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Laura's Fantasy Corner 2015


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Fili = The Flash.  :giggle2:

 

love those Ravenclaw clothes! They look very comfy indeed.

 

I'm glad someone does! My sister was cross because they only had Hufflepuff and Slytherin ones when she went, and my husband just sort of rolled his eyes despairingly when he saw them. :giggle2:

 

I wasn't keen on the first Powder Mage book... think I was just hoping for Sharpe with magic :lol: Glad you liked it though! Was it a satisifying ending to the series? or will there several more? :giggle2:

 

A lot of reviews I've read were just as disappointed as you were by it. Maybe I'm just easier to please. :giggle2: It wraps up the trilogy nicely, though I suppose there are one or two opportunities for spin-offs in the future. I'd personally love to see a series about Adamat and his investigations. :D

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I hope you enjoy your new books (bargains indeed :D)! Your new clothes look very comfortable too, I'm a little bit jaleous :P:). Fili is very fast!

 

Thanks! I reckon you'd definitely be a Ravenclaw too. :D

 

I was so surprised to find a book for £1 in Waterstones! :o Normally their 'sale' items are still far more expensive than full-price books anywhere else. :giggle2:

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Thanks! I reckon you'd definitely be a Ravenclaw too. :D

 

I was so surprised to find a book for £1 in Waterstones! :o Normally their 'sale' items are still far more expensive than full-price books anywhere else. :giggle2:

Me too :D!

 

Yeah, that is very cheap! I've been to Waterstone's in the UK and I love to see all their books, but they are often expensive compared with some other shops and online. One pound is a great price!

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And, thanks to Primark, I'm now officially a Ravenclaw (and a geek). :D (They're so comfortable! :wub: )

 

 

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(That's Fili in the bottom corner, doing her best impression of The Flash. I'd already tried taking the picture twice but ended up with Loki's tail in both shots. In the end I realised that trying to avoid cat photobombs is an exercise in futility. :rolleyes: ).

 

Bloody hell, I didn't realise Hogwarts had chavs :o  Did you get a baseball cap to wear backwards, too? :P

 

 

Sorry, couldn't resist . . . :giggle2:

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Bloody hell, I didn't realise Hogwarts had chavs :o  Did you get a baseball cap to wear backwards, too? :P

 

 

Sorry, couldn't resist . . . :giggle2:

 

:lol: Rest assured, I'd never actually wear them outside of the house!

 

And of course Hogwarts has chavs; that's what Slytherin House is for. :giggle2:

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:lol: Rest assured, I'd never actually wear them outside of the house!

 

And of course Hogwarts has chavs; that's what Slytherin House is for. :giggle2:

 

Chavs are usually found in the lower classes, and the Slytherin House is supposed to represent leadership and resourcefulness. I read the books when young and translated, but from what I see in the movies and read in wikis the Slytherin are about unscrupulous people from pure families. Kind of like "The Eton College" section inside Hogwarts, what makes me believe it'd be the last place you'd find chavs. This doesn't mean that Eton College is frequented by unscrupulous people; it means that the Slytherin are unfairly treated as the enemy in the story. My point of view is that many of the main characters show characteristics from other Hogwarts Houses, and where they belong is just a matter of interpretation. Snape and Riddle could have easily found themselves in Gryffindor and the Potters in Slytherin, I think; it would be far more interesting if Harry entered Slytherin and still maintained a friendship with Ron and Hermione.

 

Those are nice pyjamas.

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Chavs are usually found in the lower classes, and the Slytherin House is supposed to represent leadership and resourcefulness. I read the books when young and translated, but from what I see in the movies and read in wikis the Slytherin are about unscrupulous people from pure families. Kind of like "The Eton College" section inside Hogwarts, what makes me believe it'd be the last place you'd find chavs. 

 

I beg to differ! :giggle2:

 

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My point of view is that many of the main characters show characteristics from other Hogwarts Houses, and where they belong is just a matter of interpretation. Snape and Riddle could have easily found themselves in Gryffindor and the Potters in Slytherin, I think; it would be far more interesting if Harry entered Slytherin and still maintained a friendship with Ron and Hermione.

 

I completely agree here - that would have been more interesting. It's also a fair point that pretty much anyone could have been in any house (I myself always found it a bit strange that Hermione wasn't a Ravenclaw). And it's true that it's probably unfair to pigeonhole people - after all, we only see a very small portion of each house, and in real life it would be unfair to tar all of them with the same brush.

 

The fact that the first book was aimed more at children probably excuses a lot of the simplification of 'good people, evil people, clever ones and stupid ones'.

 

Maybe we're over-thinking the whole thing. :giggle2:

 

Those are nice pyjamas.

 

Thanks!

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Have you never played Canis Canem Edit? Or go to school? Have you never been young? It's proper of their age to wear chavs, be bullies and go to prison x)

I have played bits of this game and seen my boyfriend play large parts of it. It's an interesting game.

 

I will say though, and I hope this isn't seen as discriminatory or elitist because I don't mean it as such, that at my secondary school there weren't that many 'chav'-like people, they seem to be more prevalent in schools of a lower level (the school in the town near where I lived when I was a young teenager, I went to a school further away). I did 'vwo', my school was 'havo-vwo', the level most people take is 'vmbo', which level you can handle is based on your intelligence and on tests and what teachers say. In rare occasions people go up a level or down a level, if it turns out to be easier or harder than they thought it would be. At my school we also didn't have the groups that you sometimes see in American films, we had no "jocks" or "bikers" or "cheerleaders" or such, at my school. There were popular kids and less popular kids. Again this is just what it was like at my school when I was a student there.

 

Again I don't mean this to sound elitist :blush2:, it just seems that "chavs" as they are called in Britain, seem more prevalent among people of a lower socio-economic class, in the Netherlands. I don't know exactly what's meant by the word 'chav' though, so I hope what I've written here isn't offensive to anyone as I don't intend it to be.

 

Btw, :giggle2: at the image above of the three actors.

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Have you never played Canis Canem Edit? Or go to school? Have you never been young? It's proper of their age to wear chavs, be bullies and go to prison x)

 

Not quite sure what you mean here. My "I beg to differ" comment was in joky reference to the picture of the Slytherin actors dressed like chavs. :shrug:

 

Again I don't mean this to sound elitist :blush2:, it just seems that "chavs" as they are called in Britain, seem more prevalent among people of a lower socio-economic class, in the Netherlands. I don't know exactly what's meant by the word 'chav' though, so I hope what I've written here isn't offensive to anyone as I don't intend it to be.

 

Btw, :giggle2: at the image above of the three actors.

 

You didn't say anything offensive, don't worry. :) I think this is just a case of a simple joke being taken a bit too seriously. :rolleyes:

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You didn't say anything offensive, don't worry. :) I think this is just a case of a simple joke being taken a bit too seriously. :rolleyes:

Thanks. I am sorry though, I sometimes have trouble seeing that something is a joke and instead I take it too seriously. It gets me in trouble sometimes, socially :blush2:.

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I LOVE those Ravenclaw clothes!! I have a Hogwarts pjyama top, which I got because I couldn't find any decent Ravenclaw stuff in my Penneys (Primark is Penneys here, don't ask.) I'm so jealous! I wonder if maybe they're in my Penneys now... I might have to have a look over the next few days, coz I would really love to have them.

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I have played bits of this game and seen my boyfriend play large parts of it. It's an interesting game.

 

 

I've been to three schools since the videogame was released; in the internet, I've been in several gaming forums and one football forum for alpha-males. You're the first person to have actually both recognized and played it. Who would say, it's even fairly popular, I never understood how I'd never find someone who played it. Perhaps it's more popular up north.

 

Not quite sure what you mean here. My "I beg to differ" comment was in joky reference to the picture of the Slytherin actors dressed like chavs. :shrug:

 

I'm also joking. The fact is one of those slytherin chaps was condemned to prison a few years ago for violent behaviour.

 

 

I LOVE those Ravenclaw clothes!! I have a Hogwarts pjyama top, which I got because I couldn't find any decent Ravenclaw stuff in my Penneys (Primark is Penneys here, don't ask.) I'm so jealous! I wonder if maybe they're in my Penneys now... I might have to have a look over the next few days, coz I would really love to have them.

 

Please, tell us more about this Penneys.

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Primark is Irish, it opened under the name Penneys here in Ireland but when the owner Arthur Ryan took it to the UK, he changed the name outside of Ireland to Primark to avoid confusion with J. C. Penney, an American name/brand. :)

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Good, I'm glad to hear it :D!

 

:D

 

I LOVE those Ravenclaw clothes!! I have a Hogwarts pjyama top, which I got because I couldn't find any decent Ravenclaw stuff in my Penneys (Primark is Penneys here, don't ask.) I'm so jealous! I wonder if maybe they're in my Penneys now... I might have to have a look over the next few days, coz I would really love to have them.

 

Yeah, I'd definitely go and check! My sister got hers quite a few weeks back, and she said it looked then like it was the end of the line - they only had Hufflepuff and Slytherin stuff. Good luck getting the Ravenclaw stuff - be sure to check the men's department too, as they had some jackets that weren't in the women's section. :D

 

I'm also joking. The fact is one of those slytherin chaps was condemned to prison a few years ago for violent behaviour.

 

Ah, those Slytherins - always up to no good! :giggle2:

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Review: 'The Black Company' by Glen Cook

 

 

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Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead. Until the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her...

 

 

This is the first time I’ve delved back into The Black Company since I first became acquainted with the series about eight years ago. Although at first I struggled to immerse myself in Cook’s writing, it quickly became a very enjoyable read and a refreshing change from some of the doorstops I’ve been reading lately.

 

The Black Company is written from the point of view of Croaker, a physician and annalist working for a mercenary force called – you guessed it – the Black Company. The Company have been hired by The Lady, an ancient tyrant who, along with her monstrous generals (twisted supernatural beings known as the Ten Who Were Taken), is intent on defeating the Rebel armies and ruling all the known lands.

 

I’ll admit I struggled to get to grips with the novel at first, being somewhat taken aback by Cook’s curt writing style. The Black Company is largely comprised of brusque prose and terse descriptions, which lends even major scenes an air of “blink and you’ll miss it”. The novel is a little disorientating at first, skipping over major events in the storyline in between paragraphs, but the style is something I quickly became accustomed to.

 

I think The Black Company is the first example of ‘grimdark’ I ever read, and I still remember the thrill I had when first reading it (even if I don’t remember much else). A bunch of characters who are actually fighting on the side of the bad guys? At the time I’d never heard of anything like it, though of course nowadays grimdark tales are a dime a dozen. One thing that stands out here is the way Cook really does emphasise the mercenaries’ . . . well, mercenary nature: Croaker and the rest are almost always motivated by greed and selfishness, and yet still somehow come across as sympathetic (well, most of the time).

 

Cook has created a grim, eerie, satisfyingly dark world, and does a great job establishing it here. His casual references to the Taken help contribute to the dark atmosphere, with evocative (if slightly unimaginative) names like Nightcrawler, Soulcatcher, Moonbiter, Bonegnasher, The Howler, and The Hanged Man. They lurk threateningly on the periphery of the story, shrouded in mystery, and I think it’s brilliant. However, I do wish they’d played more of a prominent role in the action: they add a thrill of horror and threat to the story, but unfortunately seem to do little else.

 

The Black Company is packed full of action; however, most of it is tersely described from a distance, as befits the premise of Croaker as annalist. This can make it come across as more of a list of events, and as a result it can be a bit dry at times. I also found myself having a bit of an issue with the sheer numbers involved. Cook informs us that there are hundreds of people in the Black Company, yet we only ever see a handful, and the others are barely even mentioned except when Croaker infrequently refers to the Company as a whole. It was difficult for me to reconcile my initial image of a relatively small group of mercenaries with the massive force we’re told they are later in the book.

 

Similarly the description of the battle towards the end didn’t really seem to add up. We’re told repeatedly that the battle involves over 250,000 combatants, yet the author never really manages to convey the true scale of the conflict – instead it just seems like he’s listing numbers.

 

One final issue: while I do really like having the story narrated by Croaker, I find that the biggest problem with using a single first-person narrator lies in finding pretexts for having them witnessing or participating in key events. In this case I found the pretexts for getting Croaker in the thick of things (namely getting sent on special missions by the Lady again and again, despite not being one of the most skilled fighters in the company) to be a bit flimsy. However, I did enjoy how the plot of The Black Company twists expectations: the sub-plot actually ended up becoming the main plot, with its resolution feeling almost more climactic than that of the main conflict.

 

So. When I first started my re-read of The Black Company I almost put it down again, as I struggled to see how I’d enjoyed the series so much all those years ago. But it didn’t take long before it booked its ideas up, and now I can’t wait to revisit the rest of the series.

 

4/5

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Brilliant review, Laura  :smile:
 

 

His casual references to the Taken help contribute to the dark atmosphere, with evocative (if slightly unimaginative) names like Nightcrawler, Soulcatcher, Moonbiter, Bonegnasher, The Howler, and The Hanged Man.
 

 

They do remind me of the way Erikson names some characters, though, particularly his Malazans.  Another thing he 'borrowed' from Cook, perhaps :D 
 

 

I also found myself having a bit of an issue with the sheer numbers involved. Cook informs us that there are hundreds of people in the Black Company, yet we only ever see a handful, and the others are barely even mentioned except when Croaker infrequently refers to the Company as a whole. It was difficult for me to reconcile my initial image of a relatively small group of mercenaries with the massive force we’re told they are later in the book.

 

I think that's true - I only ever really imagined them as a small group, so it was slightly disorienting when it went large scale like that.  I have that problem with a lot of fantasy, I must admit.  It must be very difficult to convey such huge numbers effectively.  I think the author(s) have to walk a line between focusing on too few characters or too many, and I think a lot of them veer towards the latter - Erikson certainly does in the later books, and GRRM sure as hell does.  As a case of the opposite, I remember reading Zelazny's Amber books and him throwing around numbers of dead like confetti and it had no effect on me at all, because I had no idea who any of them were :shrug:
 
 

One final issue: while I do really like having the story narrated by Croaker, I find that the biggest problem with using a single first-person narrator lies in finding pretexts for having them witnessing or participating in key events.

 

That can be a major problem with first-person narrative, yeah.  One of the worst cases of it that I've come across was in C J Sansom's Heartstone, where he had to come up with the most convoluted reasons for Shardlake - a lawyer - to go onboard the Mary Rose as it goes up against the Spanish Armada.  Made no sense whatsoever :doh:  :lol:  I think there was more of a justification for it in Croaker's case, as the Company annalist.

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Brilliant review, Laura  :smile:

 

Cheers Steve! :D

 

They do remind me of the way Erikson names some characters, though, particularly his Malazans.  Another thing he 'borrowed' from Cook, perhaps :D

 

Definitely! It struck me more in the names of the regular soldiers - there were a lot of ironic nicknames (although naturally I can't think of an example now! :rolleyes: ) that definitely reminded me of Malazan.

 

I think that's true - I only ever really imagined them as a small group, so it was slightly disorienting when it went large scale like that.  I have that problem with a lot of fantasy, I must admit.  It must be very difficult to convey such huge numbers effectively.  I think the author(s) have to walk a line between focusing on too few characters or too many, and I think a lot of them veer towards the latter - Erikson certainly does in the later books, and GRRM sure as hell does.  As a case of the opposite, I remember reading Zelazny's Amber books and him throwing around numbers of dead like confetti and it had no effect on me at all, because I had no idea who any of them were :shrug:

 

I think that was why I started getting a bit lost around Toll the Hounds. Some of the POV characters he puts in - like the people in that Snake thing, and the woman with the K'Chain Che'Malle, and even those Tiste Andii - all felt kind of unnecessary, and a bit hollow compared to the others. They definitely detract from the final books in the series. Although, strangely enough, I don't have a problem with all Erikson's minor characters - more often than not their names make them easy to remember (especially the soldiers), and they help flesh out the story and create a sense of lots and lots of actual people, rather than just actual numbers.  

 

Great review! I'm glad you enjoyed the book. Is this the first in the series?

 

Thanks Gaia! It is, it's the first in the Black Company series. I think there are 10 books in total. :)

 

I've had this on my wishlist for years but never actually felt like reading it. Great review although it has left me in the same limbo state, wanting to read it but not actually being bothered to :blush2:

 

You need to read more Malazan first! ;)

 

Nah, I'd definitely recommend it - if nothing else it's rather short, and might give you a nice break from some of those wordy tomes you've been ploughing through lately. :)

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