Novelish

The third book in the Inheritance Cycle (which began with Eragon) now has a title: Brisingr. The release is set for midnight on September 20th, 2008, though it seems to me that most of Christopher Palioni’s readers will wait for morning: the series is popular, but not Harry Potter popular.

Also, the sequel to The Name of the Wind was pushed back to April 2009. Shit. The decision is understandable, and his blog has a rather good explination of the whole thing, but it’s still disappointing.

Fantasy series in general seem to have a habit of mysteriously expanding, I’ve noticed, and this time it’s Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance trilogy - uh, I mean, cycle. It’s going to be four books now.

I’ve always been extremely critical of Eragon and Eldest, and this latest development makes me even less excited about the future books in the series. In a video on Alagaesia.com, Paolini talks about searching for a good ending place to leave the third book and deciding on the death of a major character. (It wasn’t clear whether this character was destined to die at that point regardless, or if it was only conceived to make a good finale.) But even so, I’m not convinced a story originally planned as one volume could work as well as two.

The third book is scheduled to release on September 23rd, 2008.

Here’s a frame of the video I mentioned (full version available here):

• The first interesting thing about this is, well, it’s where he writes. I can’t help finding a writer’s workspace interesting - even a writer whose books I don’t like.
• The second interesting thing is Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Behind his right shoulder. Seeing that increases my respect for him just a little bit. I don’t immediately recognize any of the other spines, but leave a comment if you happen to, ’cause I’d be interested.

No, really. He was in love with Grindelwald - a revelation that reportedly led to several minutes of cheering from the audience.

More information in the link, but J.K. Rowling finished by saying: “I had to give you something to talk about for the next ten years… just imagine the fan fiction now.”

And, honestly, my first thought was of the childlike excitement this would give the fan fiction community. There’s already a discussion about it on FictionAlley.

I just got back from Ursula K. Le Guin’s reading of Powers at the University Bookstore in Seattle. Exciting, no?

Pictured above: Duane giving the introduction. Duane is the University Bookstore’s fantasy specialist, sort of. I don’t know his official job title. He is very awesome, however.

And here’s Ursula Le Guin; after reading a passage of Powers - as well as a poem that someone in the audience requested - she answered a few questions.

I’ll copy down what I remember of the Q&A below. Disclaimer: I believe I accurately captured the essence of what was said, but I’m writing this several hours later. It’s possible that I may have made a small mistake or two.

• The world of The Western Shore series and Powers isn’t based on any particular country or culture - it’s her world, an invented world. The northern parts of it resembles Scotland in some ways… but she’s only been to Scotland once and doesn’t really knows what it’s like there.
• On differences between writing life in 1955 and 2005: the largest change for her is that, after a few decades, she’s getting paid for her books. (Presumably meaning paid enough to live on.) Writing is not a very romantic pursuit, she explains, in response to an audience member bringing it up. It involves a lot of sitting alone. For the writer that may be enjoyable - they’re lost within in their own worlds, after all - but definitely not biography material.
• Does she have an ending planned out when she begins? Basically, yes. She doesn’t work very well without an idea of where something is going; she needs a “strong conviction” of where it’s headed. But sometimes where it’s headed will change - and a lot of how the characters get to where they’re headed isn’t planned at all beforehand.
• She belongs to a poetry group that will give a monthly assignment, usually involving some specific form (e.g. a sonnet). She finds that having the structure laid out can be a really good thing in helping the words come out. (I believe the word “liberating” was used, even though you might think it’s the opposite.)
• She is a very fast reader. In regards to how she allocates time, reading is something she usually does when she’s tired, since writing can be a lot of work. She often reads in the early afternoon or at night, which would presumably mean she writes in the morning.
• She likes languages a lot, inventing them and so forth. She identifies with Tolkien in this way, as that’s something he did, too.
• She thinks she’s taken the Earthsea books to where she wanted them to be, so it’s unlikely that there will be another.
• She’s also unlikely to return to the space opera genre. Previously, the idea that humans were headed for space seemed possible. She feels this gave some credibility to the genre among readers, and also made it more appealing to her to write. But today, it doesn’t seem so realistic.
• There are only so many paragraphs about traveling you can do before it starts to get boring, so sometimes corners have to be cut; horse-travel is one corner that shouldn’t be cut and often is. All too often, riders will travel at a gallop for an entire day, only to jump off and go about their business as usual at the end of it. The poor horses would be left exhausted, desperately in need of some food and water, and likely unable to keep up a similar pace the next day - but in so much fantasy none of that is ever mentioned.
• Writing about invented worlds gives her the opportunity to be political and talk about current events (Iraq is mentioned) without, well, talking about them. Many people don’t like to be preached to too directly. Many people don’t like hearing about politics in a direct way because they already hear about it all the time from many sources - they want an escape of some sort. History doesn’t offer a very good one, as it constantly reminds you of current events. Fiction, on the other hand, does, even if it’s very political at the core.

More pictures after the break.

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Hi, Blog.

It’s me, Thorn. I’m not dead, despite what you may think. It’s just that I haven’t been posting much, and somehow not posting becomes more and more of a habit the longer it goes on.

Fortunately, the cover of Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (the sequel to The Name of the Wind) just came out, and that was too exciting to not blog about.

Here it is:

I was a bit surprised that it isn’t in the same style as the first book, but it’s pretty all the same. Now to wait until March, or April, or whenever the release date was supposed to be…

• See some reactions to the cover in Patrick Rothfuss’s blog comments

• My full post on the Friday-night Harry Potter parties is coming, but some pictures are up on Flickr. There’s a set for Chapters, which I stopped at from around 9:00-10:00pm, and a set for the party at the VanDusen Botanical Garden (put on by Vancouver Kidsbooks) from 11:00pm-12:30am.
• In the US, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours, according to Scholastic. Publisher’s Weekly has an article on it.
• Fantasy Book Critic reviewed Mary Modern, which I’ve mentioned on Novelish before. It’s not wholly positive, but somehow I’m not looking forward to getting my hands on a copy any less.

• The New York Times reviewed Deathly Hallows
• JK Rowling and her publishers weren’t happy (neither was Leaky)

I don’t think anyone could say the review’s content ruined the book for them. If the New York Times obtained a copy of the book, how can you blame them for writing about it? Wouldn’t keeping quite to please a private company be bad journalism?

• I’ll be attending a local release party tonight

While I don’t know all the details, it looks as though it’s going to be pretty big. Check back early tomorrow for pictures, and I’ll post a review as soon as possible.

So, I was reading the social news site Digg a minute ago. And Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is on the internet now.

Many of the sites where it was posted quickly removed it, but since hundreds of people already have it, I think there are bound to be copies floating around over the next three days.

Not to mention spoilers.