Hi,

@dark, yes I’ve read the storm light book series and really enjoyed it. I have the fourth book on pre-order  ready for when it is released next month. I Actually just downloaded the way of kings Prime, which is meant to be an alternative draft of the original  book, but also meant to be quite different too. It was being offered as a reward tear in a recent Kickstarter campaign Brandon Sanderson ran, but do to how quickly the campaign hit its funding goal  (I think it reached its funding goal in under 3 minutes hahaha) he decided to give away the Way of kings Prime as a free PDF download to everyone  including people which didn’t back the Kickstarter, which is where I got my copy, although I haven’t read it yet so not sure what it will be like. I do like Sanderson’s writing, but I wouldn’t say god like and some of his books definitely aren’t quite as good as others. I think Sanderson does two things really well though, firstly as mentioned yesterday he creates really great magic systems (like in Mistborn, I really like the use of metals and their ‘pull and push’ and think he uses that really well both in and out of battles). the second thing I think he does well is leading you to think you’ve worked out the story or twist, he  often leads you to think you have a pretty good handle on the book/world, then throws something up and makes you realise you actually didn’t  understand as much of the world as you previously did. I think he often does this in his books, especially in The Mistborn but also in others like Storm light too, as an example in the part you mentioned in your previous post about one of the main characters who’s backstory  you find out in the third book, which gives you a totally different outlook on him as a character. I think all authors have good and bad books though, I a while back read Fight club by chuck Palahniuk (not fantasy, but the book the film fight club was based on), I really enjoyed the book, very dark, clever writing style  and a nice concept  (although I think I prefer the film ending to the book, which is unusual), but I was really looking forward to reading another  of his books and although I didn’t hate the next book of his I tried, , it definitely wasn’t as good as fight club, so I think all authors  have good and bad books, which is why I would struggle to give a single definitive favourite author. One last thing I will say for Sanderson and  authors like Joe Abercrombie is they do put out a lot of books and they put them out quickly, as a fan of Patrick Rothfuss’s ‘The king killer chronicles’ and George Martin ‘s ‘Game of Thrones’, I really really appreciate authors which put out books quickly hahaha. by the way, That’s Awesome that you got your other half a green Aja t-shirt for her birthday, I’m looking forward to the TV series, but also like you dreading what they could potentially do to a personal favourite series of mine.

Paul Lemm

@Lem, I'm looking forward to the next book too, and where things go, though I wish we were getting Zeth's backstory, as he's one of the most fascinating characters.
I don't mind character power too much so long as the characters remain relatively week in comparison to what they're fighting so that things dont' feel too easy. The one character I am getting mildly irritated with in this respect is Kaladin going all superman, and I strongly dislike the idea that the main characters get their loyal sidekicks who sort of have worse versions of their powers just to follow them around.

My lady and I reread all of Stormlight just before Oathbreaker came out, so we're pretty uptodate there.

With the Green Aja T shirt, I actually wanted to get my lady an Aja shawl. She has the great serpent ring, and a rather nice pendent with the flame of tarvallan in Green, unfortunately, though I've found people giving instructions on how to crochet their own shawls, I can't find anyone actually selling them, which is a shame.

Ais Sidai wise, she's definitely green, no questions asked.

@Lem, Yeah, my lady loves the great serpent ring and Green Aja pendent, actually rather the way I wear a copy of the one ring on the opposite hand to my wedding ring, my lady wears her great serpent ring all the time too. I also have some Ashaman dragon cufflinks for myself .
Sadly, Badali Jewelary, who previously made all the Wo~T stuff, have had to stop their WoT line with the tv series coming out, because you know, netflicks wants their sweet sweet merchandise deals,

their website is here, and they have a lot of cool stuff, we even have talent pipes from Kingkiller, and I bought my brother one of the Dresden files black danarius fallen angel coins as a Christmas present last year as well.

Those unfetterred collections sound cool, we'll have to check those.

New spring was actually intended as the first of three prequals, the second dealing with Tam finding young Rand literally on the slopes of Dragonmount while serving in the war, and the second dealing with how Lan and Mwarane came to the two rivers just before the beginning of Eye of the world.
Sad they won't be completed, though by the same token, I'd rather Sanderson didnt' expand the series too far or things around them, I'd much rather have a series with a difinitive ending rather than them just bimble on and on.

My inner nerd is very excited at all this stuff like Asha'Man pins, talent pipes, denarius coins and the like. I wish I'd heard of it sooner.

If you read New Spring, you will absolutely see a new and pretty inexperienced Moiraine for quite awhile. She's one of the primary protagonists of the book, and it's set twenty years or so before the main series.

One of the expanded WoT stories is called River of Souls, I believe, and it's quite good. Digs a bit into Demandred and how he gets the people of Sharra on his side...it's actually a pretty nuanced and sympathetic look at him.
The other one, A Fire Within the Ways, is actually a short novella, I believe, and basically concerns how Perrin and a bunch of friends close the Ways so that shadowspawn can't use them anymore. I haven't read it yet, but it is narrated by Michael Cramer.

Hi,

@Jayde, Although I’ve got Unfettered 3 which has the Fire within the ways   story  I haven’t started reading the book yet, I did read river of souls the week before last. It was a nice piece, although not essential to the overall Wheel of time story (so I see why it might have been cut since the books were already so big), but like you said it was good to get a little bit of back  story around Demandred and the Shara people,, plus the origins of the item he finds in the book too. As for merchandise there’s definitely been some very cool stuff mentioned in this  topic, ,  I hadn’t heard of denarius coins  before, but then haven’t read any of the Dresden file books. I did see in another topic (Gorillas Playthrough I think) that you’re a fan of Final Fantasy X (its probably my favourite too, although also the last one in the series I played , so can’t speak for ones later in the series), but although it’s not strictly Merchandise more promotional material, but I’m sure it was for the launch of Final Fantasy x that in Japan they released a limited  edition energy drink called Phoenix  down to help promote the launch of the game, which I just thought as a final fantasy fan was a really cool marketing trick/concept. I tried really hard to get hold of one for the person I was seeing at the time as she was Final Fantasy crazy, but couldn’t get hold of one over here in the UK. They even ran a TV commercial, which was a live action thing set in the streets of japan, where the main character and others around them all had numbers above their head (final fantasy HP style) with the number counting down as they take damage, when it hits zero he falls , only to drink the Phoenix down  energy drink,  at which point it inevitably plays the classic final fantasy phoenix down revival sound then the guy gets back up and goes on a rampage hahaha, it was very cheesy but cool in a final fantasy promotional kind of way
@ dark, those are some Awesome items from the shop,  I like that you can even buy metal  vials from the Mistborn  series from there too.  I actually thought the wheel of time series was an Amazon studios show, I believe the Lord of the rings is also being Produced by Amazon too, so I’m surprised they can still sell the Lord of the rings stuff but not the Wheel of time merchandise, although  it could be something to do with the fact that Wheel of time is a direct remake of the book series, where as I believe that the upcoming Lord of the rings series is a new concept separate from the book series, which might  make it not such a problem to be selling stuff based on the books since the show isn’t based on those books. Part of me wishes the Wheel of time was a Netflix production, since I tend to find them  the best provider for adding audio description to their original series, although in fairness to amazon I probably don’t watch as much stuff there so they may these days create a lot of audio description content too, I know I recently watched their adaption of the very dark humoured comic superhero sereies ‘The boys’ which was an amazon original and it did have audio description, so hoping regardless of whether it’s a Netflix or Amazon whoever shows it adds audio description to the Wheel of time tv sereies

Paul Lemm

I have high hopes for WoT, but I also have had high hopes before, and they were dashed. I know already that it won't match the books. There's no way; Jordan is too unique and singular a voice, and flaws or no, the series is very much its own thing, and it's hard to top. If I watch this series - I don't have Netflix or anything like that - it will have to be with my preconceived notions and expectations based on the series put aside.

I've heard that the amazon controls are accessible on the phone Ap, though since I have no chance in hell of getting anything visually out of something as small as a phone screen, I just haven't investigated that.
Sadly, on PC they're %100 inaccessible.

Actually, the description of the boys sounds a bit like the anime Tiger and bunny which I did enjoy, and which again, did something different with superheroes.
It's probably a series I'll like, albeit I have game of thrones season 8, and the audios to go first.
I've heard of black mirror, as a sort of modern version of the twilight zone, though haven't really investigated the series.

In general, I tend to read more than I watch tv, mostly I pick one series and go slowly through it a couple of episodes at a time, I've been doing GoT for the last few months, and before that it was Picard, before that buffy the vampire slayer and Angel.

GoT has taken me a bit longer because of having to watch the series and do the audio descriptions separately, since annoyingly the full box set of dvds didn't come with description, even though some of the past seasons did.

With book/film adaptations, I'm at least partly a purist, however equally I don't mind if something is just done differently or given a different spin, EG, I'd have never imagined Saruman the way Christopher lee did him, but he was awesome.

Likewise, in game of thrones, the scenes with Aria and Tywin aren't in the books at all, but are amazing!
What worries me slightly more, is when the plots of books are simply altered to make them shallower or more visually appealing, without any attention paid to consistency of world or characters.
For example, the idea that golum could actually get Sam to Abandon Frodo on the boarders of Mordor, or the random Elf/dwarf romance in the hobbit.
Indeed, there is a perfect example of what should've been a great adaptation handled badly, since had Toriel been introduced simply as a kick ass female elf guard captain, perhaps one who goes against her King to try and help out the dwarves, or perhaps one who gets in trouble due to the dwarves escape by barrel and so has to win back her King's respect, that would have been fantastic!

The hobbit after all has no female characters, and having one at least in there fulfilling her own story would have both added to the richness of the world, and been all around a good move, after alll Tolkein had several pretty awesome female elven warriors, notably Luthein herself.

however, what do they do with Toriel? A legolas, Fili Toriel love triangle!

of all the trite, pathetic, shallow things to do with a female character, the love triangle! and a cross ratial love triangle that has no basis  in Tolkkein's legendarium! especially one featuring a character who didn't even need to be in this story!

This is what I mean with adaptation.

I don't mind changes that enhance the story, but I strongly dislike changes that actually break the story, or simply make no sense with the established world or characters.

Btw, for more about this, check out Lost in adaptation, by Dominic noble on Youtube, a youtuber who compares films to the books they are based on, he's done everything from Harry potter and Twilight, to Rebecca, picture of Dorian grey and the invisible man.

I don't agree with him about everything, but he's entertaining and has interesting opinions.

Hi,

@dark, although I haven’t had much time for films and tv series recently, I normally enjoy watching tv shows and films as much as books. I tend to watch most Netflix stuff directly through the app on my phone since I don’t have enough sight to see the show even on a big tv, and since the app layout is really nice and accessible and  easier/quicker  on the phone than using Netflix on my firestick, if it’s just me watching I’ll often watch/listen via my phone. . I haven’t seen any of the twilight series, but I’ve seen people make comparisons between that and black mirror, I think Black mirror  has a key focus on technology, mainly either on new technology we have now or burgeoning technology which isn’t a million years away  . There’s a lot of nuance in the series as it explores things like how technology often built for good purposes gets used for a darker purpose, or some of the moral implications the new technology puts on society  and how it really is a new world we are entering  with unwritten rules on what is and isn’t acceptable on a moral level with some of this nnew technology, and also how technology shapes us and society too. I realise as I’m writing this I’m probably making the show sound terrible as writing really isn’t a strong point of mine. Needless to say it really is a great series and one I’d recommend for sci-fi fans or people with an interest in technology  and enjoy a show with a darker theme. As for GOT, I’ve watched that and enjoyed it, a lot of people hated the final series, I definitely wouldn’t go as far as to say I hated the final series,  there were some things I didn’t enjoy how they did it, but I think this comes back to my point from my previous post in that trying to cram a whole huge book into a ten episode series just isn’t possible, so you miss some of the finer points of what make the story, but despite that I still enjoyed the series, although will be looking forward to seeing what George Martin does with the ending in the book series (if it ever gets finished hahaha). I’ve seen buffy before, but not angel, actually recently one of the audio description sites put up an audio described version of each of the buffy  seasons, so I think at some stage I’ll probably re watch that as its been a long time and would be nice to watch with audio description.
@Jayde, I agree with you and dark on the Hobbit film, it was a favourite book of mine as a kid, possibly  that or the lion, Witch and the wardrobe were the first fantasy books I read. I was horrified when I found out they had split it into 3 films, as you said that could have only been purely for money making purposes. I did watch the thing just to see what they did with it and for my love of the original book and well let’s just say it definitely won’t be something I’d watch again. Regarding the Green mile, you make some good points, I think for me personally I felt more of an emotional connection to the characters in the film for some reason. Just for anyone else reading this I’ll say not to read further if you haven’t seen the film/read the book and don’t want spoilers. I’m not usually moved hugely by films in general although I enjoy watching them, but I did feel there was some great acting in the film  and although the final scene with John  not much is said  it carries a lot of emotion I think, although I do have to say I was also watching it in a cinema where you could hear a lot of people crying/sniffling  or just clearing their throats at that point in the film, which I guess carries some emotion itself. I think you could also argue that since I knew nothing about the film before I went to see it and it is a bit of a shock ending, that with an ending such as that you can only truly experience it once, as the second time you know what’s coming so it’s less  impactful, so I guess reading the book many years later after watching the film numerous times  that it may be due to the first watch of the film and its initial watch and story reveal/ending may be why I have a preference to the film. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the book too, but it just didn’t quite have the same power at the end for me at least as that of the film.  Also its not a typical Stephen king book, in that its not a horror which is his usual genre , but also I believe   The Green mile the book was actually written and published originally as a collection of short stories and only later published as a full book, so not typical in that fashion either. Again, though like I said I didn’t dislike the book and enjoyed reading it especially to get a little more detail  around the characters, plus some extra story content which was removed from the film which you can often find in a book that you just can’t squash into an hour and a half film.

Paul Lemm

@Lem, don't confuse Twilight and the twilight zone .
Actually for that sort of anthology story telling I always prefered the outer limits which was a bit darker.
Black mirror would be interesting, but at the moment I think I'm more drawn to series that ell a definite story than series which are episodic.

Reading (or audio dramas), tend to take priority with me, much as I like my dvd collection in general.

Angel really is the companion series to Buffy, and a lot of events and characters cross between them, for example Cordelia's story and development as a character from completely shallow, self-obsessed mean girl, to pretty awesome, world saving hero needs to carry on over with Angel. Same goes for Wesley and Faith.

There are elements of the story in Angel I disliked, for example, I liked where Spike's story ended for Buffy, and was actively disappointed that he was bought into Angel as a character, since awesome though Spike was, I preferred the idea of him having a distinct ending, to him just sort  of just being bought back to carry on because he was popular.
Likewise, the Buffy series actually left the angel/buffy relationship in a far better place than Angel did, albeit most people's problem with Angel, the sort of open ended "one more battle", ending didn't bother me quite as much as the fact that one  beloved and amazing character in Angel got really severely short changed, seemingly just because they needed to resolve her story some way.

Actually, I've seen those audio described Buffy seasons and have been thinking of trying them out with my lady, since I've always thought she'd enjoy Buffy if we could find it with description.

It's odd, I never liked Buffy whenever I encountered it in the early 2000's, mostly because I just saw a couple of isolated "monster of the week" type of episodes, and beyond watching teenagers pound on vampires, never really got the relationships or what was going on.

it was after I watched firefly and loved the world and the characters, that various people told me Buffy had the same quality of writing, so even though Urban fantasy is probably one of my least favourite genres, I decided to give it a go, and yeah, it was pretty amazing!

As to the ending of game of thrones, well as I've been sharing thoughts progressively in monthly chat topics, I'll not start about that here.
I'm going to start season 8 this evening, so we'll see.

@Lem, I'll bare that in mind about black mirror since it is a series I've heard about.
Interestingly enough, with Buffy and Angel, I found some pretty awesome online transcripts from a now no longer available site which detail all the action rather nicely.
I would have one of those open in a separate window whilst watching the dvds, and if I thought I'd missed something (especially in fast action sequences), would cut to it.

Hopefully, a described version of Angel will materialise at some point, but in the mean time, if You'd like the transcripts, let me know.
The website where I got them seems to be down, but fortunately I saved them all for future use as text files.

Actually, I'd also like to show my lady several bits of Startrek TNG, which is a series I've been watching since I was in my mid teens, and which has some episodes I know she'd love, but sadly I've not come across any audio descriptions of that as yet, and unfortunately the dvd copies I have don't have descriptions either.

Okay Lem, Transcriptions sent.
If other people want them, let me know and I'll gladly stick them on sendspace.
It's a shame to miss out on Angel really, given how integral it is to Buffy's story line.
Season 1 of angel happens at the same time as Buffy season 4, season 2 season 5 and so on, with Angel Seasons 4 and 5 happening after the Buffy series finishes, there are even a couple of crossovers where characters from Buffy Like Willow, Jonathon  and occasionally Buffy herself turn up in Angel as well, albeit I do wish they'd done a few more of these to tie the two series together a bit more.