Comments | bellatrys: Anyone read these yet?

bellatrys

Anyone read these yet?

Feb 16, 2007 16:49

Dragonspell by Donita Paul, published by WaterBrook PressSaw the set in Barnes & Nobles the other day but was on my way out & didn't have time to skim them. This is the Random House offshoot that published that "coming Apocalypse/War with Islam" book that I posted about a few weeks ago, btw. Just curious if anyone's yet had a chance to investigate ( Read more... )

fantasy, fandom, religion

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Christian fantasy stardragonca February 17 2007, 01:23:47 UTC

This is usually the Let's Make Lewis and Tolkien Spin at Lightspeed genre.

Protestants. Why does it have to be Protestants...?

'Cos they don't have hagiographies? deiseach February 17 2007, 01:43:17 UTC

Catholics can at least get the weird out by writing hagiographies (or making films about obscure Marian apparitions).

Protestants, being stuck with sola scriptura, have to channel their, um, imaginative leanings into the likes of this.

I'm wondering about that review, though: I agree that one term to strike fear and dread into any heart is plonking 'Christian' in front of music/film/book/painting because it's usually dire beyond words, but that teasing little reference to a 'fainting dragon' has me intrigued.

Not intrigued enough to make me want to touch the thing with a ten-foot bargepole, mind you, but it does make me wonder if there might be some sparks of imagination, phantasy and - dare I say it? - art deep down there somewhere.

After all, if you went by the earnest (God love them!) Christians who seized upon the popularity of the LOTR movies to plug Tolkien, Lewis et al as 'Christian' writers, you'd never have gone within a parsec of their stuff, and that'd be a pity.

To be fair to Protestants deiseach February 17 2007, 01:45:40 UTC

They'd probably snark back that Catholics put all their fantasy into their theology (cue muttering about Foruth Member of the Trinity and Praying to the Saints is Necromancy) :-)

wombat1138 February 17 2007, 03:41:22 UTC

But what's the Anglicans' excuse for quotes like "My villain, if he had got to grips with Harry Potter, would have beaten him" and "I called Lord Voldemort Lord Vulgarwart. I said he was a bit of a wimp and Harry Potter was not the only gay in the village"?

(I notice with some bemusement that not only are they hoping to cast Sean Bean as the movie, but there's also some talk of Mel Gibson directing. O frabjous booyah, or something.)

*snorts with disdain* deiseach February 17 2007, 03:52:49 UTC

First, it's the "Daily Record". Yeah, I believe that Mel is all lined up, 'cos he's ultra-RadTrad Catholic of Irish descent and naturally he'd be falling over himself to direct something based on a book by a Broad Church Anglican Englishman.

Second, I've read two of the books and they're okay-ish. Wouldn't set the Thames on fire. Not the worst, not the greatest. Instantly forgettable, in that I didn't remember the villain's name when I read it in the article.

Third - pfffttt! Anglicans, what else can you expect?

Gotta love this bit deiseach February 17 2007, 03:55:53 UTC

"His fearsome character has dark powers which allow him to communicate with the dead."

What, like every two-bit psychic and medium out there since the Fox sisters? Oooh, I'm quaking in my boots at the ugsome fearfulness of this terrifying potentate of ultimate darkness...

Re: Gotta love this bit lyorn February 17 2007, 05:35:37 UTC

Oooh, I'm quaking in my boots at the ugsome fearfulness of this terrifying potentate of ultimate darkness...

Especially as the only practical use of talking with the dead is solving murders and the like (but AFAIK necromantic evidence won't be considered in court) and learning about history... There are lots of powers more useful for a career as an Evil Overlord.

stardragonca February 17 2007, 07:50:59 UTC

Granny,where's my gloves?

Re: Gotta love this bit evilstorm February 18 2007, 13:27:17 UTC

Hrm. Now I want to see a "film noir"-ish verse where edgy necromancers play Philip Marlowe-esque detectives. Why? Don't know, the plotbunny just bit me.

Funny you should mention that... deiseach February 18 2007, 23:10:27 UTC

"'Cast a Deadly Spell' (1991) is a Horror/Detective HBO movie with Fred Ward, Julianne Moore and Clancy Brown. Ward stars as 1940s private detective Phillip Lovecraft, in a parallel world in which magic is real, monsters and mythical beasts stalk the back alleys, zombies are used as cheap labor, and everyone -- except Lovecraft -- uses magic every day. Yet, cars, telephones and other modern technology also exist in this world ( ... )

Re: Funny you should mention that... evilstorm February 20 2007, 05:31:27 UTC

Ooooh SHINY. Thanks D!

How IS Fionn Macha s'posed to be pronounced?

Will now attempt death-defying feat of pronunciation deiseach February 20 2007, 19:20:51 UTC

Ladeeez and gennlmen! Behold, as - without the aid of a net! - approximation of pronunciation is attempted ( ... )

Re: Will now attempt death-defying feat of pronunciation evilstorm February 21 2007, 06:57:42 UTC

*giggling* I will never understand how Gaelic is s'posed to be pronounced.

Yeah, I. I feel your pain. Hollywood keeps trying to give people authentic Chinese names and auuuggghhh.

If I were a masochist bellatrys February 21 2007, 15:12:53 UTC

and not just a quondam cutter, I would suggest compiling a "Definitive Fandom Guide to Irish & Chinese Pronunciation, The Way They Actually Sound Relative To BBC-English Pronunciation, Not According To Some Arcane Arbitrary System That Makes No Sense To Anybody And Has No Relation To Any Known Latin Orthography, Not Even French" - it would be absolute ruddy hell to try to pin down (even if we did "and this is how, if you have a northern/southern/eastern/western/wherever accent"), we'd NEVER hear the end of it (I base this on witnessed international attempts to figure out pronunciation on Usenet back in the '90s which generally turned into regional dogfights and accusations of who sounded stoopider) from people complaining that we'd got it all wrong - and the best way of course would be to do it with linked soundfiles but who could afford to host it? let alone who would want to record it and be thus immortalized in hubris...

Re: If I were a masochist evilstorm February 21 2007, 16:54:18 UTC

...I say we need that for Irish. Pinyin actually works pretty well, really. Maybe it's cos I'm used to it, though, in which case I'd need gweilo input before I could do anything.

Free/sponsored hosting? How much bandwidth would you need?

...wait is this s'posed to be a thought experiment or for reals. I do it for real, sure, but only after my finals.

Well, of course you would! [g] bellatrys February 21 2007, 17:56:38 UTC

Pinyin actually works pretty well, really. Maybe it's cos I'm used to it,Yup. If you heard me trying to read names in Pinyin, you'd laugh at me, or else go "Huh? What was that supposed to be?" I actually have [very, very slightly] more confidence in my ability to read out Vietnamese and have it sound sort of like what it should, because even tho' I can't keep the diacritical straight, knowing that it's French-based means that I have something of a baseline for how it's skewing from English (Spanish, Italian) pronunciations of Latin letters. As for Irish Gaelic...let's just say that listening to Enya and reading along the liner notes was very enlightening - "Good lord, *that's* how you pronounce X? Where did all the consonants go? Elope with their French counterparts after 1798, or what ( ... )

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