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rwxI watched the miniseries premiere of the modern Battlestar Galactica yesterday afternoon/evening, and I was pretty enthralled. It's a great story, but I kept laughing insanely every time they said "the lords of Kobol" or just [C|K]obol generally. It's pretty dark, though, but I love darker stories. The Starbuck being a woman doesn't bother me, but the Apollo/Starbuck love interest thing seemed a little overdone.
I think Gelitin will be the next big european arts collective everyone goes nuts over, their big rabbit installation is pretty astounding.
Recently, I finished Stephen R. Donaldson's Runes of the Earth. So far, this is a better story than the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but probably not as good as the second. It's not as good a story as the Second Chronicles, but I would recommend reading this if you liked the second chronicles. It's a pretty good read as far as the other books on the market go. (The first series can be fairly emotionally grueling to read, which may be harder to get through if you're not in a state of teen angst like I was when I read it, though. It's in some ways better than the LOTR, but violates a lot of fantasy genre conventions concerning flawed heroes and I can remember people recommending banning the first book at points in the distant past.)
However, one thing that I found curious about it is that Donaldson's ear for dialogue seems to be completely shot in this book, and to have some extent returned to the narrative and conversational styles of the first books while losing some of the poetry and clarity. So, I'm hoping that this is due to his long stint with modern detective novels (which had excellent dialogue) causing the fantasy dialogue to be slightly creaky, rather than an ongoing thing.
Donaldson's stories tend to revolve around despair vs. hope, and passivity vs. action, if you're just sitting down to read his books, I'd recommend the imaginative and well-written Mordant's Need books, which have covers like crap romance novels but are great, innovative highish fantasy. If you like martial arts and detective novels, you might prefer The Man who Fought Alone, also by the same author; it deals with many of the same themes in a contemporary context.
I think Gelitin will be the next big european arts collective everyone goes nuts over, their big rabbit installation is pretty astounding.
Recently, I finished Stephen R. Donaldson's Runes of the Earth. So far, this is a better story than the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but probably not as good as the second. It's not as good a story as the Second Chronicles, but I would recommend reading this if you liked the second chronicles. It's a pretty good read as far as the other books on the market go. (The first series can be fairly emotionally grueling to read, which may be harder to get through if you're not in a state of teen angst like I was when I read it, though. It's in some ways better than the LOTR, but violates a lot of fantasy genre conventions concerning flawed heroes and I can remember people recommending banning the first book at points in the distant past.)
However, one thing that I found curious about it is that Donaldson's ear for dialogue seems to be completely shot in this book, and to have some extent returned to the narrative and conversational styles of the first books while losing some of the poetry and clarity. So, I'm hoping that this is due to his long stint with modern detective novels (which had excellent dialogue) causing the fantasy dialogue to be slightly creaky, rather than an ongoing thing.
Donaldson's stories tend to revolve around despair vs. hope, and passivity vs. action, if you're just sitting down to read his books, I'd recommend the imaginative and well-written Mordant's Need books, which have covers like crap romance novels but are great, innovative highish fantasy. If you like martial arts and detective novels, you might prefer The Man who Fought Alone, also by the same author; it deals with many of the same themes in a contemporary context.
