Monday Review: The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

I know what you're all thinking, and yes, it is true - I am about to review a *ahem* fantasy novel. A fantasy novel for the young adult market, no less.

But fear not, I have not yet taken leave of my senses, for it is a fantasy novel for the young adult market by Jasper Fforde, and as eagle-eyed readers may have spotted, that qualifier was enough to sell me on the YA fantasy novel bit.

Being for the younger market, it's shorter than your average Thursday Next novel, and a much fluffier affair than Shades of Grey, but definitely retains the flavour of a Ffordian world.

It also has as its protagonist a wise-cracking teenage girl who unexpectedly discovers that she is the last in a long line of slayers, so, you know, comparisons are bound to be come to mind - except, possibly, to the teenage target audience who might only know Buffy as some obscure old skool vampire show that knocks around on the daytime TV schedules.

But I digress. The Last Dragonslayer is set in the unUnited Kingdom, a dystopian land of faded magic, agency Wizards and Fizzy Pop, where the last dragon still lives safely in the no-mans land between the kingdoms of Hereford and Brecon - until, that is, the Last Dragonslayer is summoned...

You get the picture. Essentially this is the origin story of Jennifer Strange, Dragonslayer; but it is also the origin story of a world which, in the rest of the trilogy, will be changed because of her actions. Whether that world turns out just to be Hogwarts with jokes remains to be seen (at least by me). It certainly could go that way, were it not for that qualifier again: 'by Jasper Fforde', which of course means it is far more likely to turn into Buffy meets Monty Python, and what's not to love there?

So, yes, it's a YA novel, so it's not as deep or as dark as Shades of Grey, the characters are not as well formed as Thursday Next (at least not yet), and there is of course a coming of age theme (none of which are bad things, unless you really dislike YA novels or a quick, easy read). Yes, it's a fantasy novel, with magic, dragons, quarkbeasts and so on. But above all, it is a Jasper Fforde novel, with the brilliantly imagined world, surreal Ffordian humour, and those special features tucked away in the dusty corners of the author's website. Definitely one to add to any comic fantasy bookshelf.

 

Linky goodness:

My review of Shades of Grey

Dragonslayer Trilogy website

Stupid movie idea of the year

Yes, you've all probably heard it already, but I just want to add my voice to those saying what an utterly bonkers idea it is trying to make a new Buffy movie.

The original movie was pants. The fact that it spawned one of the best TV shows of the 90s shows that while the idea was undoubtedly good (witness the amount of sub-Buffy pretenders to have appeared since), it was the way the cast worked together, and the brilliant writing (is Buffyism in the dictionary yet?) that made it the phenomenon it was. (When was the last time you saw the name Sarah Michelle Gellar in a tabloid article without being prefaced by the words 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer star'?)

If Fran Rubel Kuzui can get a cast, and writers, that good, there should be no need to bring Buffy back from the dead (again, poor girl!). If not, well, why drag Buffy's good name back to the Hollywood mediocrity from whence it rose?

And as for doing the whole thing without a link to the show, or involving Joss Whedon... I refer to my previous comment about mediocrity.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, they want to reinvent Ghostbusters too... but at least having the Pete, Ray and Egon there to hand over to Eliza Dushku (am I right in thinking Dollhouse is just a big Dusku fetishist's paradise?)

And isn't it annoying when bloggers who pretend they can write keep starting sentences with 'and'?

Ok, rant over. Thank you for your time.

On Demons...

Take a teenager who unexpectedly turns out to be the last in a long line of vampire hunters. Give them an eccentric foreign mentor called Rupert, who has access to a vast library of occult reference material, a vampire-turned-demon-hunter who the hero might take a fancy to, and a best friend who apparently has nowhere else to be. Then send them out to battle not only vampires, but all manner of demons and other nastiness.

The problem with any TV series about vampire hunters – and especially one about teenage vampire hunters – is that it’s going to be compared to the TV show about vampire hunters.

And you have to have something pretty special in order to stand up to that… hijacking the Van Helsing mythos and giving Gene Hunt a pointless American accent is not really going to cut it.

So Demons, ITV1’s latest attempt to tap into the Doctor Who fanbase has left me about as underwhelmed as Primeval did. It’s a decent enough way to waste an hour in front of the telly, and being a 6-parter, it doesn’t threaten to take over too much of life…

On the other hand, the series is nearly over and I’ve only just mentioned it because I’ve ended up stacking episodes up on my Sky+ box, just not caring enough to watch them.

Tuesday Tunes vs CSFF Blog Tour: Shade

I should, of course, still be NaNo-ing, so I'll keep the intro short (unless I can figure out a way to incorporate it in my word count).

This week the CSFF Blog Tour is featuring Christian vampire novel Shade by John Olson, which of course means that Tuesday Tunes is featuring the Top Ten Vampire Songs, personally selected by an elite team of undead pop music fans.

10. Annie Lennox - Love Song for a Vampire
This is horrible, but I couldn't of many songs with vampire in the title. In by default, really.

9. The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into the Sun
This is the first track on the album Rules for Indie Rock Vampires. Isn't it? Well, it should be.

8. The Kinks - Little Miss Queen of Darkness
Nothing to do with vampires, but a nice little Kinks tune from the 60s.

7. Kristin Hersh - Teeth
This is from Kristin's first solo album after leaving the Throwing Muses. It has a swear word in it, and lots of other words that don't really make any sense. You have been warned.

6. Moby - Live Forever
I mayve mentioned before that every top ten should have seven minutes of electronica. So here it is.

5. Arctic Monkeys - Perhaps Vampires is a Bit Strong But...
...I bet they look good on the dancefloor.

4. Living in a Box - Living in a Box
You're just jealous you didn't think of it.

3. Sultans of Ping FC - Teenage Vampire
I blogged the Sultans a while back. I couldn't get Teenage Vampire on mixwit, but everyone needs to hear Where's Me Jumper? so I put that on instead. So sue me.

2. Snow Patrol - How to be Dead
This should probably be the subtitle to Rules for Indie Rock Vampires, shouldn't it.

1. Evanescense - My Immortal
An obvious choice, not only because it's the best song on the list, but also because the pop-goth style of Evanescance is perfect for all things vampiric. And Amy Lee is my favourite rock chick, but that's another story.

Sci-fi song of the week

Is it possible to find a sci-fi related vampire song? Taking the view that vampires belong in realms of fantasy rather than science fiction? Well of course it is. To which end I give you...

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme by Nerf Herder, now playing on the sci-fi songs mixtape.

Oh, and when you've enjoyed all the music, pop round the blog tour, would you? The route is on the last post. Just tell people I said hi - I'd stop by myself, but I should be writing.

Podcastle: Cup and Table

Regular readers may recall that I don’t get fantasy. Nonetheless, I do keep half an eye on the feed for Podcastle, just in case a story comes along that straddles the genre borders or otherwise grabs my attention.

Cup and Table by Tim Pratt was one such story. It caught my attention primarily for being a Holy Grail story, and turned out to be just such a genre-straddling stories – it has a dash of time travel, and with the addition of some spandex it could have been a superhero story – but at heart it’s the sort of urban fantasy that Joss Whedon made me a fan of all those years ago.

I liked the world, I liked the anti-heroes of the Table, and I think I liked what it said about God. But what sticks in my mind, apart from the ending, is the character of Carlsbad. Here is an entity made up of the collective evil of mankind. I’ve no idea how original that concept is in fantasy literature, and I don’t really care. It appeals to me. It appeals to me as an obvious parallel to so many things in the real world, like the porn industry, an entity whose existence depends on the collective lust of mankind. Same goes for drugs, weapons… ours is a world stalked by Carlsbad and many others like him. I guess that’s another idea to add to the story stew constantly bubbling away in my head…

Anyway: Cup and Table. If you’re prepared to accept that it’s a story entirely about bad guys, and has a bit of swearing in it, it’s definitely worth a listen. And, Tim, if you're reading, I could definitely stand to hear more from this world. ;)

Have you seen a blowfish driving a sports car?

And so begins Season 2 of Torchwood. Hopefully this opening line is a precursor to a Torchwood that doesn't take itself too seriously, and concentrates on entertaining, like big bro Doctor Who.

That said, I am raising no expectations at this stage as to whether it has addressed the shortfalls of series one. I will almost certainly stay tuned, if only because it's on in Heroes' old slot, which, coming after Jericho finishes elsewhere, makes for a good evening's telly.

Anyway, the opening episode: a smidge predictable at times, but, yes, entertaining. I may have chuckled a couple of times. Jack is a bit less angsty having resolved his issues with the Doctor, and a bit more like the Captain Jack we first met. I liked Captain John, but I can't help wondering how long I can watch him before wanting to actually watch Spike. (I don't think there was any intention to hide his Spikey origins; unless the 'sewer chic' comment and his enquiry as to the whereabouts of the blonde were meaningless coincidences.)

Unfortunately, Captain John's soundbite from next week's trailer suggests that one of my gripes with the first series hasn't gone away:

"It's all sex, sex, sex with you people isn't it?"

Then again, maybe they'll just have a laugh about that too.

Dang, I said I wasn't going to do that...

Project Seven musings

So I've been thinking a bit about my current writing project. My protag's life story is starting to come together quite nicely, but I'm still not sure how it will ultimately be presented. Not being a big reader of books without some speculative element, I'm probably not well placed to start writing one. So the question remains: how to include a speculative element so that I can write the story in my preferred genre?

Some vague possibilities have occurred:

The futuristic sci-fi version

In Star Trek: Nemesis, Picard meets a younger, more evil Picard, a clone created some time in the past. Watching this recently made me wonder - what if you found you had been cloned, there was another you wandering around? What if the clone had the same character flaws and weaknesses as you, but instead of choosing to resist whatever temptation this led to, chose the easy route and embraced his dark side? What happens when the two meet?

It doesn't have to be a clone, of course; the evil twin could be from a parallel universe, or the result of a time-travel experiment gone wrong. Or a 'transporter malfunction' as happened to Kirk in Star Trek. Or some mystic force such as might be found in the Buffyverse.

We could also copnsider the possibility that it isn't a physical twin, but some kind of Jekyll & Hyde complex.

The Urban Fantasy version

One potential telling of this tale always had a hint of Angel to it. I may have struck upon an idea that adds a twist to that; although, I suspect it's probably been done before, though possibly less often than the evil twin story.

If you could wish your problems away, would you? Maybe one mistake, one bad decision, that you could have excised from your life, along with all the baggage that followed it. An addiction, or a period of illness, completely removed from your personal timeline. Sounds tempting, on the surface. But in losing the bad stuff, you lose the good that inevitably comes from it: all that you learn, the ways you become a stronger person. The people you could help when they find themselves in the same situation.

That is the central dilemma in this telling of the story. Our protag meets some kind of entity with the ability to remove the darkness of his past. Presumably this entity would, effectively, have lived through the darkest chapters of our hero's life, and be left with the emotional baggage that followed.

In taking on the ills of the world, this entity becomes a sort of Christ-figure, albeit probably a very dark one. I think he has potential for exploration - is he really a Christ-figure, or is he just removing the negative so that the positive results also disappear?

Or have I just stumbled across my next project?

Normal service will resume shortly...

...in the meantime, here's a few things I've missed, just in case you have too.

Jesus loves Sci-fi. Well, we knew that, but it's always good to find someone else who knows it.

And from there I followed the linky goodness to The Gospel According to Buffy. Well, who could resist that, eh?

And for those with time to listen to podcasts, The Sci Phi Show has a little series on Science and Religion that may be of interest. I haven't got round to listening myself. (I've been pre-occupied, remember?)

Oh yes, and the Lost Genre Guild have meandered off in a podcastwardly direction too. (I haven't listened to that either!)

Um, anyway, we now return you to your regular scheduled blogging.

Project Seven

What is Project Seven?

A vast multi-national attempt to finally prove the existence (or not) of God?
Some wierd science experiment which has the unlikely side-effect of making angels and demons visible to the human eye?
Or just a vaguely good but currently aimless title for a CSF story?

Well, actually, I'm referring to the seventh item on my WIPlist. Which, oddly, was a non-sf project. However, because I am utterly hopeless at writing 'real world' stories (I may be hopeless at sf stories too, but I get a kick out of it anyway) some elements of it have gone into The Sequel. However, I don't think sf is really the genre this story needs.

So, I hear you asking, what actually is Project Seven?

Well, it's more fantasy (which I keep saying I'm not going to blog about here) than sf, but more like The Prisoner than The Hobbit. It's based in a world I dreamt up a while ago, which somebody subsequently stole from my head and made into a TV show. There's angels. There's demons. There's flashbacks - the protag has a dark past and is seeking redemption. Sounds a bit Angel-esque, I know, but there's no vampires. It's differently dark - the dark side comes from the real world. Originally there was a plane crash on a mysterious island, but I think I may have to (ahem) lose that. I might even find room for some Brit humour.

Project Seven is what I want to work on right now. There's some work needed to tweak the setting - I was thinking post-apocalypse urban fantasy, but I don't want to lean too much towards Angel. Tongue-in-cheek post-rapture world, perhaps? Or maybe Project Seven is a Quantum Leap-style time travel project, allowing my hero to go back in time and make amends for his own screw-ups...

Doctor Who and the Spin-off invasion

First there was a K-9 spin-off - in about 1981, originally - but the latest K-9 Adventures seem to have gone very quiet just lately. (Probably because no-one recognised the tin dog.)

Then there was Billie Piper: Earth Defence, which died a death when Billie didn't want to do it. Duh!

Now, Sarah Jane Smith (who was also in the original K-9 spin-off, of course) is going to battle evil with a 13-year-old neighbour for CBBC.

But most importantly, coming very soon (to me, at least :p ) is Torchwood, a proper grown-up spin-off, which sounds a bit like the X-Files filmed in Wales.

And in other news, Buffy Season 8 is set to arrive in March. Hooray! Er, but only in comic book form. Hooray, sort of.

Until then, it's endless Doctor Who reruns and Angel on DVD for me...

DVDs I'm currently loving

I'm loving Season 3 of Angel.

Angel practically disappeared from terrestrial UK TV during season 3, having switched to Channel 5 and being shown in a constantly-shifting middle-of-the-night slot. I taped a few episodes but gave up in the end, and have now worked my way through to the second half of the season on DVD.

Although I have heard bits of what's to come in the next couple of seasons, most of what I have to look forward to is completely new to me, and as I said, I'm loving it. I'm particularly loving Season 3 because Angel has just become a Dad, and that is something I can totally relate to!

I also finally got round to watching Serenity, after my DVD player packed up last time I started. (The proceeds from Yoda on Mars covered the cost of a replacement.) I was late to the party here, too - Joss Whedon is apparently no longer popular with UK TV, so I held off watching Serenity until I had seen the Firefly DVDs.

I must admit, I wasn't quite ready for how dark it got on Miranda - I think the tag line 'They aim to misbehave' kind of led me to expect a kind of Italian Job-style crime caper in space. With cowboys.

Instead, I can't help thinking it had everything a Star Wars movie should have had: witty one-liners, a huge space battle, climactic shoot-out, one really nasty bad guy, a girl who really kicks butt (a sort of post-Buffy Princess Leia, maybe), and absolutely no Jar Jar Flaming Binks. Oh, and Mal Reynolds is renegade-with-a-heart in the Han Solo mould. I reckon he'd shoot first, too.

The bigger picture themes of belief, sin and redemption crop up - and not just from Shepherd Book. Elliot made a few comments in this direction in his review a while back.

It's not all Joss, though; I've also watched a few episodes of last year's Doctor Who again. It occurred to me watching the Dalek episode, which for me was one of the series highlights, that the Doctor sacrificing Rose for the greater good of mankind became a bit of a recurring theme over the first two seasons. I'm sure it wasn't like that in the old days. I remember when the good Doctor wouldn't sacrifice a Jelly Baby for the rest of mankind...