Or at least my author copies have. Most of which I’ll have to pack away as we’re getting ready to move. It does look spiffy, though. The rest of the copies will be available next month–not long. You can pre-order here if you’re so inclined, and I hope you are. That way you won’t have to wait as long. Just looking out for you, that’s all.
Category Archives: Folklore
The War God’s Son — Audible.com Update
More promotion, sorry, but it happens when books are about to manifest. In this case it’s the Audible.com edition of The War God’s Son, again narrated by the inestimable Brian Nishii, is now available for pre-order. You don’t even have to read it, as Brian is doing that for you. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
The War God’s Son – Update
The official publication date is set for October 13th, just a couple months away. Here’s a link to the Prime Books web page for the book, including a description and an excerpt from the book and list of places where it can be pre-ordered. The Audible.com edition should be out at the same time, or close enough for jazz.
As the writer, I remember mostly how much work it was to get it done the way I wanted it done, the way I believed–and now I know I was right–it should have been done. As a reader, I think it’s a lot of fun, and we get much deeper into Yamada’s story. I can’t wait for it to come out.
Review: The Last Rainbow by Parke Godwin
Continuing the purge of my old writing files after a hiatus to paint the master bath. Not only am I finding stories I never published (no surprise there, not every story is a winner), I’m finding stories and articles I’d forgotten I’d written. One of which was a fairly detailed review of Parke Godwin’s The Last Rainbow. I was reviewing for the long gone Fantasy Review at the time, and as I was going through my old file I found a letter from the editor telling me they already had a review of the book, so my review was never published and I’m including it here. There are a couple of spoilers, for those among you who believe that what happens in a book is what the book is really about, so fair warning.
The Last Rainbow
1985.
Parke Godwin’s The Last Rainbow is subtitled “A Novel of Saint Patrick” and that’s certainly true—in the same sense that Firelord was about King Arthur and Beloved Exile, Guenivere. As in it’s true so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough.
Novels about legendary figures are nothing new—the bare bones of fact and myth always beg for the flesh of the storyteller’s art, but to say that the vein has been mined before is to completely miss the point. What sets our best writers apart is not chosen genre, social consciousness, or even prose style. It is their ability to look at a subject, any subject, from their own unique perspective and let the rest of us see what they see. Communication is the heart and soul of any good story. Anything less is just ‘connect the dots’ and word games. T.H. White used “The Matter of Britain” in his The Once and Future King to reflect his own society, and if the images in his mirror are cloaked in fancy they’re never hidden. John Gardner took the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf and turned it on its head, telling the story from the monster’s point of view in the masterful Grendel, and suddenly we’ll never again be quite so righteously complacent in the hero’s triumph. Agree or not, we will look again, and wonder.
All of which is a roundabout way to point out that Godwin works a kindred magic in The Last Rainbow. He takes the stone statue life of Saint Patrick, and with a superb artist’s eye, patiently chips away the gilt of time and dogma to reveal the living flesh beneath. Continue reading
Do You Want Footnotes With That?
Reference books. We tend to accumulate them in the natural course of our writing projects, whatever they may be. After all, Google doesn’t have all the answers, and while any single citation should be taken with a grain of salt, the ones you find on the internet need something more along the lines of a 50 lb bag. A source of reliable information is to be treasured, and since I’m going to be packing them up soon (oh, they are SO going with me), I thought I’d mention a few. I’ll concentrate on those I’ve found especially useful for the Yamada series and why, since I’ve been asked about them so apparently some people are curious.
Richard Parks 