This week I start getting a little caught up with some of the books I’ve read for the Sword & Laser Book Club, with a look at one of the best-selling fantasy novels of 2023 – Fourth Wing.
Tag Archives: fantasy
Anime Review: Aura Battler Dunbine
It feels weird to call Byston Well, the setting Yoshiyuki Tomino created for Aura Battler Dunbine – a series that many Isekai novels draw their lineage from – as a “joke”. However, arguably no creator has so desperately tried to “make fetch happen” with a setting that Tomino has done with Dunbine – not only with New Aura Battler Dunbine, but also Wings of Rean and Garzey’s Wing. Yet, with the degree of traction the original work obtained, there has to be something there – right?
Continue readingThis month we talk about the Record of Lodoss War OVA – with some tangents to the novels, the Actual Play, and the Chronicles of the Heroic Knight OVA (and also Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth).
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Anime Review: Sorcerous Stabber Orphen – Final 2 Seasons
The last two cours of Sorcerous Stabber Orphen went back-to-back, feeding directly into the other, at a total of 24 episodes (which was the same length as the previous seasons of the show) but with two different subtitles – Chaos in Urbanrama and Doom of Dragon’s Sanctuary. The two series are somewhat mixed in quality, but they go one into the other to such a degree that it’s hard to talk about them in isolation.
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Manga Review: Record of Lodoss War – Crown of the Covenant Vol. 1
It has been decades since the last installment of Record of Lodoss War, so I was tremendously surprised to encounter a new installment of the manga coming out in 2023 – subtitled Crown of the Covenant. I’ve picked up the first volume, so it’s time to give my thoughts.
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Film Vlog Review: Dungeons & Dragons – Honor Among Thieves
I went and saw Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in a theater, and I’m going to talk about it!
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Legends & Lattes: Book Review
This month’s pick for the Sword & Laser Book Club, and the winner of their Madness In March Tournament was Legends & Lattes, a book that had been on my recommendations list for quite a bit, so it’s time to take a look at it.
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Book (Video) Review: Final Fantasy XV – Dawn of the Future
It’s time to look at the book adaptation of the DLC for Final Fantasy XV that we didn’t get (and a little bit that we did)
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Book Review: Weird of the White Wolf
Weird of the White Wolf is the fourth part of the first of the current set of Elric omnibus volumes, and undoubtedly, this is where things get serious. I mean – there were serious things before, but this is where Elric gets shoved headlong into his destiny (the “Weird” in the title referring the Old English use of the word – Wyrd – meaning destiny) – like it or not (tending towards “or not”). And this is helped by the fact that here is where we encounter the first stories in the publication order, even if they’re not the first in Elric’s internal chronology.
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The Fortress of the Pearl: Book Review
The Fortress of the Pearl is Michael Moorcock, in 1989, writing a book set between Elric of Melnibone (1972) and Sailor on the Seas of Fate (1976). The current Elric omnibus collections put this in that space in the chronology in their reading order, while my previous video on the Elric reading order recommended reading it significantly later. Re-reading the book now, in its place at the timeline – I think my assessment is accurate, but not necessarily for the reasons that I thought originally.
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Nettle & Bone: Book Review
Nettle & Bone was this month’s Sword & Laser Book Club pick, and was a tremendously brisk, and very enjoyable read. It also introduced me to a variety of fantasy fiction I hadn’t encountered before – the “Grimcozy”
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Book Review: She Who Became The Sun
It’s time to review the last of the Hugo Nominees that were on my shortlist – She Who Became The Sun By Shelly Parker-Chan
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Anime Review: Ranking of Kings
Ranking of Kings is a show that, frankly, I missed the boat on. It was a show that everyone on AniTwitter, everyone on the anime podcasts I listened to were praising to high heavens, but I pushed off watching it. Until now. Now I’ve finally watched it and it’s time to give the show the consideration it deserves.
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She Who Became the Sun: Book Review
This weekend is Worldcon, and several weeks before the convention (basically the week before I got COVID), I finished reading the last of the novels that were up for Hugo Awards that weren’t part of a series that I hadn’t already started reading – She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan – a novel inspired by wuxia fiction, inspired by the rise of the Hongwu Emperor. It’s an… interesting book, but one which had some points that I stumbled over.
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Light from Uncommon Stars: Book Review
There is some discussion as to whether there needs to be a clear dividing line between the genres of Science Fiction & Fantasy, that a work needs to be one or the other. As someone who encountered Shadowrun during my formative years of Middle School (shortly after Dungeons & Dragons), I’ve ultimately become someone who has come to realize that fantasy and science fiction are like chocolate and peanut butter. So, when Light from Uncommon Stars came up as a book pick for the Swords & Laser book club, as I’ve attempted to get caught up on my book reading I decided to put it on my list – even more so when I saw that it was nominated for the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
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The Green Knight: Film Review
The Green Knight is the perfect re-imaging of this particular part of the Arthurian legend. It is dark, but not without hope. It presents honor & chivalry, but not without flexibility. It presents Gawain as, perhaps, the perfect Millennial knight.
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Sakugan: Anime Review
We have a trio of mecha anime that I watched this past year – the first of which to finish was Sakugan, something of an underdark exploration anime, combined with some Gurren Lagann-esque hot-bloodedness, and a well-done father-daughter dynamic with the leads.
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Fena: Pirate Princess – Anime Review
Fena: Pirate Princess is the first co-production in a while between Adult Swim/Cartoon Network and an anime studio (in this case, Production IG), possibly the first major series since the second season of The Big O. With an animation style and plot that feels like it’s meant to evoke Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water and The Mysterious Cities of Gold, while leaning into the “anime-ness” in a way that feels similar to Avatar: The Last Airbender, except in the sense of an anime studio looking at Avatar and going, “We can do this.” The question then is – can they do this?
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Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S: Anime Review
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S is Kyoto Animation’s big return to television after the horrific fire of 2019, along with the pandemic, so it feels right for them to come back with something as cheerful and heartwarming – and also horny on main – as Dragon Maid.
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Book Review: Piranesi
It’s time for a review of another Sword & Laser Book Club pick.
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Sorcerous Stabber Orphen: Battle of Kimluck: Anime Review
Orphen’s second season is, arguably, a lot more focused than its first. That, unfortunately, doesn’t stop the show from tripping over its own feet when it comes to the world-building of the setting. In particular, it’s where the mythology of the setting is concerned, especially related to the organization known as the “Kimluck Church.”
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City in Autumn Stars: Novel Review
In my review of The Warhound and the World’s Pain, I lamented that the book felt too short, and that the sexual assault sequence served no purpose. I should have noticed the finger curl on the monkey’s paw.
Continue readingThis week I have another martial arts film review, as I’m taking a look at Golden Harvest’s Feng Shui fueled adventure film, “Bury Me High”
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The Warhound and the World’s Pain: Book Review
Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series is interesting to discuss. Some stories have direct analogies to and inversions of Robert E. Howard’s work, like Elric. Others, like Hawkmoon, go in radically different directions. The first Von Bek novel probably falls more into the former camp – feeling like something of an inversion of Solomon Kaine, in multiple respects.
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