Brandon Sanderson: New Fantasy Titles Coming Soon!
For those of you who are fans of Brandon Sanderson, he’s got two more books in the pipeline (according to Tor)! (And, yes, I realize I’m not the only one throwing this information out there). Here’s the press release: Tor announces acquisitions of two new novels by #1 New York Times bestselling fantasy author Brandon Sanderson Sanderson to publish new Mistborn novel in late 2011 followed by The Rithmatist in 2012 New York, NY: Wednesday, December 1 2010 Tor Books is proud to announce the acquisition of two new novels by acclaimed fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, whose recent book Towers of Midnight, Book Thirteen in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time®, recently debuted at #1 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and ABA National Indiebound bestseller lists. Sanderson is also the author of New York Times bestselling novels The Way of Kings, The Gathering Storm, The Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, Elantris, and the middle grade “Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians” series. He is currently working on A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume in The Wheel of Time, and planning a sequel to The Way of Kings. Sanderson’s first new project will be an original, standalone short novel set in the universe of his Mistborn trilogy (Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages). Sanderson previously announced plans for a sequel trilogy set in the far future of that world, and the new novel, entitled Mistborn: The Alloy of Law, is set during a frontier era where “allomancy” meets gunplay. The Alloy of Law will be published in late 2011. Sanderson’s second project, titled The Rithmatist, was first drafted in 2007 and perfected this year. Set in an alternate-history America where magic users (called “Rithmatists”) battle wild chalk creatures, The Rithmatist introduces Joel, a student at the Rithmatist academy with great interest in but no ability to use the magic. But when students start vanishing, it’s up to him to expose the sinister figure behind the disappearances. The Rithmatist will be published in 2012 after the publication of A Memory of Light. This year and next will also see major publications in the Wheel of Time franchise, including the graphic novel adaptations of New Spring (January 2011) and The Eye of the World: Volume 1 (September 2011) before the landmark publication of A Memory of Light, the final volume in the series. The third annual JordanCon will take place April 15–17 2011 in Atlanta, GA. Pre-registration is currently ongoing at www.ageoflegends.net. Fore more information visit www.brandonsanderson.com. That’s pretty darn good news for Mr. Sanderson, and fans of his work! Hopefully they’ll sell as well as his previous books (they will, duh).
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One
It’s finally here: the first part of the official end of the Harry Potter series. The books have long since passed, but fans that need their Harry Potter fix still have two movies left with which to indulge themselves. And the fans seem to know it if box office numbers have anything to say on the matter. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part one) pulled in $125 million in the U.S. on its first weekend alone, and over $200 million extra internationally, smashing the franchise record of $102 million domestically for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That number is nothing to scoff at either, especially considering the controversy over the splitting of the final book into two films. Fans of the books often wondered how they were going to pull off The Deathly Hallows back when we all thought there was only going to be one movie; the book, after all, is 784 pages long, and as much as the filmmakers have cut from previous books, doing so for The Deathly Hallows is incredibly tricky considering the number of plotlines needed to fulfill the agenda set up in The Half-blood Prince. For that reason alone, The Deathly Hallows (part one) is perhaps the closest an HP film has come to the original source material since the original two films (directed by Chris Columbus). Coupled with the two movie split, this is a huge gamble. If you’re going to split a movie in half, you have to justify that by creating a complete narrative that avoids leaving the audience with a cliffhanger, but is also open enough to warrant seeing the final installment. The Deathly Hallows (part one) comes close to meeting this task, though knowing whether the film is truly effective depends on what happens in the final half of the sequence. Still, what The Deathly Hallows (part one) offers fans is an action-packed fantasy film that doesn’t forget its core audience and sets the stage for the true climax of the series in part two. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part one) drops the audience right where The Half-Blood Prince left them: in darkness. Voldemort has risen to power, influencing and threatening the safety of the wizarding world. The Ministry of Magic is rapidly trying to control public hysteria, mudbloods (wizards born of muggle parents) are being targeted and killed by Voldemort’s army, and Harry Potter is in greater danger than he ever was before. But Harry Potter and his friends have a job to do: they have to find the last few horcruxes—the pieces of Voldemort’s soul that prevent the Dark Lord from completely dying—and destroy them so as to end Voldemort’s reign and bring things back to the way they were. And in their journey they’ll discover more about themselves, the world around them, and what they must do and sacrifice to protect everything they hold dear. The Deathly Hallows is perhaps one of the darkest of the Harry Potter films, even when compared to The Order of the Phoenix. Unlike previous films, the government-level adjustments to wizarding society in The Deathly Hallows are manipulated directly by Voldemort, instead of by the fear of what people are often unwilling to acknowledge (in the case of the wizards in The Order of the Phoenix, it is the fear of Voldemort’s return, which, of course, proves to be a somewhat ironic fear, since it more or less plays into Voldemort’s hands). The result is a more personal kind of darkness: characters betray one another—even people you’d never expect—proving that it has become increasingly more difficult in this world to know who to trust; likewise, people quickly begin to sacrifice their freedoms in the fear of something they feel helpless to resolve. Astute viewers will immediately begin to draw parallels between The Deathly Hallows and our own world, particularly given the changes in the last few months in the U.S. and elsewhere. Unlike our world, however, the one presented in The Deathly Hallows is reasonably projected from Voldemort’s rapid removal of wizarding society’s security blankets. Hogwarts is no longer the safe haven it had always been, even given the handful of dangerous incidences that have occurred there over the franchise. For Harry and his companions, this is doubly problematic, because what The Half-blood Prince showed them is that Voldemort can get to them no matter where they go. The Deathly Hallows continues this trend to even greater effect—without security blankets, Harry, Hermione, and Ron are both on the run and more desperate than ever to find the horcruxes they need to destroy Voldemort for good, because sooner or later, Voldemort and his men will find them and kill them. The shift in tone, beginning most clearly with The Order of the Phoenix and culminating in The Deathly Hallows, coupled with the radical change of scenery, also make possible the ramping up of the action that has been teasing us for six movies. There are fewer restrictions on the characters, good and evil–both because of the conditions of the emerging world and the original source material–and this freedom is reflected clearly in the action. Duels are rugged and uncontrolled—an obvious contrast to the previous six films, all of which take place in the confines of school and the educational structure. Likewise, The Deathly Hallows is unfettered by a narrative dominated by children, not simply because the main characters are now practically adults; if anyone remembers the enormous duel between Dumbledore and Voldemort—and loved it as much as I did—then they’ll be equally pleased with The Deathly Hallows, where advanced levels of magic are in higher frequency and presented in situations entirely external from the school, thus adding a certain degree of realism to the story. That is to say that magic in The Deathly Hallows is not centered on training in a school, but on using it to achieve one’s personal goals, whether that be murder, manipulation, or pleasure. For example, we see the polyjuice potion