Alex Epstein's new novel
about Morgan le Fay...
... magic, legends,
history, myth,
and more.
The Circle Cast website
Email Alex
Wiccan Links
Starhawk
Eclectic wicca at its most inventive.
Gerald Gardner
Q. How many Gardnerian witches does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. That's a secret.
Margot Adler
Author of the influential survey of contemporary Wicca Drawing Down the Moon.
Historical Links
Butser Ancient Farm
Peter Reynolds runs a recreated Celtic farm, with ancient styles of sheep. The Irish in The Circle Cast would have lived more or less like this..
Ireland in 400 AD
About the time of The Circle Cast.
South Cadbury Castle
A Dark Ages hillfort believed to be the original Camelot.
Camlann
The final battle. A short story.
Camlann Eve
I perpetrated a one-night
live-action
role-playing game set in King Arthur's tent on the eve of the battle of Camlann. It was fun. It was a bit geeky. Who will win the battle?
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Creative Commons License.
Friday, November 5, 2010
I'm reading Tim Powers' DECLARE, a strange fantasy novel about shifting alliances among spies in a world where supernatural entities exist. It's interesting to think about because it's generally hard to figure out what the hero wants. There's a love story. And he's a dedicated spy trying to infiltrate ... something ... but the story unfolds in back-and-forth time -- 1948, then 1963, then 1941, then 1945, then 1963 again. And it changes main characters halfway through. I don't know what the stakes are.The hero is a bit of cipher, as spies sometimes are. What am I rooting for?
In other words it bends all sorts of narrative rules and even arguably breaks some.
Somehow it gets away with it. I'm not sure why I keep reading it, but I do. Maybe because I want to find out what the supernatural powers are, and what exactly happened on Mount Ararat in 1948.
I want to get to the bottom of the mystery. That must be it.
I started Charles Stross's MERCHANT PRINCES series but got bored halfway through book one. I'm a big fan of his SF work, but this was cheesy fantasy. Not for lack of story elements. The heroine was clearly drawn. I knew what she wanted. I knew what danger she was in. There was an interesting parallel universe story going. But there was nothing mysterious about it; unlike in Roger Zelazny's AMBER series, by which the Merchant Princes series is loosely inspired. So I didn't care.
I tries to give THE CIRCLE CAST both: a coherent story, and a mystery. You may judge how well I did.Labels: reading books
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