Doing it Elizabethan Style: Shakespeare’s Richard III
A few weeks ago I heard that the Globe had transferred two of their summer productions to the Apollo Theatre for the winter – and more importantly from my perspective, these were two new all-male productions starring Mark Rylance, former artistic director of the Globe. I’d read about the similar productions he’d done almost a decade ago, so the chance to see one at last was irresistible! I hesitated briefly over which to choose, and eventually plumped for Richard III. Much as I love Twelfth Night, it’s a play I’m very familiar with, whereas the only version of Richard III I’ve seen is the well-known Laurence Olivier film. The reviews of Rylance’s performance suggested that this might be the better of the two, which swayed...
Read MoreAlchemist of Souls signed audiobook giveaway
Christmas is coming early for one of Mal Catlyn’s fans… One of the (many) cool things about Angry Robot Books is that they now publish an audiobook version of all their titles, simultaneously with the paperback and ebook. This is a great thing for both authors and readers, since there are a lot of fantasy fans who don’t have much time to sit down and read a book but will happily listen to one on their daily commute or whilst doing chores (I listen to audiobooks whilst washing up). Anyway, I have a spare boxed set of The Alchemist of Souls on CD to give away. This is the unabridged edition, on 13 discs, narrated by award-winner Michael Page (see my June blog post announcing the audiobook release). All you have to do to be in with a chance is to...
Read MoreFriday Reads: Casket of Souls, by Lynn Flewelling
Casket of Souls is the sixth installment in Lynn Flewelling’s long-running Nightrunner series of fantasy novels set in a roughly 17th/18th-century-esque milieu. Whilst recent books have seen protagonists Seregil and Alec travelling widely, Casket of Souls finds them back on familiar territory in the city of Rhiminee, and back to their old ways. Seregil, a very minor nobleman distantly related to the royal family, is an accomplished spy and cat-burglar and, with his young companion and lover Alec, has served the crown loyally for years. However with a war dragging on and food shortages in the city, tensions are running high, and it’s not long before the two young men find themselves in the midst of a conspiracy to usurp the throne. And as old friends...
Read MoreThe Alchemist of Souls – now in audiobook!
June is Audiobook Month, so I’m delighted to be able to contribute with my own slice of aural entertainment. You can now wrap your lugholes around the adventures of Mal, Coby and friends with the latest co-production between Angry Robot Books and Brilliance Audio. Read by Michael Page, award-winning narrator of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, this is an unabridged edition of The Alchemist of Souls. That’s 15 whole hours of Elizabethan intrigue, romance and action – enough to entertain you through quite a few commutes. I’ve been listening to it myself the past few days, partly to find out how Michael got on with the skrayling names and languages, and partly to try and absorb the rhythm of my own prose when read by a great...
Read MoreThe perspective of time
I’ve just been watching a DVD of “Twelfth Night” (the BBC/Trevor Nunn version with Helena Bonham-Carter and Nigel Hawthorne), and it suddenly struck me that this play is the twin (no pun intended!) of “The Merchant of Venice”. We often think of “The Merchant of Venice” as a serious play, even a tragedy, because of its (to us) strongly anti-Semitic flavour and the persecution of Shylock. In contrast, “Twelfth Night” is acknowledged to be a comedy, even though a substantial subplot consist of the cruel persecution of another representative of a hated religious group, Malvolio the Puritan. However having seen “The Merchant of Venice” performed at the Globe, I now know that it is one of...
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