Good news for fans of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller series. The once worrisome Fox TV adaptation of the bestselling fantasy series is no more. The option with the studio has lapsed, putting the franchise back on the market where it was reportedly in high demand with a number of studios at Comic-Con this past weekend.
This is great news in my opinion. The TV adaptation of this series always troubled me. It most likely wasn’t destined to get the budget and treatment Game of Thrones enjoyed on HBO and this is a series that always seemed better suited for film, where it likely would get the time, care and cast it deserves. Here’s to hoping that when the dust settles on the bidding war over the rights, it lands with a studio that is interested in making a quality product and not just a well timed cash grab with the release of the final book ‘The Doors of Stone.’
So, the bad news (as was pretty much expected) is that the final Kingkiller Chronicle book will more than likely not be released in 2014. The good news, however, is that previous statement is sort of untrue. There will be a new Kingkiller book in 2014, but it will not be the trilogy closing ‘Doors of Stone.’ Instead, it will be the recently announced novella, ‘The Slow Regard of Silent Things,’ which chronicles a tale from fan favorite character Auri.
For those who don’t know, Auri is the mysterious girl that Kvothe befriends while attending the university during the events of ‘The Name of the Wind.’ She lives a rather reclusive and enigmatic existence in the ‘Underthing’ below the school, only rarely emerging from hiding, where she happens to meet Kvothe in one of those chance encounters. Although the exact time period of Auri’s tale in ‘The Slow Regard of Silent Things’ is not divulged, it is said to profile some part of her time in the ‘Underthing.’ Perhaps we’ll get some insight into her life before she withdrew to her Smeagol like existence though.
Either way, the novella will be out later this year in November. Also, in June, be on the lookout for the short story about fellow Kingkiller universe character Bast, entitled ‘The Lightning Tree’, which will appear in the George R.R. Martin edited anthology ‘Rogues.’ And be sure to check out the full interview with Mr. Rothfuss over at Geek & Sundry.
Right on the heels of Game of Thrones returning to its fourth season on HBO (April 6th at 9 pm), author George R.R. Martin released another chapter of his forthcoming Song of Fire and Ice novel ‘The Winds of Winter’ to the public. The chapter is titled ‘Mercy’ and unsurprisingly follows the plights of a character named Mercy.
It’s all good and good that Martin is releasing material to the fans, but if he is going at the chapter a year pace, we all may be waiting for a very long time for things to wrap up. And they’ll have to recast the show a few times over before its completion, too. But in Martin’s defense, he is currently winning the prove your next book actually exists war with Patrick Rothfuss, so points to him for that. Either way, I will be excited to check out both ‘The Winds of Winter’ and ‘The Doors of Stone’ whenever they respectively hit shelves. Until then, head over to George R.R. Martin’s blog to check out the new chapter.
In honor of it being Hobbit release week, I give you Sesame Street’s Lord of the Rings parody. It is entitled ‘Lord of the Crumbs.’ It is pretty great.
With little to no news lately on the release of Patrick Rothfuss’ final ‘Kingkiller Chronicle’ book (although this week he did some funny commentary on goodreads reviews of the unreleased novel), I thought it would be fun to revisit some of the cast ideas for the upcoming TV adaptation. It was announced a few months ago that Rothfuss’ popular fantasy series would receive the television treatment a la Game of Thrones and a few sites including Buzzfeed posted their ideal cast list for the show.
A lot of Buzzfeed’s proposed cast for ‘The Name of the Wind’ are vastly different than what I imagined, but they still look like they would fit the characters well. Bill Nighy in anything as anything is always great, but I’m sure he would be especially great as the Chronicler. Eddie Redmayne (pictured above) feels like he could manage as Kvothe, but I’d be curious as to what era Kvothe he’d play. Chris O’Dowd as Manet and Idris Elba as Kilvin sound about right, but truthfully I’d endorse them even if they didn’t fit.
In Tor’s ideal cast list, they have Tom Hiddleston as Kvothe, which honestly seems to fit a little better in my mind than Eddie Redmayne. Hiddleston could really shine as Kvothe, especially when called upon to convey a great underlying sorrow to the character. And I’m sure we could find a role to shove Benedict Cumberbatch in while we’re at it. Either way, be sure to check out the full fantasy cast lists at Buzzfeed, Tor and even Rothfuss himself chiming in over at his blog.
According to io9, Fox has recently acquired the television rights to Patrick Rothfuss’ epic fantasy series The Kingkiller Chronicle. Set in a world where magic exists but is often shunned outside of academic settings, the story follows the exploits of young protagonist Kvothe who tries to avenge the death of his family and make a name for himself in the world. This is the news blurb from Deadline on the pick up.
New Regency Productions and 20th Century Fox Television have optioned Patrick Rothfuss’ fantasy trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle to develop into a drama series. Eric Heisserer (Hours, The Thing) is attached to adapt the series and will exec produce. Arnon Milchan, Andrew Plotkin, Brad Weston and Robert Lawrence (Die Hard With A Vengeance) also serve as exec producers. Set in a compelling world where the sharpest minds can master magic, The Kingkiller Chronicles tells the story of Kvothe, a streetwise young man who hopes to one day hunt down the mysterious group that murdered his family.
Seeing as Fox snapped up, developed and then failed to greenlight Lev Grossman’s similarly popular YA fantasy series The Magicians, we’ll have to see how this adaptation fares. Patrick Rothfuss’ world and characters are just too rich to squander and I hope that they take some pointers from HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation and try to get it right, because this series is worth the effort. It’d be a shame to drop the ball on this one. Learn more about the pick up on the always cool fantasy/sci-fi super site io9.
My moment of concern for today was that my grocery list, at least for twenty minutes, only had three items on it: powdered sugar, light bulbs and chapstick (I know, the cornerstones of every great meal). Anyway, moving away from that tangent, I’m going to be introducing author profiles to the site. I may eventually do some book reviews and critiques on the site, but for now I’d much rather focus on the more positive aspects of writing/reading. Truthfully, I tend to be a bit more forgiving with books and compensate by heaping unnecessarily high amounts of criticism on movies (I swear I’m not a movie snob though, I thoroughly enjoy bad movies).
I suppose someone told me Brian Jacques passed away in February, but I really only processed it in the last couple of weeks when I saw an ad for his final book, The Rogue Crew. For those unfamiliar with him, Jacques was an English author responsible for the Redwall books, a fantasy series for kids that could be best summarized as Lord of the Rings with animals.
As a child, I devoured these books. They inspired me to keep reading and eventually write myself. But I lost touch with his work over the years and honestly, I felt somewhat guilty when I heard that he had passed away as I hadn’t picked up one of his books in many years. So, I went back to revisit his books and in the process, catalyzed a lot of fond memories.
Books we read in our adolescence do not always hold up very well when we revisit them as adults. Sometimes shards of nostalgic memories will usher us through their pages in a sort of dazed state of denial, convincing ourselves that it was just as good as we remember it. But often, we’re disappointed. But I think Jacques’ novels hold up rather well compared to most kids series, because they are laced with an infectious positivity.
For example, I am struck by how often he used exclamation points in his descriptive passages. In my mind, this marks Jacques as a man who truly loved life. His joy for all things can be seen in his lines of his texts, especially when he wrote about food. Reading these books always made me hungry (There is even a Redwall cookbook available) and it was no different when I reread them. See why:
“Magnificent aromas of bilberry scones, hazelnut muffins and oatrose turnovers assailed their nostrils from the top shelves of the four-tiered oven.”
“Dingeye, his face shrouded in whipped strawberry cream, was bolting down candied chestnuts and mintcream wafers at the same time. Thura was dipping a hot vegetable pastie into honeyed plums and woodland trifle, stopping now and then to gulp down great swigs of dandelion and burdock.”
I’m not even sure if half of these food arrangements/combinations exist in real life, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m probably going to stop writing this post and go eat something. Life brims in the pages of his books, seen in his love of food, feast, merriment and adventure. He will be missed. Maybe you yourself have passed the age where you can enjoy his books, but that still doesn’t mean you can’t recommend the series to nieces, nephews, sons, daughters or any sort of stray children that may be wandering around your neighborhood.
