Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz *

In the kingdom of Gweynedd, magic is forbidden and the Deryni, the sorcerers that use it are considered outside the pale. When the young king Kelson's father is killed by the evil sorceress Charissa, he and his Deryni advisors Morgan and Duncan must find a way to defeat her. They stand against the might of the Church and their own magical nature in an effort to survive. For Kelson is the child of the Deryni and this is a dangerous thing to be in the eyes of the Church. This is a wonderful book that I highly recommend. The book is available in both paperback and Kindle and Nook.

Dreams

I warned you that I would include some of my own writing in this blog. :) This is a poem I wrote called Dreams.

Dreams

Do dragons roar within your mind? 

Do unicorns fill your heart?

Do you feel the beat from ol' Pegasus' wings?

Do you see fairies in the dark? 

Do you hear the giant's earthly bellow?

Or the woodland elf's sweet song?

Have you drank ale with the hobbit?

Or brought your dreams along?

Tales Before Tolkien

So I decided on another category for the blog, classic fantasy. Many of the books in this category would be considered science fiction by their authors, but in today's modern world they seem more fantastical than science fiction. I will also review a few myths in this section as well. Today we know these stories to be fantasy, but at the time they were written they were taken for the truth. My criteria is simply this: these stories came out before J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit in the 1930s. In that vein I will start this off with a book entitled Tales Before Tolkien.

This collection edited by Douglas Anderson has many stories that Anderson thinks may have influenced Tolkien. In some of them like the Story of Sigurd, Tolkien actually acknowledged the influence. Others Anderson simply thought had similar themes to Tolkien's work.

 One of my favorite stories in this collection is the story of Puss-Cat-Mew, a story based very loosely on the nursery rhyme of the same name. The nursery rhyme goes as follows: Pussy Cat Mew jumped over a coal/And in her best petticoat burnt a great hole/Poor pussy's weeping, she'll have no more milk/Until her best petticoat's mended with silk. In the story Puss Cat Mew is a fairy maiden who to falls in love with a young man. When her petticoat is burned, she is captured by a horrible ogre and her husband has to go save her. It also has an interesting origin of Stonehenge. It suggests that Stonehenge is the ruins of the Ogre's fortress. 

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief *

So I decided to do something new here: a book/movie review. These are books and movies where there were only one adaptation of said book so that there is no other means of comparison as in my world reviews. The first book/movie is Percy Jackson.

The story follows the life of Percy Jacks, son of Poseidon. Yes that Poseidon, Greek god of the sea and earthquakes. In the book, Percy is a twelve year old kid who is sent to Camp Half-Blood because most of the Olympians thinks he stole Zeus' lightning bolt and Hades' helmet of Darkness. When Percy learns that Hades has kidnapped his mother and is holding her for the ransom of the helmet, which Percy doesn't have, he sets out on a quest with Annabeth, daughter of Athena, and Grover the Satyr in an effort to find the real thief of both legendary items and rescue his mother from the Underworld. What's funny is that I remember seeing these books when they first came out 11 years ago now. I picked it up, read about Greek gods showing up in modern New York City, and decided it was stupid. It wasn't until I saw the movie that I went and found all the books and read them.

The movie is very different than the book. Many of the side notes have been deleted and Percy has aged about 4 years to age 16. But hey, I still think it's great. In this one besides the quest to rescue his mom, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover engage in the additional quest of finding Persephone's pearls so that they can actually get out of the Underworld. This quest takes up most of the movie. Although many people objected to its obvious deviations from the original source material, I do not find a problem with it even after reading the book. Maybe because I saw the movie first.

I would highly suggest both of them.