I've been re-reading Gardens of the Moon over my lunch breaks, and just indulging the hell out of it. I'd read about a dozen pages or so and then pack it up for the next day. This is what I should have done the first time I tried me some of this Malazan Book of the Fallen—taken my sweet time.

I appreciate Steven Erikson, now, for what he's doing. When I first read it in college, Gardens of the Moon made no sense and I was like, Warrens? I'm enjoying the reread a lot now, for some reason, despite not understanding everything. It's probably because of random forum people reassuring new readers to stick with it and that it'll pay off. And there's always something about projects like this, ones with such sheer scope and depth and ambition, that seems to require a bit of faith on the beholder's part. Like the Pyramids.

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It also helps that I'm reading the august and hefty hardcover tenth anniversary edition I won from Neth (thanks dude!), rather than my disposable mass paperback copy with mediocre cover art.

I never really got why people would pay for expensive hardbacks. Sure you get the book faster, but just borrow it from the library and then if it's really good, buy the paperback, which will have the same exact story inside. But now I think I see; it's the presentation and feel and better paper and roomier text layout and secure binding; the reading experience definitely improves and is worth the premium.

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I finished Ken Scholes's Lamentation a few weeks back, but didn't want to write a review for it. One, because I'm lazy, but two, because the book didn't stir me. I felt no urge to broadcast. The book's good, don't get me wrong, but not that good. It's in faint praise territory. Characters are well-developed; the worldbuilding is imaginative and thought out; plot's interesting and stuff happens regularly. So what am I complaining about? As with all things concerning taste and preference, reason and logic don't factor into what I like or dislike, really, most of the time. It's about gut, baby. I either like something or don't like it; it's not a choice. But I better articulate some reasons so I don't lose all credibility.

So Lamentation is a solid story, with good meat. But it lacks a certain spirit, the kind that stays in your head after you read, and follows you home. There's no haunting here. Nothing's particularly memorable, and it's a pretty ordinary fantasy novel. Now, I read fantasy for the extraordinary, that's the whole point, right?

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I've got two Guy Gavriel Kay books atop my to-read pile, oh boy oh boy. Tigana and Under Heaven, yes please!

Avempartha is the second book in Sullivan's fantasy series and easily matches the quality of his debut, The Crown Conspiracy (review here!). The transition to this sequel is nice and smooth, and really shows how much it pays off to plan a series from the very beginning rather than winging it and retconning later on. Royce and Hadrian are still awesome and go off adventuring like no one's business. We also find out more about their pasts and get inklings of their major significance to the bigger story. This adds a hearty, meatier depth to their sugar-high swashbuckling. I still don't care at all about Prince Alric and Princess Arista and have to endure their character development. I wish Arista would just rip the Nyphron Church and everyone new ones and say "Screw you and your double standards for using magic, you hypocritical bigots. How'd you like this for witchcraft—" before she throws them facefuls of fireballs. But I imagine it'll be a few more books until Arista really busts out her magic and kicks some misogynist ass.

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Avempartha picks up where The Crown Conspiracy

leaves off, but the story is pretty self-contained. A farm girl named Thrace hires our reluctant heroes Royce and Hadrian to break into an elven tower—its name and picture proudly shown on the cover—and to retrieve from within a special sword, the only weapon that can kill the beast that's terrorizing her village. It's a great premise I think, classic fantasy. Going back to what I said in my review of the first book, I feel so dang comfy with these books and I settle in snug like you won't believe.

Thrace is a great new character, and makes up for Myron's absence in this book; I started rooting for her from the get-go. She's from a simple village and doesn't know the worldly ways of cities and kings. But she does know the importance of family and friends, personal responsibilty and courage, and all the real things that actually matter. I thought Thrace was just an inconsequential quest-giver in the beginning of the story, but Sullivan has grand plans for her—Avempartha's really her book. Her character climax coincides—not so coincidentally— with the book's climax in Chapter 14, "As Darkness Falls." Hooey, that chapter evoked the very feelings of awe, joy, and triumph that I specifically read fantasy to get evoked.

The world-building in this book rocks my socks, and finally more of the magical elements come into play. The titles of the books themselves reflect this shift in emphasis: we went from decidedly medieval castles, dungeons, and political assassinations in The Crown Conspiracy to fantastic wispy elven towers, magical beasts, and rune swords in Avempartha. Here's a taste of the atmosphere, as Sullivan introduces the titular tower in full descriptive prose:

Out in the middle of the river, at the edge of the falls, a massive shelf of bedrock jutted out like the prow of a mighty ship that ran aground just before toppling over the precipice. On this fearsome pedestal rose the citadel of Avempartha. Formed entirely of stone, the tower burst skyward from the rock shelf. A bouquet of tall, slender shards stretched upward like splinters of crystal or slivers of ice, its base lost in the billowing white clouds of mist and foam.

There's deep history here. The river the ancient tower sits on

separates human lands from the lands where the elves have retreated. They're still there on the other side, biding their time perhaps. And what's really cool, the tower uses the rushing torrents around it as a power source. A power source for what? RAFO.

As a petty aside, to save you undue stress and speculation, the beast is a dragon (it's also there on the cover). Now, Sullivan doesn't call it a dragon; he calls it a Gilarabrywn. But as far as the reader—and the entire Western culture—is concerned, a powerful flying lizard is a dragon. Too bad Mr. Sullivan! You can't win this one.

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The book ends on a cliffhanger of sorts. While the main plot centers around Thrace and the tower and the dragon, with Royce and Hadrian in the thick of things, other plots are a-brewin' at the periphery. The greater arc involving the Church, the Empire, and the Heir starts to engage and Sullivan's pulling out some of the stops. I'm going to stay vague and annoying about this because I care, dear readers.

You'll like this book if you liked the first book, as the

traditional fantasy style remains consistent so far across the books in the series. It doesn't look like Sullivan's going to go stream-of-consciousness on us or make the horses into viewpoint characters any time soon. I think you'll like this book even if you didn't like the first book very much. The world of Elan opens out and becomes more extraordinary here, stakes are higher, and events gain momentum and consequence. Onward to Nyphron Rising!

I've been pouncing on any and all news about Brandon Sanderson's upcoming The Way of Kings, and hounding his blog and twitter incessantly for the latest. The release of the cover art yesterday is huge news for me; my heart jumped when I saw an image in his latest blog post. Mind, just the fact that there was an image there elicted my bodily response—it didn't even register with me what the image was before I involuntarily got excited.

I then settled down and actually looked at the cover. After all that anticipation, I was dismayed my first thought was a big meh. I don't think it's all that great, despite wanting it to be. For one thing, I didn't really know what I was looking at when I first saw the art. The way the text covers up parts of the image—not a lot, but enough—makes it hard for me to parse at first glance. For example, the sword seems to emit a blue beam of light, but the big "Way" of the title covers up precisely the tip of the sword to make this unclear. I also thought the flag pole was another weapon until I realized there is a flag under there. I read the tor.com post about The Way of King's cover creation process and the full painting by Michael Whelan is

just absolutely amazing. Cropping the original art into the narrow space of a cover, and making the title fit with it, unfortunately really took their toll.

I do like the content of the cover a lot more than its presentation. I still don't really know what's going on in the scene depicted on the cover—a sunset duel in inclement weather?—but whatever it is, I'm intrigued and want to know what happens. I would definitely pick this book off the shelf if I stumbled upon it and hadn't known about it already or religiously stalked its progress for months...

So now, if only books somehow existed in HD widescreen format that could effectively show off scenic art for their covers... Something like the re-released eBook cover for Lord of Chaos, which is amazingly cool and side-scrolling (Always a plus!). They should replace physical book covers with OLEDs :p

Feast your eyes! I really liked the UK covers for Robin Hobb's recent Rain Wild Chronicles, so I poked around and discovered that Harper Voyager carried this most exquisite design for all her books. Animals! Jackie Morris designed them all.

These have the same layout as George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire books, with the big name on top, isolated image, and title on the bottom, but less shiny and serious. The nice papery texture, pastel background, and hand-drawn critter menagerie—with the odd ship—just make me want to collect them all. I haven't read Hobb's books—got halfway through Assassin's Apprentice—so I don't really know if there are dragons all over the place in her trilogies, or the significance of the pony in The Golden Fool, but I bet it'll be fun to guess why they picked a particular icon for each book.

This will be the first of a different sort of post that I'll put up when I'm not reviewing something. It'll be about writing, which I hope will be interesting to other aspiring writers out there. Specifically in this post, I'll tell you about my motivations and why I even want to get published in the first place.

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I first encountered the dubious existential state of "pre- published" mentioned on Editorial Anonymous. As a, uh, pre-author myself, I can easily understand the craving to tell people you're a writer or you're writing a novel, but then needing to reconcile the inconvenient fact that you haven't actually written anything, or haven't got any publisher's attention, by resorting to the salve of optimistic euphemism. It's like saying you're "in between jobs." (Really gross; I'm glad I never actually heard anyone say this for real.)

I'm glad people are willing to delude themselves and compromise their integrity for the sake of appearing to be a writer. It's like lying about your age. Writers are the vaguely late-twenties people in a room full of forty-year-olds. This

means writers are respected and the profession's a commodity! It's certainly why I'm drawn to it.

I want to be famous and known worldwide for my profound insights and entertaining stories, and rich enough to write full time. That is my dream and it's certainly glitzy enough. And it seems so amazingly simple. I don't have to audition, get an interview, raise capital, fill out an application, obtain a license, or deal with any of those artifical barriers to entry—essentially, all I have to do is put words down on paper.

And the best thing about this: writing is really super hard for me, and publishing I know is even harder. If (when!) I do become a published author, it'll be a worthwhile accomplishment after years of practice and hard work. I love a challenge.

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My illusions of grandeur—about fantasy authors that is!—are fueled by authors' blogs, especially the chummy kind where they share with you how they became authors and show you the pitfalls and shortcuts along the path to publication. Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson, for example. I find

these blogs so fascinating, and educational too. Not only do they tell me how they went about writing and getting their book published, they show all the cool things that happen to them once they've succeeded. Fan mail! Book signings! Nunchucks in the mail!

It's not all sunshine and roses of course. The authors who don't make it big sure as hell won't blog about their overdue bills and relationship problems. But it's great fun to know what's possible if you do make it big.

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So that's background. I'll tell all about what happened after I decided that the writer's life is for me and actually sat down to write. *cliffhanger*