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wombat1138Some reviewy things'n'stuff for books that're primarily based on other books.
The Art of (George RR Martin's) A Song of Ice and Fire: (Martin's name is on the front cover, but not on the spine) This artbook is mainly compiled from CCG/RPG illustrations, although it also includes specially commissioned pieces by people like John Howe as well as fanart from online. It's a very nicely made hardback with glossy paper and an attached dustcover-- from what I can see underneath, the front and back boards look identical, though of course they don't have the inner flap things. In comparison to some of the online images I'd already seen, it seems that some media simply don't reproduce well; the fine gradations of watercolors/pastels run the risk of getting flattened out and looking cartoonish. But in general, all of the art is nicely done and very professional-looking (compared in particular to the "Wheel of Time" metabook), and I'm hoping the portraits will improve my chances of keeping track of Martin's characters.
The Prize in the Game, by Jo Walton (aka![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky): This was a gift from qadgop some years ago; I've just finished another re-reading of it. Set in the same universe and with some of the same characters as Walton's The King's [Peace/Name] semi-Arthurian diptych, this inquel/spinoff is based (I gather) on the Cattle Raid of Cooley, of which I had little or no prior knowledge, but this book is certainly readable and comprehensible in its own right. At certain points, there were some Very Odd Things that happened which may've been rooted in the original legends, but hey.
(It certainly worked better for me than Richard Adams's Traveller, whose eponymous narrator was the horse of General Richard E. Lee and showed about the level of understanding you'd expect from a horse (I casually slander, having almost no direct familiarity with horses)-- doubtless a fascinating descant to the textbook accounts of the American Civil War, but not a terribly coherent narrative on its own.)
Walton's writing style has an effect I can't completely articulate; while its mechanics are very different from JK Rowling's or GRR Martin's, my initial impulse would be to describe all of them in the same very general way-- unlike with JRR Tolkien or Tanith Lee, there are no particular phrases that make you stop to savor the pure beauty of the language, no mot juste singing out in a pure perfect tone. Walton's prose strikes me as being restrained to the point of telegraphic terseness at times, but I like her worldbuilding in a way I don't like most other semihistorical fantasies that've heavily borrowed from real-world history. Why? Dunno. She seems to've put much more thought into it than the usual search-and-replace of names on a map of Europe, and the different cultures really do seem to have different worldviews from us and each other.
Codex Derynianus, by Robert Reginald and Katherine Kurtz: This large paperback is the second edition, revised from a limited-edition hardback whose value may've dropped with this release but which may still be worth more than my car. (This is not very difficult at this point, but hey.) It's an encyclopedia of sorts, with medieval-style entries based on Kurtz's Deryni novels as well as material which falls outside their map/chronology. I can't really tell whether someone unfamiliar with the original works would enjoy this, but there are some sly, subtle jokes buried within the archaicized prose (especially the non novel-based material) and my name is in the acknowledgements section yay :)
(The Dark-Haired Man was also written by Robert Reginald and originally intended as a tie-in to the Deryniverse. For assorted reasons, he ended up lightly filing off the serial numbers for separate publication, but the original traces are still legible to the careful eye, esp. when cross-referenced to the Codex.)
His Dark Materials, by Nicholas Wright: I liked Philip Pullman's books a great deal, though the third one didn't feel quite right to me; this dramatic adaptation does a wonderful job of tightening up the trilogy into two acts, compressing the sprawling cast and multiverse into actual improvement from the originals, imho. There are very few stage directions, and the scattering of supplementary material I've seen online still has me looking for some sort of sumptuous coffee-table production volume from the National Theatre in London, but the bare bones of plot structure are streamlined and elegant. Unfortunately, I don't think the existing plans for a live-action/CGI movie have anything to do with this script, nor do I know what's been happening with that screenplay since the former director decided he could do a better job than Tom Stoppard then quit the project entirely.
The Art of (George RR Martin's) A Song of Ice and Fire: (Martin's name is on the front cover, but not on the spine) This artbook is mainly compiled from CCG/RPG illustrations, although it also includes specially commissioned pieces by people like John Howe as well as fanart from online. It's a very nicely made hardback with glossy paper and an attached dustcover-- from what I can see underneath, the front and back boards look identical, though of course they don't have the inner flap things. In comparison to some of the online images I'd already seen, it seems that some media simply don't reproduce well; the fine gradations of watercolors/pastels run the risk of getting flattened out and looking cartoonish. But in general, all of the art is nicely done and very professional-looking (compared in particular to the "Wheel of Time" metabook), and I'm hoping the portraits will improve my chances of keeping track of Martin's characters.
The Prize in the Game, by Jo Walton (aka
papersky): This was a gift from qadgop some years ago; I've just finished another re-reading of it. Set in the same universe and with some of the same characters as Walton's The King's [Peace/Name] semi-Arthurian diptych, this inquel/spinoff is based (I gather) on the Cattle Raid of Cooley, of which I had little or no prior knowledge, but this book is certainly readable and comprehensible in its own right. At certain points, there were some Very Odd Things that happened which may've been rooted in the original legends, but hey. (It certainly worked better for me than Richard Adams's Traveller, whose eponymous narrator was the horse of General Richard E. Lee and showed about the level of understanding you'd expect from a horse (I casually slander, having almost no direct familiarity with horses)-- doubtless a fascinating descant to the textbook accounts of the American Civil War, but not a terribly coherent narrative on its own.)
Walton's writing style has an effect I can't completely articulate; while its mechanics are very different from JK Rowling's or GRR Martin's, my initial impulse would be to describe all of them in the same very general way-- unlike with JRR Tolkien or Tanith Lee, there are no particular phrases that make you stop to savor the pure beauty of the language, no mot juste singing out in a pure perfect tone. Walton's prose strikes me as being restrained to the point of telegraphic terseness at times, but I like her worldbuilding in a way I don't like most other semihistorical fantasies that've heavily borrowed from real-world history. Why? Dunno. She seems to've put much more thought into it than the usual search-and-replace of names on a map of Europe, and the different cultures really do seem to have different worldviews from us and each other.
Codex Derynianus, by Robert Reginald and Katherine Kurtz: This large paperback is the second edition, revised from a limited-edition hardback whose value may've dropped with this release but which may still be worth more than my car. (This is not very difficult at this point, but hey.) It's an encyclopedia of sorts, with medieval-style entries based on Kurtz's Deryni novels as well as material which falls outside their map/chronology. I can't really tell whether someone unfamiliar with the original works would enjoy this, but there are some sly, subtle jokes buried within the archaicized prose (especially the non novel-based material) and my name is in the acknowledgements section yay :)
(The Dark-Haired Man was also written by Robert Reginald and originally intended as a tie-in to the Deryniverse. For assorted reasons, he ended up lightly filing off the serial numbers for separate publication, but the original traces are still legible to the careful eye, esp. when cross-referenced to the Codex.)
His Dark Materials, by Nicholas Wright: I liked Philip Pullman's books a great deal, though the third one didn't feel quite right to me; this dramatic adaptation does a wonderful job of tightening up the trilogy into two acts, compressing the sprawling cast and multiverse into actual improvement from the originals, imho. There are very few stage directions, and the scattering of supplementary material I've seen online still has me looking for some sort of sumptuous coffee-table production volume from the National Theatre in London, but the bare bones of plot structure are streamlined and elegant. Unfortunately, I don't think the existing plans for a live-action/CGI movie have anything to do with this script, nor do I know what's been happening with that screenplay since the former director decided he could do a better job than Tom Stoppard then quit the project entirely.