Matthew Sturges (Midwinter), Joe Abercrombie (The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, Last Argument of Kings) and Tom Lloyd (The Stormcaller, The Twilight Herald) at the World’s Biggest Bookstore:
The World’s Biggest Bookstore is located in Toronto, Ontario, at 20 Edward St, just north of the Toronto Eaton Centre.
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A great interview with Joe Abercrombie over on SF UK Book News. Even though it deals with the conclusion of The First Law trilogy, there’s no spoilers for us US folks. My favorite bit:
UKSFBN: Throughout The First Law you’ve taken great and deliberate delight in subtly subverting established fantasy conventions. Given that you freely confessed, last time you talked to us, to doing this on purpose, will you also admit to having increased the satire levels in the final volume, or has the trope-bashing been kept to a minimum this time around?
Joe Abercrombie: “The trope-bashing is certainly still going, more than ever in a way, since the trilogy is a single story and it perhaps diverges further and further from what the reader expects as we draw near to the end. Epic fantasy is a genre full of clichés, so you can’t really write in it without reacting to them yourself in some way – whether you embrace them, consciously reject them, or try to twist them to your own evil purposes.
“But, you know, for all the attempts to do something surprising and rework the formula and all that, I hope that what I’ve delivered first and foremost is a cracking fantasy tale. I’m aiming more for Unforgiven than for Blazing Saddles, if you like. A re-examination of the classic form, perhaps, a self-aware comment on it, perhaps, but also a solid example of the form. I’m not taking myself too seriously (despite appearances), but I’m not taking the piss either.
“Not too much, anyway.”
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Congratulation to Joe Abercrombie, whose novel The Blade Itself,
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A wealth of Joe Abercrombie over on SFCrowsnest. First, they reprint his blog entry on the influence of George RR Martin on his work (The Blade Itself,
As a kid I was very into the Lord of the Rings, and read it every year for a while. Wizard of Earthsea also had a strong effect on me. So did Michael Moorcock (particularly Corum and all the crazy names). I watched Conan the Barbarian many times more than is healthy for a teenage boy (there’s boobs in it, and I’m not just talking about Schwarzenegger’s). I started playing an awful lot of roleplaying games around this time, and with supplements from that, early fantasy-styled computer games such as Dungeon Master, Bloodwych, and Legend, cracking through a load of Dragonlance, and David Eddings first two series (or are they the same series with different covers?) I probably glutted myself on the cheesier end of the fantasy spectrum. Nothing wrong with cheese, you understand, as long as you get some fibre in your diet at the same time.
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Visions of Paradise aggregated the “Best of the Year” mentions from some twenty sources, including SF Site, Fantasy Magazine, Bookgasm, SFF World, Fantasy Book Critic, Strange Horizons, Locus Online, Locus Magazine, as well as award nominations for the BSFA, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. They then listed the books which received the most mentions, to produce a “best of the best” list. The result – Ian McDonald’s Brasyl
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Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes’s Unshelved, “the world’s only daily comic strip set in a public library, “has just done a comic strip devoted to Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself.
Now, that’s true fame!
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Patrick of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist has posted his 2007 Year-End Awards. As with SFFWorld, Joe Abercrombie (The Blade Itself /
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The guys at SFFWorld have put up their annual Review of the Year in two parts. They run through their opinions on the best fantasy books, best SF books, best films and tv shows, best comics and games. Very glad to see both Joe Abercrombie (The Blade Itself /
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Joe Abercrombie is interviewed by John Joseph Adams on SciFi Wire today. Discussing his hit fantasy The Blade Itself,
Neth Space posts their review of Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself,
As have many before, Neth praises the book’s characters, saying “Abercrombie skillfully portrays them with near-perfect internal and external dialogue set at an ideal pace. These seem like real people from history rather than some over-done cliché or archetype.”
And finally, Neth concludes “…one of the most promising epic fantasies that I’ve read in years. Abercrombie had me laughing with his guile as he stops just short of spitting in the face of genre and set my heart racing through some the best written fight scenes of any genre. This one is not just for fans of epic fantasy.”
Update 10/30/07: Neth Space also posts this hysterical interview, Joe Abercrombie Answers Five Questions. Not your usual interview, mind you.
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