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(Now someone help me restrain Regis, it’s a good cause but I don’t think Paypal accept kidneys.)

Salvatore has written 20 (!) books about Drizzt, which is surprising because if any author would try to write a fantasy series of 20 books he would be stoned to death by his readers. If you even try to write only half of that you would have a series that eventually start to decline in quality* until you just try to keep things rolling for the planned end.

What makes the never-ending books about Drizzt work is that they are not part of a single series, instead consisting of six different series of 3-4 books. You have The Dark Elf Trilogy (3), The Icewind Dale Trilogy (3), Legacy of the Drow (4), Paths of Darkness (4), The Hunter’s Blade Trilogy (3), and Transitions (3). I have read them all, and I can guarantee that the books actually gets better.

Drizzt was never even intended as a main character. He was created as a sidekick for the Icewind Dale Trilogy, and afterwards got a series all on his own where his past is told. The very same thing happened to Artemis and Jarlaxle, who went from being enemies of Drizzt to their own series, The Sellswords (also very good by the way, I would probably want to read more about them than Drizzt). It seems like something that would happen to a TV series, where a side character steals all the show and get a spin-off.

So maybe Jordan shouldn’t have planned The Wheel of Time to be gigantic, but instead set the aim low and build on it from there? Losing a bit of that epic’ness but hopefully gaining focus and quality.

Maybe we could even have ignored Perrin.

* Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind.**

** What? I’m just sayin’…

Back when I started reading fantasy my English was crap. So the natural process was to pick up book translated to Swedish, in my case books by David Eddings. These days I wouldn’t touch an Eddings book even with a long stick, but back then it was they who got me into fantasy. One thing led to another, and I ended up borrowing translated Wheel of Time books (the translated title is “The Saga of the Return of the Dragon” or something stupid like that) from a friend who had all the books (to that date).

Reading translated books is a pain. Not only is there a margin for misinterpretation from the translator (ask me about the Swedish version of Lord of the Rings), but you first have to wait for the author to write and publish the book, and then for the local publisher to translate and publish it. Since for some unfathomable reason English to Swedish translations turns up with a much larger volume of words, the already thick Wheel of Time books each has to be cut in two. So while the rest of the world grumbles and mutters about eleven books, Swedish people are looking at twenty-two books. Yes, that’s right. Twenty-two.

Each of them for the price of a full book of course.

Now this could be a tragic tale in itself, but what is worse is that the Swedish publisher now has decided not to translate and publish the last three (to be six in Swedish) books by Brandon Sanderson.

The publisher cites declining sales and the death of the original author as reasons, and I guess that seems reasonable. No one really wants to wait another year for the translation when a new book is published. I know I didn’t. The entire mission of translating and publishing a vast book series like Wheel of Time seems doomed to fail at start, but I guess they didn’t anticipate it would take them twenty-five years to do it. When I started reading it all those years ago it wasn’t finished, and as soon as I ran out of translated books I picked up the untranslated ones and never looked back. I guess everyone will do that now.

But doesn’t the publisher have some kind of duty to fulfill the task they set out to do, no matter how long time it takes? What of all the people who have twenty-two books in their bookcase and can never complete the series?

The wedded writing duo of Jim Butcher and Shannon K. Butcher have quite a few tidbits for you.

First up is the man himself and the upcoming launch of Codex Alera book 6, First Lord’s Fury (Available from Amazon right now for a mind-boggling $9). If any of you can stand the suspense and fancy a minor spoiler, I direct you to the preview page on Jim’s site where every Tuesday we’ll get just a little more, so far we’re up to Chapter 3.

Shannon too has a book launch this November with the second in her Sentinel Wars series with excerpts for both “Finding The Lost” and the first book “Burning Alive” available on her site above.

Both can also be found on Twitter for those of you out there who have the social media bug. @Longshotauthor for Jim and @ShannonKButcher for Shannon.

(Word of warning though, Jim recently gave us the first line to the next Harry Dresden book, Changes, on Twitter. Spoiler doesn’t quite cover it.)

Personally I started reading an early version of Warbreaker a long time ago, and while I enjoyed the story I just couldn’t get used to reading long books from the screen. So I will probably pick up Warbreaker when I get the chance. From the reviews it seems to be a pretty good book.

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters, who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn’t like his job, and the immortal who’s still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago.

Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren’s capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known asbreath that can only be collected one unit at a time from individual people.

By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of  bravery, and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

Dan Dos Santos has an interesting video of how he paints the cover for the book, and it’s hard not to be amazed at the talent. I should have paid more attention during art class in school. Video embedded below.

Robin Hobb is famous for her books about FitzChivalry and the Liveship Traders, both of which take place in the same world (The Realm of the Elderlings). Most recently she wrote Solder Son Trilogy, set in a new world and very different from her usual style, but with The Rain Wild Chronicles she has returned to The Realm of the Elderlings.

Guided by the great blue dragon Tintaglia, they came from the sea: a Tangle of serpents fighting their way up the Rain Wilds River, the first to make the perilous journey to the cocooning grounds in generations. Many have died along the way. With its acid waters and impenetrable forest, it is a hard place for any to survive. People are changed by the Rain Wilds, subtly or otherwise. One such is Thymara. Born with black claws and other aberrations, she should have been exposed at birth. But her father saved her and her mother has never forgiven him. Like everyone else, Thymara is fascinated by the return of dragons: it is as if they symbolise the return of hope to their war-torn world. Leftrin, captain of the liveship Tarman, also has an interest in the hatching; as does Bingtown newlywed, Alise Finbok, who has made it her life’s work to study all there is to know of dragons. But the creatures which emerge from the cocoons are a travesty of the powerful, shining dragons of old. Stunted and deformed, they cannot fly; some seem witless and bestial. Soon, they become a danger and a burden to the Rain Wilders: something must be done. The dragons claim an ancestral memory of a fabled Elderling city far upriver: perhaps there the dragons will find their true home. But Kelsingra appears on no maps and they cannot get there on their own: a band of dragon keepers, hunters and chroniclers must attend them. To be a dragon keeper is a dangerous job: their charges are vicious and unpredictable, and there are many unknown perils on the journey to a city which may not even exist…

Read the prologue.

Eddings has a special place for me since he was the author who introduced me to fantasy. It was during a book sale ten years ago or something that I picked up The Diamond Throne (mostly because of the awesome cover art by Keith Parkinson), and thanks to its accessibility it was soon followed by many other authors.

His writing feels more aimed at a younger audience — something that made me feel a little disappointed as I grew older and read more books — but at the same time something for which I am deeply thankful. If I had picked up a book by Stephen Donaldson to introduce me to the genre I would never had been where I am today.

If a little toddler told me he was interested in fantasy and asked me today what book he should start with I would probably still say The Diamond Throne by David Eddings.

Source: Stephen Hunt’s SF Crowsnest

The awards are given by the Mythopeoic Society, a non-profit organisation promoting ’study, discussion and enjoyment of fantastic and mythic literature’.

Nominees for the Scholarship Awards, which reward study of fantasy literature, are especially interesting to note. Mostly because they’ve just listed lots more things to go on my reading list!

The finalists, in full, are:

Adult Literature

• Carol Berg, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone (Roc)
• Daryl Gregory, Pandemonium (Del Rey)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt)
• Patricia A. McKillip, The Bell at Sealey Head (Ace)
• Gene Wolfe, An Evil Guest (Tor)

Children’s Literature

• Kristin Cashore, Graceling (Harcourt Children’s Books)
• Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins)
• Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways (HarperCollins)
• Ingrid Law, Savvy (Dial)
• Terry Pratchett, Nation (HarperCollins)

Scholarship Awards

Inklings Studies

• Gavin Ashenden, Charles Williams: Alchemy and Imagination (Kent State, 2008)
• Veryln Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, eds. Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes (HarperCollins, 2008)
• John Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins; Part Two: Return to Bag-end (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)
• Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford, 2008)
• Elizabeth A. Whittingham, The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study of the History of Middle-earth (McFarland, 2008)

Myth and Fantasy Studies

• Charles Butler, Four British Fantasists:  Place and Culture in the Children’s Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper (Children’s Literature Association & Scarecrow Press, 2006)
• Jason Marc Harris, Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction (Ashgate, 2008)
• Farah Mendlesohn, Rhetorics of Fantasy (Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008)
• Marek Oziewicz, One Earth, One People:  The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card (McFarland, 2008)
• Richard Carl Tuerk, Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the Frank L. Baum Books (McFarland, 2007)

• Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK)
• Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
• Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

For once, I’ve read all of these. The Scalzi, Stross and Doctorow stories fall more under science fiction. Well, more or less. Anathem is very hard to place, and I’m willing to call it “speculative”, and not try to pin it down any further. The Graveyard Book is definitely fantasy. So I’m better informed than in any previous year, and yet – I cannot decide which of these I think is most worthy.

Anathem is a wonderful book. It’s deep, complex, satisfying, and makes you think. It’s hard work at times, and while I was fine with the long, long philosophical sections, many people weren’t. The invented words bugged some people, but I reckoned they were very well done, and indeed, appropriate. I say it deserves a Hugo.

Little Brother is also very, very good. Two paragraphs ago, I called it science fiction.  I’d prefer a world where it was fantasy, but it’s definitely not. It’s more of a real-world, tomorrow-or-the-next-day satire. It concerns itself with surveillance, citizens’ rights, and the way in which both are changing. I reckon it deserves a Hugo.

The Graveyard Book is Neil Gaiman at his very best. He’s been writing this for many, many years, and it’s a beautiful, polished, charming piece of work. It’s suitable for kids, and also has enough thought-provoking material to make it well worth the time for adults. Not only did I like it a lot, but I’m jonesing for a sequel, so obviously, it deserves a Hugo.

Saturn’s Children is a Heinlein-ish, Asimov-influenced, space opera. It has no human characters whatsoever, and it’s both big and clever, examining more concepts than anyone can summarise into a single paragraph. It deserves a Hugo.

And Zoe’s Tale re-examines the events of Old Man’s War from a new point of view, and adds immense depth to the setting, not to mention looking at concepts like consciousness in a way I’ve never seen before. I was sceptical until I picked up a copy, and had looked at half a page before I decided to buy. It… you’ve guessed it, deserves a Hugo.

You see the problem here. I look forward to hearing which of these deserving novels actually wins the award, and in the meantime, I encourage you to read all of them.