Now, pretty much anyone who has an interest in popular culture is aware that the first Star Wars movie since 2005, The Force Awakens, was released on December 18th 2015. Full disclosure: while I consider myself a fan of Star Wars, I have only dabbled in the Extended Universe/Legends supplementary material. Like many, though, I was anxious to see what J.J. Abrams would make of Lucas’ legacy and booked my ticket to a showing on release day. In anticipation of the event, I did a fair amount of preparation. This blog post details my immersion in the world of Star Wars during the month of December. Out of respect for the three of you out there who have not yet seen The Force Awakens, I will place my thoughts on the movie/audiobook itself below the cut. The Rewatch Naturally, the main part of my pre Force Awakens preparation was a rewatch of the Star Wars movies released prior to Episode 7. I chose to do this following machete order. I urge you to check out the full link on why this order works, but in summary, you watch Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and then switch to the…
This week for me has been a week of Skull Thrones and Star Wars and Shakespeare, Oh My! One of the big releases of last week was The Skull Throne, the fourth in Peter V Brett’s Demon Cycle fantasy series. I have read and enjoyed the three previous ones so I was keen to read the fourth. More accurately, I should say listened to as I experienced this book in audiobook format. In general, I did enjoy it, but I did have a few issues. The biggest challenge I had was the sheer amount of in world vocabulary Brett has invented for this series. I admit it’s been a while since I read any books in the series, but at first I found all the jiwah Ka, khaffit, Shar’Dama Ka, inevera rather disconcerting and it threw me out of the story on many occasions. I ended up having to keep the Krasian dictionary open on my computer while I was listening. Eventually I was able to move beyond this and enjoy the story. For me one of the highlights of the book were the beautifully written interpersonal relationships, notably that between Ahmann Jardir and Arlen Bales. These are two men…
Yikes, has it really been a month since my last reading roundup? My apologies for the delay – life got in the way as it often does. As I’m back on nightshifts again (cue: sob, wailing, gnashing of teeth) I have been listening to a lot of audiobooks. My favourites, and a highlight of my reading/listening month, were the NPR radio adaptations of George Lucas’ Star Wars. I picked the first one up, Star Wars, some time ago when it was one of Audible’s Daily Deals but had not got around to listening to it. I rectified that mistake last weekend and loved it. This adaptation has been licensed from George Lucas, so they were able to incorporate John Williams’ iconic music and the sound effects from the movies (blasters! lightsabers! R2D2!). It boasts an excellent cast including Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels from the movies. At first it did take me a short while to adapt to the different voices for Leia, Han and Darth Vader, but the production quality and the excellence of the cast soon made me forget about that. As I’ve said before on this blog, the original Star Wars movies have such strong themes and…