Over the past weeks I’ve been enjoying a few epic conversations here on the blog. Mainly this spun out of some of the observations around epic fantasy that I saw arising during the Gemmell Awards voting period, and I am interested to know what you think.

So far, the topics we’ve discussed have been:

What Makes Fantasy Epic?  and

What Makes for “The New” in Epic Fantasy?

Once again, this week’s question arises out of last week’s discussion. We had got onto cycles in Fantasy and Paul Weimer alluded to ‘sword and sorcery’ being hot now, but having had a dry spell for some time.

I also perceive epic fantasy as having had a dry spell but currently enjoying a resurgence—but am I right? And if you agree, what do you think has driven the resurgence?

I would love to hear your views. 🙂

“Really enjoyed …[the first two books of The Wall of Night]… They made my bookworm’s heart happy.”

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Orare’s comment appeared on ‘What I’m Doing… “Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three.” ‘ Needless to say, finding out I had made a bookworm’s heart happy made me happy, too. 😉

I have a few SciFi books to give away right now, so I thought I might institute SciFi Giveaway Saturday — on a strictly ad hoc basis — until they’re gone.

But to be in to win you have to participate: each time I run this you’ll have to answer a question to enter. 😉

Today the book for giveaway is Philip Mann’s The Disestablishment Of Paradise (Gollancz) and the question is:

“What book first got you into reading science fiction?”

For me, it was Robert Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer, first read at around age 13.

Just comment with your answer anytime up until midnight, Friday 25 October (NZ time.)  I’ll  announce the result next Saturday 26th, with the draw (assuming there’s more than one comment) being made by means of Random.Org

Fully international, as always!

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth.

Now the letter “I” may not encompass all the cool places, but with Ij, the Ijir and now Ishnapur, it certainly features quite a few! 😉

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Ishnapur:  a fabled city and empire on the southern edge of the known world, which borders the great deserts of Haarth.

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“A line of pewter marked the thousand leagues of road that ran from Emer to fabled Ishnapur and beyond that again was the vast and unknown desert, a sea of dunes wrought in jasper, topaz and bronze.”

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 17 — Eye of the Storm

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‘ “It is a very long way from Ishnapur to Ij—especially for the unwary.” Something in the Master’s tone sent a chill down Jehane Mor’s spine. “Bringing down the heralds will send a message that no one is beyond our reach. But they must all be dead. No one must escape the net.” ‘

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 5 — The Guild House

Congratulations to Eleanor Catton, whose second novel The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction yesterday — a tremendous achievement.

She is the second New Zealand novelist to do so, the first being Keri Hulme for The Bone People in 1985.

You can read the official announcement here.

A full NZ report on Stuff is here.

And Graham Beattie, who attended the Guildhall dinner, offers some “random thoughts” on his Bookblog, here.

I also loved Eleanor’s speech, as heard on Radio NZ, around “worth” and “value” — I think I have that right!

Busy busy with the writing of Daughter Of Blood, The Wall of Night Three right now so no big blog post today, just a few interesting snippets from around the traps:

“Love, Crystal and Stone”
First up, my fellow BookSworn author, Teresa Frohock, has an exclusive excerpt of her story, Love, Crystal and Stone, on the Fantasy Book Critic website. Love, Crystal and Stone is Teresa’s contribution to the Neverlands anthology edited by Rebecca Lovatt and Roger Bellini – there’s also a blurb about the anthology, including the other authos and stories in it, if you follow this link :

Neverlands Library — & Love, Crystal and Stone by Teresa Frohock

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Paul Weimer reviews another fellow BookSworn author, Anne Lyle’s novel Merchant Of Dreams on SF Signal:

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle

Btw, Anne’s first novel, The Alchemist of Souls is a finalist for the British Fantasy Society’s Sydney J Bounds’ Award for Best Newcomer this year, to be announced at this year’s World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, at the end of this month.

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Neil Gaiman On Libraries and Children Reading

— when delivering  the second annual Reading Agency lecture (14th October) at the Barbican Centre in London. Article via The Bookseller.

Why do I feature this link, other than the whole Neil Gaiman Is Awesome syndrome — because I personally feel that closing libraries, in an age when governments and just about everyone else blethers on about the important of high levels of literacy for the so-called knowledge economy, is a Giant Leap Backwards for Humankind.

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And if you missed it Monday, I’ve asked the question ” What Makes for ‘The New’ in Epic Fantasy?” and would love you to join in the conversation. Just click on:

What Makes for ‘The New’ in Epic Fantasy?

breath

I am trying to breathe
like the slow, low purr of a drowsy cat
like the languid sway of an empty swing
like the shiver of a thistle in the wind

like someone about to stop breathing entirely

I look for that place
where breath becomes so light it vanishes,
pulls away like a small plane turning steeply
and heading up, straight up,
fishbone thin in a thin blue sky

then gone
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© Sarah Broom, 1972 – 2013

Published in Gleam, Auckland University Press, 2013

Reproduced here with permission.

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About The Poem:

Sarah Broom’s posthumous collection Gleam was published in August of this year, three months after Sarah’s death in April. I posted my personal eulogy for Sarah here — and said at that time how much I was looking forward to reading Gleam.

I have since had that very great joy, in reading the poetry, and sorrow, for loss of the poet. To sum up the collection, I can do no better than quote Selina Guinness’s obituary for Carcanet, Sarah’s UK publisher:  “Gleam … is a collection written in extremis, and contains some of the most beautiful and startling poems about dying I have ever read.”

So I am honoured to feature one of my favourite poems from the collection, breath, with you today. I feel it is particularly poignant because Sarah was being treated for lung cancer* throughout the the writing of the collection and breath is possibly the poem that speaks most directly to her illness. Despite the use of repetition and layering of simile and image:

“like the slow, low purr of a drowsy cat
like the languid sway of an empty swing
like the shiver of a thistle in the wind”

the poem is emotionally spare, even remote, like that:

“small plane turning steeply
and heading up, straight up,
fishbone thin in a thin blue sky

then gone”

acquiring considerable power through the juxtaposition.

I hope you will both enjoy the poem and feel what Glenn Colquhoun would call its “ache“, as I did on first encountering it when reading Gleam.

* For those who might feel inclined to be judgmental, I note that Sarah never smoked.

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Sarah Broom

About The Poet:

Sarah Broom’s first poetry collection, Tigers at Awhitu, was published by Auckland University Press (AUP) in 2010, and simultaneously by Carcanet Press in the UK.  She has also written Contemporary British and Irish Poetry: An Introduction, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006.  Her second collection, Gleam, was published by Auckland University Press in August 2013. To hear Sarah read from and discuss Tigers at Awhitu, click on the following Scottish Poetry Library podcast interview: Sarah Broom.

Sarah died on April 18, 2013, after a five year illness with lung cancer. She is survived by her husband and three children.
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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

Since The Gathering Of The Lost was shortlisted for the Gavid Gemmell Legend Award, the whole award process has got me thinking about a number of topics that keep coming up in fora and Q&A. Last week I asked one of the most fundamental questions, i.e. What Makes Fantasy Epic?

In the subsequent discussion we talked about some of the enduring and consistent elements of the (sub)genre, so of course that immediately sparked another question: “What makes an epic fantasy seem new and/or fresh for readers?” I say “and/or” deliberately, because arguably “new” and ‘fresh” are not necessarily the same thing.

Is it enough to change the historical era or cultural paradigms that inform the epic, for example, to qualify as “new”, or does the alteration have to be more far reaching?  And is it in fact possible to have anything truly new under the sun (or “Under Heaven” a la Guy Gavriel Kay’s Chinese-informed novel.:) )

Once again, I would love to hear your thoughts.

“I think The Wall Of Night series is amazing … I think the ending to the second book was just right.”

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“NightTrippin’s” comment appeared on the blog post ‘What I’m Doing: A “Daughter of Blood” Update.’

As always, it’s great to have readers drop by and let you know they enjoy what you do.:)

 “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

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Why Sir Edmund Hillary — well mainly, because he’s awesome.

Secondly, because I quoted his famous “Well, we knocked the bastard off”  in Thursday’s Gnarly post.

Thirdly, because I saw this along the way and thought it was too good not to post.

Make of it what you will. 😉