Of course worse case scenario is that it resembles Shannara or worse Legend of the Seeker.
ugh... LotS... that was a Skinimax series on ABC, just didn't work at all. i think i watched one episode and just gave up on it.
i never caught the second season of Shannara (i haven't watched TV in some time), but the first one wasn't horrible. lots of good production value, just some hokey dialog and a bit too much love triangle drama for the MTV audience, but they set it up to tell a pretty cool story...
Of course worse case scenario is that it resembles Shannara or worse Legend of the Seeker.
ugh... LotS... that was a Skinimax series on ABC, just didn't work at all. i think i watched one episode and just gave up on it.
i never caught the second season of Shannara (i haven't watched TV in some time), but the first one wasn't horrible. lots of good production value, just some hokey dialog and a bit too much love triangle drama for the MTV audience, but they set it up to tell a pretty cool story...
The first season of Shannara wasn't horrible. Not as good as it should have been, but it was produced on MTV so it is what it is. I never watched the second season, but I read that the budget was slashed and that was one of the reasons why the show lost viewers. Never had any interest in it afterwards. Too bad because I was hoping after they moved it over to Spike that it would have been written for a more mature audience than the typical MTV crowd.
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Earthsea... done right. I've been reading that series of books... and I want to see it on the screen.
Never read them do you recommend?
Hell yes, they're more important books than GRRM's, especially with their influence on the Fantasy genre as a whole. There's six books.
From a review I wrote of the first book in that series:
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ever since being introduced to Le Guin due to the book The Jane Austen Book Club, where a character is as much into Science Fiction books as Jane Austen's heroine Katherine Moreland is into Gothic Romance Fiction books, and to hear the character recommend Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (which everyone should read IMO), I have been interested in reading more from Le Guin--especially as I learned she was into more than just Science Fiction but also Fantasy and dabbling across multiple genres besides those two.
A Wizard of Earthsea is the first novel in Le Guin's fantasy Earthsea series, and it is a "coming of age" story for the mage Ged--often called Sparrowhawk. Le Guin follows the prideful, ambitious, brash, angry, and somewhat arrogant Ged as he discovers his magical abilities, is taken in by a local wizard hermit, then when he grows frustrated with the lessons provided by the hermit, sent to a wizarding school on the island of Roke. From there, Ged falls into acquaintance with two of his elders called Jasper (who is even more arrogant, show-offish, and worse, condescending) and Vetch (a portly but kindhearted soul who somehow manages to be friendly with them both, despite both Jasper & Ged having a micro-aggressive relationship with each other). Deciding to try and prove himself as a better wizard than Jasper, Ged decides to cast a dangerous spell that a young witch had tried tricking him into casting when younger. The spell unleashes a dark creature which attacks and scars Ged, nearly killing him.
Ged is shaken from the experience and forever changed. He seems at first to have lost a large part of himself from the experience as he is far more cautious, patient, deliberate, and humble than before he cast the spell. Ged is told that the shadow will now chase after him for the rest of his life until either Ged is killed by something or the shadow itself kills Ged, since he brought it into creation. Ged finishes his studies and then is sent out to be a local wizard for a place needing one. From there he has a series of minor adventures, all the while being chased by the shadow--which seems to slowly have the ability to take on his shape as time passes and the two interact more. A particularly chilling scene comes when the shadow takes possession of another's body, slowly eating that person from the inside out, until that body is but a mere shell for it to get close to Ged with, and it draws Ged to where he is isolated and weak, and then turns on Ged to attack. The scene is dark, disturbing, and thrilling.
A big theme of the story is the nature of balance (a Taoist interpretation of the concept) and acknowlegment that if you use magic to change something, it will affect something elsewhere--if you take wind to power your sails through magic--that wind will come from somewhere else and be a doldrums there. If you push a small shower of a rain cloud away to stay dry, it'll torrential downpour on someone else elsewhere. This theme especially comes to light in the story of Ged and his shadow as it becomes obvious over the course of the story that the shadow are the darker parts of Ged himself that have been divided from him and given shadow form due to the spell he cast.
There is also the theme and underpinning of the entire world of Earthsea, where magic is based on knowing something's "true name". Which is why everyone has two names--a nickname that is for common use, and a true name which if known by someone else, can be used to control others. A wizard for instance cannot perform magic if his true name is called out for instance. A wizard can only perform magic on items by knowing their true names as well. I've always been attracted to the concept of the power of one's name, so this is a great exploration of the subject for me.
Earthsea itself is a rather different fantasy world than most. It is an archipelago of islands with no large continents like Tolkien's Middle Earth upon it. Instead the focus is far more on sea travels, trade, and the power and awe of the sea--vs the very earthy Middle Earth.
Le Guin when writing the afterword mentions she was asked to write a "young adult book" "preferably fantasy" by a publisher, and she initially balked at the idea, for she didn't write a book intended for a specific audience and disliked books that set out to do so. So while this book by the publisher is obviously aimed at young adults, Le Guin herself said she found that she did better in trying to write as though her audience's age didn't matter, and I agree that the book does well to be captivating for an older audience--especially on a thematic level, while I am sure the plot and misadventures of Ged would satisfy most children. She stated that she conceived of the idea that she wanted to approach fantasy differently from Tolkien, and that she wanted to write a fantasy book that both children and adults could appreciate. And her starting point that an old wizard like Merlin or Gandalf once had to have been young? And went from there.
It's a great introduction to the world of Earthsea, though at times it feels unevenly paced between slow and fast sections. I'd definitely recommend it.