Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

I only get chance to do any modelling when I’m not at work, spending time with Elina or volunteering at one of the charities or community groups I run. Which isn’t a lot of time. However, after 10 months, I’ve finally finished the Warriors of Chaos I inherited.

I forgot to include the Chaos Hounds in the photo and I’ve since added some Dragon Ogres and a Gorebeast Chariot too.

The 29th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is “Night Watch”. Sam Vimes, the History Monks, time travel – what is there not to love about this novel? Nothing, that’s the answer. I love Lu-Tze and the City Watch is awesome too. It also reminded me of one of the half a dozen Star Trek episode plots that almost all of the 300 episodes are based around.

The Amazing Maurice is the first Discworld novel that is aimed at children. When that actually translates into texts, there is very little difference. The balance of jokes is perhaps more targeted at children than adults, but there was still plenty in there that I found entertaining and funny.

What did change was that even though it is set in the Discworld universe, you do not need to know anything about Discworld or have read the previous novels to be able to fully enjoy this one.

Leonard of Quirm, Rincewind, Captain Carrot, and a chance to save the world! What more could you want from a Discworld novel? Plus a little bit of Death too. I really enjoyed The Last Hero. It did not have too much substance to it, but it was only half the length of a typical Discworld novel and the short format worked really well for it.

The 21st novel in the Discworld series is Jingo. It sees Ankh-Morpork face off against Klatch in a territorial dispute over a new island. It was not one of my favourites.

The plot is a bit predictable. The two armies line up to fight each other, but never actually do, which reminded me strongly of “Interesting Times“. Of course Lord Vetinari has a plan all along, as always. I am also left wondering just how many extra titles and promotions can possibly forced upon Samuel Vimes.

Terry Pratchett’s nineteenth Discworld novel, Feet of Clay, looks at golems and the City Watch. What more could you want? I probably say that in all my blog posts about Discworld books. I really did enjoy this one though, it might be my favourite Discworld novel so far.

Rinsewind. Two Flower. The Counterweight Continent? What more could you really want from a Discworld novel? There was even a Dibbler-style character, not to mention a great horde of rather ageing hero barbarians! Good read.

Having been watching the TV series, I’ve also been reading the book as well.

It’s not been a bad read, but I really think it speaks highly of the TV series that actually includes most of the details.

Sadly, I can’t think of a better example than Harry Potter. But if you take Harry Potter, the novels are great because they contain large story arcs and extra details that are entirely missing from the films. I didn’t find this to be the case with A Game of Thrones – the TV series has covered pretty much all the book.

As I’ve said, that isn’t really a fault of the book though, which was definitely worth a read.

The tenth book in the Discworld series, Moving Pictures, describes how the alchemists invented film and moved to Holy Wood to set up the moving picture industry.

It’s not one of my favourite novels from the series. I found it a bit silly at first until it finally settled down, but even then I found it quite hard going in comparison to some of the previous novels. C.M.O.T. Dibbler and Detritus the troll are great characters though, and that kept things entertaining.

I occasionally find myself pining for some better similes too. Pratchett often uses phrases like “as muddy as, well, mud” which certainly have their place in a witty text, but I do feel the technique is becoming a little overused.

Book twelve in the Discworld series follows the adventures of Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as the travel to Genua to do some good old fashioned fairy godmothering.

I thought the book took quite a while to get going – I was 15-20% of the way through before they even left for Genua but after that it picked up. Nanny Ogg has firmly cemented herself as one of my favourite characters from the series.