Author: Ruth Arnell

First off, congratulations to David McKay and Gregoria for winning last week’s giveaway of the signed copies of The Towers of Midnight. Contact us as soon as possible so we can ship you your book.

Secondly, I have a question to ask you about star ratings.  We work on a five star rating system here at Fantasy Literature. Other sites use four stars or a 1-100 scale. My questions, spawned by a discussion we’ve had amongst the reviewers lately, is what the star ratings mean. When you see a book marked 2.5 stars, what do you think that means?

No, not those two towers, I have two copies of Towers of Midnight. Two copies signed by Brandon Sanderson. And because I am a nice person (well, actually because Tor is so generous) these are copies for me to give to you, dear readers. Do you want a copy? We’re going to run two different contests, one for each book.  All you have to do is answer the following question(s), and make sure to check back next Thursday evening when we announce the winners! We’ll pick our favorite answer for each question,

I know that this is a fantasy website, but I need to talk about reality for a bit today. I have no problem accepting magic and dragons and wizards and what not, that’s not the type of reality I’m concerned about. I’m talking about those niggling little errors that creep into stories that drive me bonkers.

I’m reading a story right now, and it’s not great but it’s entertaining, and we get to a big fight scene and the protagonist is described as being unarmed. And then a few paragraphs later he pulls out his knife,

I am a college professor.  Yesterday, I asked my students who had actually completed the reading for class.  One person raised their hand.  Just one. It’s a theory class, so we read the actual theorist. Another student said, “I’ve read about the ideas in the reading, so I didn’t think I needed to do the actual reading.” At which point I actually bit my lip to keep from losing it.

I’ve been wondering how prevalent this idea is among students in general, and then I started thinking about the purpose of what I do as a reviewer.  One of the functions of a review is to help you decide what to read. 

Yeah, it made me jump too, the first time I saw this. My husband sent this to me in response to an email I had sent to him proclaiming this book to have the worst cover of any book I had ever seen. I opened the email and literally flinched.

The title of the book, Twilight of Briareus, doesn’t seem nearly evocative enough for artwork this…stunning. What is going on?  Why is a giant disembodied baby head floating through space?  Is this a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with The Blair Witch Project?