Guns of Avalon

Good Tuesday to all! This has been a fun week for me, and I hope it was a good for you too. On to this week’s post!

Books

I am still well into my romance with The 1^st Chronicles of Amber. I read book 2 and 3, Guns of Avalon and Sign of the Unicorn.

Guns of Avalon is a great sequel to Nine Princes in Amber, it has so much depth and the descriptions of the places the Princes call Shadows reach epic and oneiric proportions. Corwin’s quest of conquering Amber is derailed, but his determination to sit on the throne rivals only that of his brother Eric, who is the actual ruler of Amber. This is a book that allows us to get closer to Corwin, thus revealing some of the truth hidden inside his imperfect memories.

Sign of the Unicorn is a faster book; it has a relentless pace that will navigate us through the political turmoil and family conspiracies brewing in Amber. The Shadow Road might be explained, the curse Corwin launched might come back to haunt him, brothers lost might be found and allies might become traitors. The key word here is might :P

The books were written in the early seventies, and it shows. This is a brand of fantasy that has a message behind it, not hidden, but subtle in its presence. This is a series about family, about loss, power, politics, treason and Shadows, the latter are wondrous worlds created and inhabited by the Princes, or their own shadows. I had wanted to read a fantasy series that evoked the sort of epic world where I could visit and relax, and rest my mind, and Amber is such a place.

I am already reading book 4, The Hand of Oberon.

I still managed to squeak by a few more chapters of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Final Empire, Volume 1 of the Mistborn trilogy (or quartet, since a new book of the series is due to be released a month from now). Like much of what I have read from him, the book is just massive, the people that inhabit his worlds are rich and colorful and interesting, customs and folklore and magic are well balanced and make for a great read. I will post more of this book next week, but again, what I have read is really good.

The Dresden Files are still on hold; I did not manage to read a single page of the first book, Storm Front, but will try to get a few chapters under my belt this week.

The Black Company is no longer on hiatus! I did manage to read quite a few chapters of the fourth book, Shadow Games, but wont comment on the book until I am done, hopefully next week. Croaker, I still love you!

Games

I am playing Dragon Age again; in between session of Final Fantasy VII of course (I am in Disc three, so I will take it easy and milk it as much as I can). Dragon Age: Origins is one of the greatest games I have ever played in my life. The scale of the world, the voice acting, the animations, the cut scenes, the story and the characters that will accompany you throughout makes this one the best RPG’s ever made. I have played this game twice already, both times (go figure) I played following the Human Noble origin story and because I bought the Digital Deluxe edition, I had a couple of quests that added a very good ally in Shale and gave me a place to keep my stuff (Storage space is a bitch in this game) in Warden’s Keep.

I usually like to play characters (in games where choices do have some sort of impact on the development of the story), tending to be more on the good side. With the two human characters I managed to fall in love with Morrigan, the sexy witch everybody hates to love or loves to hate.

For this go around though, I created a City Elf and will try to be more on the neutral side. I will let you now how I am doing.

Still waiting for SWOTOR to be launched!

Writing

Well, on Friday my two writing buddies and I discussed and dissected my short story, X’s Game, so that now I can edit and rewrite it at will, for the second and third drafts. The good news it that the story is a go, they liked it, the bad news, well, there are no real bad news. It still has a long way to go and I need to work on it still. But, we are getting there!

The Druid’s Grove is coming along fine, today I hope to finish Chapter 20 and will be a couple of chapters shy of finishing the Elven part of the story, which is the real meat and potatoes of the story. The Human and Dwarven part are going to be smaller. I love to write!

I have laid my goals for the final weeks of the year. I want to be writing 10,000 words per week, 2,000 words per day (I won’t write on Saturdays and Sundays, not yet anyway) and last week I fell short 3,000, but I am getting there.

The Druid’s Grove word count: 36,811

See you all next week.