is a re-edit of the original 1980 movie by the movie's original director, Richard Donner, who had a different vision of the movie than the producers. I don't remember the original that well, although I do remember it being more campy than this release, which is more serious in its treatment of the Superman character. For details, check out this extensive entry in Wikipedia . Christopher Reeve's Superman was the film Superman I grew up with, and is a Superman I'm glad was replaced last year. I'm not a Superman purist, and most of those would probably prefer Reeve's incarnation. Don't get me wrong, I like the films, but after seeing it recently, I realized that, 1) I saw the films as a kid, and, 2) special effects sure have come a long way, thankfully. Special effects are an artifact of their time, b...

Pan's Labyrinth is an amazing movie, set in Francisco Franco 's Spain, at the closing of World War II. It tells the story of Ofelia, a young girl who's mother is remarried to the brutal fascist, Captain Vidal -- and is pregnant with his son. Ofelia and her mother are not loved by Vidal -- he considers Ofelia a nuisance and her mother only a vessel for his son. While waiting for his son to arrive, Vidal goes about reigning terror on the populace of small town and hunting down Republican rebels. In this horrible world, Ofelia seeks comfort, and finds it surprisingly one night, in the form of a praying mantis that morphs into a fairy. The fairy leads Ofelia to a hidden labyrinth, where she meets a faun, who tells Ofelia that she is Princess Moanna of the underworld, and he has been looking for her to return her home. To prove that she has her essence intact, the faun instructs Ofelia to complete three tasks before the next full moon. Ofelia sets about to complete her ...

What a load of poop! That's what Guardian of the Realm was. The premise of the movie had the makings of b-movie gold, but alas, the execution rusted the gold potential and make it into poop. The movie is about demons -- those denizens of hell that want to take over the world to turn it into hell. I could never understand the motivation. Wouldn't it be a whole lot better to have the world the way it is and just keep messing with humans? I suppose demons aren't that smart ... but neither are the people in this movie, and none of them apparently, had seen a horror movie. A bunch of derelict choir boys started off this little adventure by freeing a demon that had been imprisoned by Buddhist monks centuries earlier. If these guys had seen horror movies, they would have know that the first thing the freed demon would do is kill them. Which is what happened -- more or less -- a couple of them had their bodies used as hosts for other demons. Meanwhile...