Today's links

[hawkwing_lb]

Rod Rees' The Shadow Wars (The Demi-Monde: Spring in the UK) arrived in ARC form a little while ago. Well, I started reading it for review, and tweeted a few egregiously awful quotes, and the (in)famous Requires Hate got in on the act...

The Storify of the Untethered Breasts:

"Odette gave a wiggle and was pleased to see that her untethered breast jiggled in a quite charming fashion."

Someone passed on a link to the cover of the latest Kindle magazine: Rape In Wonderland.


WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

Ronan Wills discusses Hounded by Kevin Hearne, and his view on the banality of urban fantasy.

Nerds of A Feather discusses grim/dark iterations in fantasy:

[W]hat's the purpose of all the violence and cruelty in the art we consume, and specifically in fantasy fiction? When is it acceptable and when is it not?

A certain author turns up in the comments to defend his precious, as is becoming tediously de rigueur in his case, and diametrically opposed to the response of Joe Abercrombie to criticism as quoted in the post. (I have Important Thoughts, natch, on violence and fantasy, but they'll keep.)

(No, really, they'll have to keep. I've reached my procrastination limit for today.)


And! If you've made it this far, you deserve some reward. Stylist Turns Ancient Hair Debate On Its Head:

By day, Janet Stephens is a hairdresser at a Baltimore salon, trimming bobs and wispy bangs. By night she dwells in a different world. At home in her basement, with a mannequin head, she meticulously re-creates the hairstyles of ancient Rome and Greece.

Ms. Stephens is a hairdo archaeologist.

Her amateur scholarship is sticking a pin in the long-held assumptions among historians about the complicated, gravity-defying styles of ancient times. Basically, she has set out to prove that the ancients probably weren't wearing wigs after all.

And a Dutch television show enlists two men to undergo simulated labour contractions.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The more I see of Joe Abercrombie on the internet, the more impressed I am; he comes across as a smart writer with specific things in mind that are worth doing, that appear to be very much not to my taste. And it's nice to see Use of Weapons cited as something using violence and grimness to a purpose, as that is a book I admire. I've not read Richard Morgan's fantasy, having already read enough of his science fiction to find the global grimdark there samey and ultimately boring; am I missing anything ?

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

One thing that the grim/dark fantasy article kind of glosses over (though you don't in response to rysmiel) is the degree to which the grimdark trend of the last decade or so is a deconstructive response to the more straightforward (and often problematic) epic fantasies of the '80s and '90s and before. Whether this is true on an individual author level is basically irrelevant, because even if the likes of Mr. Lawrence haven't read any of prior art in their subgenre, one can be certain that at least some of the agents, editors, and other publishing professionals involved in acquiring and selling their book are aware of it.

(There's also the argument that a fair number of the authors producing work in said sub-category grew up reading the likes of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns or the wave of imitators that followed them, in much the same way that the popularity of Vampire: the Masquerade, LARPing, and other World of Darkness stuff in the '90s probably played a role in the rise of Urban Fantasy. Even people who insist vocally that they are totally original dammit tend to absorb influences from the zeitgeist in one way or another.)