Elijah David

Yesterday's prompt for the April Fae art challenge was Portal. Since I've been doing a poem a day this month as well as the art challenge, I started brainstorming what a portal poem might be like -- and what portals have been special to me over the years. The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that. The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland . The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enoug...

When I was planning out the topics for this month's blog posts, I had hoped I'd be finished with To Green Angel Tower  before this post so I could wrap up my Osten Ard reread series. Alas, it was not to be. Instead, today's post is brought to you by recent conversations that have inspired me to reread yet another series (though the actual rereading is probably not happening just yet). I've talked about my love of Inkheart  and its sequels in the past  but I want to talk about it just a little bit more today. Specifically, the five things about this series that have stuck with me and make it a series I will still fan out over today. Dustfinger First things first, there's this little gem of a character. At times a hardcore wise man and a ruddy coward, Dustfinger is one of the series' most complex and sympathetic characters. He is also the center of one of my favorite character arcs in fiction (it's up there with Zuko's redemption in Avatar:...

Last Tuesday, Amanda Bradburn asked me about my favorite magic systems, so I thought I would talk a bit more here about what magic systems are my favorite and why. What do I mean by magic system? Basically, any book, film, or TV series will have its own take on magical or supernatural power and how that power works -- who can (or cannot) wield it, what can magic do (or not do), what a given power's weaknesses and limitations are, etc. This understanding of magic, in its totality, is what I mean when I say magic system.* Some systems -- for example, Allomancy in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series -- are so thoroughly detailed that you actually have a systematic view of magic in play when reading the book. Others -- such as Narnia or Harry Potter -- leave far more to the imagination than they do to the schoolbooks; their focus is less on how the magic works in small details than in the larger story.** * It should be noted that (while brilliant in their own right) Sanders...

Once again, it's time to see what my Top 10 favorites in a category are. This time it's (big surprise) fantasy novels! As usual, these are in no particular order and may be subject to change at any given moment. (Favorites are rarely forever, and change as we do.) The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis I'm going to do my best to limit myself to one book per series.  The Horse and His Boy  has been my favorite book in the Narnia series since I first read them in middle school. For some reason, I have always felt drawn to Shasta's story, his journey and adventures, and especially his encounter with Aslan. I think that Aslan's words in this book, more than any other, have been the ones that resonate with my soul. While my favorite Narnia books may change order from time to time, this one always rises to the top. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien I'd put all of Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium on here, but as I said I'm trying...

Current Reads: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke                         The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier                         Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams Current Writing Projects: Thesis material, currently a story titled "A Young Man with Grassy Arms" Ray Bradbury passed away this week. This is probably the second or third time I can remember an author whose works I love to read passing away (the last was Brian Jacques, and if I remember correctly Madeleine L'Engle was in there somewhere as well). What makes this even more sad, scary or possibly frightening is the fact that in my large stack of thesis reading material this summer there sit four books of his short stories for me to read, study and subsume. I don't believe in coincidences, especially where authors are concerned. I sat on my couch for a good fifteen minutes trying to ...