Elijah David

And yes, that is a Tow'rs reference. Go listen . I just finished rereading The Queen of Attolia (only a year after I reread The Thief in hopes of reading the whole series again before getting to Thick as Thieves ). As I plotted out how to do this month's ThrowBook Thursday post (delayed from last week due to a sick Samwise, who's now on the mend), I realized that I'd already used QoA for last year's TBT in May . I'm pretty sure I blinked. Then I laughed. Then I said, "What the heck, let's review it again anyway." Everything I said last year remains true (minus me thinking QoA has multiple myths; it just has the one). But I want to add a few things that I appreciated even more on this, my third time through the book: Eugenides and his sass. "I'll stop shouting, but I won't sit down. I might need to throw more ink bottles." Attolia and everything we learn about her history Ruby earrings (if you've read the books,...

Yes, I know this is a ThrowBook Thursday post, and therefore it's supposed to be about a book that's stayed with me over the years. But I honestly wasn't sure which one book to talk about this month, and I thought I could revisit my top 10 books. Only I haven't actually done a top 10 books post. I've done posts on my top 10 books to reread , top 10 fantasy books , top 10 non-fantasy/sci-fi books , and even top 100-ish books . So today I'm going to do a Top 10 Books post, with an emphasis on why these books have stayed with me. These are the books that I would choose if I had to choose only ten books to be able to read for the rest of my life. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell One of my perennial favorites, this novel is the perfect mixture of fantasy and so-called "literary" fiction. It blends the humor and social commentary of authors like Austen and Dickens with the magic of Tolkien. It has spiritual, moral, and emotional depth. It features cr...

Here's a little background for today's post. I recently started listening to the soundtrack from The Greatest Showman  (despite not having seen the film) and the music rekindled an old, oft-buried desire of mine: to write a musical. By way of research, I started looking into my favorite musicals (again) as well as those of my friends who were quick to suggest shows they loved. One of those musicals was the stage version of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame . Despite trying to listen to other musicals as well, I've been in a bit of a loop listening to this production in the last few weeks. Between this and listening to The Phantom of the Opera  and Love Never Dies , I'm feeling a serious Beauty and the Beast reading/rereading marathon building. But that's beside the point. I want to talk about why I loved reading Hunchback  and why I love the musical. The Novel I will admit that for years I was more familiar with Disney's adaptation than with Vict...

I want to mix things up a little. Instead of a book that's stuck with me, this month's TBT is about a musical album that I can't shake: The Oh Hellos' Dear Wormwood . I mentioned The Oh Hellos a  while back  when I discussed my favorite songs inspired by Narnia, but while I love their song "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb," I didn't truly fall in love with their music until Dear Wormwood . Dear Wormwood  takes its title from C.S. Lewis' satire The Screwtape Letters , which comprises a series of letters written from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, an under-demon tasked with the temptation of an unnamed human. Despite the album's name, only one song explicitly deals with Screwtape , the eponymous track "Dear Wormwood". The album as a whole is concerned with similar themes, however, addressing temptation, lost love, death, and more with a musical tone that has evolved from The Oh Hellos' earlier acoustic style into something like...

Well, I finally finished it; the Osten Ard reread is complete. To Green Angel Tower only took me 5 months (which is longer than reading the two paperback volumes took me in high school; but then again, that was high school -- an age when reading time was far more abundant). (By the way, TGAT -- book 3 of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn  -- is actually longer in word count than the entirety of  The Lord of the Rings , so don't let's have any of that nonsense about Tolkien being longwinded, yeah?) And yes, there are SPOILERS ahead because I need to rant and rave about things. You have been warned. Cover art by Michael Whelan To Green Angel Tower  picks up in the weeks following the climax of Stone of Farewell . Josua's rebel forces are largely sequestered on the stronghold of Sesu'adra. Pryrates' and Elias' plans seem to cement more each day. Miriamele and her companions are still trying to reach Josua, with an addled Sir Camaris in tow. Things are not yet at t...

As the year draws to an end, I thought I would use this month's ThrowBook Thursday to look back on the books that I've enjoyed the most this year. If I've written about the book, I'll link to the post in its description. If not, I'll rave about it a bit. (For the sake of fairness, I'm not considering books that I read for a second or more time this year, else this would be a list of old favorites.) The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson The finale of the 100 Cupboards series. I'll be writing a full review soon, but suffice it to say that this book was immensely satisfying. Turn Coat by Jim Butcher I haven't written about my love for this series much, which I hope to rectify in the coming months. I have mentioned it here , here , and here . Turn Coat is the eleventh book in the series, which currently stands at 15 novels, one short story collection, and several graphic novels. A further collection and novel are due out in the next year or two, ...

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:...

This is a conclusion to a two-part series begun in last month's ThrowBook Thursday . Check out the brief reviews of the first four Narnia books (that I listened to for this re-read)  there . I am including last month's rankings, adjusted to include the last three books. I'll only add notes for the books not covered last month, namely The Magician's Nephew ; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ; and The Last Battle . (Has anyone ever noticed that Prince Caspian is the only Narnia title to not begin with "the"?) 7. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe read by Michael York How?! How did we pair Michael York with Narnia and get this? I expected to adore Michael York's reading because I typically enjoy him on-screen. Instead, I found his urbane style making large portions of Lewis' prose come across very condescending rather than the knowing winks that Lewis gives his readers (where he reveals that he understands life as they do). His Aslan i...

This month's ThrowBook Thursday is a sequel of sorts to July's post . My reread/relisten of the Narnia series has continued (with quite an odd reading order, on which more in a moment), though I have dropped the BBC Radio adaptations after being thoroughly underwhelmed by their version of The Silver Chair . As I've gone through the audio books and Focus on the Family Radio Theatre versions of the books, I noticed that I was ranking each against the others, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts on them in that light. First off, I am still only partway through the series. I have listened to (in this order): The Silver Chair , The Horse and His Boy , Prince Caspian , and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*. In each case, I listen to the HarperCollins audio book and then the FotF radio version (with the BBC version thrown in for SC). Secondly, I'm ranking the audio books, but including any relevant thoughts on the FotF versions, as my biggest comments there tend to be how mu...

First off, my apologies for missing Monday's post. It's been a busy week and I dropped some things. I'm also mixing things up a bit this month and switching the weeks for ThrowBook Thursday and Watercolor Wednesday (for reasons which shall become apparent next week). This month's book is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. This is the edition I first read, and the cover that comes to mind when I think of Neverwhere. If you've never heard of this book, let me give you a quick history lesson. Neverwhere  began as a TV show for the BBC. While the show was in production, Neil Gaiman worked on a novelization to bear with the cuts and changes the show made to the scripts. Now, the book is a bestseller and the show is hardly known (though it does have a cult following in some circles). When the American edition was released, Gaiman cut some things (mostly a second prologue and some humor the editor thought would go over the American audience's heads) and added others (...

I have recently been on a The Silver Chair  kick, thanks to talking about the upcoming film adaptation with some of the mods and members of NarniaWeb . It started with giving the audio book a second listen, after not going back to it for years because I hated Jeremy Northam's take on Puddleglum (read: it wasn't Tom Baker). Then I followed that up with the Focus on the Family radio adaptation, as well as the BBC Radio version. Due to that, this month's ThrowBook Thursday is a bit of a comparative review, taking a look at the different versions of the story. The Silver Chair is perennially in my favorites of the Narnia books (to be fair, I love all of them), and with the production of the film adaptation moving forward, I'm hoping the production team really gets  Narnia as a whole, not just this story. The movies till now have had a mixed vision of Narnia, falling somewhere between Lewis' Narnia and the average fantasy world of Hollywood (usually on the latter ...

I'm not 2/3 of the way through Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and I've just accepted the fact I won't finish until after The Witchwood Crown  releases. That said, I'm still loving coming back to this world after so many years away. On to the review! Michael Whelan's cover art astounds as always. Check him out here . Stone of Farewell  is the shortest book in the trilogy, which may account for why I remembered so precious little of it. The fact that I originally read the third book, To Green Angel Tower , in its two-volume paperback edition likely did not help, as I kept expecting to see things which happened in that book happen here. We begin shortly after the previous book ends, with Simon and his company held captive or hosted as warriors (depending on the individual) in the ice-bound land of the trolls. Simon continues to be baffled by the Sithi, especially his friend Jiriki, and by the world at large. He mercifully grows more mature in this book, but many of ...