Dune (2021)

Denis Villeneuve’s take on Frank Herbet’s seminal sci-fi classic isn’t its first adaptation, but despite a soft spot for David Lynch’s version, I’d say it’s much the most successful. Partly that’s because it’s stayed pretty close to the book, keeping plenty of its weirder flourishes and not trying to crush everything down into a single film.

Partly it’s because the design is truly spectacular, working in all kinds of weird and wonderful influences to create a world that feels both familiar and alien.

For my own personal taste I could’ve lived with a few less lingering shots of pensive Timothy Chalamet as Paul, and a bit more exploration of the culture and politics via the stellar supporting cast, but it’s a big film that never bored me, and I very much look forward to the next installment…

Dark

It’s always nice when a new season of something you like drops on a streaming service, but even better is when you discover a series that already has several seasons sitting completed on a streaming service. So it was for me and Dark.

It starts as an ever so slightly sinister and very nicely shot and acted German soap opera, played out in a community with secrets in the shadow of a nuclear reactor. But it quickly hits you with a gobsmacking time-travel revelation, than never stops hitting you with more, ending up in the most complex knot of time-travel paradoxes I’ve ever witnessed.

One could argue that by its third and final season it’s gone slightly off the boil, but it’s still unlike anything else I’ve seen on TV.

Age of Ash

Before Daniel Abraham gained success as one half of James SA Corey, author of The Expanse, he was known for writing subtle, character-focused fantasy.

Now he’s gone back to it, beginning a new series set in the crossroads city of Kithamar. Abraham builds his characters with painstaking patience, mostly avoiding big action and big politics in favour of emotional heft at a thoroughly detailed street level.

It’ll be fascinating to see where he takes the story in future installments, as he’s opted not so much to move the world forward, as to show the same events from different points of view, elevating bit players to central cast.

Perdido Street Station

From a brand new book to one published over 20 years ago – China Mieville’s definitive New Weird manifesto is a dizzying mosaic of a novel taking place in the sprawling metropolis of New Crobuzon.

The disparate lives of a rogue’s gallery of bizarre citizens collide and intertwine – a disgraced scientist, a winged man who’s lost his wings, and an artist with an insect for a head to name a few – as something very unpleasant grows in the shadows.

Mieville is well known for rich prose and epic imagination but he shows a quick wit and a deft touch with character here too.

 Horizon Forbidden West

I resisted even trying to get hold of the notoriously difficult-to-get-hold-of Playstation 5 for some time, mostly because there weren’t any games coming out that I felt I really needed to play. But that changed this year with the release of Horizon Forbidden West.

I’d very much enjoyed the precursor Zero Dawn – an open world adventure in a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by a mixture of primitive tribes and killer machines.

Forbidden West suffers slightly from being a sequel – the setting doesn’t feel quite so classic as that from the first game and there’s a slight sense of diminishing returns to revelations about the nature of the apocalypse. But the beautiful detail is second-to-none – leaves, light, water and weather more lovingly rendered than in anything I’ve seen before. The characters even sweat, for god’s sake.

Protagonist Aloy remains a highly appealing character, and trashing giant machine dinosaurs piece by piece never gets old.

Elden Ring

Horizon is beautifully realised and fluid to play, but very much an example of the classic open-world formula, with a map scattered with various categories of challenges, and exhaustive logs to help you keep track of errands done and still to do. It feels safe, familiar.

Elden Ring, on the other hand, feels anything but. It’s very much a development of From Software’s famously unforgiving, frustratingly abstract and gloriously gloomy Dark Souls games – but shifting the action to a vast open-world has created something that feels truly revolutionary.

It’s immense and uncompromising, by turns beatiful, horrible, fatalistic and mysterious, a trippy mix of gothic fantasy and cosmic horror, a fairy tale turned into a rotting nightmare. It has very few characters and, by contrast with something like Horizon, almost no dialogue and somewhat clunky gameplay. The ‘story’ if you can even use the word to describe its slow unfolding, is dripped through to the player in shreds and fragments.

It’s a difficult, weird and unknowable beast, yet utterly compelling, packed with ruined fortresses to explore, secrets to uncover and towering monsters to overcome. A game that seems, at times, to touch the numinous…

The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie is out now in paperback from Gollancz.

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Joe Abercrombie’s The Wisdom of Crowds is finally here and to celebrate we’re partnering on an exclusive huge, global virtual event with Joe and Steven Pacey, the beloved audiobook narrator of the Age of Madness series.

Concluding the Age Of Madness trilogy, The Wisdom Of Crowds brings the series which is revolutionising fantasy to its stunning conclusion. Find out more about the novel with Andrzej Sapkowski’s conversation with Joe Abercrombie here, where the authors discuss the Age Of Madness trilogy, female warriors and more!

The virtual event is part of a global tour which will be taking place all this week (see dates above), and culminating in the much-anticipated conversation between Joe Abercrombie and Steven Pacey, which will take place on Monday 20 September at 8pm BST on Zoom.

To gain access to the virtual event all you need to do is purchase a copy of The Wisdom of Crowds before midnight on Monday 13 September 2021, fill in the form on this link here and attach your proof of purchase (such as a screengrab of your order confirmation).

Click here to order your copy.

Orders in hardback, eBook and audiobook from all retailers will be accepted. If you have already bought your copy, you are still eligible to enter.

All entrants will receive the exclusive link to join the event at least two hours prior to the start time.

The ticket registration closes at midnight 19th September 2021. Please read the full terms and conditions. If you have additional questions, please contact marketing@orionbooks.co.uk.

The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie is out now, published by Gollancz and priced at £20. Order your tickets to the virtual event here.

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When we told the lovely folks over at Gollancz how we couldn’t wait to get our hands on Joe Abercrombie’s The Wisdom Of Crowds, they took pity on us and let us get our greedy little eyes on the cover. Not only that, but they have let us exclusively share Tomás Almeida’s amazing cover for the novel with SciFiNow’ers!

Concluding the Age Of Madness trilogy, The Wisdom Of Crowds brings the series which is revolutionising fantasy to its stunning conclusion. Check out the synopsis below…

Chaos. Fury. Destruction.

The Great Change is upon us . . .

Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds.

With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch.  And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies… while Black Calder gathers his forces and plots his vengeance.

The banks have fallen, the sun of the Union has been torn down, and in the darkness behind the scenes, the threads of the Weaver’s ruthless plan are slowly being drawn together…

In the same boat as us and can’t wait to read The Wisdom Of Crowds? Find out more about the novel with Andrzej Sapkowski’s conversation with Joe Abercrombie here, where the authors discuss the Age Of Madness trilogy, female warriors and more!

The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie is out on 16 September 2021 published by Gollancz and priced at £20. Pre-order your physical copy here and the audiobook here!

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