The start of a new year is a good time to glance back at the past year and try to make some sense of everything that happened. I will do this in a small way by summing up some of the major ripples in the pond called fantasy during 2010. This means that I have made an overview of the best fantasy novels, series, movies, TV series and games of the past year.
Perhaps this short overview will point out a movie you have not seen or remind you of a novel you should have read during last year. If not, it will at least help you form an opinion of the level of the fantasy media in 2010.
Fantasy books and series
First, a quick look at the most popular fantasy books of the pas year. Several novels stand out but in particular Towers of Midnight, the 13th novel in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. It has been written by Brandon Sanderson and the general opinion is that he has done this quite well. This is also reflected by the number one position of the book in the New York Times Best Seller list and the fact that it remained high in this list and was sold in high numbers for many weeks.
Another novel that is absolutely worth mentioning is Under Heaven, written by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay is probably best know for Tigana but has shown that he can become a stable and important author in the genre.
Last book I want to mention is the recently released Stonewielder. Written by Ian Cameron Esslemont and set in the Malazan world he has created with Steven Erikson, it is a great read that I will review in the near future.
Fantasy movies, TV series and games
The major fantasy event on the screen in 2010 must have been the latest Harry Potter movie The Deathly Hallows: Part I. This penultimate movie in the Potter Series was of course very popular and successful and, I have to admit, quite good. I will review the movie sometime in the coming weeks.
Of course there were more new fantasy movies in 2010, like Twilight: Eclipse and Clash of the Titans. Both are entertaining films but not ones you will remember as a classic.
Looking at fantasy television series, there was the news of the cancellation of Legend of the Seeker which is a shame but not that big a loss as this TV series had dwindling viewer ratings and simply wasn’t that good. Hopefully, HBO can fill the gap and show how a fantasy TV series should be made when Game of Thrones airs on April 17, 2011!
On the game front there has not been much fantasy activity worth mentioning. The World of Warcraft expansion pack Cataclysm was very successful but that was hardly surprising.
Looking back, I would say it was a pretty decent year for the fantasy genre but not a great one. In one of the next posts I will look ahead and will explain what the year 2011 has to offer and boy, that will be something!
Stonewielder, the new Malazan novel by Ian Cameron Esslemont, is on its way to the stores and will be available soon!
In this latest novel, set in the work Esslemont created together with Steven Erikson, we will learn more about the legendary Greymane and the Empire’s Korelri campaign.
Personally, I thought that Esslemont’s previous novels, Night of Knives and Return of the Crimson Guard, were not yet completely at the same level as Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series but I thorougly enjoyed the books and he is getting there so I am really looking forward to his latest work.
Stonewielder will be published by Bantam Books on December 28, 2010.
Synopsis
Greymane believed he’d outrun his past. With his school for swordsmanship in Falar, he was looking forward to a quiet life, although his colleague Kyle wasn’t as enamoured with life outside the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. However, it seems it is not so easy for an ex-Fist of the Malazan Empire to disappear, especially one under sentence of death from that same Empire. For there is a new Emperor on the throne of Malaz, and he is dwelling on the ignominy that is the Empire’s failed invasion of the Korel subcontinent. In the vaults beneath Unta, the Imperial capital, lie the answers to that disaster. And out of this buried history surfaces the name Stonewielder. In Korel, Lord Protector Hiam, commander of the Stormguard, faces the potential annihilation of all that he holds dear. With few remaining men and a crumbling stone wall that has seen better days, he confronts an ancient enemy: the sea-borne Stormriders have returned. Religious war also threatens these lands. The cult of the Blessed Lady, which had stood firm against the Riders for millennia, now seeks to eradicate its rivals. And as chaos looms, a local magistrate investigating a series of murders suddenly finds himself at the heart of a far more ancient and terrifying crime – one that has tainted an entire land…”Stonewielder” is an enthralling new chapter in the epic story of a thrillingly imagined world.
Source: Amazon
Steven Erikson is the pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin, a Canadian author born on October 7, 1959. He has written some novels under his real name but became famous as the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, one of the greatest fantasy series ever written.
By writing this critically acclaimed series he has received much appreciation and gained a large fanbase. To me Erikson is one of the finest authors of the moment and may likely become one of the greatest ever.
Erikson started writing quite late in his life and only wrote some short stories before starting on Gardens of the Moon, the first book in the Malazan series. The Malazan world he had created together with Ian Cameron Esslemont, author of several other novels in the Malazan universe with several of the main characters of Erikson’s books.
Erikson tried selling this Gardens of the Moon, at first even intended as a movie script, in the early nineties but was unable to so. Eventually, in 1999 publisher Transworld published the book and after its succes paid Erikson £675,000 to write 9 other novels to complete the series.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Malazan Book of the Fallen is fantasy series consisting of 10 novels, telling the story about Gods and humans and the wars they fight and games they play. In the middle of all that, the Malazan empire, expanded over several continents, is slowly collapsing. As a reader you mainly follow a group oe Malazan soldiers and their battles against incredible powerful wizards, scary demons, ambitious ascendants and scheming Gods while at the same time you also look at the world and conflicts from the point of view of the enemies of the empire. Read more about The Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Steven Erikson writes like the devil himself is on his heels, producing a book almost every year. I also do not know another author who writes this intense on such an epic scale. Hopefully, he has something in mind after he finished his fantastic Malazan Book of the Fallen series.
