Smorgasbord Fantasia

Continuing on with our (ir)regular featured Wednesday meme of counting down to the releases of those highly anticipated books this year, we are fully jazzed about the upcoming conclusion(?) to the The GreatCoats series by Sebastien DeCastell from Jo Fletcher Books , Tyrant's Throne . Falcio, Kest and Brasti, where will you guys go next ? After years of struggle and sacrifice, Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, is on the brink of fulfilling his dead king's dream: Aline, the king's daughter, is about to take the throne and restore the rule of law once and for all. But for the Greatcoats, nothing is ever that simple. In the neighboring country of Avares, an enigmatic new warlord is uniting the barbarian armies that have long plagued Tristia's borders--and even worse, he is rumored to have a new ally: Trin, who's twice tried to kill Aline to claim the throne of Tristia for herself. With the armies of Avares at her back, led by a bloodthirsty war...

Defender is an eminently readable debut - remarkable in it's grey and dismal rendition of a dystopian world where people, hearing voices in their head, have all chosen to end their lives, making Earth a barren desolate landscape. Population is thus scarce in GX Todd 's post-tragedy America and so that makes a lone traveler named Pilgrim who rides through this lonely landscape something of a rare breed - doubly so, because he has come to a sort of non-violent agreement with the voice in his head, which he refers to as Voice . Their squabbles and arguments are colorful and so when the Voice convinces Pilgrim to stop at a roadside lemonade stand, for a teenage girl selling lemonade, Pilgrim just gives in without argument. And even decides to take her on as a passenger. The first human being he has spoken to, in one hundred fifty one days straight. While there is a premonition that warns him against this, he relents anyways and soon discovers, that Lacey - the precocious hi...

The Lego Batman Movie actually came from nowhere, for me. I had not watched the Lego movie which came last year and so wasn’t really prepared for the outrageously funny jokes that lit up the movie, the writers riffing on everything the fantasy books/superhero comics ever threw at the large screen. The smart-alec quips, the ripping fast narrative and the depth of the characterization that came to fore was something pretty unexpected. I basically went because, the dark vigilante is my favorite superhero. (Yup: I own t-shirts emblazoned with him, Watches with his motif engraved into it, Car-Bumper Stickers with the bat-mobile motif. The works. And am not ashamed!) And I was happy to be landing back in the troubled Gotham city once more. The comic books and of late, the movies or even the TV Series set in this city, about the Batman or his fringe characters have all been exceptionally grim and dark. And so this personally for me, was a slam-dunk winner; watching a fast-talking highly in...

James A Moore is one of the three, in the Three Guys with Beards Podcast. Christopher Golden and Jonathan Maberry being the other two. Now I've read ONE book of each of these three guys. If I were to rank them, I would say I loved Jonathan Maberry best, Tin Men by Christopher Golden next and the open act of the Seven Forges series is the one I liked the least. Sadly, I didn't get back to finish the Seven Forges. But then, I happened to come across the premise for The Last Sacrifice . Brogan McTyre , a warrior whose family gets sacrificed to appease the Gods, now decides to take the battle to entirely new level. He defies the Gods and challenges them. And this act has catastrophic consequences on the entire world, the angry Gods raining down hellfire and damnation on everybody. This sounded like one hell of a plot-line. Angry gods, their pets called Undying and some stubborn fool of a warrior, who doesn't know where to draw the line. But when I actually started re...

The Great Wall was another one of those movie, where the trailer really did cover it all and the movie itself, didn't have much else to offer. One of the biggest movies from China last year, director Zhang Yimou ('House of Flying Daggers') ties up Hollywood production values with Asian sensibilities to bring to life, one of the countless 'legends' about the staggering Great Wall of China in this movie - an epic fantasy adventure about mythical creatures that live in the North beyond the Wall who are out to annihilate the whole world - with the Wall and the Nameless order of brave, selfless soldiers the only protection against them. The story arc brings nothing new - we've seen the barbarian from the west joining in on the fight to save the world, bringing his own cunning war tactics and selfless bravery to the fore in an Eastern setting. So the charismatic Matt Damon, William, a mercenary running from his past and in search of the elusive 'black roc...