Platypus of Truth

The Herch shares his thoughts about a possible breakdown for the Hobbit Trilogy here .

Painting miniatures has been my hobby ever since Jr. High.  One of my friends discovered the wonderful world of Games Workshop somewhere in seventh or eighth grade and I've always had an especial appreciation for the quality and imagination evinced in their Citadel line.  It was a childhood dream come true when the company acquired the rights to produce miniatures based on Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings .  I don't have near the time to paint that I once did, so my ability to keep in step with the doings over at GW has greatly decreased.  Still, even if I'm behind the times, I'm always excited to see what their newest creations. Citadel's Finecast range of resin miniatures has been out for several years now, but I haven't had an opportunity to sit down and work with one until last week.  A very obliging friend sent me Korhil, Captain of the White Lions for Christmas.  I can't tell you how impressed I was.  The level of detail was ...

Well folks, the end of the summer is upon us and that means it's time for the annual "Seven Heavens of Summer Reading Awards."  For those who don't know or don't remember, the SHSRA were started right here in 2008 in honor of Michael Ward's groundbreaking Planet Narnia .  In this work, Ward asserts that Lewis ordered his seven Narnia books around seven planets of Medieval cosmology.  Thus, when the end of summer draws near, I pick the top seven reads of the summer that best match with the characteristics of the seven Medieval planets.  Without further ado, then, let's get on to the awards! Moon: For the planet of madness, change and flux we have Terry Brooks' The Druid of Shannara .  This meditation on mutability has a city turned to stone along with its godlike keeper, a woman changed into the earth, an elemental changed into a monster, a wandering minstrel into king, and finally a reluctant recluse into the first of a new order of Druids. Mercur...

Reading The Talismans of Shannara , encountering its particular tone again after so many years, brings with it a constant succession of images.  For some reason, Tyrsis and Varfleet are linked in my mind with the wintry world of Narshe in Final Fantasy III/VI (the book predates the game by two years).  I suppose there's also a Resistance in the game and several attempts to enter and escape an occupied city.  Still, I'm not quite sure how these things became connected in my mind.  Other disjointed memories come floating in: eating bread and cheese in the basement before going out to shoot with the bow and practice knife throwing, listening to the BBC's production of The Hobbit , playing a Tolkien ccg in the vaulted family room during a thunder storm.  Was I reading the book when these things happened?  Why these images and not others?  I don't know. One thing I do know: we did because we read.  Our world was interesting because it was wrapped in ...

In my end is my beginning -T.S. Eliot So, dear reader, I end where I began.  The first Shannara book I read was The Talismans of Shannara .  I don't quite remember how I came to pick up the last book of the Heritage Series first.  Somewhere along the line I suppose I got the impression that they were serial novels.  Anyhow, I was experiencing severe withdrawal after having come to end of all the Tolkien I could get my hands on.  Back then, when a young teenage boy asked what he could read next, the Shannara books were where everyone sent him.  So, just an author's name in hand, I shuttled off in my mom's Taurus wagon to the library (a wonderful, old Victorian edifice).  There among the stacks I grabbed the first volume by Terry Brooks (who I assumed at the time must be a woman since I didn't know any Terrences) that came to hand.  I remember sitting at the table in the breakfast nook and looking out the window at the forest where the trees made...

I've been on a trip and that's kept me away from the keyboard for the past week.  It hasn't kept me away from the books, however, and I ended up finishing The Elf Queen of Shannara .  Rather than try to break that huge chunk of pages down into several posts, I'm going to attempt to summarize here my thoughts on the work as a whole with a brief summary of the events since chapter 18 to help jog any faulty memories. *Spoiler Alert* When we last left our heroes, Wren had taken up her role as Queen of the elves.  Now, we have remaining in the company of the Loden only Wren+animal friends, Garth, Eowen, Gavilan, Triss, and Dal.  With Ellenroh's death, Eowen decides to tell Wren the secret behind the demons and the renewal of elven magic.  Quite simply, the elves are both the demons and the Shadowen, or least some of them are.  The elves delved too deep and too greedily and awakened that from which they fled...  Oops, wrong book.  This revealed, E...

This morning's post will take us all the way up to the beginning of chapter 18.  We're more than half-way there folks. *Spoiler Stuffs* The minute the company leaves Arborlon the body count begins to rise.  Tolkien hated character killing, but Brooks has always been willing to spill blood.  Early on, he did this with armies of red-shirted-ensigns.  With The Elf Queen of Shannara even the ensemble are no longer safe.  In a matter of a few chapters we lose both the Owl and the Queen.  From a plot standpoint, this is necessary to allow Wren to assume leadership of the company and thus become "the Elf Queen of Shannara."  Killing them off also raises the stakes forcing the reader to acknowledge that no one in this book is safe as well as investing the audience more deeply in the work via the pathos created by the death of a beloved character. Brooks' writing, from a plot standpoint, is at its best in this portion of the work.  Everything that ...

Tom Shippey points out in his Road to Middle Earth that the germ of Barad Dur, Sauron's Stronghold, comes from a scrap of Chaucer where the poet makes an offhand reference to a knight and his approach to "the dark tower."  Chaucer expected that everyone knew that story, but somehow in the intervening centuries it has become lost.  Using his imagination, Tolkien tried to delve back into the mine of story and imagine what this Dark Tower might have been.  We see several tries at this image, or several "accounts" in Tolkien's corpus.  The first is Thangorodrim, Morgoth's "dark tower," where he sits "on hate enthroned."  The second, and like unto it, is Sauron's original keep at Tol Sirion.  This is the dark tower before which Luthien, in all her frailty, stands and lays the deepest pits bare with her song (an image oddly reminiscent of protestant poets like Spenser, Bunyan, and Wesley).  Building on these two images, Tolkien constru...

So I've been doing a lot of gabbing here about the Shannara books and their relative merits as light adventure fiction.  Thus far, there's been plenty of analysis, but very little geek out of pausing to simply enjoy the books as fun stories.  In that spirit, then, I'm going to take a shot at naming my favorite characters from the first seven books and invite you to do the same.  Who are your favorite Shannara characters?  Here are mine (in chronological order?): 1. Allanon:   Tall, bearded, dresses in black, learned, mysterious past, and packing more firepower than half the star fleet.  For me, at least, he is the most interesting character in the first three books.  The little glimpses we get into his thought, history, and struggles blow everyone else away.  I also enjoy watching him age and change from the angry-young-Gandalf of The Sword of Shannara , to the more grandfatherly and sad figure in The Wishsong of Shannara .  We really get t...

This morning's post will cover up to the beginning of chapter 14. *Begin Spoilers* After viewing the city and learning a little more about the history of the elves on Morrowindl, Wren is summoned to the council hall.  Here, we have Brooks try his hand at political writing as he imagines the elven high council arguing with the Queen over the fate of the island.  Ellenroh pushes for them to use the Loden, an elfstone set in the Rukh staff that the queen carries, to magically enfold the city so that it can be transported back to the Four Lands.  After initial objections the council, of course, agrees, and plans are made to begin the journey back to the beach the following day.  We then get a magnificent description of the invocation of the Loden's magic and the drawing up of the city into the Loden.  Just as things are getting interesting, however, Brooks cuts back to Walker Boh and Cogline at Paranor. Thoughts: 1. I appreciate Brooks' attempt at political...

A quick post today just to finish off chapter 11. *Begin stuff-that-you-might-not-want-to-read-if-you-haven't-read-the-book* Chapter 11 really is the most interesting chapter (for me) in the book thus far.  Brooks keeps the pacing fast even though most of the chapter is taken up with conversation.  All the character's uneasiness and Brooks' stinginess in handing out information keeps up a good sense of tension that rolls right on to the next chapter.  Even though the space is brief, Brooks' is able to give us strong and swift portraits of the key players: Ellenroh, the Owl, Gavilan, Phaeton, and Eowen (shame on you Mr. Brooks!).  The frantic battle scene that ends the chapter with its display of the raw power the elves have rediscovered is quintessential Shannara.  These last two points, strong, swift character portraits and lavishly drawn battle scenes, are the hallmarks of the Shannara series; sometimes the only thing they have going for them.  With t...

Today's post will take us up to the middle of Chapter 11, or roughly half way through the book. *Spoiler Material* Wren, Garth, and the happy forest friends arrive a a besieged Arborlon after being chased around the island by various nondescript "demons."  Wondering what in the world they're going to do now, they run into Link the Owl who offers to escort them into the fortified city.  More nondescript monsters attack and Wren is "forced" to use the elfstones again to annihilate a city block's worth of baddies. That's about what it felt like to read things up to that point.  I wasn't able to really engage with the story and it all fell a little flat.  Even the monsters, which are usually Brook's favorite part, seemed pasteboard.  Upon entering Arborlon, however, the story finally begin to pick up some steam. Now we find out that the Rover girl is really the long lost elven princess.  Her return has been prophesied for years and she ...