Michael Whelan's painting of Shallan from Brandon Sanderson's Words of Radiance looks gorgeous

(via Tor.com)

Tor also has the picture available as wallpapers, so take a gander at those. Truth be told, I didn't even know this picture existed until I saw this post over at A Dribble of Ink. Worth a read, as it talks about why this would have been a better cover for Words of Radiance instead of what ended up being the cover. It is pretty odd and dumb that Shallan isn't on the cover of what is apparently her book, though.

Check out this awesome Vlad Taltos fan art by AshleyCope

Stolen shamelessly from The Wasp's Sword & Sorcery blog.

Credit: Ashley Cope.

I dig the smirk on Vlad's face and the way he's holding his sword. It's almost like he's saying "that's a nice face you've got there, be a shame if my rapier went through it."

Now there's an axe!

(via)

Yowza!

Still alive, just not in a fantasy reading mood

It's one of those situations where I have books to read, but I just don't feel like reading them at the moment. Pretty annoying too because I have a lot of fantasy books that I want to read, like LOTR, ASoIaF, Promise of Blood, Dresden, Avempartha^[1], Lord Foul's Bane, the rest of Belgariad, and Wheel of Time. Oh yeah, I've got my work cut out for me. Given the size of Martin and Jordan's works, I should be finished at some point after the 2020 presidential elections. Maybe then I'll be able to read Mistborn, The First Law, and every other fantasy novel and series that I want to read.

I think immortality may be required here.




^[1] The second book in the Theft of Swords omnibus and part of Michael J. Sullivan's excellent Riyria Revelations.

God help us if skeletons ever capture a dairy farm

http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/2cndek/milk/

#NotAllDrow

Table Titans.

Open the gate alittle!

http://imgur.com/krWb1cF

Hahahaha.

h/t langdonalger

Queen Elizabeth II eyes a new throne

Yes...yes, this would do. This would do very nicely.

Every article I've read says that she declined to sit on the throne (now there's a picture worth seeing), but the way she's eying it in the above pic, she must have given it serious thought. By the way, context on the picture is that the Queen and her husband were in Belfast, Ireland and visited the set of GoT because she's the Queen and she does what she wants.

I did notice something, in a picture Time used in their article.

Bitch, you interrupt me again and I'll have them play Rains of Castamere...at your funeral.

Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, looks like an older Tywin Lannister. Combine that with all of the gold lions on the backs of their thrones and the walls behind me leads to only one conclusion and folks, you might want to hold on your undies, because this will most certainly blow them away: The Royal Family are Lannisters!

:P

You can have your Iron Throne, I'd rather have a book one

Aerys the Mad should have sat on one of these instead, then he wouldn't have cut himself so much. He still would have been an insane asshole though. To quote the immortal Bronn, "there's no cure for being a cunt."

Of course, that's probably not enough space for us fantasy readers - most of us would use up half the slots just for one series. #fantasygeekproblems am I right? I don't think Sanderson's Way of Kings would fit anywhere on there, either, not without tipping the thing over.

(via thefullblossom)

RIP Jay Lake

Cancer is an asshole. I have one of his books, Mainspring, that I haven't gotten around to reading yet. Might be a good time to start.

Dragon Mistress

This is supposed to be a picture of Daenerys Targaryen with one of her dragons, Drogon. Instead, it looks like Mario Teodosio drew a very awesome high fantasy/sword and sorcery picture of a woman and her dragon, hence the title of this post.

(via A Wiki of Ice and Fire)

Either way, it's a bitching picture.

I think it's funny how they never dye Emilia Clarke's eyebrows for Game of Thrones

(via Game of Thrones wiki)

It's just amusing to me that Dany has super blonde/almost white hair, but her eyebrows are Clarke's original brown. On the other hand, it's probably a pain in the ass to dye someone's brows for a show that only does what, twelve episodes a season? To say nothing of Clarke having to go around with white eyebrows and brown hair the rest of the year, or enduring a second dye job to restore her brows back to their original color.

Currently reading: The Outstretched Shadow (The Obsidian Trilogy Book 1) by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

(via Macmillan)

I picked a copy up at the local library's book sale (along with 58 other books for 12 bucks) and since I don't feel like reading a door stopper at the moment, I figured I'd read this one. I've been wanting to read The Outstretched Shadow for a while now, but the library's copy is pretty beaten up, if memory serves, and I just prefer having a copy of my own. Here's the blurb:

Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training-all men, for women were unfit to practice magic-memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council.
Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? Their Magic felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it.
Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side.
Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world full of magical beings-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom.
The one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate?
Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And then all the world will belong to the Endarkened.

Too bad this isn't on the back cover instead of a scene from the end of the first chapter. That aside, this sounds like it might be right up my alley. I know the whole "youth banished for practicing forbidden magic" trope isn't new, I've yet to grow tired of it. The cover art is pretty nice too.

Did somebody say Elf cavalry?

Someone did. I noticed that the top search keyword this week is "artwork elf cavalry", so I may as well give the people what they want, so I googled and found this picture:

Art by Daarken (via Pins of War)

Yup, Warhammer wood elves clashing with some state troops of The Empire.

Twilight is the best fantasy book series ever

Way, way, way better than that dumb A Song of Ice and Fire or that trash Robert Jordan wrote.

Trailer released for Hercules

Looks interesting. I like the idea of showing Hercules performing his twelve labors.

Painting a scenario

Winter of The Iron Dwarf - Page 7.

Winter of The Iron Dwarf - Page 8.

I like the way Brendan sets up the background for the campaign. The pause he takes to drink from his cup is a nice touch because it adds a bit to the buildup. Table Titans is a pretty good D&D comic. It started off a bit meh, but I think it's finally finding its voice as the comic progresses.

What happens after a dungeon has been crawled?

It's a good question. I don't know much about the crawling of dungeons, tombs, or what have you, but unless they're crawled more than once, they would be left fallow, provided that everything has been killed in them. So, what happens to them after that? Seems like a waste of good space that could be repurposed for other uses. So with that thought in mind, what if the players were given the option of taking possession of the dungeon or whatever it is either for their own purposes or handing it over to the nearby settlement or authority for their use.

But what to use it for? Since dungeons and tombs are underground, they would be cool enough, temperature wise, to be usable for storing food, which would make it a profitable venture to rent it out to local farmers, vendors, and taverns. Cheap housing also comes to mind. It wouldn't be very desirable to live in a dungeon or a tomb, but it would sure beat not having anywhere to live. You could also sell it to any interested wizards.

I'd hate to be the guys hired to clean one of those places, though. Can you imagine having to haul out of the goblins, trolls, orcs, zombies, skeletons, etc. corpses. And the dusting. My god, the dusting.

Finished: Pawn of Prophecy

Well, I thought I had already written a post about this book the first time I read it, but a quick check of the archives shows that I apparently didn't. Huh.

(via The A.V. Club)

Just like the first time I read, I enjoyed Pawn of Prophecy a lot. I know that The Belgariad (and most of David Eddings' body of work) aren't looked upon very well because I guess they're generic, but honestly? Don't care. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with generic fantasy.

While I did enjoy it, I felt that parts of the book dragged and Garion's putting up with Polgara's bullshit was just a little annoying. I would have told her off mid-point in the adventure and damn the consequences. :P The lack of action is what dragged the story, in my opinion. There's only two fight scenes in the book (three if you want to get really technical and count the scuffle with Brill. Four if you count the boar). Then again, the book was aimed at children and young adults, so of course none of them are going to be gory.

Rating: 8/10.

David Eddings book haul

And fourteen books definitely constitutes a haul! I made the big score at a thrift store, but didn't realize the magnitude of my find at first. I saw one book, then another on the shelf and didn't really think much of it because you can usually find a couple of Eddings' books at almost any thrift store, yard sale, or elsewhere. Then I noticed another and another and another, sixteen in all and at fifty cents apiece, I could not not buy them. Except for two, The Rivan Codex and The Diamond Throne. I had the latter already and the former didn't interest me.

Book-wise, I have the entirety of The Belgariad, almost all of The Malloreon (I'm missing The Seeress of Kell), and all of The Tamuli series. I also have Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress. Not bad for seven dollars and some change!

I've read Pawn of Prophecy before and enjoyed quite a lot, so I've decided to reread it and yup, still enjoyable.

Dress your feline fighter in the finest armor

Proving that you can find anything on the internet, Etsy merchant schnabuble has made leather armor for cats.

Yes, for five hundred dollars, you too can outfit your cat in body armor before it goes out and murders anything and everything it can.

In all seriousness, I can't believe that people have actually spent five hundred dollars on something like this.

(via Laughing Squid)

Ned Stark warned us winter was coming

But good freaking god, I didn't expect it to be this cold. When I went to bed last night, it was 1 degree Fahrenheit. ONE DEGREE, PEOPLE. It's less than 10 degrees now and it's almost noon. Did I mention that I live in the Southern U.S.? Friiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

A Song of Ice and Fire house sigils, Lisa Frank style

Remember those Lisa Frank designed trapper keepers, folders, and notebooks that kids took to school back in the day? The ones with unicorns, tigers, and whatnot in every possible color known to mankind?

It's like someone stabbed a rainbow.
(via This Is My Boomstick)

Tumblr artist arterialmotive decided to put a Lisa Frank spin on the various house sigils from A Song of Ice and Fire, starting with House Targaryen and Stark.

They're adorable. I want twenty of each.

But man, can you imagine what House Bolton's sigil would look like? Holy shit. Can you even Lisa Frank a flayed body?

h/t Laughing Squid.