Review: Your Highness (comic book prequel)

I shouldn't even dignify this 46 page comic with a post but given that I was pretty shocked when I accidentally learned that this thing even existed I figured I might as well spread some information about it (and thereby lessening other people's shock when they in turn find out).

Your Highness: Knight and Dazed is the comic prequel to the 2011 movie Your Highness,
A movie collaboration between Danny Mcbride and David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Eastbound and Down). A Sword and Sorcery movie involving stoners, raunchy comedy and magic (motherfucka).

It is generally considered to be one of the worst movies ever made.

Fuck those people though, because I still get a kick out of watching this one from time to time.

Eminently quotable, with a great and epic music score, beautiful scenery, naturally shot in Ireland (because of course), cool and fun swordfighting and magic battles, sexy leading ladies (Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman), the underappreciated acting talents of Danny Mcbride,  with James Franco at his most goofy hamming it up in every scene and with way more name actors than this movie has really any right to have (Including Charles Dance and damian Lewis).

Toby Jones, Damnian Lewis and Charles Dance.
Look at that hair; the Lion still hath Manes!
Fun fact; this movie come out the same year as the first season of Game of Thrones.

This is either your thing or it isn't.
There isn't a deeper message and no other need than to entertain. And it does that with a good and funny bromance set in a fantastical setting. It got way more stick than it deserved really.
Most every actor in it said afterwards that the movie was crap too, which can't have helped.

But I still like it, and if this post makes you interested, I'll have done something good today.
Go and check it out.

Now, onto the reason why I'm doing this:

Written by Danny Mcbride and Jeff Fradley and published by Dark Horse in march 2011 as a media tie-in to the movie, the comic book  is comprised of 2 stories:

The first; Knight, follows the exploits of prince Fabious as he goes on his quest to rid the kingdom of Leezar's cyclops, falling in love with Belladonna along the way.

Pencils by Gabriel Guzman, Inks by Jordi Tarragona, colors by Michael Atiyeh

There' some actual consistency to the movie's storyline with nods and winks to Bormont's sexuality, and infatuation with his prince, mechanical bird Simon, the stoner (pervert) wizard, manious' dung eating and the general setup for the movie; it's all there.

A straightforward and straight-faced adventure quest with some pleasantly bloody fighting and vibrant colours.

The second story; Dazed, follows the exploits of prince Thadeous as he is sent by his father on a diplomatic mission to get a trade treaty signed by the dwarf king of a neighbouring kingdom.
Less needs to be said here as the fallout of this particular adventure is  discussed alot more in the film.

Pencils by Sean Phillips, Inks by Paul Peart-Smith, Colours by Val Staples.

Odd art that is very different than that from Knight but since it's a stoner story it ends up working.
Very washed out colours until of course, Thaddeous gets high.

In the end, it isn't perfect, and maybe even only halfway decent. By any right it shouldn't even exist.
But as a fan of the movie I don't actually regret buying it.

I'm still not saying it's good though.

Review: Ombria in Shadow, Patricia A. Mckillip

Here is Ombria in Shadow, with its beautiful cover.

That cover art, btw, is done by the same artist that did the Mythago Wood and Lavondyss covers (the Fantasy Masterworks editions) that I might have shown before somewhere.
Really, stunningly beautiful work by polish artist Grzegorz Domaradzki, whose work you can take a look at on his site iamgabz.com

Alright. I have a thing that I do for every book that I review.
Whenever I begin a new review post I tend to completely rewrite the book's back blurb.
It's something that helps me put everything in perspective, refreshes my memory, gets me in the writing-zone and plants my mind firmly at the start of the book, so that I can keep my review spoiler-free.
Here, however I'm going to have to do it a little different.
For a normal book, my blurb doesn't give away much, has something to say about everything, while establishing names, motives, places and other crucial information. I try to let it flow smoothly and that can be quite a challenge. The whole blurb can take some time, let me tell you.

Here in this blurb however, it hints at, but not confirms where everyone's individual stories are going and because of this, helps resolve some of the aimlessness of Ombria in shadow's plot; which was my intention. As a side-effect It also lends it an epicness that isn't quite present in the story. From Fairy Tale to Epic Fantasy, which is absolutely a bad thing if that's what you're expecting going into this book.

It also, maybe, takes away the appealing mystery that the Fantasy Masterwork's blurb gave it.
That blurb, specifically, was the reason why I picked this novel to read next. A really well done bit of writing that shows that less is better.
In more ways than one, it fits the book marvelously.
I'll show it here,  and I'll put mine after it. Then, if you care to read mine, (but be aware that it might give some slight stuff away if you DO want to read the novel) tell me which one you prefer.

"The prince of Ombria is dying, and already his sinister

 great-aunt is plotting to seize power. The Black Pearl
is feared throughout the land, and the city folk know

her reign will be a terrible one. Only the prince's son
can stop her from seizing the throne but he's just a
boy - barely worth the trouble of doing away with.

Ombria, it seems, is doomed. And yet, beneath the
streets, in a buried world of shadows and ghosts, a
mysterious sorceress is weaving new spells, watched
over by a girl sculpted entirely from wax..."

Mystery and shadows. Enticing huh?

And here comes my bit of blurb. Again, be mindful of slyness involving possible spoilers and hints.

In the ancient city of Ombria, in a castle riddled with forgotten rooms and hallways, hidden wealth and dangerous secrets, the city's king and the ruler of the noble house of Greve lies dying. 

Meanwhile, his mysterious great-aunt, the evil sorceress Domina Pearl, schemes to isolate his young son and heir, kyel.

She sends away the boy's closest friend, Lydea, a tavern waitress turned king's mistress and abandons her to the hostile streets of Ombria. Alone in the world, cut off from the people she loves, with her fate uncertain, Lydea will have to grow fast and so very far away from the flighty girl she was, into someone capable of navigating Ombria's shadowy dangers, Someone capable of saving Kyel from the unfathomable evils of Domina Pearl.

In the castle, Kyel's uncle, Ducon Greve, is the boy's last remaining ally. But, as a bastard, with no power and no claim to the throne, his influence is limited. Yet, for some reason, he is feared by the evil sorceress and goes where and when he pleases. Alone, he stalks the forgotten places in Ombria, drawing with coal and paper, he sees every shade of light and dark and not even Domina Pearl can tell how many of the ancient city's secrets he has unearthed.

Beneath the city, unknown to most and not understood by any, in a world of shadows and ghosts, between memories and dreams, a shapeshifting sorceress sells her spells to the highest bidder.

Aided by her wax girl, she deals in callous death and her magic may yet strike out at the drama playing out above.

But will these things even matter, in the end?

Because learned men, reading between the lines of history, have foreseen that an event is impending. A burgeoning darkness is moving the fate of Ombria out of balance and forward into a catastrophic metamorphosis that when it is over, will have left nothing the same.

Heh, I really am inordinately pleased with that.
Anyway, now that's done with, onwards;

Ombria in Shadow is a beautiful reading experience. A World Fantasy Award Winner for a reason.
The story flows, seemingly without direction. Like an exhausted reader's subconsciousness, filled with magic and intrigue, simply content to drift for a while.
The characters wander, and wonder at their darkening world. A figurative and literal darkness.

When I say figurative I of course mean emotional, and though the characters frequently exist in a state of emotional despair, it never becomes overbearing. This is mostly because the feelings of loss and hopelessness are countered by love. And with that I don't mean traditional romance, but  rather the love between family members and the love that parents have for a child. It's something that I can't recall ever having read before, at least not as the driving force for the main characters' actions.

The worldbuilding is seamless, effortlessly sprinkled within the narrative with vague scene setting relying both on the interplay between light and dark and a heavy dose of a melancholy entropy. And the gloom of the city of Ombria itself is just as much backdrop as it is one of the principal characters.

The writing is mesmerizing and like a dream, occasionally jumps around (even within sentences) and if you're not paying attention you'll be flitting from scene to scene without realizing it. It's like that way in which your dreams transition from one scene to another, the transitions are only noticable when you look back at them.
It really is quite well written.

I'd like to add that, like a dream, when it's over it's quite hard to actually recount anything that happened in the book. Sure yes, you can talk about the various characters and the key plot events spring easily to mind, But when it's all over, the page count seems far too large to actually fit with your memory of what happens in the book. There's a specific reason for this, but to tell would definitely be spoiling it. Suffice it to say that it's pretty good.

Ombria in Shadow is a beautiful book and reading it can feel like a dream.
Don't go looking for answers though, because like in a dream the truth is hidden and up for interpretation, if any interpretation is even necessary. Because sometimes how the book makes you feel is more important than how it all fits together.

-----

But just in case you're looking for an explanation.

I spent some time trying to figure it out myself and I'm reasonably satisfied with where I eventually got. It's quite a read.

Go here: Ombria in Shadow; an Interpretation

Gear Shift

While adapting to a new daily schedule and the demands of a new job, I necessarily had to limit my ambition of being able to read 600-plus page tomes in a week.

So for now, the book I was planning to read; Kushiel's Legacy, with its relatively high page count and its daunting first person perspective, a perspective which I've never been fond of anyway, is off the table in order to make room for the shorter books which have already started stacking up again (and they're making the shelves creak ominously).

The TBR-shelf.
Stare in horror, or excitement
(depends on how you're inclined, really).

Anyway, I was looking for shorter books that were bound to be worth it. And looking at my shelves something quickly stood out.

Enter the Fantasy Masterworks; a series of books, by publisher Gollancz, collecting some of the greatest, sweeping, most ground-breaking and beautiful fantasy books ever written. including some less widely read fantasy novels that shouldn't have slipped through the cracks, but have and were/are in this series reissued in a new coat, award winners and books with quite a large influence on the fiction that came after it, genre or otherwise. Everything from Dunsany's beautiful fairy tales to Moorcock's multiverse, Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery and George R.R. Martin's mississipi fever dream, the list goes on and on and all of it's quite good (I can only comment on the ones I've read, and sadly that's far less of them than I'd like. Except that Aegypt one, I didn't really get what this one was doing and that probably is my fault. But why issue only the first book in a quartet that needs to stand together to be understood anyway? Damnit gollancz!!!)

Either way, though I had recently purchased a pretty big haul of the new Fantasy Masterworks I kept looking guiltily at a book that had been eyeing me for several years now, and vice versa.
The Old Fantasy Masterworks edition of the Riddle Master of Hed, by Patricia A. Mckillip, now with a new cover in the new editions.

I've tried to read it several times over the years but there's some weird thing going on where I just can't bring myself to even read a single page. I loan the book out, or I just suddenly find my interests switched around and no matter what happens; in the end I always put it back on its shelf.

So now, trying to go for a compromise I looked at the Fantasy Masterworks list and found 2 more of her books between its titles. Reading the blurb of the one with the pretty cover I was quickly persuaded to give that one a go.

As is usual for the Masterworks; I did not regret it.

Next up; a review for Ombria in Shadow.

HELSREACH - Part 1: Prologue - A Warhammer 40k Story

Wow, just wow.
Yeah, there's actually some incredible writing in the warhammer 40k universe.

And Helsreach is still one of my favourites. Pretty much anything Aaron Dembski Bowden writes is so much fun to read. These days I've moved away from most of both the warhammer worlds (40k and the old world), but I'll pick up anything with that man's name on it.

If you've ever wondered how that people can read these books. Aaron's work will show you.
He writes the most human and relatable Marines I've ever read.
There's so much depth to the character of Grimaldus in Helsreach that it was an eye opener, since this book I haven't been able to enjoy alot of the 40k fiction that I enjoyed previously.
It shows you that even with the melodramatic bombast that alot of this setting is, its vicious bolter-porn, the oceans of mindless brutality; the writing can work with that rather than just adhere to it like some mindless drone.

Seeing one of Bowden's best stories being given so much love in Richard Boylen's animation is nothing short of awesome. It brilliantly captures the introspective doom-laden feel of the book.

I can only hope that Richard can keep this up, because I'd love to see more.

Parts 2 and 3 are up as well. Go check them out.

At Last

Finally!
Arrived a day late on saturday evening at 19:15.
Really? REALLY? How is this so late!?

That is some shitty pre-order doings!

The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence (2008), Gollancz

The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence was published in 2008 by the UK-based Orion Publishing Group under their Gollancz imprint, which, simply because it specialises in Science Fiction and Fantasy, is the best book publisher ever.

Collecting 8 Books from various sub-genres in the fantasy genre,

namely; 

Fairy tales (Lud-in-The-Mist),

Sword and Sorcery (The Conan Chronicles, Elric, Lankhmar),

mythology (The Broken Sword, Lyonesse),

Slipstream/ Science fantasy ( Chronicles of Amber)

and historical fantasy (the Dragon Waiting).

Given the variety and high quality of the books in its list I suppose the UFS is meant to give a taste of the wide-ranging flavours in the Fantasy genre, with an emphasis on Literary fantasy.

Arranged here by internal order The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence consists of;

-The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard (ISBN: 978-0-575-08273-1)

Edited by Stephen Jones, collecting the short stories;
'The Hyborian Age' (1936)
'The Tower of the Elephant' (1933)
'The Hall of the Dead (synopsis)' (1976)
'The God in the Bowl' (1952,1975)
'Rogues in the House' (1934)

'The Hand of Nergal (fragment)' (1976)
'The Frost-Giant's Daughter' (1953,1976)
'Queen of the Black Coast' (1934)
'The Vale of Lost Women' (1967)
'The Snout in the Dark (draft)' (1969,1979)
'Black Colossus' (1933)
'Shadows in the Moonlight' (1934)
'A Witch shall be Born' (1934)
'Shadows in Zamboula' (1935)
'The Devil in Iron' (1934)
'The People of the Black Circle' (1934)
'The Slithering Shadow' (1933)
'Drums of Tombalku (Draft)' (1966,1986)
'The Pool of the Black One' (1933)
Map of the Hyborian Age (2000)

-Elric by Michael Moorcock (ISBN: 978-0-575-08270-0)

Collecting several stories and novels;
'The Dreaming City' (1961)
'While the Gods Laugh' (1962)
'The Stealer of Souls' (1962)
'Kings in Darkness' (1962)
'The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams' (1962)
'Stormbringer' (1965,1977)

-Lankhmar  by Fritz Leiber (ISBN: 978-0-575-08274-8)

Collecting the novels;
'Swords and Deviltry'
'Swords against Death'

'Swords in the Mist'
'Swords Against Wizardry'

Though the copyright states 2001, the individual novels were actually
collected from seperate short stories. The first 2 (chronological) novels were then published in 1970, the other two in 1968.
This complete gathering of the first 4 books in the canon takes it copyright date from the Fantasy masterwork edition of the First book of Lankhmar.

-Lyonesse  by Jack Vance (ISBN: 978-0-575-08271-7)

Consisting of
'Suldrun's Garden' (1983)

-Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirlees (ISBN: 978-1-8579-8767-6)

Consists of
 'Lud-in-the Mist' (1926)

(has the honor of having the flat-out best cover in the UFS;
Sophie Toulouse's 'Fallen Angel Nation of Angela')

-The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (ISBN: 978-0-575-08272-4)

Consists of
'The Broken Sword'  (1954)

-The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (ISBN: 978-0-575-08269-4)

Collecting the novels;
'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970)
 'The Guns of Avalon' (1972)
 'Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
 'The Hand of Oberon' (1976)
 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978)

 These are the 5 first novels of the Chronicles of Amber series. The Chronicles of Amber can be divided into two parts; 1-5 (the Corwin Cycle) and 6-10 (The Merlin cycle).
So this book can stand on its own.

-The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford (ISBN: 978-0-575-07378-4)

Consists of
'The Dragon Waiting' (1983)

Covers and artwork rundown

The beautiful Cover Illustrations are by parisian freelance artist Sophie Toulouse and the overall cover design is by UK-based independent designer Sue Michniewicz.

Credit where it is due; the covers are nicely uncluttered with only the artwork, the book's title and the author's name on a white background. On the back we have some short cover blurb, a title repetition, a short, simple postivive description of the book in general, some simple publishing details and a review quote by a famous author.

Working with only a few colours; grey, white and black for the artwork plus another single colour unique to each book which is also used for the book titles on front, back and spine.
This colour is also used for the Review quote's author name, the general description and the first letter of the Book Blurb.
The book author's name is in black on the front.

small note:
For several of my personal books this colour has been given a reflective finish which is super lovely, I assumed this depended on the printed edtition but my edition of Lankhmar kind of blows that out of the water, So I'll just give the facts rather than position a theory to this curious phenomenon;
 Elric (1st ed) blue, Lyonesse (1st ed) pink, Lud-in-the-Mist (3d ed) green, The Conan Chronicles (1st ed) silver, Lankhmar (4th ed) red, The Dragon Waiting (1st ed) cyan.  This reflective finish is present on cover and spine, but not on the back.
And I also have some books which do not have that same finish, just the same colour without reflective treament, which is just a bit sad; The Broken Sword (4th ed) orange, Chronicles of Amber (6th ed) purple.


Differences between the Fantasy Masterworks and the Ultimate Fantasy Sequence

The reason for this post is that in trying to collect these books, as usual several years too late, I had alot of trouble getting them (being not born in the UK and not having access to any good second hand english book shops), as online sellers are kind of slapdash with information.

There's not alot of information surrounding them so I looked around and from either the internet or my own finally complete set tried to compile as much information as possible.

Also, because people like to lump these books together with the Gollancz' Fantasy Masterworks series and that's obviously not actually accurate.

To that end I'll now list some differences:

In general:

Obviously the covers and ISBN numbers are different. but is there, besides the very pretty covers, any actually added value to the series?

On the whole, I'd say no, The Fantasy Masterworks actually contain some extra bit of stuff, even some things that I thought were integral to the novels.

The 'Also by the author' pages, dedications and author blurb are retained though they are always added at the back of the book.
There is a reduced number of review quotes
Index sections were left out completely.

Noteworthy differences

For The Conan Chronicles there is no afterword or index in the book that was present in the original Fantasy Masterworks edition, there are also no acknowledgements at the start of the Copyright Pages. The Map of the Hyborian Age can be found at the back.

For the Broken sword there is a notable difference in the newer U(nnumbered)FM edition, which comes with a new introduction by Michael Dirda. There is no introduction present in the original FM edition. The (unsigned) foreword by Poul Anderson is added to the back.

The Dragon Waiting has 'a historical note' and 'shadows as they pass' at the back. These are two sets of notes relating to history and characters.
There is no index and no attention is given to the FM edition's imposing typeset (used for the titles).
There really is no contest in which of the two is the superior version.

Lankhmar is another one with big differences. There's no index.
Normally every individual novel in the First book of Lankhmar (Fantasy Masterworks nr18) has a list of humorous contents and descriptions of the different acts in the book, which slyly alludes to Fritz Leiber's past on stage. In the UFS these have been left out completely.
(Also, the copyright page states that the copyright dates from 2001 which is obviously not the publication date of the original novels, but the date of publication of the Fantasy masterworks edition of the First Book of Lankhmar.)

Elric has no index. Map is at the back.

Chronicles of Amber has no index.

(I don't have any FM editions of Lud-in-the-Mist and Lyonesse so I can't really compare those)

I'll update this picture when I get the other two. Some time...

Also, feel free to point me to any new information regarding this series or correct erroneous information as I have tried to be as complete as possible, but it's easy to miss things or make errors.

Review: Ichabod Azrael

Here is The Grievous Journey of ICHABOD AZRAEL (and the dead left in his wake)

I mentioned before that I'd had my eye on this one for a while. I was interested in this one not just because of the cool cover or because of the blurb which pointed to a conflict between mortals and the powers of Heaven and Hell, but also because of this little youtube video, which is part of the ABC's of 2000ad youtube series, where they go through their entire backcatalogue, giving 3 minutes of information about every individual title that has been printed in their publishing history;

Among other things; such as comparing it to Garth Ennis' Preacher (which I don't like all that much, but the idea at its core is still an interesting one and the tv-show is pretty damn entertaining), what in particular drew my attention was that it was going to be a metafictional tale; meaning that it would be aware of its own storytelling gimmicks or that it would play around with them, giving a self-aware look at its own goals and story, possibly while commenting on the medium of storytelling in, and of, comics in general.

Oh yes, and there would be demons. And angels. A hunt for God. And brutal violence and copious amounts of gory bloodshed. All while clothed in a western duster, and while wielding 2 demon-killing revolvers.

It was a really good tale, delivering on all my expectations. With old-fashioned tough-as-nails gunslingers, demonic and angelic mayhem, some reality hopping, occasional and frequently humorous sidekicks and in the last act; enough food for thought to keep you mulling for a while. The meta parts (both physical and fictional) of the comic were pretty inspired.

The metafictional parts in particular are done quite well. This is not a tale that would work outside of the medium of comics. Despite the book's abrupt end, because of its self awareness it ends up working.

It's worth noting that the story consists of three arcs and that the metafictional context only really starts to come to the fore in the last third. 

I suppose the art deserves a mention. the story switches, for reasons, between monochromatic art and colour and it does it to great effect. The art itself isn't something to write home about for the first two parts, but part three has alot more detail put in. It's always fun if the art is on an upward curve, isn't it?

The book comes with a pretty interesting introduction and an interview at the back with the comic's writer, but as the interview didn't actually add much to the reading experience and didn't have any information, besides the peripheral, on Ichabod Azrael itself I didn't appreciate it so much.

Apart from that, I enjoyed this one alot and I'd recommend it to people looking for mature and mythical storytelling with an emphasis on literary leanings.