Wade Garret's Blog, page 6
January 11, 2016
The Return of the Thin White Duke, by N.G :)
The Return of the Thin White DukeI never met David Bowie. After a while it almost became a game: I only had one hero left, and it was him. The nearest I came to it was meaning to send him a copy of Trigger Warning, with this story in it, and an apologetic note.
It's unabashedly fan fiction. You can find the story of its origin in Trigger Warning.
He was the monarch of all he surveyed, even when he stood out on the palace balcony at night listening to reports and he glanced up into the sky at the bitter twinkling clusters and whorls of stars. He ruled the worlds. He had tried for so long to rule wisely, and well, and to be a good monarch, but it is hard to rule, and wisdom can be painful. And it is impossible, he had found, if you rule, to do only good, for you cannot build anything without tearing something down, and even he could not care about every life, every dream, every population of every world.
Bit by bit, moment by moment, death by little death, he ceased to care.
He would not die, for only inferior people died, and he was the inferior of no one.
Time passed. One day, in the deep dungeons, a man with blood on his face looked at the Duke and told him he had become a monster. The next moment, the man was no more; a footnote in a history book.
The Duke gave this conversation much thought over the next several days, and eventually he nodded his head. "The traitor was right," he said. "I have become a monster. Ah well. I wonder if any of us set out to be monsters?"
Once, long ago, there had been lovers, but that had been in the dawn days of the Dukedom. Now, in the dusk of the world, with all pleasures available freely (but what we attain with no effort we cannot value), and with no need to deal with any issues of succession (for even the notion that another would one day succeed the Duke bordered upon blasphemy) there were no more lovers, just as there were no challenges. He felt as if he were asleep while his eyes were open and his lips spoke, but there was nothing to wake him.
The day after it had occurred to the Duke that he was now a monster was the Day of Strange Blossoms, celebrated by the wearing of flowers brought to the Ducal Palace from every world and every plane. It was a day that all in the Ducal Palace, which covered a continent, were traditionally merry, and in which they cast off their cares and darknesses, but the Duke was not happy.
"How can you be made happy?" asked the information beetle on his shoulder, there to relay his master's whims and desires to a hundred hundred worlds. "Give the word, your Grace, and empires will rise and fall to make you smile. Stars will flame nova for your entertainment."
"Perhaps I need a heart," said the Duke.
"I shall have a hundred hundred hearts immediately plucked, ripped, torn, incised, sliced and otherwise removed from the chests of ten thousand perfect specimens of humanity," said the information beetle. "How do you wish them prepared? Shall I alert the chefs or the taxidermists, the surgeons or the sculptors?"
"I need to care about something," said the Duke. "I need to value life. I need to wake."
The beetle chittered and chirrupped on his shoulder; it could access the wisdom of ten thousand worlds, but it could not advise its master when he was in this mood, so it said nothing. It relayed its concern to its predecessors, the older information beetles and scarabs, now sleeping in ornate boxes on a hundred hundred worlds, and the scarabs consulted among themselves with regret, because, in the vastness of time, even this had happened before, and they prepared to deal with it.
A long forgotten subroutine from the morning of the worlds was set into motion. The Duke was performing the final ritual of the Day of Strange Blossoms with no expression on his thin face, a man seeing his world as it was and valuing it not at all, when a small winged creature fluttered out from the blossom in which she had been hiding.
"Your grace," she whispered. "My mistress needs you. Please. You are her only hope."
"Your mistress?" asked the Duke.
"The creature comes from Beyond," clicked the beetle on his shoulder. "From one of the places that does not acknowledge the Ducal Overlordship, from the lands beyond life and death, between being and unbeing. It must have hidden itself inside an imported offworld orchid blossom. Its words are a trap, or a snare. I shall have it destroyed."
"No," said the Duke. "Let it be." He did something he had not done for many years, and stroked the beetle with a thin white finger. Its green eyes turned black and it chittered into perfect silence.
He cupped the tiny thing in his hands, and walked back to his quarters, while she told him of her wise and noble Queen, and of the giants, each more beautiful than the last, and each more huge and dangerous and more monstrous, who kept her Queen a captive.
And as she spoke, the Duke remembered the days when a lad from the stars had come to World to seek his fortune (for in those days there were fortunes everywhere, just waiting to be found); and in remembering he discovered that his youth was less distant than he had thought. His information beetle lay quiescent upon his shoulder.
"Why did she send you to me?" he asked the little creature. But, her task accomplished, she would speak no more, and in moments she vanished, as instantly and as permanently as a star that had been extinguished upon Ducal order.
He entered his private quarters, and placed the deactivated information beetle in its case beside his bed. In his study, he had his servants bring him a long black case. He opened it himself, and, with a touch, he activated his master advisor. It shook itself, then wriggled up and about his shoulders in viper form, its serpent tail forking into the neural plug at the base of his neck.
The Duke told the serpent what he intended to do.
"This is not wise," said the master advisor, the intelligence and advice of every ducal advisor in memory available to it, after a moment's examination of precedent.
"I seek adventure, not wisdom," said the Duke. A ghost of a smile began to play at the edges of his lips; the first smile that his servants had seen in longer than they could remember.
"Then, if you will not be dissuaded, take a battle-steed," said the adviser. It was good advice. The Duke deactivated his master advisor and he sent for the key to the battle-steeds' stable. The key had not been played in a thousand years: its strings were dusty.
There had once been six battle-steeds, one for each of the Lords and Ladies of the Evening. They were brilliant, beautiful, unstoppable, and when the Duke had been forced, with regret, to terminate the career of each of the Rulers of the Evening, he had declined to destroy their battle-steeds, instead placing them where they could be of no danger to the worlds.
The Duke took the key and played an opening arpeggio. The gate opened, and an ink-black, jet-black, coal-black battle steed strutted out with feline grace. It raised its head and stared at the world with proud eyes.
"Where do we go?" asked the battle-steed. "What do we fight?"
"We go Beyond," said the Duke. " And as to whom we shall fight... well, that remains to be seen."
"I can take you anywhere," said the battle-steed. "And I will kill those who try to hurt you."
The Duke clambered onto the battle-steed's back, the cold metal yielding as live flesh between his thighs, and he urged it forward.
A leap and it was racing through the froth and flux of Underspace: together they were tumbling through the madness between the worlds. The Duke laughed, then, where no man could hear him, as they travelled together through Underspace, travelling forever in the Undertime (that is not reckoned against the seconds of a person's life).
"This feels like a trap, of some kind," said the battle-steed, as the space beneath galaxies evaporated about them.
"Yes," said the Duke. "I am sure that it is."
"I have heard of this Queen," said the battle-steed, "Or of something like her. She lives between life and death, and calls warriors and heroes and poets and dreamers to their doom."
"That sounds right," said the Duke.
"And when we return to real-space, I would expect an ambush," said the battle-steed.
"That sounds more than probable," said the Duke, as they reached their destination, and erupted out of underspace back into existence.
The guardians of the palace were as beautiful as the messenger had warned him, and as ferocious, and they were waiting.
"What are you doing?" they called, as they came in for the assault. "Do you know that strangers are forbidden here? Stay with us. Let us love you. We will devour you with our love."
"I have come to rescue your Queen," he told them.
"Rescue the Queen?" they laughed. "She will have your head on a plate before she looks at you. Many people have come to save her, over the years. Their heads sit on golden plates in her palace. Yours will simply be the freshest."
There were men who looked like fallen angels and women who looked like demons risen. There were people so beautiful that they would have been all that the Duke had ever desired, had they been human, and they pressed close to him, skin to carapace and flesh against armour, so they could feel the coldness of him, and he could feel the warmth of them.
"Stay with us. Let us love you," they whispered, and they reached out with sharp talons and teeth.
"I do not believe your love will prove to be good for me," said the Duke. One of the women, fair of hair, with eyes of a peculiar translucent blue, reminded him of someone long-forgotten, of a lover who had passed out of his life a long time before. He found her name in his mind, and would have called it aloud, to see if she turned, to see if she knew him, but the battle-steed lashed out with sharp claws, and the pale blue eyes were closed forever.
The battle-steed moved fast, like a panther, and each of the guardians fell to the ground, and writhed and was still.
The Duke stood before the Queen's palace. He slipped from his battle-steed to the fresh earth.
"Here, I go on alone," he said. "Wait, and one day I shall return."
"I do not believe you will ever return," said the battle-steed. "I shall wait until time itself is done, if need be. But still, I fear for you."
The Duke touched his lips to the black steel of the steed's head, and bade it farewell. He walked on to rescue the Queen. He remembered a monster who had ruled worlds and who would never die, and he smiled, because he was no longer that man. For the first time since his first youth he had something to lose, and the discovery of that made him young again. His heart began to pound in his chest as he walked through the empty palace, and he laughed out loud.
She was waiting for him, in the place where flowers die. She was everything he had imagined that she would be. Her skirt was simple and white, her cheekbones were high and very dark, her hair was long and the infinitely dark colour of a crow's wing.
"I am here to rescue you," he told her.
"You are here to rescue yourself," she corrected him. Her voice was almost a whisper, like the breeze that shook the dead blossoms.
He bowed his head, although she was as tall as he was.
"Three questions," she whispered. "Answer them correctly, and all you desire shall be yours. Fail, and your head will rest forever on a golden dish." Her skin was the brown of the dead rose-petals. Her eyes were the the dark gold of amber.
"Ask your three questions," he said, with a confidence he did not feel.
The Queen reached out a finger and she ran the tip of it gently along his cheek. The Duke could not remember the last time that anybody had touched him without his permission.
"What is bigger than the universe?" she asked.
"Underspace and Undertime," said the Duke. "For they both include the universe, and also all that is not the universe. But I suspect you seek a more poetic, less accurate answer. The mind, then, for it can hold a universe, but also imagine things that have never been, and are not."
The Queen said nothing.
"Is that right? Is that wrong?" asked the Duke. He wished, momentarily, for the snakelike whisper of his master advisor, unloading, through its neural plug, the accumulated wisdom of his advisors over the years, or even the chitter of his information beetle.
"The second question," said the Queen. "What is greater than a King?"
"Obviously, a Duke," said the Duke. "For all Kings, Popes, Chancellors, Empresses and such serve at and only at my will. But again, I suspect that you are looking for an answer that is less accurate and more imaginative. The mind, again, is greater than a King. Or a Duke. Because, although I am the inferior of nobody, there are those who could imagine a world in which there is something superior to me, and something else again superior to that, and so on. No! Wait! I have it the answer. It is from the Great Tree: Kether, the Crown, the concept of monarchy, is greater than any King."
The Queen looked at the Duke with amber eyes, and she said, "The final question for you. What can you never take back?"
"My word," said the Duke. "Although, now I come to think of it, once I give my word, sometimes circumstances change and sometimes the worlds themselves change in unfortunate or unexpected ways. From time to time, if it comes to that, my word needs to be modified in accordance with realities. I would say Death, but, truly, if I find myself in need of someone I have previously disposed of, I simply have them reincorporated..."
The Queen looked impatient.
"A kiss," said the Duke.
She nodded.
"There is hope for you," said the Queen. "You believe you are my only hope, but, truthfully, I am yours. Your answers were all quite wrong. But the last was not as wrong as the rest of them."
The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.
A wind blew through the garden of dead flowers, and the Duke was put in mind of perfumed ghosts.
"Would you like to know the answer?" she asked.
"Answers," he said. "Surely."
"Only one answer, and it is this: the heart," said the Queen. "The heart is greater than the universe, for it can find pity in it for everything in the universe, and the universe itself can feel no pity. The heart is greater than a King, because a heart can know a King for what he is, and still love him. And once you give your heart, you cannot take it back."
"I said a kiss," said the Duke.
"It was not as wrong as the other answers," she told him. The wind gusted higher and wilder and for a heartbeat the air was filled with dead petals. Then the wind was gone as sudenly as it appeared, and the broken petals fell to the floor.
"So. I have failed, in the first task you set me. Yet I do not believe my head would look good upon a golden dish," said the Duke. "Or upon any kind of a dish. Give me a task, then, a quest, something I can achieve to show that I am worthy. Let me rescue you from this place."
"I am never the one who needs rescuing," said the Queen. "Your advisors and scarabs and programs are done with you. They sent you here, as they sent those who came before you, long ago, because it is better for you to vanish of your own volition, than for them to kill you in your sleep. And less dangerous." She took his hand in hers. "Come," she said. They walked away from the garden of dead flowers, past the fountains of light, spraying their lights into the void, and into the citadel of song, where perfect voices waited at each turn, sighing and chanting and humming and echoing, although nobody was there to sing.
Beyond the citadel was only mist.
"There," she told him. "We are the end of everything, where nothing exists but what we create, by act of will or by desperation. Here in this place. I can speak freely. It is only us, now." She looked into his eyes. "You do not have to die. You can stay with me. You will be happy to have finally found happiness, a heart, and the value of existence. And I will love you."
The Duke looked at her with a flash of puzzled anger. "I asked to care. I asked for something to care about. I asked for a heart."
"And they have given you all you asked for. But you cannot be their monarch and have those things. So you cannot return."
"I... I asked them to make this happen," said the Duke. He no longer seemed angry. The mists at the edge of that place were pale, and they hurt the Duke's eyes when he stared at them too deeply or too long.
The ground began to shake, as if beneath the footsteps of a giant.
"Is anything true here?" asked the Duke. "Is anything permanent?"
"Everything is true," said the Queen. "The giant comes. And it will kill you, unless you defeat it."
"How many times have you been through this?" asked the Duke. "How many heads have wound up on golden dishes?"
"Nobody's head has ever wound up on a golden platter," she said. "I am not programmed to kill them. They battle for me and they win me and they stay with me until they close their eyes for the last time. They are content to stay, or I make them content. But you... you need your discontent, don't you?"
He hesitated. Then he nodded.
She put her arms around him and kissed him, slowly and gently. The kiss, once given, could not be taken back.
"So now, I will fight the giant and save you?"
"It is what happens."
He looked at her. He looked down at himself, at his engraved armour, at his weapons. "I am no coward. I have never walked away from a fight. I cannot return, but I will not be content to stay here with you. So I will wait here, and I will let the giant kill me."
She looked alarmed. "Stay with me. Stay."
The Duke looked behind him, into the blank whiteness. "What lies out there?" he asked. "What is beyond the mist?"
"You would run?" she asked. "You would leave me?"
"I will walk," he said. "And I will not walk away. But I will walk towards. I wanted a heart. What is on the other side of that mist?"
She shook her head. "Beyond the mist is Malkuth: The Kingdom. But it does not exist unless you make it so. It becomes as you create it. If you dare to walk into the mist, then you will build a world or you will cease to exist entirely. And you can do this thing. I do not know what will happen, except for this: if you walk away from me you can never return."
He heard a pounding still, but was no longer certain that it was the feet of a giant. It felt more like the beat, beat, beat of his own heart.
He turned towards the mist, before he could change his mind, and he walked into the nothingness, cold and clammy against his skin. With each step he felt himself becoming less. His neural plugs died, and gave him no new information, until even his name and his status were lost to him.
He was not certain if he was seeking a place or making one. But he remembered dark skin and her amber eyes. He remembered the stars -- there would be stars where he was going, he decided. There must be stars.
He pressed on. He suspected he had once been wearing armour, but he felt the damp mist on his face, and on his neck, and he shivered in his thin coat against the cold night air.
He stumbled, his foot glancing against the kerb.
Then he pulled himself upright, and peered at the blurred streetlights through the fog. A car drove close -- too close -- and vanished past him, the red rear lights staining the mist crimson.
My old manor, he thought, fondly, and that was followed by a moment of pure puzzlement, at the idea of Beckenham as his old anything. He'd only just moved there. It was somewhere to use as a base. Somewhere to escape from. Surely, that was the point?
But the idea, of a man running away (a lord or a duke, perhaps, he thought, and liked the way it felt in his head) hovered and hung in his mind, like the beginning of a song.
"I'd rather write a something song than rule the world," he said aloud, tasting the words in his mouth. He rested his guitar case against a wall, put his hand in the pocket of his duffel coat, found a pencil-stub and a shilling notebook, and wrote them down. He'd find a good two-syllable word for the something soon enough, he hoped.
Then he pushed his way into the pub. The warm, beery atmosphere embraced him as he walked inside. The low fuss and grumble of pub conversation. Somebody called his name, and he waved a pale hand at them, pointed to his wristwatch and then to the stairs. Cigarette smoke gave the air a faint blue sheen. He coughed, once, deep in his chest, and craved a cigarette of his own.
Up the stairs with the threadbare red carpeting, holding his guitar case like a weapon, whatever had been in his mind before he turned the corner into the High Street evaporating with each step. He paused in the dark corridor before opening the door to the pub's upstairs room. From the buzz of small talk and the clink of glasses, he knew there were already a handful of people waiting and working. Someone was tuning a guitar.
Monster? Thought the young man. That's got two syllables.
He turned the word around in his mind several times before he decided that he could find something better, something bigger, something more fitting for the world he intended to conquer, and, with only a momentary regret, he let it go forever, and walked inside.
It's unabashedly fan fiction. You can find the story of its origin in Trigger Warning.
He was the monarch of all he surveyed, even when he stood out on the palace balcony at night listening to reports and he glanced up into the sky at the bitter twinkling clusters and whorls of stars. He ruled the worlds. He had tried for so long to rule wisely, and well, and to be a good monarch, but it is hard to rule, and wisdom can be painful. And it is impossible, he had found, if you rule, to do only good, for you cannot build anything without tearing something down, and even he could not care about every life, every dream, every population of every world.
Bit by bit, moment by moment, death by little death, he ceased to care.He would not die, for only inferior people died, and he was the inferior of no one.
Time passed. One day, in the deep dungeons, a man with blood on his face looked at the Duke and told him he had become a monster. The next moment, the man was no more; a footnote in a history book.
The Duke gave this conversation much thought over the next several days, and eventually he nodded his head. "The traitor was right," he said. "I have become a monster. Ah well. I wonder if any of us set out to be monsters?"
Once, long ago, there had been lovers, but that had been in the dawn days of the Dukedom. Now, in the dusk of the world, with all pleasures available freely (but what we attain with no effort we cannot value), and with no need to deal with any issues of succession (for even the notion that another would one day succeed the Duke bordered upon blasphemy) there were no more lovers, just as there were no challenges. He felt as if he were asleep while his eyes were open and his lips spoke, but there was nothing to wake him.
The day after it had occurred to the Duke that he was now a monster was the Day of Strange Blossoms, celebrated by the wearing of flowers brought to the Ducal Palace from every world and every plane. It was a day that all in the Ducal Palace, which covered a continent, were traditionally merry, and in which they cast off their cares and darknesses, but the Duke was not happy.
"How can you be made happy?" asked the information beetle on his shoulder, there to relay his master's whims and desires to a hundred hundred worlds. "Give the word, your Grace, and empires will rise and fall to make you smile. Stars will flame nova for your entertainment."
"Perhaps I need a heart," said the Duke.
"I shall have a hundred hundred hearts immediately plucked, ripped, torn, incised, sliced and otherwise removed from the chests of ten thousand perfect specimens of humanity," said the information beetle. "How do you wish them prepared? Shall I alert the chefs or the taxidermists, the surgeons or the sculptors?"
"I need to care about something," said the Duke. "I need to value life. I need to wake."
The beetle chittered and chirrupped on his shoulder; it could access the wisdom of ten thousand worlds, but it could not advise its master when he was in this mood, so it said nothing. It relayed its concern to its predecessors, the older information beetles and scarabs, now sleeping in ornate boxes on a hundred hundred worlds, and the scarabs consulted among themselves with regret, because, in the vastness of time, even this had happened before, and they prepared to deal with it.
A long forgotten subroutine from the morning of the worlds was set into motion. The Duke was performing the final ritual of the Day of Strange Blossoms with no expression on his thin face, a man seeing his world as it was and valuing it not at all, when a small winged creature fluttered out from the blossom in which she had been hiding.
"Your grace," she whispered. "My mistress needs you. Please. You are her only hope."
"Your mistress?" asked the Duke.
"The creature comes from Beyond," clicked the beetle on his shoulder. "From one of the places that does not acknowledge the Ducal Overlordship, from the lands beyond life and death, between being and unbeing. It must have hidden itself inside an imported offworld orchid blossom. Its words are a trap, or a snare. I shall have it destroyed."
"No," said the Duke. "Let it be." He did something he had not done for many years, and stroked the beetle with a thin white finger. Its green eyes turned black and it chittered into perfect silence.
He cupped the tiny thing in his hands, and walked back to his quarters, while she told him of her wise and noble Queen, and of the giants, each more beautiful than the last, and each more huge and dangerous and more monstrous, who kept her Queen a captive.
And as she spoke, the Duke remembered the days when a lad from the stars had come to World to seek his fortune (for in those days there were fortunes everywhere, just waiting to be found); and in remembering he discovered that his youth was less distant than he had thought. His information beetle lay quiescent upon his shoulder.
"Why did she send you to me?" he asked the little creature. But, her task accomplished, she would speak no more, and in moments she vanished, as instantly and as permanently as a star that had been extinguished upon Ducal order.
He entered his private quarters, and placed the deactivated information beetle in its case beside his bed. In his study, he had his servants bring him a long black case. He opened it himself, and, with a touch, he activated his master advisor. It shook itself, then wriggled up and about his shoulders in viper form, its serpent tail forking into the neural plug at the base of his neck.
The Duke told the serpent what he intended to do.
"This is not wise," said the master advisor, the intelligence and advice of every ducal advisor in memory available to it, after a moment's examination of precedent.
"I seek adventure, not wisdom," said the Duke. A ghost of a smile began to play at the edges of his lips; the first smile that his servants had seen in longer than they could remember.
"Then, if you will not be dissuaded, take a battle-steed," said the adviser. It was good advice. The Duke deactivated his master advisor and he sent for the key to the battle-steeds' stable. The key had not been played in a thousand years: its strings were dusty.
There had once been six battle-steeds, one for each of the Lords and Ladies of the Evening. They were brilliant, beautiful, unstoppable, and when the Duke had been forced, with regret, to terminate the career of each of the Rulers of the Evening, he had declined to destroy their battle-steeds, instead placing them where they could be of no danger to the worlds.
The Duke took the key and played an opening arpeggio. The gate opened, and an ink-black, jet-black, coal-black battle steed strutted out with feline grace. It raised its head and stared at the world with proud eyes."Where do we go?" asked the battle-steed. "What do we fight?"
"We go Beyond," said the Duke. " And as to whom we shall fight... well, that remains to be seen."
"I can take you anywhere," said the battle-steed. "And I will kill those who try to hurt you."
The Duke clambered onto the battle-steed's back, the cold metal yielding as live flesh between his thighs, and he urged it forward.
A leap and it was racing through the froth and flux of Underspace: together they were tumbling through the madness between the worlds. The Duke laughed, then, where no man could hear him, as they travelled together through Underspace, travelling forever in the Undertime (that is not reckoned against the seconds of a person's life).
"This feels like a trap, of some kind," said the battle-steed, as the space beneath galaxies evaporated about them.
"Yes," said the Duke. "I am sure that it is."
"I have heard of this Queen," said the battle-steed, "Or of something like her. She lives between life and death, and calls warriors and heroes and poets and dreamers to their doom."
"That sounds right," said the Duke.
"And when we return to real-space, I would expect an ambush," said the battle-steed.
"That sounds more than probable," said the Duke, as they reached their destination, and erupted out of underspace back into existence.
The guardians of the palace were as beautiful as the messenger had warned him, and as ferocious, and they were waiting.
"What are you doing?" they called, as they came in for the assault. "Do you know that strangers are forbidden here? Stay with us. Let us love you. We will devour you with our love."
"I have come to rescue your Queen," he told them.
"Rescue the Queen?" they laughed. "She will have your head on a plate before she looks at you. Many people have come to save her, over the years. Their heads sit on golden plates in her palace. Yours will simply be the freshest."
There were men who looked like fallen angels and women who looked like demons risen. There were people so beautiful that they would have been all that the Duke had ever desired, had they been human, and they pressed close to him, skin to carapace and flesh against armour, so they could feel the coldness of him, and he could feel the warmth of them.
"Stay with us. Let us love you," they whispered, and they reached out with sharp talons and teeth."I do not believe your love will prove to be good for me," said the Duke. One of the women, fair of hair, with eyes of a peculiar translucent blue, reminded him of someone long-forgotten, of a lover who had passed out of his life a long time before. He found her name in his mind, and would have called it aloud, to see if she turned, to see if she knew him, but the battle-steed lashed out with sharp claws, and the pale blue eyes were closed forever.
The battle-steed moved fast, like a panther, and each of the guardians fell to the ground, and writhed and was still.
The Duke stood before the Queen's palace. He slipped from his battle-steed to the fresh earth.
"Here, I go on alone," he said. "Wait, and one day I shall return."
"I do not believe you will ever return," said the battle-steed. "I shall wait until time itself is done, if need be. But still, I fear for you."
The Duke touched his lips to the black steel of the steed's head, and bade it farewell. He walked on to rescue the Queen. He remembered a monster who had ruled worlds and who would never die, and he smiled, because he was no longer that man. For the first time since his first youth he had something to lose, and the discovery of that made him young again. His heart began to pound in his chest as he walked through the empty palace, and he laughed out loud.
She was waiting for him, in the place where flowers die. She was everything he had imagined that she would be. Her skirt was simple and white, her cheekbones were high and very dark, her hair was long and the infinitely dark colour of a crow's wing.
"I am here to rescue you," he told her.
"You are here to rescue yourself," she corrected him. Her voice was almost a whisper, like the breeze that shook the dead blossoms.
He bowed his head, although she was as tall as he was.
"Three questions," she whispered. "Answer them correctly, and all you desire shall be yours. Fail, and your head will rest forever on a golden dish." Her skin was the brown of the dead rose-petals. Her eyes were the the dark gold of amber.
"Ask your three questions," he said, with a confidence he did not feel.
The Queen reached out a finger and she ran the tip of it gently along his cheek. The Duke could not remember the last time that anybody had touched him without his permission.
"What is bigger than the universe?" she asked.
"Underspace and Undertime," said the Duke. "For they both include the universe, and also all that is not the universe. But I suspect you seek a more poetic, less accurate answer. The mind, then, for it can hold a universe, but also imagine things that have never been, and are not."
The Queen said nothing.
"Is that right? Is that wrong?" asked the Duke. He wished, momentarily, for the snakelike whisper of his master advisor, unloading, through its neural plug, the accumulated wisdom of his advisors over the years, or even the chitter of his information beetle.
"The second question," said the Queen. "What is greater than a King?"
"Obviously, a Duke," said the Duke. "For all Kings, Popes, Chancellors, Empresses and such serve at and only at my will. But again, I suspect that you are looking for an answer that is less accurate and more imaginative. The mind, again, is greater than a King. Or a Duke. Because, although I am the inferior of nobody, there are those who could imagine a world in which there is something superior to me, and something else again superior to that, and so on. No! Wait! I have it the answer. It is from the Great Tree: Kether, the Crown, the concept of monarchy, is greater than any King."
The Queen looked at the Duke with amber eyes, and she said, "The final question for you. What can you never take back?"
"My word," said the Duke. "Although, now I come to think of it, once I give my word, sometimes circumstances change and sometimes the worlds themselves change in unfortunate or unexpected ways. From time to time, if it comes to that, my word needs to be modified in accordance with realities. I would say Death, but, truly, if I find myself in need of someone I have previously disposed of, I simply have them reincorporated..."
The Queen looked impatient.
"A kiss," said the Duke.
She nodded.
"There is hope for you," said the Queen. "You believe you are my only hope, but, truthfully, I am yours. Your answers were all quite wrong. But the last was not as wrong as the rest of them."
The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.
A wind blew through the garden of dead flowers, and the Duke was put in mind of perfumed ghosts.
"Would you like to know the answer?" she asked.
"Answers," he said. "Surely."
"Only one answer, and it is this: the heart," said the Queen. "The heart is greater than the universe, for it can find pity in it for everything in the universe, and the universe itself can feel no pity. The heart is greater than a King, because a heart can know a King for what he is, and still love him. And once you give your heart, you cannot take it back."
"I said a kiss," said the Duke.
"It was not as wrong as the other answers," she told him. The wind gusted higher and wilder and for a heartbeat the air was filled with dead petals. Then the wind was gone as sudenly as it appeared, and the broken petals fell to the floor.
"So. I have failed, in the first task you set me. Yet I do not believe my head would look good upon a golden dish," said the Duke. "Or upon any kind of a dish. Give me a task, then, a quest, something I can achieve to show that I am worthy. Let me rescue you from this place."
"I am never the one who needs rescuing," said the Queen. "Your advisors and scarabs and programs are done with you. They sent you here, as they sent those who came before you, long ago, because it is better for you to vanish of your own volition, than for them to kill you in your sleep. And less dangerous." She took his hand in hers. "Come," she said. They walked away from the garden of dead flowers, past the fountains of light, spraying their lights into the void, and into the citadel of song, where perfect voices waited at each turn, sighing and chanting and humming and echoing, although nobody was there to sing.
Beyond the citadel was only mist.
"There," she told him. "We are the end of everything, where nothing exists but what we create, by act of will or by desperation. Here in this place. I can speak freely. It is only us, now." She looked into his eyes. "You do not have to die. You can stay with me. You will be happy to have finally found happiness, a heart, and the value of existence. And I will love you."
The Duke looked at her with a flash of puzzled anger. "I asked to care. I asked for something to care about. I asked for a heart."
"And they have given you all you asked for. But you cannot be their monarch and have those things. So you cannot return."
"I... I asked them to make this happen," said the Duke. He no longer seemed angry. The mists at the edge of that place were pale, and they hurt the Duke's eyes when he stared at them too deeply or too long.
The ground began to shake, as if beneath the footsteps of a giant.
"Is anything true here?" asked the Duke. "Is anything permanent?"
"Everything is true," said the Queen. "The giant comes. And it will kill you, unless you defeat it."
"How many times have you been through this?" asked the Duke. "How many heads have wound up on golden dishes?"
"Nobody's head has ever wound up on a golden platter," she said. "I am not programmed to kill them. They battle for me and they win me and they stay with me until they close their eyes for the last time. They are content to stay, or I make them content. But you... you need your discontent, don't you?"
He hesitated. Then he nodded.
She put her arms around him and kissed him, slowly and gently. The kiss, once given, could not be taken back.
"So now, I will fight the giant and save you?"
"It is what happens."
He looked at her. He looked down at himself, at his engraved armour, at his weapons. "I am no coward. I have never walked away from a fight. I cannot return, but I will not be content to stay here with you. So I will wait here, and I will let the giant kill me."
She looked alarmed. "Stay with me. Stay."The Duke looked behind him, into the blank whiteness. "What lies out there?" he asked. "What is beyond the mist?"
"You would run?" she asked. "You would leave me?"
"I will walk," he said. "And I will not walk away. But I will walk towards. I wanted a heart. What is on the other side of that mist?"
She shook her head. "Beyond the mist is Malkuth: The Kingdom. But it does not exist unless you make it so. It becomes as you create it. If you dare to walk into the mist, then you will build a world or you will cease to exist entirely. And you can do this thing. I do not know what will happen, except for this: if you walk away from me you can never return."
He heard a pounding still, but was no longer certain that it was the feet of a giant. It felt more like the beat, beat, beat of his own heart.
He turned towards the mist, before he could change his mind, and he walked into the nothingness, cold and clammy against his skin. With each step he felt himself becoming less. His neural plugs died, and gave him no new information, until even his name and his status were lost to him.
He was not certain if he was seeking a place or making one. But he remembered dark skin and her amber eyes. He remembered the stars -- there would be stars where he was going, he decided. There must be stars.
He pressed on. He suspected he had once been wearing armour, but he felt the damp mist on his face, and on his neck, and he shivered in his thin coat against the cold night air.
He stumbled, his foot glancing against the kerb.
Then he pulled himself upright, and peered at the blurred streetlights through the fog. A car drove close -- too close -- and vanished past him, the red rear lights staining the mist crimson.
My old manor, he thought, fondly, and that was followed by a moment of pure puzzlement, at the idea of Beckenham as his old anything. He'd only just moved there. It was somewhere to use as a base. Somewhere to escape from. Surely, that was the point?
But the idea, of a man running away (a lord or a duke, perhaps, he thought, and liked the way it felt in his head) hovered and hung in his mind, like the beginning of a song.
"I'd rather write a something song than rule the world," he said aloud, tasting the words in his mouth. He rested his guitar case against a wall, put his hand in the pocket of his duffel coat, found a pencil-stub and a shilling notebook, and wrote them down. He'd find a good two-syllable word for the something soon enough, he hoped.
Then he pushed his way into the pub. The warm, beery atmosphere embraced him as he walked inside. The low fuss and grumble of pub conversation. Somebody called his name, and he waved a pale hand at them, pointed to his wristwatch and then to the stairs. Cigarette smoke gave the air a faint blue sheen. He coughed, once, deep in his chest, and craved a cigarette of his own.
Up the stairs with the threadbare red carpeting, holding his guitar case like a weapon, whatever had been in his mind before he turned the corner into the High Street evaporating with each step. He paused in the dark corridor before opening the door to the pub's upstairs room. From the buzz of small talk and the clink of glasses, he knew there were already a handful of people waiting and working. Someone was tuning a guitar.
Monster? Thought the young man. That's got two syllables.
He turned the word around in his mind several times before he decided that he could find something better, something bigger, something more fitting for the world he intended to conquer, and, with only a momentary regret, he let it go forever, and walked inside.
January 2, 2016
George R.R Martin just made me feel better :)
Last Year (Winds of Winter) Jan. 2nd, 2016 at 12:24 AM
The last post from the Lost Post, and the one you've all been waiting for.
Back when this was one long long long post, before Live Journal sent it to the cornfield, I mentioned opening with Dickens' line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." So it was for me in 2015. I've spent much of the day recreating (in Cliff's Note summaries) my own personal "best of times" from the previous year, all the wonderful things that went down for me in 2015, the awards and the publications and the bestseller lists, the cons and the parties, the travel, all the exciting new projects underway at HBO and right here down the street in Santa Fe. But inevitably that brings me to my own personal "worst of times," and that is considerably less fun to blog about, so do forgive my reluctance to do so.
You wanted an update. Here's the update. You won't like it.
THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished.
Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You're disappointed, and you're not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, "I have completed and delivered THE WINDS OF WINTER" on or before the last day of 2015.
But the book's not done.
Nor is it likely to be finished tomorrow, or next week. Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. (Those 'no pages done' reports were insane, the usual garbage internet journalism that I have learned to despise). But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course... but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures.
I suppose I could just say, "Sorry, boys and girls, still writing," and leave it at that. "It will be done when it's done." Which is what I have been doing, more or less, since... well, forever. But with season 6 of GAME OF THRONES approaching, and so many requests for information boiling up, I am going to break my own rules and say a little more, since it would appear that hundreds of my readers, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, are very concerned about this question of 'spoilers" and the show catching up, revealing things not yet revealed in the books, etc.
My publishers and I have been cognizant of these concerns, of course. We discussed some of them last spring, as the fifth season of the HBO series was winding down, and came up with a plan. We all wanted book six of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE to come out before season six of the HBO show aired. Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant THE WINDS OF WINTER had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October. That seemed very do-able to me... in May. So there was the first deadline: Halloween.
Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s. And as spring turned to summer, I was having more bad days than good ones. Around about August, I had to face facts: I was not going to be done by Halloween. I cannot tell you how deeply that realization depressed me.
Early August saw me back east for my nephew's wedding and an appearance with the Staten Island Direwolves. I took advantage of the visit to have another sit down with my editors and publishers and told them that I didn't think I could deliver by Halloween. I thought they'd be sick about it... but I have to say, my editors and publishers are great, and they took it with surprising equanimity. (Maybe they knew it before I did). They already had contigencies in place. They had made plans to speed up production. If I could deliver WINDS OF WINTER by the end of the year, they told me, they could still get it our before the end of March.
I was immensely relieved. I had two whole extra months! I could make that, certainly. August was an insane month, too much travel, too many other obligations... but I'd have September, October, and now November and December as well. Once again I was confident I could do it.
Here it is, the first of January. The book is not done, not delivered. No words can change that. I tried, I promise you. I failed. I blew the Halloween deadline, and I've now blown the end of the year deadline. And that almost certainly means that no, THE WINDS OF WINTER will not be published before the sixth season of GAME OF THRONES premieres in April (mid April, we are now told, not early April, but those two weeks will not save me). Even as late as my birthday and our big Emmy win, I still thought I could do it... but the days and weeks flew by faster than the pile of pages grew, and (as I often do) I grew unhappy with some of the choices I'd made and began to revise... and suddenly it was October, and then November... and as the suspicion grew that I would not make it after all, a gloom set in, and I found myself struggling even more. The fewer the days, the greater the stress, and the slower the pace of my writing became.
Look, I have always had problems with deadlines. For whatever reason, I don't respond well to them. Back in November, when I returned to Northwestern to accept my Alumni Award, I told the Medill students that was why I started writing fiction instead of getting a job on a newspaper. I knew even then that daily deadlines would kill me. That was a joke, of course... but there was truth in it too. I wrote my first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT, without a contract and without a deadline. No one even knew I was writing a novel until I sent the completed book to Kirby to sell. I wrote FEVRE DREAM the same way. I wrote THE ARMAGEDDON RAG the same way. No contracts, no deadlines, no one waiting. Write at my own pace and deliver when I'm done. That's really how I am most comfortable, even now.
But I won't make excuses. There are no excuses. No one else is to blame. Not my editors and publishers, not HBO, not David & Dan. It's on me. I tried, and I am still trying. I worked on the book a couple of days ago, revising a Theon chapter and adding some new material, and I will writing on it again tomorrow. But no, I can't tell you when it will be done, or when it will be published. Best guess, based on our previous conversations, is that Bantam (and presumably my British publisher as well) can have the hardcover out within three months of delivery, if their schedules permit. But when delivery will be, I can't say. I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out.
I am going back to my stance from last March, before all this. It will be done when it's done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it.
Having said all that, I know what the next question will be, because hundreds of you have already asked it of me. Will the show 'spoil' the novels?
Maybe. Yes and no. Look, I never thought the series could possibly catch up with the books, but it has. The show moved faster than I anticipated and I moved more slowly. There were other factors too, but that was the main one. Given where we are, inevitably, there will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of GAME OF THRONES that have not yet happened in the books. For years my readers have been ahead of the viewers. This year, for some things, the reverse will be true. How you want to handle that... hey, that's up to you. Look, I read Andy Weir's novel THE MARTIAN before I saw the movie. But I saw the BBC production of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL before I finally got around to reading Susanna Clarke's novel. In both cases, I loved the book and I loved the adaptation. It does not need to be one or the other. You might prefer one over the other, but you can still enjoy the hell out of both.
Of course, there's an aspect to our situation that did not apply to either the Weir or Clarke cases. Those novels were finished before they were optioned, adapted, and filmed. The case of GAME OF THRONES and A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is perhaps unique. I can't think of any other instance where the movie or TV show came out as the source material was still being written. So when you ask me, "will the show spoil the books," all I can do is say, "yes and no," and mumble once again about the butterfly effect. Those pretty little butterflies have grown into mighty dragons. Some of the 'spoilers' you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all... because the show and the books have diverged, and will continue to do so.
IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL FIVE SEASONS AND READ ALL FIVE BOOKS, STOP HERE!
Just consider. Mago, Irri, Rakharo, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Pyat Pree, Pyp, Grenn, Ser Barristan Selmy, Queen Selyse, Princess Shireen, Princess Myrcella, Mance Rayder, and King Stannis are all dead in the show, alive in the books. Some of them will die in the books as well, yes... but not all of them, and some may die at different times in different ways. Balon Greyjoy, on the flip side, is dead in the books, alive on the show. His brothers Euron Crow's Eye and Victarion have not yet been introduced (will they appear? I ain't saying). Meanwhile Jhiqui, Aggo, Jhogo, Jeyne Poole, Dalla (and her child) and her sister Val, Princess Arianne Martell, Prince Quentyn Martell, Willas Tyrell, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Lord Wyman Manderly, the Shavepate, the Green Grace, Brown Ben Plumm, the Tattered Prince, Pretty Meris, Bloodbeard, Griff and Young Griff, and many more have never been part of the show, yet remain characters in the books. Several are viewpoint characters, and even those who are not may have significant roles in the story to come in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING.
GAME OF THRONES is the most popular television series in the world right now. The most pirated as well. It just won a record number of Emmy Awards, including the ultimate prize, for the best drama on television. It's an incredible production with an incredible cast and crew.
WINDS OF WINTER should be pretty good too, when it comes out. As good as I can make it, anyway.
Which is a long way of saying, "How may children did Scarlett O'Hara have?"
Enjoy the show. Enjoy the books.
Meanwhile, I'll keep writing. Chapter at a time. Page at a time. Word at a time. That's all I know how to do.
((And yes, this is my final Cliff's Note for the day. You can all go to bed now)). ************No, there's obviously no comparison, but as an author, it does help to know when others have similar struggles. Helps even more when the BIG GUYS have them. :)**********
The last post from the Lost Post, and the one you've all been waiting for.
Back when this was one long long long post, before Live Journal sent it to the cornfield, I mentioned opening with Dickens' line, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." So it was for me in 2015. I've spent much of the day recreating (in Cliff's Note summaries) my own personal "best of times" from the previous year, all the wonderful things that went down for me in 2015, the awards and the publications and the bestseller lists, the cons and the parties, the travel, all the exciting new projects underway at HBO and right here down the street in Santa Fe. But inevitably that brings me to my own personal "worst of times," and that is considerably less fun to blog about, so do forgive my reluctance to do so.
You wanted an update. Here's the update. You won't like it.
THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished.
Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You're disappointed, and you're not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, "I have completed and delivered THE WINDS OF WINTER" on or before the last day of 2015.
But the book's not done.
Nor is it likely to be finished tomorrow, or next week. Yes, there's a lot written. Hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters. (Those 'no pages done' reports were insane, the usual garbage internet journalism that I have learned to despise). But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course... but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures.
I suppose I could just say, "Sorry, boys and girls, still writing," and leave it at that. "It will be done when it's done." Which is what I have been doing, more or less, since... well, forever. But with season 6 of GAME OF THRONES approaching, and so many requests for information boiling up, I am going to break my own rules and say a little more, since it would appear that hundreds of my readers, maybe thousands or tens of thousands, are very concerned about this question of 'spoilers" and the show catching up, revealing things not yet revealed in the books, etc.
My publishers and I have been cognizant of these concerns, of course. We discussed some of them last spring, as the fifth season of the HBO series was winding down, and came up with a plan. We all wanted book six of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE to come out before season six of the HBO show aired. Assuming the show would return in early April, that meant THE WINDS OF WINTER had to be published before the end of March, at the latest. For that to happen, my publishers told me, they would need the completed manuscript before the end of October. That seemed very do-able to me... in May. So there was the first deadline: Halloween.
Unfortunately, the writing did not go as fast or as well as I would have liked. You can blame my travels or my blog posts or the distractions of other projects and the Cocteau and whatever, but maybe all that had an impact... you can blame my age, and maybe that had an impact too...but if truth be told, sometimes the writing goes well and sometimes it doesn't, and that was true for me even when I was in my 20s. And as spring turned to summer, I was having more bad days than good ones. Around about August, I had to face facts: I was not going to be done by Halloween. I cannot tell you how deeply that realization depressed me.
Early August saw me back east for my nephew's wedding and an appearance with the Staten Island Direwolves. I took advantage of the visit to have another sit down with my editors and publishers and told them that I didn't think I could deliver by Halloween. I thought they'd be sick about it... but I have to say, my editors and publishers are great, and they took it with surprising equanimity. (Maybe they knew it before I did). They already had contigencies in place. They had made plans to speed up production. If I could deliver WINDS OF WINTER by the end of the year, they told me, they could still get it our before the end of March.
I was immensely relieved. I had two whole extra months! I could make that, certainly. August was an insane month, too much travel, too many other obligations... but I'd have September, October, and now November and December as well. Once again I was confident I could do it.
Here it is, the first of January. The book is not done, not delivered. No words can change that. I tried, I promise you. I failed. I blew the Halloween deadline, and I've now blown the end of the year deadline. And that almost certainly means that no, THE WINDS OF WINTER will not be published before the sixth season of GAME OF THRONES premieres in April (mid April, we are now told, not early April, but those two weeks will not save me). Even as late as my birthday and our big Emmy win, I still thought I could do it... but the days and weeks flew by faster than the pile of pages grew, and (as I often do) I grew unhappy with some of the choices I'd made and began to revise... and suddenly it was October, and then November... and as the suspicion grew that I would not make it after all, a gloom set in, and I found myself struggling even more. The fewer the days, the greater the stress, and the slower the pace of my writing became.
Look, I have always had problems with deadlines. For whatever reason, I don't respond well to them. Back in November, when I returned to Northwestern to accept my Alumni Award, I told the Medill students that was why I started writing fiction instead of getting a job on a newspaper. I knew even then that daily deadlines would kill me. That was a joke, of course... but there was truth in it too. I wrote my first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT, without a contract and without a deadline. No one even knew I was writing a novel until I sent the completed book to Kirby to sell. I wrote FEVRE DREAM the same way. I wrote THE ARMAGEDDON RAG the same way. No contracts, no deadlines, no one waiting. Write at my own pace and deliver when I'm done. That's really how I am most comfortable, even now.
But I won't make excuses. There are no excuses. No one else is to blame. Not my editors and publishers, not HBO, not David & Dan. It's on me. I tried, and I am still trying. I worked on the book a couple of days ago, revising a Theon chapter and adding some new material, and I will writing on it again tomorrow. But no, I can't tell you when it will be done, or when it will be published. Best guess, based on our previous conversations, is that Bantam (and presumably my British publisher as well) can have the hardcover out within three months of delivery, if their schedules permit. But when delivery will be, I can't say. I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out.
I am going back to my stance from last March, before all this. It will be done when it's done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it.
Having said all that, I know what the next question will be, because hundreds of you have already asked it of me. Will the show 'spoil' the novels?
Maybe. Yes and no. Look, I never thought the series could possibly catch up with the books, but it has. The show moved faster than I anticipated and I moved more slowly. There were other factors too, but that was the main one. Given where we are, inevitably, there will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of GAME OF THRONES that have not yet happened in the books. For years my readers have been ahead of the viewers. This year, for some things, the reverse will be true. How you want to handle that... hey, that's up to you. Look, I read Andy Weir's novel THE MARTIAN before I saw the movie. But I saw the BBC production of JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL before I finally got around to reading Susanna Clarke's novel. In both cases, I loved the book and I loved the adaptation. It does not need to be one or the other. You might prefer one over the other, but you can still enjoy the hell out of both.
Of course, there's an aspect to our situation that did not apply to either the Weir or Clarke cases. Those novels were finished before they were optioned, adapted, and filmed. The case of GAME OF THRONES and A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is perhaps unique. I can't think of any other instance where the movie or TV show came out as the source material was still being written. So when you ask me, "will the show spoil the books," all I can do is say, "yes and no," and mumble once again about the butterfly effect. Those pretty little butterflies have grown into mighty dragons. Some of the 'spoilers' you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all... because the show and the books have diverged, and will continue to do so.
IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL FIVE SEASONS AND READ ALL FIVE BOOKS, STOP HERE!
Just consider. Mago, Irri, Rakharo, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Pyat Pree, Pyp, Grenn, Ser Barristan Selmy, Queen Selyse, Princess Shireen, Princess Myrcella, Mance Rayder, and King Stannis are all dead in the show, alive in the books. Some of them will die in the books as well, yes... but not all of them, and some may die at different times in different ways. Balon Greyjoy, on the flip side, is dead in the books, alive on the show. His brothers Euron Crow's Eye and Victarion have not yet been introduced (will they appear? I ain't saying). Meanwhile Jhiqui, Aggo, Jhogo, Jeyne Poole, Dalla (and her child) and her sister Val, Princess Arianne Martell, Prince Quentyn Martell, Willas Tyrell, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Lord Wyman Manderly, the Shavepate, the Green Grace, Brown Ben Plumm, the Tattered Prince, Pretty Meris, Bloodbeard, Griff and Young Griff, and many more have never been part of the show, yet remain characters in the books. Several are viewpoint characters, and even those who are not may have significant roles in the story to come in THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING.
GAME OF THRONES is the most popular television series in the world right now. The most pirated as well. It just won a record number of Emmy Awards, including the ultimate prize, for the best drama on television. It's an incredible production with an incredible cast and crew.
WINDS OF WINTER should be pretty good too, when it comes out. As good as I can make it, anyway.
Which is a long way of saying, "How may children did Scarlett O'Hara have?"
Enjoy the show. Enjoy the books.
Meanwhile, I'll keep writing. Chapter at a time. Page at a time. Word at a time. That's all I know how to do.
((And yes, this is my final Cliff's Note for the day. You can all go to bed now)). ************No, there's obviously no comparison, but as an author, it does help to know when others have similar struggles. Helps even more when the BIG GUYS have them. :)**********
December 29, 2015
Finally, my review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens
This is going to be a stream of thought, rather than a planned out, book-report style review. I hope to cover several points, but, if I miss or neglect some, I'm sure you won't care—you've already read far too many reviews of this movie anyway. So, does it really matter that yet another unknown is throwing his Two Cents into the wind for whoever to read? I didn't think so. And, to further the point, the next time something like Star Wars gets placed in my lap, maybe then I'll have real room to critique. This is just for fun and because I'm a geek. For me, blogging about this stuff is the next best thing to sitting around with friends and going over and over all the little details for hours on end. I mean, I'd like to stay married. :)
Ok, first things first: I enjoyed this movie. To me, it was a solid B (reasons to follow)
I enjoyed the return to Old Movie Magic. I enjoyed the equal mix of CGI and FX and Costumes and Settings and all that jazz. It was good. Now, I'll try not to compare this movie to the prequels as best I can—sorry, I know that word alone makes people mad—And not because I hated them, which I didn't—yep, Fan Boy's ears are burning so bad right now—but because the actual style of this movie felt once again so in-line with Four, Five and Six, that One, Two and Three feel even more like totally different films.
THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
Ok, so here we go.In no particular order and without talking much about Plot, because, well, GO SEE THE MOVIE!
JAKKUHome of Rey, the female lead and pretty bad ass character. Now, I won't Monday Morning this...but, I hope someone asks J.J "Why another desert planet?"Of course, the scenes are pretty, great textures and depth; the creatures are cool, the marketplace is detailed, and if you know me, you know I love a good desert planet, but comeeeeeee ooooooooon.I have to know the reason for this. Was it nostalgia? Was it getting back to the comfort zone? Was it not wanting to rock the boat too much with this first movie? Was it because all Skywalkers have an affinity for deserts? If you're going to hide one, given the trend, feels like maybe a water or ice world might've been better? Also, given the list of other story ideas, I think they kicked the can around about an Ice World or Swamp Planet, I just want to know WHYYY? :)
REY SKYWALKER *Remember, I warned you, so stop crying.
Ok, she made the movie for me. She was fantastic. I loved that she was a Junker, making her livelihood off scrapping the leftovers of the Empire. I loved that she lived in a fallen Walker. I loved when she put on the old Ty-Fighter pilot's helmet, looking innocently towards the stars, wondering about WHEN whoever left her behind would return......
And yet, while I feel, contextually, the answers to all the Haters questions are THERE within the context of her character, maybe too much is on the part of the viewer to make those assumptions—to be so keenly aware of the subtext to make the connections. Which, for me, not a big deal, but does play into the overwhelming Pass Given to ALL STAR WARS MOVIES when people, usually angrily, overlook what's infront of them: They'll say "It's just Star Wars, it's a Pop Corn Light Show with Lazar Swords and Space Magic" *These kinda things drive me nuts.
So, let me give you some examples which've bothered some viewers and maybe I can open minds:
Q) Rey knew how to fly the Millennium Falcon, fix it, as well as other machines?
A) Not a big deal, if you assume most people know how to fly one thing or another, so, not a stretch. Also, she's a Junker, so she likely knows what she's working with, what it's for, how to take it apart...and thus...put it back together. She's likely, like alot of characters in the Star Wars universe, a roving encyclopedia of parts and space gadgets. Feels like Haters Hating. It's not like Han had some secret trick to start the engine or anything. He's not The Fonz of Space.
Q) Her quick ability to Use The Force: Mind Trick, Summoning the Light Saber, her fight with Kylo
A) Ok, so she's a Prodigy. Or, she's had training, but forgotten it.
Both of these could be true, but we didn't get much to settle the issue. So, kinda maybe a real flaw.
I'll admit, I think her using the Jedi Mind Trick was completely for the fans/viewers. Which made it kinda gimmicky, but that's also ok. I bet you it made you smile too. However, the same result could've been achieved if they'd set up her Abilities: they come out under times of stress. So, she could've been just repeating that she wanted to be released and after enough times the Trooper finally either succumbed or her Force Powers finally "Awakened" :)
Similarly, her summoning the Light Saber, was, to me, also a gimmick for the fans, but, it was cool, so it doesn't bother me. Again, I bet it got a HUGE return in the theaters. No real way to set this up....unless...when she first found it, it could've stirred when her hand was near it or when she touched it, or something, because, as Obi Wan said, it was calling to her. :)
Finally, her fight with Kylo, which we will also cover when speaking about him. But I feel she showed competence when fighting off the two guys on Jakku and she'd likely had kinda a rough life growing up there, so she's obviously a Scrapper and a Junker :) See what I did there?
But people didn't like that Finn, a Storm Trooper, couldn't stand against Kylo, so how could Rey? Well, she has the FORCE!!! But, her ability to use it under pressure could've been better expressed to fans prior to this scene where she quiets/calms herself. For instance, when earlier looking for scraps in the downed Star Ship, there could've been a quick scene where she almost fell to her death...but....she focused, steadied her mind and emotions and did some bad-ass free-climbing to get out or w/e.
Now, fans upset that Kylo was pushing his Light Saber against Ray and failed to do something else while she was doing her Capcom move button sequence, well, that's an issue to take to J.J. Also, if you've ever seen a sword fight, in any movie, there's tons of times where in mid duel, the combatants are basically trying to push the other one away/down, their blades locked. CAUSE IT LOOKS COOL. Also, in fencing, there's lots of counter techniques that come into play once you've gotten into that position, kinda like in Judo or in Wrestling, where from a DRAW stance, someone has to turn it around and regain the upper hand. So, that's what this scene was about. :)
In the end, Deal With It. She's a Jedi. :)
FINNWow. Just a fun character. I really enjoyed him. To me, he was the FAN in the Star Wars universe. I loved his energy. I loved his humor, though some of his lines were kinda goofy :) Also, I feel he did a good job with his actions scenes. And, lets be honest, the youtube video of him seeing himself in the first big Trailer.....AMAZING. That's how any actor should be if/when you ever get to be in such a movie. I loved it. So happy for him. Think he's going to continue to do a great job.
Q) What kind Storm Trooper....?
A) He's the Worst Storm Trooper.
Now, I know there was a line somewhere in the movie about these Troopers not being nearly as good as the Clones. However, I feel, anyone who was raised from birth, with such indoctrination, with all the training that would go into making you a Trooper, wouldn't just tuck-tail-and-run on his first day on the job. That's just me. So, I feel that was kinda the writer's fault for making him a Trooper. Really, he should've been a Smuggler or Spy, who somehow had to pass himself off as a Trooper in order to get away from the First Order. He's also just TOO NICE, the scenes where he's holding Rey's hands are too cute for someone who is supposed to have been a Trooper. And yes, I get it, he's turned on the First Order.....but I kinda feel the First Order, ya know, just blew-up Three Planets of innocent people, they murder everyone they come across—kinda the worst that remains of the Empire—would never have allowed such a kind, good person ever become a Trooper. That's just me. So, I want some details on his backstory. I want explanations. The Trooper who died, blood-stained his helmet afterwards....was that person important? If that's what sent him over, I need some reason to go there, otherwise, ya, I just can't.
Q) Was Phasam even important?
A) No. Though she could've been if SHE'D BEEN THE ONE WHO SQUARED OFF VS FINN and then somehow got away, forced to feel by Resistance....
POEWhile he was fun and cool, he wasn't a big deal for me. Honestly, I hope it comes out that his story is more than Just Being the Best Pilot in the Resistance: ex Bounty Hunter? That idea was kicked around the in the office, so I hope it stuck to some wall and will make it's way back. Otherwise, ummm he's just another cool guy in a world where we really mostly care about Jedi and Dark Side people. :)
How did THIS :)
Become THIS :(
HAN and LEIA
It's been 30yrs. Their Son is a Monster. He's killing people by the Star Ship load. The First Order is destroying planets at a time. Any hope of the Return of the Jedi Order is GONE. And yet, there's no passion left enough to even briefly gloss over the likely horrors and pains inflicted upon them, their relationship(s), the Rebellion/Resistance and the Galaxy as a whole.
If you've guessed, for me, this was the biggest and worst issue with the whole movie. I felt Leia was almost a completely wasted character and their reunion was totally empty. So, what happened? Why did we go from the old couple, who bickered and argued and fought all the time, over silly things, yet very much loved each other....to this?
Do you think the assumption that it's been 30yrs is good enough for the viewer to just assume they're tired of the old arguments, so why have yet another one? I don't. It should've been great to see them and I was originally excited for it. I wanted the love to come back. The playful, affection and romance to come back. The little digs to come back. And then, yes, I wanted a hard, emotional argument over their Son Ben Solo (Kylo Ren)
I wanted the old arguments to come out....
I wanted Leia to defend him, making more contrasts to Vader, how he could be saved, how it wasn't his fault. How maybe it was their fault. I wanted Han to be the realist: How their Son was a monster, how he ruined everything, how he wasn't his Son anymore....which would've later made the scene where Leia finally got Han to see that Ben was HIS SON, how Luke couldn't reach him and that he had to. He was HIS FATHER, as Luke saved Anakin, so Han could save Ben. And then later, Han's best scene in the whole movie, on the bridge, would've been carried equally by the actors, instead of Ben having to do most of the heavy lifting.
Because here's the thing. How many people KNEW Vader was Luke and Leia's Father? Is that the kinda secret that would be allowed to get out? Is that why the Rebellion became the Resistance? Or, did that happen when yet another Skywalker fell to the Darkside? I mean, how would you feel if the Son of your two most favorite leaders, who's UNCLE WAS LUKE SKYWALKER, turned out to be yet another killer? Does the Resistance think Kylo killed Ben, the way Anakin was killed by Vader? Or, did word get out and so people lost faith, ya know, cause Luke just gave up and left....
All of this could've carried great emotional weight given how their was no BIG reveal moment.
And now, well, I doubt the next two movies will address these issues as well as could've been through the eyes of the two who spawned it.
What a shame.
BEN SOLO *AKA KYLO RENGiven that I feel he's two characters in one, I'll refer to each as individuals going forward.
It's been so long since we've had a cool looking enemy and Kylo is cool looking. His helmet is awesome. His Light Saber, which lots of people mocked, is pretty bad ass. His whole garb is pretty cool. I dig him. For me, there's nothing really wrong with this character, I'd just like to make a few notes.1) When people complain about how Rey/Finn were able to fight toe-to-toe with Kylo, I'll simply say, Why does everyone think Kylo should be some great master of the Light Saber? This isn't the crazy Old Empire. These aren't the Star Wars Video game characters, who mix force and weapons into crazy, damn near DBZ moves. Really, with the exception of the three-way showdown at the end of The Phantom Menace, the duels in the series have never been amazing. Plenty of Kung-Fu movies have greater melee scenes. A) Finn is a Storm Trooper, so, likely plenty of melee training. B) Rey obviously has skills herself....and....well...SHE'S A JEDI
Ok, Luke trained Ben, sure, but how much training did Luke have with the Light Saber? Honestly, not much; least very little ON SCREEN and that's what I'm mostly speaking to. The great Jedi/Sith Light Saber skills of the past, from the prequels and the books before then, should be, for the most part, GONE. DEAD. Vader was too much of a machine to really use all the intricate fencing maneuvers he might've known prior to Obin Wan....ya know....Plus, he doesn't need them anymore. He hasn't needed them since the Jedi were destroyed. His mechanical body has made him so strong. His fear is basically a weapon. Who would dare fight with him? When he and Luke faced off, watch it again, not much there...remember him Throwing His Light Saber? Sure, later in video games we saw it used, coupled with the force, to make it a deadly boomerang, but that didn't happen on screen. He basically just threw it and then picked it up. Luke, also, didn't show any awesome fencing skills, he basically just beat on Vader till he got the opportunity to cut off his hand. Think about it.
Also, one of the most impressive things anyone Now A Days can do with a Light Saber is deflect, repel, ricochet, an energy bolt back at whoever is doing the shooting...because how many people have Light Sabers or similar weapons and who would risk trying to fight hand to hand against the likes of Kylo or Vader back in the day? Which is why it's a much more useful and intimidating skill for Kylo to know how to PAUSE A BOLT IN MID AIR!!!!
2) I thought it was great how he beat on the wound(s) he got from Finn during their fight, or maybe it was when he was fighting Rey, either way, very cool character detail.
3) Everyone is totally fine with Kylo's Light Saber temper-tantrum the two times he got disappointing news, yet everyone mocked and hated when Anakin did basically the same thing in Clone Wars. And I'm pretty confident it's because Kylo is cool looking. I read everything online where people want to insert all this nuance for why its ok, but looking back at all the Hate Hayden got, kinda silly. I will also add, just as with Anakin, this scene with Kylo didn't make me fear him, it made me pity him. And while I understand the reason why JJ went with this, I tend to agree with lots of viewers that perhaps this isn't what some were expecting in a villain.
4) Oh, and this bugs me JJ- "Long before we had this title, the idea of The Force Awakens was that this would become the evolution of not just a hero, but a villain - and not a villain who was the finished, ready-made villain, but someone who was in process." Ummm J.J, did you see the prequels? Again, the only reason it's now cool, is because Kylo looks cool and people like the actor more than Hayden, but there's no other difference.
Also, after a 30yr jump, this isn't so much an evolutionary chain of Ben's turn to the darkside that we all can follow and understand, as it is, given the speed with which we must except it, a critical survival adaptation.
5) So glad Ben killed Han. Loved that his struggle wasn't to stop himself, but to push himself because he knew it had to be done. :) He did a great job in this scene.
6) I think he'll look different in the next movie. I think he'll become more and more like Vader.
7) I hope Ben can't and won't be Redeemed. I think that would be terrible for the series. Also, I hope Ben kills Leia. :) I think their family should be a tragic lesson.
SUPREME LEADER SNOKEYes. I hope he's Darth Plageuis. :)
How did we go from THIS
To This
LUKE SKYWALKER Sorry, I hate this. I hate the way he looks. Why did he become Obi Wan? What happened to the Black? It was so awesome in Return of the Jedi when he was in all black. Or why not Gray? Again, love to know the reason for this and will all Jedi hence forth become copied versions of Obi Wan? God, I hope not.
Anyway, I was excited that the story would focus on The Search for Luke. Great. An Adventure. And it didn't bother me, as I imagine it didn't bother many, that we called the plot shortly after realizing the story would take place 30yrs after Return of the Jedi. It only made sense that Luke would Fail and in-turn leave. So, yes, all excited to track Luke down.....wait?
What do you mean we get the rest of the map by the end of the movie?
No! Why?
Because of Light Speed we can get across the galaxy in...shit
On the plus side, instead of dodging the issue like, "Why didn't the Eagles just fly the Ring into Mordor," we at least went at it head first and got there as fast as we could using the available means to do so, so, there's that. Really, by the very end of the movie, I wish he'd simply not been in it. Could've found him at the very opening of Ep8, or maybe a cool flash scene at the end or maybe just an awesome voice over, oh well.
Finally, I'll say, I hope there are no more Skywalker or Solo kids. I hope they either no longer exist because the canon's been changed or, I hope Kylo killed them all when he rose up against Luke.
But, to form your own opinion, go see it yourself.
December 28, 2015
New Amazon Review
This was a great read from cover to cover,
December 15, 2015 By ImA Contradiction (Kindle Edition) This was a great read from cover to cover. The depth of the world created by the Author left me feeling spellbound after the final chapter. In reading the story I found that I became caught up in the lives of the characters as well as in the imagery used to pull me into the world itself. I quite literally felt like I was inside their world, seeing everything as they saw it. I enjoyed the multiple characters POVs because it allowed me to see even deeper into the world created by Garrett. I will be looking forward to more installments in the series.
December 15, 2015 By ImA Contradiction (Kindle Edition) This was a great read from cover to cover. The depth of the world created by the Author left me feeling spellbound after the final chapter. In reading the story I found that I became caught up in the lives of the characters as well as in the imagery used to pull me into the world itself. I quite literally felt like I was inside their world, seeing everything as they saw it. I enjoyed the multiple characters POVs because it allowed me to see even deeper into the world created by Garrett. I will be looking forward to more installments in the series.
December 3, 2015
New Amazon Review.
4 Stars: Slow-Burning, Subtle and Unique!
by Author Dave de Burgh
Wade has written a considered and carefully crafted tale here, one that merges different genres not only well but in interesting and exciting ways.
He allows his characters to grow in the reader's mind, giving them to space and time to continuously define themselves, while also expanding and exploring the world they live in without dumping info on the reader or bogging down the narrative.
His tale also creates new cultures and magic while subtly twisting our own history, so don't be surprised if you read about something that sounds familiar.
My only issue is that the book is a slow read, but that may be because I'm used to reading fast paced tales - one thing is for sure: this is a novel that builds subtly and consistently, showing Wade to be a writer and storyteller who has great control and a vast imagination.
by Author Dave de Burgh
Wade has written a considered and carefully crafted tale here, one that merges different genres not only well but in interesting and exciting ways.
He allows his characters to grow in the reader's mind, giving them to space and time to continuously define themselves, while also expanding and exploring the world they live in without dumping info on the reader or bogging down the narrative.
His tale also creates new cultures and magic while subtly twisting our own history, so don't be surprised if you read about something that sounds familiar.
My only issue is that the book is a slow read, but that may be because I'm used to reading fast paced tales - one thing is for sure: this is a novel that builds subtly and consistently, showing Wade to be a writer and storyteller who has great control and a vast imagination.
November 4, 2015
The NaNoWriMo Diet—Guest Post: Michael R. Fletcher Author of Beyond Redemption
The NaNoWriMo Diet
It's tempting to let this devolve into a humor piece and talk about my love affair with whiskey and how sometimes, when my brain won't shut-up and let me sleep, I bludgeon it into submission with liberal doses of Jameson. But no. I'm gonna keep this serious. Well, mostly serious.
My suspicion is that successful writers all have at least a little OCD. Who else would sit for hours on end mashing away at the keyboard with their face? What, you don't type like that? Weird.
Smarter writers (or at least those capable of obsessing over more than one thing at a time) will pay attention to their physical and health-related needs as well as their daily word count. Unfortunately I'm not one of those. I can either obsess about my health or work on a book. In the past I would write a book and then, in the time between writing and editing, exercise like mad in an attempt to shed some of the gained pudge. I used to joke that I gained ten pounds with every novel written Except it wasn't really a joke. The thing is, if you want to do this writing thing for realsies, there isn't much down time. When I finish writing a book I jump straight into either editing or planning another. The rest of the time my two functioning brain cells are focused on trying to figure out how to promote myself and my writing.
And then one day I truly began obsessing about diet. I spent months at it, trying different diets and generally experimenting willy nilly with my own health. At one point I even went strictly carnivorous for an entire month. That was my favorite experiment, though you have to eat lots of offal to stay healthy.
I'm going to share my findings here. Not because they're remarkable, but because so few people seem to be aware how ridiculously easy it is to lose weight. Don't get me wrong, this isn't going to give you washboard abs. It will however help you maintain a healthy weight through prolonged periods of minimal exercise. That said, you will be happier and healthier if you combine a good diet with some exercise. Even walking will do wonders for brain and body.
Here it is, the secret NaNoWriMo Diet! Take the money you save from not having to buy diet books or special pre-packaged Weight-Watchers meals and buy BEYOND REDEMPTION.
Eat no processed food. Drink only water.
Done!
If you pay attention to the diet world at all, you'll recognize this as Paleo.
Here it is with a little more detail:
Eat nothing that has more than a single ingredient.
Eat only unprocessed meat, unprocessed fruit, and unprocessed vegetables. The actual proportions of each don't much matter.
DRINK ONLY WATER.
It's sad how long it took me to figure that out. Imagine, the trick to maintaining a healthy body weight is eating real food. Whoda thunk it!
Am I perfect, do I follow this diet with psychotic diligence? Nope. I love my beer and whiskey. Sometimes I have a grilled cheese sandwich. Cheeeeeeeeese...don't even get me started on cheese. Even so I managed to drop fifteen pounds in a single month when taking the diet seriously.
So, next time you're planning on sitting on your ass for an entire month (NaNoWriMo anyone?) think about eating real food. Or, if you're really crazy, do it all the time.
What, still here?
What's the real NaNoWriMo Diet?
It's coffee and whiskey and whatever you can eat with one hand so as to leave the other free to type.
About Michael R. Fletcher
Michael R. Fletcher is a science fiction and fantasy author. His novel, Beyond Redemption, a work of dark fantasy and rampant delusion, was published by HARPER Voyager. His début novel, 88, a cyberpunk tale about harvesting children for their brains, was released by Five Rivers Publishing in 2013. 88 is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and elsewhere. The next two Manifest Delusions novels, THE ALL CONSUMING, and WHEN FAR-GONE DEAD RETURN are currently in various stages of editing while Michael tries to be the best husband and dad he can be. Michael is represented by Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.
About Beyond Redemption:
A darkly imaginative writer in the tradition of Joe Abercrombie, Peter V. Brett, and Neil Gaiman conjures a gritty mind-bending fantasy, set in a world where delusion becomes reality . . . and the fulfillment of humanity's desires may well prove to be its undoing. Faith shapes the landscape, defines the laws of physics, and makes a mockery of truth. Common knowledge isn't an axiom, it's a force of nature. What the masses believe is. But insanity is a weapon, conviction a shield. Delusions give birth to foul new gods. Violent and dark, the world is filled with the Geisteskranken—men and women whose delusions manifest, twisting reality. High Priest Konig seeks to create order from chaos. He defines the beliefs of his followers, leading their faith to one end: a young boy, Morgen, must Ascend to become a god. A god they can control. But there are many who would see this would-be-god in their thrall, including the High Priest’s own Doppels, and a Slaver no one can resist. Three reprobates—The Greatest Swordsman in the World, a murderous Kleptic, and possibly the only sane man left—have their own nefarious plans for the young god. As these forces converge on the boy, there’s one more obstacle: time is running out. When one's delusions become more powerful, they become harder to control. The fate of the Geisteskranken is to inevitably find oneself in the Afterdeath. The question, then, is: Who will rule there?
Links:
Amazon
B&N
Goodreads
September 10, 2015
August 20, 2015
I hope to make this list one day :) *Congrats All*
Tanner Greenring / BuzzFeed 1. The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss
DAW Books 
en.wikipedia.org It’s not an understatement to say that this is the very best fantasy series currently underway. It’s only two books in at the moment (well, two and a half), so it’s a perfect time to jump in and get started. A rich and compelling story of a brilliant young man’s rise to become a legendary magician, framed by a present where he is middle-aged and seemingly powerless. 2. The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson 
Tor Books 
en.wikipedia.org Another series that only has two books so far, so now’s the time to get involved. The one issue is that they’re BIG books, so the two Stormlight Archives feel more like four books. Luckily, they’re incredible, so you’ll tear through them. RIYL: really big swords, sorcery, and massive battle sequences. 3. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin 
Bantam BooksA Song of Ice and Fire, the series that A Game of Thrones belongs to, is a modern classic. If you enjoy the HBO show, you owe it to yourself to read the books. (Just be prepared for this thing to start real tight and end up sprawling.) 4. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien 
Ballentine BooksIf you’re reading a list of the best fantasy books, there’s like a 0% chance you haven’t read The Lord of the Rings books already, but just in case you somehow haven’t, you should. Required reading. Prerequisite for all fantasy. 5. The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks 
Orbit Books 
Orbit Books Solid fantasy books with an intricate and fascinating system of magic. A little bit like how the power rings work in the Green Lantern comic books, except set in a fantasy world. 6. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman 
Scholastic 
Adrian Hon, mssv.net / Via en.wikipedia.org/Philip_Pullman Classic storybook fantasy full of witches, magic animal companions, and badass polar bears covered in armor. These books skew a little younger, but are still fun to read for adults as well. 7. Discworld by Terry Pratchett 
Harper CollinsDiscworld isn’t a traditional fantasy cycle, but more of a fantasy-themed and generally humorous collection of books, short stories, encyclopedias, and maps. There are 40 books in eight different storylines, so it’s quite an undertaking. Sadly, Terry Pratchett died earlier this year, and the final Discworld book, The Shepherd’s Crown, is expected to hit shelves this fall. 8. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie 
Orbit BooksAs violent, gritty, and unpredictable as Game of Thrones, but with more heart, humor, and sense of play. This series will draw you in immediately and make you fall in love with its troubled, complicated lead characters. 9. The Sword of Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks 
Del Rey 
Ranger714 / Via en.wikipedia.org/Terry_Brooks Elves, Dark Lords, and quests to retrieve mythical swords in order to vanquish said Dark Lords. These are classic, epic fantasy books that feel an awful lot like the Lord of the Rings series at times, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The Lord of the Rings books are, after all, very, very good indeed. 10. Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett 
Harper Colins Publisher 
Luigi Novi / Via en.wikipedia.org/Peter_V._Brett A “hero’s journey” told through several protagonists and settings. As its name implies, the Demon Cycle exists in a complex and fascinating world where humans and demons are forced to live at constant odds with one another, and explores what happens when humans finally take a stand. 11. The Riddle-Master Trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip 
Del Rey 
Stepheng3 Set in a world akin to northwestern Europe, and with royalty disguised as commoners, talkative ghosts, and star-crossed lovers, The Riddle Master Trilogy feels a bit like a contemporary fantasy equivalent to some of Shakespeare’s stories. (But with shape-shifting monsters, magic, and, yes, lots of riddles.) 12. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson 
Tor BooksThe heart of this series is in the intricate and cleverly deployed system of magic that powers it. Allomancers have different abilities tied to different metals, and there is a real thrill in watching the characters learn and master their craft and combine forces as they attempt to overthrow a corrupt and oppressive regime. 13. Gentlemen Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch 
Bantam SpectraThieves, pirates, and a beautifully planned series of heists that are a delight to watch unfold. This series is not without its share of heartbreak and loss, but the tribulations of its protagonists are tempered with a joyful sense of mischief, cunning, and a fair amount of swashbuckling. Oceans 11 meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Robin Hood. 14. The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin 
Orbit 
Via amazon.com.-K.-Jemisin/e/B0028OIVC0 A vividly imagined world where gods are slaves and nothing is as it seems. Author N.K. Jemisin deftly subverts all the old fantasy tropes in the course of creating a beautiful, rich world full of intriguing characters and dazzling moments that will leave you wanting more. 15. Liveship Traders Trilogy by Robin Hobb 
Spectra 
Harmonia Amanda / Via en.wikipedia.org/Robin_Hobb Epic tales of the sea and pirate stories…except all the ships are magical and sentient and sort of have minds of their own at times. The thinking “liveships” carry with them generations of collected wisdom and often have as much rich characterization as the human characters aboard them. 16. The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling 
Scholastic 
Daniel Ogren / Via en.wikipedia.org/J._K._Rowling You’ve probably never heard of these little-known books from British author J.K. Rowling. But this well-kept secret is actually a wonderful series of books that deserves much more recognition than it gets. OK, let’s be real: If you are the one person who hasn’t read these yet, just do yourself a favor. Read them now. Right now. No more excuses. 17. The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind 
Tor FantasyLess a fantasy series and more a complex dedication to world-building. The Sword of Truth series is 14 books, all of which are designed to be stand-alone stories, totally independent from the others. (Except for the final three books, which are a traditional trilogy.) They follow several key protagonists all grappling with the same antagonists bent on world domination. 18. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis 
HarperCollins 
Arthur Strong / Via en.wikipedia.org/C._S._Lewis Like reading the Bible, if the Bible was set in a fantasy universe. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but the books are pretty heavy on the Christian allegory. The seven novels (the reading order of which is a little controversial) are shorter than standard fantasy books, and written for younger readers, so they’re incredibly fun, easy to get through, and definitely worth picking up if you had the extreme misfortune of not reading these as a child. 19. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin 
Puffin Books 
Hajor / Via en.wikipedia.org/Ursula_K._Le_Guin A classic of the genre from one of its all-time masters, Ursula K. LeGuin. The Earthsea saga confronts the great themes of life and death with its wonderful cast of magicians, priestesses, and dragons. Elegiac in tone and epic in scope, the books in this series will make you think and grow as you delight in the adventures of its characters. 20. The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay 
Penguin PutnamFrom the great Guy Gavriel Kay (see also, the stunning Tigana), The Fionavar Tapestry is a high fantasy tale of princes and princesses, dragons and warriors, with an intriguing foothold in the contemporary world. Follow the adventures of five students from our world who find themselves in the middle of an epic battle in the magical Fionavar, in this riveting and deftly realized series that draws from Arthurian legend, Norse and Welsh mythology, and the very best of the fantasy traditions established by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. 21. Raven’s Shadow by Anthony Ryan 
Anthony RyanIn the vein of Name of the Wind, the first book of the Raven’s Shadow series more than does justice to a hero’s journey with a compelling bit of world-building and enough action and adventure to keep you completely hooked. Follow the adventures of Vaelin al Sorna as he weaves his way from his apprentice training in the harsh military “Sixth Order” to worldwide renown as the fearsome “Hope Killer.” 22. The Broken Empire series by Mark Lawrence 
Penguin Group 
Via amazon.com-Lawrence/e/B004HNAQOQ/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1 A little more adult than many of the selections on this list, the Broken Empire series is aimed at the cynical fantasy fan. The world in which these books take place is violent and brutal, and their protagonist is not particularly sympathetic. This series feels a bit like a fantasy story told from the perspective of the vile and power-hungry evil king who would usually play the part of the villain. 23. A Land Fit For Heroes by Richard K. Morgan 
Del Rey Books 
Roberta F. / Via en.wikipedia.org/Richard_K._Morgan An exuberant twist on some standard dark fantasy tropes, A Land Fit For Heroes is almost gleeful in its violence, sexual themes, and cynical outlook. Author Richard K. Morgan brings some of his science fiction chops (see in particular the brilliant Takeshi Kovacs novels) to add color to a fantasy world full of magic, destiny, and so, so, so much violence. Also, the hero is gay, which is a refreshing change. 24. Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon 
Delacorte Books 
Captmondo / Via en.wikipedia.org/Diana_Gabaldon Part romance novel, part historical fiction, part fantasy, the Outlander series takes the best parts of each genre and makes its own unique narrative, which begins with a 20th-century nurse who’s mysteriously time-warped to 18th-century Scotland. These books are full of intrigue and romance and are extremely readable, and also feature a female protagonist, which is rarer than it should be for fantasy novels. 25. The Wheel Of Time by Robert Jordan 
Tor FantasyThe first three books in this iconic series are a classic exploration of the themes of good versus evil and a template for almost all of the high fantasy that follows it. After Jordan’s death in 2007, the extremely talented Brandon Sanderson (see also The Stormlight Archive in this list) has finished off the series to great acclaim from fans. But there are 14 books (of, frankly, varying quality) to read before the grand finale, so you better get cracking now. 26. Malazan Book Of The Fallen by Steven Erikson 
Bantam Books 
Fazal Majid / Via en.wikipedia.org/Steven_Erikson “Epic” doesn’t even really begin to describe this 10-volume series, with its sweeping plot, its multiple storylines, and its intricate, ambitious world-building. This is the War and Peace of high fantasy literature, but obviously way better, because it has assassins, magic, and dragons – three things Tolstoy never thought to include in his magnum opus, to his great detriment and (presumably) lasting regret. 27. The Black Company by Glen Cook 
Tor Fantasy 
Harmonia Amanda / Via en.wikipedia.org/Glen_Cook You won’t read a review of The Black Company without seeing the word “gritty,” and that’s because Glen Cook basically singlehandedly brought the idea into the world of fantasy. Follow the adventures of this morally questionable group of mercenaries as they hack their way through a dark, war-torn world full of death, misery, and, occasionally, a chance at redemption. 28. Elemental Logic by Laurie J. Marks 
Tor FantasyThe Elemental Logic books are a fascinating look into what it’s like being on the wrong side of a hostile occupation, and all the politics and betrayal that comes along with it. Complicated characters play their stories out in a richly imagined world, and the lines between good and evil often become blurred throughout the three books. 29. The Chronicles Of Amber by Roger Zelazny 
Doubleday 
en.wikipedia.org A man wakes up in a hospital with no idea of how he got there. His attempts to find out lead him through a series of other worlds and into a tumultuous confrontation with the members of his family who rule over the one true world. 30. The Avalon Series by Marion Zimmer Bradley 
Random House 
Via en.wikipedia.org/Marion_Zimmer_Bradley The Mists of Avalon and its decades-spanning series of sequels and prequels all tell the familiar tale of the Arthurian legend, but with characters such as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table playing secondary roles. Instead, the series follows the lives of the women in Arthur’s court, and explores the Matter of Britain from a more feminist perspective. 31. The Merlin Quintet by Mary Stewart 
William MorrowAnother set of fantasy novels retelling the Arthurian legend, but this time mostly through the perspective of a Welsh boy named Myrddin Emrys, who grows up to be the powerful wizard Merlin. The series follows Merlin as he grows up, raises Arthur, and eventually becomes the young king’s trusted ally during the part of the Arthurian legend that most readers will be familiar with. The series is a fascinating take on a familiar tale. 32. The Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore 
TSR, Inc. / Penguin Books / Wizards of the CoastAlthough The Dark Elf Trilogy was originally written as a prequel trilogy to another series, the popularity of the protagonist, a dark elf named Drizzt Do’Urden, has made this the stand-out series among all the D&D books out there. If you’re a fan of the world of Dungeons & Dragons, or just need a fix between play sessions, look no further. 33. The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock 
Ace Publishing 
Catriona Sparks / Via en.wikipedia.org/Michael_Moorcock Elric VIII, the 428th Sorcerer Emperor of Melniboné, is a weak and frail introvert. But his sword, Stormbringer, is anything but. It brings Elric the strength he needs to survive, at a cost: It feeds on the souls of its prey. Michael Moorcock’s subversion of what he saw as the tired tropes of fantasy established by Tolkien and others make for a powerful read that is, to this day, a seminal influence on the genre. 34. Redwall by Brian Jacques 
Puffin/Philomel Books 
mind on fire / Via en.wikipedia.org/Brian_Jacques Redwall is a fantasy series for older children set in a world full of talking animals. The 22 books span centuries within the world, with some familiar characters from earlier books returning only as legends in later books. Despite being a childrens’ series, the world of Redwall is rich and complex, and it manages to be engaging despite the expansive nature of the books. 35. Temeraire by Naomi Novik 
Del Rey 
Robert Snyder / Via en.wikipedia.org/Naomi_Novik For anyone who ever felt that the Napoleonic wars were all well and good but didn’t have nearly enough dragons, this fun and compulsively readable series will permanently fix that problem. This is basically Hornblower meets Dragonriders of Pern, and it’s a perfect combination. Naomi Novik is a true delight to read, and you should also check out her excellent new novel, Uprooted. 36. Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini 
Knopf BooksEragon and its sequels are entry-level high fantasy. They’re thematically similar to fantasy classics such as the Earthsea novels or the Wheel of Time books, but written to be accessible to modern kids and young adults. The book has everything you’d expect: dragons, ultimate evil, and a farm boy thrust into the role of the hero. All in all, they’re a great introduction to the genre. 37. The Riyria Revelations by Michael J. Sullivan 
OrbitThe Riyria Revelations follows two unlikely heroes across three novels written as one long ongoing tale, rather than as a series of sequels. The heroes are accused of regicide in the opening pages, and they spend the rest of the books in over their heads as they try to clear their names. Unfortunately, they have their hands full, because they’re going to need to solve the mystery of the king’s death and battle against evil wizards all at the same time. 38. Prince Of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker 
Overlook Press & Orbit 
Roberta F. / Via en.wikipedia.org/R._Scott_Bakker On the surface, the Prince Of Nothing novels are everything you’d expect from well-written fantasy novels: a good magic system, a full and complex world, and well-rounded characters. But anyone who took a Philosophy 101 class will recognize some key principles of academic philosophy and human psychology at play, which makes for a challenging yet interesting read. 39. Dragonlance by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman 
Wizards of the CoastDragonlance was one of the first independently produced modules for Dungeons & Dragons, and it was so well-written and engaging for fans that it became the setting for the game’s first foray into the world of novels. At this point, there are over 200 published Dragonlance novels, but if you’re looking for the core experience, the original Chronicles Trilogy and the Legends trilogy are your best bet. 40. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson 
FontanaWhen the protagonist of the series – a writer named Thomas Covenant who is afflicted with leprosy – is struck by a police cruiser, he wakes up in a land of high fantasy and magic. Was he somehow transported to this new world, or is he lying in a coma in a hospital bed? He’s never quite sure, and he spends the entire series as “The Unbeliever,” trying to figure things out alongside the reader. 41. The Powder Mage Trilogy by Brian McClellan 
OrbitThe Powder Mage books are a little different from the other books on this list because they’re set in a more modern “Bulletpunk” setting, where swords and sorcery are replaced with guns and epaulettes. Even the magic system in the books involves consuming gunpowder in order to access inert abilities. There’s a lot happening in this trilogy, from gun battles with gods to good, old-fashioned policework, so there should be a little something for everyone. 42. The Once And Future King by T.H. White 
Ace 
Burns Library, Boston College / Via en.wikipedia.org/T._H._White Published in the ‘50s by T.H. White, The Once And Future King has gone on to be an enduring classic, and it still stands out as the very best reimagining of the Arthurian legend for a modern audience. Psychologically complex and at times devastating, this five-book series is rightly considered one of the very best fantasies ever written. 43. The Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud 
Disney-HyperionA young adult series that sets itself apart with excellent writing and humor. This trilogy by Jonathan Stroud tells the story of a 12-year-old magician and the lovable but cantankerous 5,000-year-old spirit who becomes his familiar. Basically…RIYL Harry Potter. 44. The Gormenghast Series by Mervyn Peake 
Overlook Press 
en.wikipedia.org A gothic fantasy that looms imposingly in its influence on some of the later masters of the genre, Mervyn Peake’s deeply weird but masterfully written Gormenghast series is often described more as a “fantasy of manners” than a heroic fantasy in the style of Tolkien. These are books of castle intrigue, romance, madness, and grotesque, brilliant imagination. You’d want Guillermo del Toro to direct the movies rather than Peter Jackson. 45. The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix 
HarperTeenA high fantasy series with a non-traditional subject: A family of necromancers. And a cat named Mogget. A deeply imaginative series that will keep you reading all the way to the gripping conclusion. 46. The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper 
Margaret K. McElderry Books 
slowking / Via en.wikipedia.org/Susan_Cooper Susan Cooper’s classic series is for a younger audience, but it stands up as one of the very best of its kind. Based on Arthurian legends and Norse mythology but set in the 20th century, these five books follow the story of 11-year-old Will Stanton, who discovers that he is the youngest of the Old Ones, and that the fate of the world rests on his shoulders. 47. The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb 
SpectraRobin Hobb, aka Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, published the first book of her Farseer Trilogy in 1997, netting her a British Fantasy Award nomination for Best Novel. The series follows FitzChivalry Farseer, a royal bastard whose nascent magical abilities and training as an assassin may just be enough to protect him from the powerful forces that threaten his kingdom, not to mention the malicious intentions of his dangerous and conniving relatives. 48. The Traitor Son Cycle by Miles Cameron 
Orbit 
Via amazon.com-Cameron/e/B001HQ2XDS The Red Knight and its sequels read like historical fiction, if medieval Europe had been full of monsters and magic. The series follows a band of mercenaries and their captain, known only as The Red Knight, as he and his merry men hack and slash their way across the kingdom of Alba. The books are prohibitively thick, but don’t let that turn you off, because they are immensely rewarding. 49. Dreamblood by N.K. Jemisin 
OrbitAnother promising series by N.K. Jemisin, the Dreamblood series creates a vivid landscape of war, intrigue, and religion, set in the City of Dreams, where crime and violence are unknown, but nightmares lurk. 50. The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist 
HarperCollins Publishers 
Georges Seguin (Okki) / Via en.wikipedia.org/Raymond_E._Feist Based on a role-playing world originally created to compete with Dungeons & Dragons, this is classic epic fantasy. An orphan boy discovers magical abilities within himself and becomes a hero in the world of Midkemia. Rifts open up between worlds and a huge battle between order and chaos erupts, spanning 10 novels. 51. The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman 
Viking Press 
Larry D. Moore / Via en.wikipedia.org/Lev_Grossman Lev Grossman’s brilliant trilogy is always referred to as “Harry Potter for grownups,” but a better description would be “Narnia for the permanently disillusioned.” The evil forces arrayed against Grossman’s hero, Quentin Coldwater, are not so much the wizards, monsters, and demons he has to face as he comes to terms with his considerable powers, but the even more terrifying horrors of finding a place in the world and learning how not to be an asshole while you’re at it. This series may break you a little bit emotionally, but there’s so much fun to be had along the way.
