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"when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth."

THE NAME OF THE WIND is a great novel so far. I can ‘t say enough about it if you enjoy fantasy. It starts in third person, some strange occurrences occur and you find out nothing is quite what it seems.

An innkeeper takes lead in the story as the main character, who is soon revealed to be a wizard in hiding. He seems to have been a famous and powerful individual in the kingdom at some point before he went into hiding. Clues are thrown into the pot that gives the impression that the main character has gone through a lot in his life and still carries a heavy burden. The reason why he is in hiding is still to be revealed but it is slowly unfolding. I like the way the author did this too…you see, early in the book a chronicler is introduced that happens to notice the main character for who he truly is. He had been trying to trace him down for some time with almost no hope of ever doing so. Until the day where much to his surprise, he found him in passing when trying to reach someone of nobility for a recording.

The chronicler ends up delaying that interview of importance to get HIS story, of which he says will require a three-day commitment to go through it all. Book one, is day 1 of the storytelling on the planned trilogy and an excellent debut from the author.

Once the “telling” begins, the story is told in the main characters own words. Therefore, it switches to first person and it is almost as if the reader becomes the chronicler. It feels like you are sitting there and he is telling you the story over a cup of spiced wine. Good stuff.

The story itself is interesting. He starts about as far as he can remember as a kid. Right now, I am about half way through the novel and he has been accepted to the wizard school and is having quite a rough time. The thing I like the most about this novel is that the main character is really well fleshed out and he is really flawed, maybe even on the verge of not being so innocent…Think along the lines of Anakin turning to Darth Vader. I obviously don’t know what is going to happen, but it has that flavor up until this point.

The narration from the main character starts like this (when he actually begins telling his story):

Oh yeah, about George R R Martin. I did love his first entry to that series. I have CLASH OF KINGS in my TBR pile (the second entry) and still have to get rest of the series. I am way behind on those books...

THE NAME OF THE WIND has more of a Terry Goodkind feel, but in some ways, I like it even better. It is a much darker book. Georger R R Martin, when just taking the first instalment into account seemed to concentrate more on medieval battles, incest and politics. The world had more of a medieval Europe feel.

THE NAME OF THE WIND is higher fantasy in the regard that magic it very present in this world.

Oh, yeah. I'm a big fan of Gene Wolfe who I think is one of the greatest american writers alive today. His masterpeice is the 4 volume epic The Book of the New Sun. It's set millions of years in the future, to the point that the sun is actually old and dying. The story is about Severian, a torturer's apprentice from a guild of torturers employed by the emperor who is exiled from the keep where he was raised and spends the next year exploring the strangest world ever put to paper. This description doesn't do justice to this wonderful, confounding(but not confusing) story.

There is a sequel that he wrote years later that's only made up of 1 volume, followed by a new 4 volume series set in that world, followed by a concluding 3 volume series. As much as I've gushed about his first series you would think I would have read the others, but I can't bring myself to. I'm afraid I won't enjoy them as well and I'll tarnish the memory.

I've never read George R.R. Martin's books(Don't ask me why, I just haven't.), but I think an HBO mini-series would be awesome!

Of course, the Dark Tower books.

I love Ursula K. Leguin.

Right now I'm really big into the whole steampunk movement(That's it's current name anyways.). This genre is marked by very barouqe and decadent settings, usually cities for some reason. I love Jeff Vandermeer, China Meivelle, M. John Harrison, to name a few. My favorite novel from this genre is The Etched City by K.J. Bishop, set in something like the deserts of Australia about a world sort of running down and a city that causes people's dreams to infect one another.

I like science fantasy; stories with a science based setting, but stories so wild they more closely resemble fantasy. This type of story uses Clarke's law that the more technologicaly advanced from us a civillization is, the more it's abilities resemble magic. The Book of the New Sun is an example.

The book I'm reading right now, Desolation Road by Ian McDonald is like that.

What I'll be reading in the near future will be Little Big by John Crowley. Some people have called it the best fantasy novel ever written. The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick, and then something by Paul Park, and The Name of the Wind.

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Well, there have been a couple of flipper babies...yeah.

I recently finished Saberhagen's The Books of Swords. It was my first serious venture into fantasy and I thought they were terrific.

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Reading:

The Spartacus War - Barry Strauss
Slow Death - Jim Fielder
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire - Edward Gibbon

I used to read some. I read The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring and half of The Two Towers. I read The Harp of The Gray Rose by Charles DeLint. Mostly I read many of the books in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I really loved the first book but it started to drag a little more with each sucessive book until almost nothing was actually happening in an 800 page novel. I quite reading after the ninth book. I also used to read some of the novels put out by Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play, which is what got me into the genre.
I really only read horror anymore.

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http://vintagehorror.com/home/author/matt

For you George R.R. Martin fans out there. The next book in his Song of Fire and Ice series will be released in September.

All 1008 pages of it!
http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-Son ... _b_title_5

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Well, there have been a couple of flipper babies...yeah.

One year from September to catch up on the series before this monster comes out in paperback.

I was actually just talking to a buddy tonight over some drinks about the series. He couldn't help but rub in my face on how he was caught up and I had no idea on what I was missing...

Needless to say, all he pretty much reads is fantasy. A few scifi novels here and there, but fantasy is his weak spot. I just lent him THE NAME OF THE WIND, which is probably the first fantasy book that I have ever read before him. So, I couldn't help but rub that to his face...tsk tsk tsk...

I'm currently reading Christopher Golden's The Veil Trilogy. Very good stuff similar to The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and Possibly Grim Reapings. It's a very surreal fantasy about a parallel world that coincides with Earth that all of our Myths and Legends live on. It's quite trippy and dark but a lot of fun so far.

Other than that this year I have read The Princess Bride (which was ok). The Dreaming Dark Eberron Trilogy (which was good but ended poorly) and Perdido Street Station which I thought was amazing though not always the easiest book to read. But it did get me interested in some more steam punk and Mielville books.

Some of my favorite fantasies are Dies the Fire by SM Stirling, His Dark Materials by Pullman, and The Borderland books created by Terry Windling. I have also really been enjoying the Norrelea books by Tim Lebbon. Now that is some Dark Fantasy.

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You lick the hand that feeds you, And kiss the blade that cuts
I wanna fuck you in your god's hands when your praying bites the dust
Please Please Please

Reading: 11/22/63 by Stephen King
Playing: Many iOS Games

I have to put in a good word for what's sometimes called "sword and sorcery." I recently picked up the reissues of the Conan books by Robert E. Howard. Classic. I've also enjoyed Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books... an underrated series that deserves a place next to Tolkien.

Some very good sword and sorcery is the Elric books by Michael Moorcock. Some strange @$%# there.

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Well, there have been a couple of flipper babies...yeah.

China Meiville has a lot of fans who normally read horror. His Perdido Street Station is pretty grim stuff, and I think he was nominated for the Bram Stoker for his first novel King Rat.

A lot of horror fans have enjoyed Barkers Imajica, Weaveworld, and Abarat as well.

The Elric books I read were collected in two hardbacks. They may have been book club editions.

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Well, there have been a couple of flipper babies...yeah.

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FLASH VIRUS: EPISODE ONE (always free)

FLASH VIRUS:EPISODE TWO ($1.99)

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http://vintagehorror.com/home/author/matt

I have done one collaberation (I didn't think of it at first) over at the Justice and Wilbanks messageboard for Christmas. There were six of us that passed it on to the next. It was read in the Christmas addition of Pod of Horror. Here's a link to the printed version if anyone is interested. I wrote the third section. It isn't supernatural, which is tough for me to write, but I had fun participating nonetheless.

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http://vintagehorror.com/home/author/matt

I've always liked R.A. Salvatore and Terry Brooks. I've also started to get into Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, my fantasy reading has dwindled to almost nothing. But I did pick up The Name of the Wind on HHF's recommendation, and I'll get to it eventually.

Thad