Quote of the month

"The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland." - L.M. Montgomery

I just started for the second time The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia A. McKillip

I just started for the second time The Cygnet and the Firebird by Patricia A. McKillip, the second book of her Cygnet Duology.

 

This is easily one of my father and my favorite McKillip books, the Luxour Desert one of our favorite places, for in this one book and place does McKillip employ the mighty Dragon. Which, now, poses a threat to both the Cygnet and an enchanted Firebird.

I just finished for the second time The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip

I just finished for the second time The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip, the first book of her Cygnet Duology.

Astonishingly, I think I like it better the second time than I did the first, if for no other reason than I could track this tale out of corn and stars from the first husks right to the heart of the swan whose black wings protect Ro Holding. But the lesson is the same: some powers are meant to be known and not used, and in some areas it is better to make the choice to stop learning - for with every heart you burn knowingly it is your own you cast into the flames.

A Soviet Union's Lord of the Rings film is found.

An all-but-forgotten 1991 Soviet-made production of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been found, probably like the Ring itself, at the bottom of a river or in dank lightless cavern given its low quality.

“It’s so bad it’s good,” said Dimitra Fimi, a senior lecturer in fantasy and children’s literature at the University of Glasgow. “It’s a weird concoction of stuff — some of it is really close to the narrative and other bits are curtailed somehow.”So far, Tolkien fans in Russia and the West seem to appreciate the production for what it is and what it is not. Everyone knows it is not the director Peter Jackson’s blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy of the 2000s.  “Тhere is no sense in comparing these films,” said Nikolai Matchenya, a 31-year-old fan from Pskov, Russia. “It’s like comparing a new car with new computer systems inside with old, mechanical automobiles.”  The effects? “Too old-fashioned,” he said. The acting? “Poor.” The costumes? Those were “not bad.”  Few would argue about the effects, at least. When the wizard Gandalf sets off magic fireworks, the actor lifts his cape and drawings of fireworks appear. A bug-eyed bird puppet stands in for a giant eagle, and the villainous Sauron appears as an eye superimposed over a cup of pink ooze. Magic is often depicted with a watery effect and some spooky music.

Still, the history behind it is interesting. The Soviet government was less than fond of Tolkien, publishing no official translation of The Hobbit until 1976 and this with ideological alterations, while The Lord of the Rings itself was basically outlawed for decades. Why? Possibly because the Men of the West are the unequivocal good guys fighting and uphill but ultimately victorious war against the Enemy in the East.

For myself, I find this film interesting though hardly impressive. Gollum looks more like a mutant cabbage and Gandalf a cosplay Merlin wannabe who could barely find a decent costume. I look at that image of the above and I even cannot tell who is who. (No, I have not and do not intend to watch it. Time is far to precious, and I am not enough of a movie person to see a stunted version of a masterwork.)

I just started for the second time The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip, the first book of her Cygnet Duology.

I just started for the second time The Sorceress and the Cygnet by Patricia A. McKillip, the first book of her Cygnet Duology. 

Time to return to Ro Holding and a tale of stars and time, in which the very constellations are at odds and a realm must, without armies, fight to live.

I just finished Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy

"Answer the unanswered riddle."

 

I just finished Harpist in the Wind, book #3 of Patricia A. McKillip's Riddle-Master Trilogy.

Reading this series a second time was nothing short of incredible for, knowing the answers to the riddles from the outset, one realizes the true depths of McKillip's cunning. It was clear from the first chapter of book one that she had this cataclysmic riddle-game planned point for point, one riddle leading into another as warriors and wraiths, harpists and shape-changers, and a farmer-prince with three stars on his face came into his power alongside a princess of An. It is, in the older and more profound sense of the word, awesome. The strictures of wizardry may teach the avoidance of death, yet those of riddlery teach that the person who flees from death often finds themself running towards it and that it is better to turn forward into the unknown rather than backward toward death. And it was riddlery that won the day.

 

"Beware another riddle-master."