Tag: Zelazny

What My Favourite Characters Would Be Doing in Quarantine Book Tag

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn books, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot50 Comments

We’ve been recently tagged by the unparalleled Orangutan Librarian to “take 5 or more of the favorite book characters and imagine what they would be doing if they were quarantined with us in the real world”. The tag, created by Kal at Reader Voracious, looks so much fun that we jumped on the opportunity right away! 😉 We are in a very hyperactive mood lately, I guess it’s a giddiness born from being in lockdown for far too long 😀 So, thank you for this little tag, Orangutan Librarian – it was fun!

Characters in Quarantine

FitzChivalry Farseer from Robin Hobb’s Realm of Elderlings series

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He’d be secretly happy to have another opportunity to whine and feel sorry for himself. I can totally see him using the quarantine as an excuse to lock himself down in a remote, desolate place and once again write the story of his life :D.

Fraa Jad from Neal Stephenson’s Anathem

Anathem

He’d have already explored all possible universes and options, and chosen the one course of action that would have prevented the coronavirus from jumping from bats/pangolins to humans in the first place. So, long story short, he wouldn’t be in quarantine now, because there wouldn’t have been a pandemic! Unless what we have now is the best possible option already…. (shudders).

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Fantasy Bucket List Book Tag

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn books, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot64 Comments

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Our second Wyrd & Wonder tag 🙂 We decided to go crazy, and there were a few we wanted to do for quite a while…

Ladies and Gentlemen – Fantasy Bucket List Book Tag, originally spotted on The Little Book Owl.

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A fictional world that you would like to tour

Piotrek: Middle Earth. There are many fascinating universes in the world of fantasy, but this is the one that started it all, the Amber of fantasy realms. I want to walk in Lorien, rest in Rivendell, climb… well, not necessarily Caradhras in winter, but perhaps Erebor, if Smaug isn’t around? Yes, one of the rare peaceful moments would be perfect for an extended tour. It already is one of my special places, although only ever visited in imagination.

I hope I’ll get to visit New Zealand as an acceptable substitute 😉

Ola: Please do! 😀

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As I am already in the Earth-equivalent of Middle Earth, the fictional world I’d like to visit the most would be Amber – the pattern-world of fantasy worlds created by Roger Zelazny. Though in truth it’s a cheating answer – because from there I could get (more or less) easily to other worlds: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Robin Hobb’s Realm of Elderlings, Neal Stephenson’s Arbre from his absolutely mind-blowing Anathem (the review of which will come soon!), Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, Glen Cook’s world of the Black Company (but I’d only go there if I had a guarantee I would come back, even the mythical Khatovar doesn’t strike me as a good place to live), Iain Banks’s utopian Culture worlds and Neal Asher’s Polity, and so many others!

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Bookish Heavenly Virtues

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn books, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot59 Comments

Buoyed by the success of our Deadly Bookish Sins tag we decided to even out the playfield – and created a corresponding Bookish Heavenly Virtues tag 😉 We had a lot of fun writing the questions and answering them, and now we hope you’ll enjoy reading them – and, if you do, we invite you to participate in the tag as well :).

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CHASTITY: Which author/book/series you wish you had never read?

 

Ola: Aaand we start with a bang 😉 The two that most easily come to mind are Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind (DNFed around the junkie dragon mark and I only wish I threw it down sooner) and Justin Cronin trilogy (DNFed within first 100 pages of the third installment – what a waste of time). I’m usually pretty lenient when it comes to books, as they are in fact someone’s years of hard work and dreams. But I absolutely abhor waste of time on things I dislike, as the theory of alternative costs plays in my mind different scenarios of what I could have done with that precious resource, and the two examples above represent exactly that.

Piotrek: It’s a hard one. I usually only go for books I can be sure to enjoy at least a bit, and some of the really terrible ones I revenge-reviewed, so it was not a waste of time, was it?

One case where I could have saved the time and read something else, even at a cost of not having a vitriolic review to write, was the Iron Druid Chronicles. Details – in the linked review 😉 but I have to say, the more time passes, the more I’m convinced it’s a case of urban fantasy tropes tortured inhumanely for no good reason.

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Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand (1976)

On By Ola GIn books, Ola, reviews9 Comments

Doorways in the Sand

A fantastic romp through absurdity, surrealism, and wonder of a world where the galactic society is so much larger than just a bunch of ex-apes ready to leave the Earth, Doorways in the Sand remains one of lighter and funnier Zelazny’s works, nominated to Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. It was also one of his five personal favorites, along with A Night in the Lonesome October, This Immortal, Lord of Light (one of my favorite SF novels) and Eye of Cat.

It’s an incredibly optimistic, fun, short novel, full of poetic remarks, absurd puns, Lewis Carroll allusions and crazy tidbits of information from almost every sphere of science: sociology, anthropology, geology, plant biology, architecture, chemistry, psychology, parapsychology, physics… the list goes on and on, and the best part is that the presence of every bit in the text is fully justified: plot-wise and otherwise.

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Roger Zelazny, The Dream Master (1966)

On By Ola GIn books, Ola, reviews9 Comments

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A surprise. Not a pleasant one, I might add. The first underwhelming, even disappointing Zelazny book I have ever read. Sure, Creatures of Light and Darkness were very… particular, a difficult mix of poetry and prose that read as if the writer was high all the time, but even that book had its moments of greatness and pure reading pleasure. The Dream Master has none. And really awful covers, each and every one of them :P.

The main idea is pretty cool and had served as a basis for the movie Dreamscape which Zelazny wrote an outline for. I would also venture a guess that it thoroughly inspired Nolan’s Inception, even though I found no mention of it in any interview. But the similarities are many, and striking. In not so distant future the humanity grew so far from their origins that mental problems became a new norm. Suicides have become one of the most common cause of death. But with new problems arose new solutions. And thus a guild of Shapers was born – a fraction of a percent of humanity, who remain ultra-stable and psychically strong enough to be able to access others’ dreams and alter their subconscious without grave consequences for themselves.

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