I have yet to purchase the new Tolkein book, however if you are looking for a review, Scott Nokes has a long list of ‘em: Children of Hurin (and a lot of Drout)

Technorati Tags: JRR Tolkein, Tolkein, Hurin, Children of Hurin

Time had a brief review of The Lost Tolkien Novel.

And, I’ll be honest, it sounds promising. While I read the Silmarillion several times, it has never been a fav, and I must confess that even with all the Tolkien mania of my youth, I got bored with the collected notes that started with the Book of Lost Tales (although there are parts of Unfinished Tales, the book between the Silmarillion and the later collections of drafts and notes, that I quite enjoyed).

Still, this new discovery (and I had no idea that there was anything left for Christopher to mine) sounds like it might be an enjoyable return to Middle Earth. I would enjoy a move novel-esque visit to the First Age than the Silmarillion afforded.

I suspect that I will have to grab a copy of Children rather soon. If I do, I’ll be sure to review it here.

Via Reuters: New Potter book to hit U.S. with 12 million copies

Publisher Scholastic Corp. said on Wednesday it would release a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first U.S. printing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which hits stores on July 21.

That’s a lot of books. However, I suspect that there will no trouble selling them.

Via the AP: Final Harry Potter book due out in July

I dunno, but here are the results:

I am: Robert A. Heinlein Beginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers.

Slate has an interesting piece on Comics that reinvent the superhero genre–more specifically it looks, through the lens of Heroes at comics that have looked beyond the normal “men in tights” approach to the super-powered world and have focused, instead, on character issue.

I was intrigued to see that Concrete was still around, as I remember his earliest days (and still have his early books around here somewhere).

One side note that I think intersects with the story, as well as with Heroes itself would be the Wild Cards books from the 1980s which deal with the implications of the sudden acquisition of powers on a large scale in a way that deviated from standard comic book formulae. Of course, they were short stories and later novels, so don’t quite fit with the Slate story. Indeed, I think that the series was recently revived.

The SciFi wire has some excellent news: HBO Playing With Ice and Fire

HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s best-selling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire into a dramatic series, to be written and executive-produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Variety reported. Fire is the first TV project for Benioff (Troy) and Weiss (Halo) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Martin, a former TV writer, will write one of the episodes himself. The rest will be written by Benioff and Weiss.

The series will begin with the first book, 1996’s A Game of Thrones. Each season to follow will be based on one of the subsequent novels, which average about 1,000 pages each. Martin has nearly finished the fifth installment, but won’t complete the seven-book cycle until 2024. The author will co-executive-produce the series along with Management 360’s Guymon Casady and Created By’s Vince Gerardis.

Fantastic news and enough to guarantee that I keep HBO on my cable package!

It will be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

So reports the SCI FI Wire

I was sent a copy of Orson Scott Card’s new book Empire, which I finally finished last week.

Given that there has been some Blogospheric discussion of the book today and yesterday (for example: here and here), it seemed like a good time to post my review.

The proximate cause of the discussion was a review in yesterday’s LAT of a number of dystopian novels (including Empire and Robert Ferrigno’s Prayers for the Assassin which I have a proof of, but have not yet read). The LAT’s review wasn’t kind (but then again, neither is mine).

Below the fold are my thoughts on the book, including some spoilers.

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Those who might be fans of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, might be interested to know that he has recorded some podcasts about his work. The first, which deals with the origins of the series can be found here: Episode1.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object).

The list of podcasts are on this page at the bottom right.

If you are unfamiliar with the series, I highly recommend it. It is easily the best non-Tolkien fantasy series I have ever read. Very complex and compelling.

The bad news that one finds on his livejournal page is that Dance with Dragons will not be done by the end of this year. At one point the publication date was tagged as February. Sadly, that will not come to pass.