Reader Question Day #21 – Mount & Blade & Tea

Manwe asks:

Regarding the [medieval romances] do you like the genre? And have you read any of the medieval sagas? I have a deep affinity for them.

Back in college, I actually did my senior thesis on La Chanson de Roland. Of course, that’s technically a chanson de geste, but the character of Roland turned up in the later Romances as part of the Matter of France. I’ve read Mallory and several of the different permutations of the Arthurian legend. What’s interesting is that Count Roland actually existed (Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard mention the “Count Hruolandus of the Breton March”) and Arthur probably did not, but Arthur is vastly more famous than Roland, at least in the English-speaking world.

Of course, Charlemagne gets a cool rock opera written about him.

I just picked up The Belgariad series (by Eddings) after I heard good things about it. Any thoughts on the series?

The Belgariad and the Malloreon are entertaining, but not deep. Eddings writes very clear, readable prose (which, take it from me, is a lot harder to do than it looks), but his books tend to be very light and breezy. So I thought they were an entertaining read, but not a profound one. They definitely lack the current trend of angsty nihilism, so that is a point in their favor.

Garnet asks:

Is [GHOST IN THE STORM] available at iTunes yet for iBook?

Not yet. For some reason, Apple has been increasingly slow to accept ebooks from Smashwords – I suspect Apple is trying to force people into using iBooks Author. Which is disappointing, because I sell a lot of books off iTunes, but not enough to justify the cost of buying a Mac just to use iBooks Author.

However, iBooks runs off EPUB files, and if you’re comfortable sideloading books onto your iPad/iPhone (it’s pretty easy) you can get the EPUB of GHOST IN THE STORM off Smashwords.



Kallinikos asks:

If you could pick just one computer game, what would it be?

Mount & Blade: Warband. You can conquer a medieval world via overwhelming economic superiority. Which reminds me of a book I just read – THE DRAGON’S PATH by Daniel Abraham, an epic fantasy about an orphaned refugee. After her home is destroyed, instead of taking up sword and going on a quest, she…starts a bank. It works rather well.

rose asks:

Coffee or tea?

Tea, definitely. Back in 2011, I emergency-taught a section of Modern World History with exactly six days to prepare. The only way I got through that was by drinking cup after cup of black tea.

-JM