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Popular fantasy author Robert Jordan’s website is reporting that the author died yesterday at 2:45PM. This is very sad news for fans of his long-running series “The Wheel of Time”, of which he was in the process of writing the final volume. It is somewhat-well-known that Jordan was suffering from a rare condition called cardial amyloidosis.

I was introduced to the Wheel of Time books back in high school (about 13 years ago), and quickly devoured through what was available at the time (”Lord of Chaos” had just been released). I was enthralled with the world that Jordan had created, so rich with texture and character, so real, and life-like. Granted, he borrowed from just about every fantasy archetype out there (there are only four or five different “stories” in fantasy, they’re just being rehashed over and over again), but he did it well, and that was what made the difference. Many people will say that the later books in his WoT series started to drag a bit (myself included - I really didn’t enjoy Crossroads of Twilight, but thought Knife of Dreams was much better), or that Jordan might have started off more plot threads than any author should be able to handle without tying off others, but what can’t go without saying is that he definitely changed a lot of people’s lives by his work (for example, if it weren’t for his quote on George R R Martin’s “A Game of Thrones”, I probably never would have read it, nor would I have found out how much more awesome it was than most fantasy out there).

In any event, it’s still a sad day for fantastic fiction. Robert Jordan will definitely be missed.

The Last Question is a short story written in 1956 by Isaac Asimov; he has claimed that it was his best. I read a bunch of Asimov when I was young, don’t remember it much, but undoubtedly his reputation exceeds far beyond this blog post. Read the story here, it’s very good indeed, with one of those great “wallop” endings.

Variety.com - HBO turns ‘Fire’ into fantasy series

This is cool. Sure, we’ll have to wait five years for anything to even consider appearing (longer if GRRM keeps his current book releasing “pace”), but it’ll definitely be worth it. I’ve devoured everything he’s written that I could find over the last 9 years or so, and I feel as though he stands above most other authors because he typically eschews traditional, “predictable” storylines, usually by killing off main characters and forcing the storyline to re-assess itself at every turn.

On a beautiful day like today, I can’t think of anything better to do than read, can you?

I’ve spent the last two days plowing through The Da Vinci Code. It was an interesting read, and it’s understandable why the Church feels threatened in some way by the book. My opinion is that faith is a personal thing: either you believe or you don’t. There is no physical evidence supporting the life of Christ, all we have to go on are written accounts. And you know what? That should be enough for faith. If you need more than that, then maybe you should examine what it truly means to be a Christian, that it’s Christ’s teachings about how we should live our lives that count for almost as much as the sacred mysteries.

Is the Church afraid of losing people who are easily swayed by ideas? People who will believe the book is more than the fiction it claims to be? They must not think very much of their masses. The bottom line if this: whether or not The Da Vinci Code movie is as thought provoking as other films made in recent years that provided an unorthodox look at Christianity (Monty Python’s Life of Brian, The Last Temptation of Christ, Dogma (to a lesser extent), and The Passion of the Christ (in some people’s eyes)), hopefully it will be as entertaining as the book was.

Heh, I bet the Church is just jealous that it can’t draw like the movies do, and they don’t want other people cashing in on their stories when they can’t seem to do it anymore.

PS: My wife hates me because i read the book instead of cleaning the kitchen…

A Feast For Crows is finished!

I started reading George R.R. Martin’s books several years ago, and as is the case with monster fantasy series, there’s usually an interminable wait between books. The series in question is called “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and A Feast For Crows is the fourth of what was to have been a series of six books, but will now be seven (click the link above to find out why).

I cannot recommend Martin enough as an author. His prose is always very dense and captivating, his stories are at once epic and personal, and most of all, his plotlines are relatively unpredictable: he is not afraid to kill off his protagonists, which he does with reckless abandon. Of course, it helps to have a cast of over a hundred people to play with…

Robert Jordan’s got NOTHING on GRRM’s game anymore. GET THIS BOOK! Not to mention, of course, the others in the series:

• A Game of Thrones
• A Clash of Kings
• A Storm of Swords

If you’re a lover of fantasy or historical fiction, you will NOT be sorry.

(PS: I don’t know when the book’s going to be in stores, I just know that it’s done. To put the wait in perspective, A Storm of Swords was nominated for the Hugo Award for best SF/Fantasy Novel in the year that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire won it. ASoS was far superior, as I felt the Potter book had too much exposition near the end IMHO. I also know that this is nothing compared to the wait between Stephen King’s Dark Tower books, but I don’t care)