The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney

A few months back I noted The Ten Thousand as being one of my hot tips for 2008. Reading a lengthy preview that the author sent me a while back reinforced this feeling, and now reading the complete novel has confirmed my initial guess. Probably the most underread author in epic fantasy has delivered his strongest novel to date.


The Ten Thousand is based on The Anabasis, the best-known work of the Greek writer Xenophon. In that book Xenohpon relates how a Greek mercenary force of ten thousand warriors was hired by Cyrus the Younger, a Persian prince seeking to supplant his brother. When Cyrus was killed, the Greek army had to fight its way out of the now-hostile empire and find its way home.

In this novel the setting is the world of Kuf, which is divided between two humanoid species: the Macht and the Kufr. The Macht live in a mountainous peninsula made up of feuding city-states (reminsicent of Greece), whilst the Kufr inhabit the vast Assurian Empire to the south-east which dominates a huge continent. Many of the most famous mercenary companies of the Macht are summoned to the capital where a vast host is being assembled to sail across the sea and join the armies of the Assurian pretender Arkamenes, who seeks to usurp his brother, Ashurnan. Amongst these are Gasca and Rictus, two young warriors who join up for very different reasons, the former to see the world and fight, the latter to forget the horrors of the destruction of his city and family. As the story proceeds we meet other characters: Jason, the young and charasmatic commander of one of the mercenary companies; Vorus, a Macht living amongst the Kufr who is an advisor to Ashurnan; and Tiryn, Arkamenes' consort.

The story unfolds similar to the events of history, with the Macht fighting their way into the very heart of the Empire where Ashurnan awaits them with a vast host. There, at the Battle of Kunaksa, the hinge of the world will turn, with dire consequences for everyone involved.

As normal, Kearney anchors the story on his characters: Rictus, the young warrior lost in his grief and rage who finds opportunity and responsibility thrust upon him; Jason, the popular commander who doesn't know what he wants from life until, amidst the blood and mud, he finds it; Vorus, the exiled warrior who finds his loyalties and admiralties torn; Ashurnan, a ruler desperately trying to be a great king but not knowing how, whilst his brother believes he is great and worthy and doesn't realise the truth; and Tiryn, whose own preconceptions and believes are put to the ultimate challenge. They are flawed people, but the reader cannot help empaphising with them and the increasingly harsh challenges they face.

Kearney has previously attracted the reputation of doing battle sequences better than almost any other writer in the genre, better than Bakker, Martin or Erikson, with perhaps only Gemmell and Cornwell at the very height of their powers challenging him. The battles here are hard, brutal affairs but they are also used to make the characters change and grow, with every engagement also reflecting some revelation or advancement in the characters. It is an excellent device, perhaps not a conscious one, but handled superbly.

In this one novel (The Ten Thousand is a stand-alone, although Kearney does not rule out other works set in the same world) Kearney successfully encapsulates all of his strengths as a writer, making for his tighest, most satisfying novel to date, and may possibly have just given us the best epic fantasy of 2008.

The Ten Thousand (*****) is an engrossing, superb novel of war and its impact on humanity with a fitting ending. It will be published by Solaris on 1 September 2008 in the UK and in October in the USA.

Speculative Horizons reviews the novel here. Realms of Speculative Fiction reviews it here. Graeme's Fantasy Book Review covers it here. A Dribble of Ink has a two-part interview with Paul Kearney here and here.

The Grand History of the Realms by Brian R. James & Ed Greenwood

The history of the Forgotten Realms fantasy world is long and complex. Since the Realms first appeared in print in 1987, with the novel Darkwalker on Moonshae and the original first edition of the Forgotten Realms boxed setting, over 210 novels and dozens of game products have been published, each adding to the canon and history of the world. This doesn't include the extensive history and backstory built up by creator Ed Greenwood whilst he ran the Realms as his own private creation for the twenty years prior to that. Needless to say, the story and history of the Realms have become somewhat convoluted in the forty years they have existed.

According to the blurb, The Grand History of the Realms is supposed to detail the complete history of the Realms as explained in the novels, computer games and RPG ame products previously published. That claim has to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Lake Michigan. It's a suspiciously slim tome for such a grand endeavour, and indeed the events of many novels, sourcebooks, computer games and adventure modules go completely unmentioned in the book, making its worth somewhat dubious. More irritatingly, the book also fails to mention the sources for its dates and events. What is new material and what is old? What comes from existing game products and what comes from the novels? Combined with the lack of an index, this even further lessens the value of the book. Reading up on the Tuigan Invasion is cool, but if you want to delve further into the events, what novels do you read? What game products do you look up? The book doesn't give you any help on that score.

Of course, what makes this all the more irritating is that the original, free version of the book (assembled by Brian R. James when he was just a fan providing a resource to candlekeep.com) does annotate all of its dates with the source in question. And, seperately, other sourcebooks and Dragon magazine articles have provided dates for all of the novels. Combining these sources into the book and providing a more substantial tome would have been more useful.

Unfortunately, the book's biggest hindrance is that it is simply a timeline, not a narrative history, so if you want to read up on the history of Elminster, for example, you have to trawl through the entire book and pick up his story as you go (this is made all the more difficult as, ridiculously, Elminster's birth date is not mentioned either). A narrative history would put together Elminster's history in one chapter and set it in context among the greater history of the world. This book singularly fails to do that. There is also the issue that where certain dating contorversies have emerged, rather than come to some conclusion about each one, the writers have sometimes put in both conflicting dates. As a result some notable historical figures die in a civil war, only to die again in exactly the same civil war fourteen years later. Right.

The next problem is that the transition of the Dungeons and Dragons game from 3rd to 4th Edition, including the adoption of a completely new system of magic, means that the Realms have also got to change and rather than simply retcon the transition (as they did between 2nd and 3rd Edition) the game designers have decided to nuke the Realms by killing the Goddess of Magic (along with about fifty other deities), disrupting the magic system for the planet, nuking an entire continent for no logical reason and devastating several of the others (including Faerun, the main Realms continent). Oh yeah, and they've also advanced the timeline by 104 years (meaning that about half the characters and NPCs in the Realms that fans are familiar with are suddenly dead of old age). Needless to say, many Realms fans aren't happy about this. You can probably hear the screaming over the Internet from here.

Finally, on the criticism front, the book uses a ton of recycled art, sometimes with wrong or incorrect captions, and some of it is from completely different settings with no relevance to the Realms (the unexplained presence of a warforged - a sort of killer robotic golem - from Eberron being a clear example).

The book does have some saving graces, however. A few loose ends left dangling from 2nd Edition in areas that were not addressed in 3rd (such as the outcome of the Sythillisian War between an empire of ogres and the human merchant kingdom of Amn) are finally resolved, and the timeline advances the current history of the Realms forward by about ten years (before the centry-long leap into 4th Edition), making it slightly easier for Dungeon Masters running games advancing in real time to keep track of what is going on. There's also some fine new pieces of Realmslore, such as the first-ever maps of the Imaskar Empire and the Kingdom of Jhaamdath, and an interesting map depicting the landmasses of Toril when they were just one huge supercontinent. Also, since the book doesn't introduce any new rules, it can be used happily by those who are playing either 3rd or 4th Edition, or even the die-hards still using older systems. That said, although the writers have gone to some lengths not to make it an obvious gaming product (no D&D logo anywhere on the book, encouraging sales to bookshops as well as gaming hobby stores), its worth for non-gamer fans of the Realms, such as perhaps readers of RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden novels or Paul S. Kemp's Erevis Cale books, is virtually nil due to the lack of focus on many of the events in the novels.

The Grand History of the Realms (**½) is therefore a failure, albeit an ambitious one, but some Forgotten Realms fans may appreciate it as a one-stop resource for researching some of the dates in the setting's history. The book is simply nowhere near as exhaustive or detailed as it needed and promised to be. The book is available from Wizards of the Coast in the UK and the USA.

The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

The Fall of Hyperion is the second novel in the four-volume Hyperion Cantos, although it does effectively resolve the storylines opened up in Hyperion. When the first book ended, the pilgrims had arrived at the Valley of the Time Tombs on Hyperion where each was supposed to confront the Shrike and petition it for a wish. However, one of their number, Het Masteen, had vanished without a trace. At the same time, the 'barbarian' Ousters are launching a massive assault on the Hyperion system which the Hegemony of Man's space fleet, FORCE, has proven unable to repulse. All eyes in the Hegemony turn to the Hyperion system where the fates of billions will be decided.

The novel proceeds along two parallel paths. In the first, we see events unfolding on Hyperion as the surviving pilgrims explore the Time Tombs. In the second, we follow Hegemony CEO Gladstone as she plans the defence of the Hegemony of Man against both the Ousters and the AI TechnoCore, humanity's extremely unreliable ally. Both storylines are related through a second 'cybrid' based on the poet Keats, who is telepathically linked to Brawne Lamia, one of the pilgrims on Hyperion, and has also been called into the advise the CEO.

Fall of Hyperion is therefore a somewhat different book to the first. Much bigger and more explosive events are depicted than in the first book. This is definitely a less character-intense book, although it could be argued that the original Hyperion did such a good job of defining the characters we don't really need to delve further into their skulls. Fall of Hyperion is, however, more action-packed and much faster paced, developing into a real page-turner as the book proceeds. In particular, Gladstone becomes a fascinating character, her decisions at the end of the book likely to doom her to infamy for all time, despite the necessity of her actions.

There are a few more problems than there were with Hyperion. The Keats angle in the first novel was interesting and allowed Simmons to explore his obvious love of the poet quite thoroughly. However, having a second Keats avatar pretty much relate the entire story of the second novel is a massive overkill. If you have no interest in the poet, there are long stretches of this second novel that are just extremely tedious. Also, after the massive build-up to galactic apocalypse with the promise of billions dying and humanity falling into a huge dark age, the ramifications of 'the fall' are seriously downplayed. Perhaps the next book in the series, Endymion, which picks the narrative up some 200 years later, will do a better job of expanding on this, but it feels like Simmons pulled his punches at the end of the book.

That said, Fall of Hyperion is an enjoyable, at times gripping science fiction novel and a worthy sequel to Hyperion. Well recommended.

The Fall of Hyperion (****) is available from Gollancz in the UK either in a one-volume edition or in an omnibus with Hyperion. The book is available from Bantam Spectra in the USA.

Wertzone Classics: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny has the reputation of being one of the most interesting and innovative speculative fiction writers of his generation. His Amber novels are regarded as classics of fantasy and Damnation Alley is highly regarded to this day. Unfortunately it wasn't until recently that I got into his work, starting with his Hugo-winning 1967 novel, Lord of Light.

The setting is the distant future. Earth - now called Urath - is nearly forgotten. Mankind has settled a distant colony world, but the original crew of the colonisation ship have, through advanced technology, become extremely powerful beings and taken on the mantle of the Hindu gods. The general population is kept in harsh, downtrodden servility to these deities. Advanced AIs and the gods judge the 'karmic debt' of each person when they die, deciding if they are to be reborn in another human body or reincarnated as an animal or elevated to godhood. It is the ultimate hierarchal structure, designed to keep the powerful in power and the downtrodden under the heel. Every time a major technological discovery is made, the gods crush it with merciless force to ensure that the status quo continues.

One person thinks differently: Mahasamatman. He is one of the First, but has never claimed to be a god. But then, he has never claimed not to be a god. He refuses to believe in the innate superiority of the gods and finds what they have done to the people they were supposed to be protecting and serving repellent. To this end he carves an identity for himself as the Lord of Light, Buddha, and seeks to bring about the end of his world...

Lord of Light is an exceptionally clever, thought-provoking and intelligent novel. It is an incredibly fresh work. 1967? It could have been written yesterday. Zelazny is a funny and poetic writer, approaching each chapter, each interlude and each character from a slightly different angle, sometimes invoking rich mythic imagery. He bears some influences on his sleeve: at some moments the book feels like a Hindu cover version of The Dying Earth (complete with Vancian dialogue exchanges), but only momentarily. The mystery of how a futuristic, space-faring civilisation became a dramatic reenactment of Hindu mythology is never fully explained, but Zelazny gives us enough clues to work out ourselves how it happened. He also packs a hell of a lot into this 300-page tome, including vast wars and battles, struggles with body-stealing alien entities, brief-but-intriguing philosophical discourses on the nature of humanity and humourous monkey episodes. It's a story about myth, power and absolute corruption that resonates as strongly now as it did forty years ago.

Lord of Light (*****) is yet more proof that Gollancz's SF Masterworks list is one of the best, most definitive lists of the SF&F classics anyone could ask for. It is available in the UK from Gollancz and in the USA from Eos.

Update

After my prolonged DVD and TV-viewing spree, expect literature reviews to resume shortly, with Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny and Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons leading the way.

Peadar O'Guilin's excellent debut novel, The Inferior, gets its US release this week. Check out my original review here.

Release news which may be of interest:

The eighth volume in Steven Erikson's The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Toll the Hounds, will be released in the UK on 1 July 2008, with the US version following on 16 September.

Ian Cameron Esslemont's second Malazan novel, Return of the Crimson Guard, will be released by Bantam on 14 August in the UK, although a two-volume, special limited edition is out now from PS Publishing.

Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains follows on 7 August from Gollancz in the UK, and from Del Rey in the US next spring. Review here.

Paul Kearney's The Ten Thousand is out in the UK and USA on 1 September. The two-volume Monarchies of God omnibus is scheduled for the autumn, but this isn't set in stone. Check out his new interview with Aidan at Dribble of Ink here, in which he also has good news for fans of the Sea-Beggar series, which was left hanging in mid-air by Bantam last year.

Terry Pratchett's new fantasy, Nation, is released in the UK on 11 September. It is not set in his regular Discworld setting and apparently is the novel he's wanted to write for five years.

Peter F. Hamilton's The Temporal Void, the second book in The Void Trilogy, will be released in the UK on 3 October 2008, and in the USA in the spring.

Scott Lynch's The Republic of Thieves, the third book in his Gentleman Bastards series, has been delayed from this summer to February 2009.

Patrick Rothfuss' The Wise Man's Fear, the follow-up to 2007's hit debut The Name of the Wind, is currently scheduled for April 2009.

George RR Martin's A Dance with Dragons is still officially listed by Bantam for September 30th and by Voyager for November. GRRM himself has set himself a deadline of finishing the book by the end of this month. Expect to here more news on this score (good or bad) in the next few weeks.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book II: Earth

The second season of Avatar picks up where the first left off. The Northern Water Tribe has successfully defended itself against a Fire Nation invasion, with the help of the Avatar, Aang. With Katara having mastered Waterbending and now capable of teaching Aang, Team Avatar (as Sokka dubs the group) heads south into the Earth Kingdom to find Aang someone to teach him Earthbending. Meanwhile, Prince Zuko and his uncle, General Iroh, have been exiled and outcast by the Fire Lord, who has sent his daughter Azula to hunt down them and the Avatar. To this end she recruits two fellow female warriors to succeed where her brother failed.

Season 2 starts off with our heroes on a high after their victory over the Fire Nation and their securing of the Northern Water Tribe as allies. Their luck seems to hold up, with the Fire Nation apparently keener on tracking down the 'traitors' Zuko and Iroh than pursuing the Avatar, and they soon meet Toph, a blind girl who 'sees' through Earthbending and is the teacher Aang needs. However, no sooner has Toph joined the group then things start to fall apart: a valued member of the team disappears without a trace, the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se comes under attack by the Fire Nation and political intrigue within the Earth Kingdom weakens the allied forces as the Fire Nation advances.

Avatar's second season (or 'Book', in the show's own parlance) is a splendid follow-up to the first. It's the middle part of the trilogy, but if it adheres to an existing format, thankfully it's the original Star Wars trilogy: Earth is The Empire Strikes Back of this story, putting our heroes through the wringer emotionally, physically and mentally, and ending on a surprisingly downbeat note. The notion of 'mentorship' is investigated thoroughly, with Aang's mastery of bending now in the hands of two people barely older than himself, whilst Zuko's relationship with Iroh goes through some tough times. In fact, it's the internal war between Zuko's dual natures over his soul which forms the most satisfying through-line of the series, and Zuko's painting as a young man tortured by his own past with his own strengths and weaknesses rather than as a simplistic bad guy, or a bad guy who turns to good, is a surprisingly mature theme for what is apparently a kid's show.

Many individual episodes are of note, although Tales of Ba Sing Se is especially noteworthy. With our heroes forced to stay in the Earth Kingdom capital for a protracted stay, this episode doesn't feature a major crisis but instead follows them on several minor plot strands, from Sokka getting into a haiku-off with some poets ("That's one too many syllables!") to Aang establishing a zoo to an especially splendid instalment in which Iroh pays tribute to his late son. It's an extremely accomplished episode, as is Appa's Lost Days, in which the most under-explored member of the team gets his very own episode. However, there are far less stand-alones this season, with every episode linking into the main story arc and minor characters from the first season returning with more concrete roles.

With its second season, Avatar continues to impress, exploring themes of redemption, honour and extreme property damage in a consistently intelligent and amusing manner.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book II: Earth (****½) is available on DVD in the USA, but has not been officially released in the UK yet. Import Region 1 copies can be found on Amazon.co.uk. Season 3 returns to Nickelodeon for its final five episodes (also the final five episodes of the series) in mid-July.

Lostwatch 5: Season 4, Episodes 9-13

Lost's fourth season was cut short by the US writer's strike, but luckily the early end to the strike allowed the season to return having lost just a grand total of two episodes, leaving the bulk of the planned storyline intact.

The Shape of Things to Come picks up where we left off. Danielle and Karl are dead and Alex is a prisoner of the mercenary team led by Keamy. The team launches an assault on the Barracks, the former home of the Others, and Ben, Locke, Sawyer, Claire and Hurley are besieged in one of the houses. Meanwhile, on the beach Jack gets closer to the truth about the freighter crew's true intentions. In the flashforwards, we learn more about Ben's intentions and actions after he left the Island, culminating in a showdown with his arch-enemy, Charles Widmore. This is one of Lost's most action-packed episodes to date, featuring massive explosions, gun battles and one of the most violent appearances of the Monster to date. Between the fireworks are more intense character moments, as Ben underestimates his enemy for the first time and his showdown with Widmore is one of the most dramatically intense moments in the entire series, sold by stellar perofrmances from Emerson and Dale.

Something Nice Back Home is a slightly quieter episode, with Jack suffering from appendicitis and Juliet having to operate to save his life. This is juxtaposed with flashforwards showing Jack and Kate as a happy couple off the Island, but a conversation with Hurley and repeated glimpses of his dead father, as well as his discovery that Kate has been keeping a secret from him, serve to set him on the course to self-destruction (cleverly prefiguring the total collapse of Jack's life we saw in the Season 3 finale). Unfortunately, the cleverness of the flash-forwards scenes cannot compensate with a lacklustre 'present' storyline, which is confounded by total left-field plot twists (such as the unconvincing revelation that Charlotte can speak Korean and Claire's disappearance after seeing her dead father).

Cabin Fever ups the supernatural quotient as Locke is guided by visions of a dead DHARMA scientist to a meeting with Jacob, only to find that Jacob isn't present and Christian Shepherd - and Claire - are. Once again Michael Emerson turns in a great performance as Ben as he faces the reality that he has been displaced in Jacob and the Island's affections by Locke. Flashbacks reveal that the Island may have been having an impact on Locke's life long before he set foot on Oceanic 815. This revelation, although on the one hand playing down the 'coincidence' aspect of the show and perhaps giving a reason why 815 was pulled towards the Island in the first place (since the plane went off-course long before Desmond's negligence in the Season 2 finale caused it to crash), does feel like an artificial retcon rather than a pre-planned development. It will be interesting to see if they can build on this revelation in future episodes and seasons.

There's No Place Like Home is the two-part season finale (although Part 2 is a double-length episode, so technically it's a three-parter). The future members of the Oceanic Six are scattered all over the place. The 815 survivors are beginning to be evacuated to the freighter, but a huge bomb has been found on board, with Michael, Jin and Desmond having to find a way of defusing it. Locke and Ben's path leads them to the DHARMA Initiative station known as the Orchid, and a confrontation with one of the Island's most ancient secrets. But in the future the members of the Oceanic Six are plagued by increasing guilt over the actions that led to their freedom and news of the death of a colleague puts them over the edge, particularly Jack, culminating in the realisation that they must return to the Island. However, given what Locke and Ben did on the day of their departure, that may be easier said than done...

As far as season finales go, it's hard beating this one. Action, self-sacrifice, heroism, deaths, more explosions, guest cameos (a great but brief turn from Michelle 'Admiral Cain' Forbes) and moments of real emotional power (Henry Ian Cusack proves himself once again to be the show's most underrated actor in his climatic scenes as Desmond finally finds what he has been looking for) combine to form one of Lost's most satisfying episodes. The end of the episode is a note of real finality. Lost as it has existed for four seasons is dead and gone, and it's unclear how the series will continue from this point on, especially in light of the climatic revelation. With the fourth season and the finale in particular the Lost writers have completely regained the form and storytelling ability it looked like they had lost at the start of Season 3. It will be fascinating to see how the story proceeds from this point onwards.

409: The Shape of Things to Come *****
410: Something Nice Back Home ***
411: Cabin Fever ****
412: There's No Place Like Home, Part 1 ****
413: There's No Place Like Home, Part 2 *****

Lost Season 5 will begin filming in August to debut on ABC in late January 2009 and will consist of 17 episodes. The producers are keeping schtum about exactly what the new format of the show will be, but will be putting an appearance in at Comicon in July which will provide some hints. Season 4 will be released on DVD on 9 December 2008 in both the UK and USA.

Control

Control is the 'biopic' of Ian Curtis, the lead singer with the late 1970s rock/post-punk band Joy Division. Between 1977 and 1980 Joy Division were a number of bands who helped establish Manchester as a centre of musical excellence in the UK. They released two absolutely seminal albums - Unknown Pleasures and Closer - and a slew of hit singles and EPs, culminating in 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', which catapaulted them into the charts and set the scene for their first tour of the United States. But, on the eve of that tour in May 1980, Curtis committed suicide at the age of 23. A year later his bandmates reconvened, renamed themselves NewOrder, and went on to become one of the most successful bands of the 1980s. Control is Curtis' story.

Control is the first full-length film to be directed by Anton Corbijn. This is somewhat surprising, as Corbijn has been directing music videos for a quarter of a century, working with bands such as Depeche Mode, U2, Nice Cave, Bryan Adams, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mercury Rev and Coldplay, not to mention directing the 1988 re-release of the Joy Division song 'Atmosphere'. He is also a highly acclaimed photographer, responsible for the sleeve design and photography for, among others,U2's The Joshua Tree.

For this film, Corbijn chose to use his trademark black-and-white imagery. It may be a cliche - this is a dark and somewhat depressing film - but it works well, especially when compared to Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People which covers same of the same story in blazing technicolour. Still, I couldn't help wondering if perhaps Corbijn should have moved outside of his comfort zone and perhaps bled colour and black-and-white together as the film moves from the happy optimism of youth into darker and more suffocating territory.

The film opens in 1973 with Curtis still at school, showing him as a massive fan of David Bowie and falling in love with his first girlfriend, Deborah, whom he marries shortly after leaving school before getting a job working for the local unemployment office. He dreams of being a writer and a rock star, and hears about a local band called Warsaw founded by guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter 'Hooky' Hook, but they're lacking a singer. After catching a performance by the Sex Pistols, Curtis decides to join up, providing lyrics and taking over the microphone. A blazing trail of success follows: they change their name to the more successful Joy Division (the name of a brothel made up of Jewish women used by the SS in WWII, which immediately earns them the ire of some groups who accuse them of being Nazi sympathisers), get some performance slots on TV and record a successful debut album, Unknown Pleasures. Ian and Deborah also have a baby daughter. But, coming back from the band's first gig in London, Curtis is struck down by epilepsy. Unable to take the pressure of being in the band and in his job at the same time as suffering from his illness, he resigns from his job and Deborah has to bring in a living wage. During a foreign tour Ian meets and falls in love with a Belgian fanzine-writer, Annik, which complicates things even further.

A film like this lives and dies based on its performances and they are universally excellent. Newcomer Sam Riley gives a stunning performance of the haunted, intense Curtis. The only major criticism I have is that Curtis' sense of humour doesn't come through in his performance, but that may be more the fault of the writer. 24 Hour Party People and Deborah Curtis' book, Touching from a Distance, both make it clear that Curtis wasn't constantly down and depressed, but from this movie you don't get that impression. Deborah Curtis is played by the much more well-known Samantha Morton, who gives a sympathetic performance as the wife who is left behind when her husband finds fame (but not fortune) as a rock star. Another stand-out is German actress Alexandra Maria Lara (who was excellent in the 2004 movie Downfall), who plays Annik. Also of note is Toby Kebbell, who plays the band's infamously acid-tongued manager Rob Gretton, who provides much of the film's humour.

Control is a haunting movie consisting of stunning performances and a soundtrack to die for (the actors, impressively, actually play and sing all the Joy Division songs themselves). It makes for uncomfortable viewing at times, but is an engrossing piece of work.

Control (****½) is available on DVD in the UK at the moment. The US edition will be released this week.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book I: Water

Whilst I've always quite liked the aesthetic qualities of Japanese anime, I must confess I've always found the plots to be nigh-on incomprehensible (based as many are on Japanese cultural tropes which have no analogue in the West), and the ones that seemed to be understandable seemed to only last a few episodes before being canned (the excellent Cyber City Odeo 808 being a perfect example of a great show with tremendously interesting characters, yet it lasted a mere three episodes). Having said all of that, my exposure to anime in recent years has been extremely limited and these older generalizations may not hold true.

An interesting and apparently successful approach has been to combine Western storytelling with the anime style of art to produce something of a hybrid programme. Robotech began this trend back in the early 1980s, with Carl Macek crafting an original story (albeit one heavily derived from Macross, one of the three contributing Japanese TV shows) to fuse three different Japanese shows into one continuity. A few years later, French writers and Japanese animators combined to create The Mysterious Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31, both notable for being limited series with definitive endings with much more adult themes than is usually encountered in animation primarily aimed at children. The latest such effort is Avatar: The Last Airbender, a Nickelodeon production currently in its third season hiatus in the USA.

Avatar is set in a heavily Japanese-inspired world which is divided into four forms of magic: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Manipulation of each form of magic is known as bending. Over the centuries, each form of magic has attracted its own followers, and a powerful nation or tribe has arisen based around each element: the two Water Tribes live at the opposing poles of the planet, the Fire Nation occupies a huge volcanic archipelago, the Earth Kingdom dominates the largest continent and the various Air Tribes (at least three of which used to exist) occupy remote mountain chains. The four peoples lived in harmony under the protective guidance of the Buddha-like Avatar (who could combine the four elements and thus kept the tribes in balance) until, a century prior to the series beginning, he vanished without a trace. Without a check on their ambition, the Fire Nation launched a war of aggression against the other peoples, quickly overrunning and apparently destroying the Air Tribes, but then becoming bogged down in a lengthy war against the Earth Kingdom.

Avatar opens with two youngsters from the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and her brother Sokka, discovering the Avatar trapped in a magical block of ice. The Avatar is a 12-year-old boy named Aang, an Airbender who doesn't know anything about the war or the events that have transpired in his absence. His only companion is Appa, his magical flying bison, but Aang rapidly finds himself the target of Zuko, an exiled Fire Nation prince who is determined to capture Aang to restore his honour and prestige at the Fire Lord's court. With the Southern Water Tribe in danger due to Aang's presence, Aang decides to journey to the North Pole to learn waterbending from the more powerful Northern Water Tribe. Katara, a novice Waterbender herself, and Sokka agree to accompany him.

Avatar is a single, large story which is divided into three 'books' or seasons, with each episode a chapter of that book. Book I is named Water, as the focus is on Aang's journey to the Northern Water Tribe and what happens when he gets there. Along the way he and his companions have many adventures, including repeated run-ins with Zuko (whose backstory becomes more complex and intriguing with every appearance) and Zuko's rival, Admiral Zhao, who is determined to capture the Avatar for his own purposes. We also learn about the ongoing war on the Earth Kingdom's continent, although somewhat disappointingly we never see the front lines. Aang also finds time to visit two of the Air Temples in an effort to understand his own growing power. Events culminate at the North Pole where Zhao launches a concerted effort to destroy the Northern Water Tribe.

Avatar is, simply put, a tremendously enjoyable slice of television. It's definitely a kid's show (those looking for dark, gore-filled gritty anime best look elsewhere), but it never talks down to its audience and credits them with a fair bit of intelligence. The worldbuilding is impeccable, the stories are intelligent and logical and the writers clearly have the story mapped out ahead of time, resulting in tremendous coherence and continuity. These guys could teach the makers of Battlestar Galactica a lot. It's also quite funny and shows occasional homages to other forms of animation: one early episode featuring our heroes accidentally devastating part of a city with a mail cart even has a Wild E. Coyote-style freeze-frame shot so the audience can more thoroughly appreciate the destruction they unleash. In another sequence two prison guards report the appearance of a dangerous flying bison to the commandant (voiced by George 'Mr. Sulu' Takei), who delays acting on the news due to linguistic concerns over where the correct designation is 'flying bison' or 'flying buffalo'. The animation is also excellent, clearly inspired by Hayao Miyazaki (Appa, our heroes' mount, is a nod to the Catbus from My Neighobur Totoro) and is a step above practically every other US animated show in production today.

I'm struggling to find some negatives here. The show is fast-paced and funny. It isn't preachy and never indulges in, "I learned something today..." moral lessons. It's simply a very good show, enjoyable by all no matter your age.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 1: Water (****½) is available on DVD in the USA. Annoyingly, it isn't available in the UK yet, although Region 1 copies can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. Season 3, which is the final season, is currently airing in the USA on the Nickelodeon.

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Back in 2001, a movie based on the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game was released. It can charitably be described as, "Not all that it could have been." At the time many fans pondered why Wizards of the Coast had allowed an inexperienced director to adapt their best-known product using his own (not particuarly impressive) homebrew campaign world as a basis, rather than using some of their best-selling novels as a source, such as RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden books or, the more popular suggestion, the epic Dragonlance saga by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Well, in 2006 it appears that someone finally took the (rather obvious) move of licensing the Dragonlance world and series to be used as the basis of a movie trilogy.

For readers of a particular age (those who grew up in the mid-1980s), Dragonlance is as seminal a fantasy touchstone as Tolkien. The original Dragonlance Chronicles (Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons of Spring Dawning) is a traditional tale of a band of heroes who come together and get embroiled in the ongoing war between the armies of dragons, led by the dark goddess Takhisis, and the forces of light, represented by the god Paladine. Over the course of many battles and adventures, they eventually succeed and overthrow the Dark Queen. What is more interesting, however, is the internal journey many of the heroes undertake, most notably that of the extremely morally ambiguous mage Raistlin, who is torn between his loyalty to his friends and his own thirst for power, which forms the basis of the superior sequel series, The Dragonlance Legends (Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, and Test of the Twins).

That a film adaption of Dragons of Autumn Twilight has taken so long to arrive is surprising. The original trilogy sold well over 4 million copies in its first decade in print, and Weis & Hickman are often credited - alongside Stephen Donaldson, Terry Brooks and Raymond E. Feist - of helping to kick-off the post-Tolkien epic fantasy boom. At the same time, the demands of such an adaption are notable. The story features sequences involving armies of dragons attacking cities, lots of magic and enormous battles. Making a live-action movie would have been impossible before the advent of the CGI age, and an animated film would have disappointed most of the fans.

Which makes it all the more inexplicable that, in 2006, Paramount and Wizards of the Coast agreed to go with an animated film. And not a CGI movie or a high-quality animated feature employing the best Korean or Japanese animation houses in the business, but a cheap 'n' cheerful adaption by an unknown Indian company which employs less-advanced animation techniques than mid-1980s episodes of He-Man. The animation is somewhat stilted throughout and the character designs tend to be somewhat bland (with arguably only Fewmaster Toede really being a memorable design). Even more bizarre is the decision to use rather weak CGI to depict the dragons and their half-humanoid servants, the draconians, leading to a mishmash of styles which detracts from the story.

The other problem is that the entire 400-page novel has been squeezed into a 90-minute film, leading to severe compression of the story. Fan-favourite scenes such as the wicker dragon are thus lost, and climatic events in Pax Tharkas are simplified considerably. Lots of character development is also abandoned on the cutting room floor, and elements such as Tanis' continuing inner turmoil at being caught between the elven and human worlds but not a part of either are depicted clunkily. Raistlin's story arc more or less survives intact, and is enlivened by a decent vocal performance by Kiefer Sutherland.

That all said, the writer does do a good job of transmitting the background story to the viewer. A pre-credits, Fellowship of the Ring-style prologue gets the story across quite straightforwardly, and the adaption makes use of the fact that they're not making it up hurriedly as they go along (as the original writers of the novels did) to set things up ahead of time. High Lord Verminaard doesn't just show up out of nowhere as he does in the books, for example.

As a slice of entertainment for young children, the film works quite well (although a few scenes do contain blood, and Tasselhoff Burrfoot has become a psychopath in this adaption, stabbing a goblin repeatedly through the heart in one particular scene, so parental discretion is advised), and fans of the novels may get a nostalgic kick out of seeing their old favourite characters on screen. It's also notably a better viewing experience than either the live-action 2001 Dungeons and Dragons movie or its utterly horrific direct-to-DVD sequel (Wrath of a Dragon God, which may actually be the worst movie created in the history of humanity to this time, the works of Uwe Boll of course excepted). However, the adaption does have the feel of being a major missed opportunity. With better animation and a more generous running time, this could have been a very good adaption indeed, but instead it has to settle for being rather mediocre.

Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight (**) is available in the United States on DVD, and as a Region 1 import in the UK.