Two Swords. This Sunday marked the return to HBO’s grimdark fantasy epic, A Game of Thrones. This season is based on the second-half of George RR Martin’s A Storm of Swords, book 3 in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. The first episode takes us through Westeros and the lands beyond the Narrow Sea, displaying palace intrigue, spoiled kings, Wildling cannibals and (of course) dragons. As usual, spoilers and then some.
J’Ouvert in the end, is magic. Wonderful, fantastic, dangerous magic.
*photo courtesy of the film After Mas, taken by Joseph Mora
Peter Jackson has followed up with the second installment in his rendition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, titled The Desolation of Smaug. It’s a fitting name, because undoubtedly Smaug runs flys away with the film (move over Bilbo). Overall, it’s a significant improvement on part one of the stand-alone book turned cinematic trilogy. But like its predecessor, the movie still suffers from its inherent flaw–Jackson’s obsession to turn this children’s tale into one long drawn out prequel to Lord of the Rings. Once more, E is for Embellish.
Spoilers to follow.
“The world is more like a living creature than a machine, and so too are stories. In fact stories exist in a bewildering number of adaptations…some of them might even look a little like a fish.”
Some time ago, in a younger life that seems far, far away, I decided I wanted to write. I was going to write speculative fiction, like the sci-fi and fantasy books I’d spent so much of my younger life reading. I was going to be a PoC writing awesome speculative fiction that no one had seen before, away from the run-of-the mill elves, dwarves and what-not. And the very novelty of my work would gain accolades and applause.
Then I woke up.
Phenderson Djèlí Clark 