Fullmetal Alchemist is one of my all time favorite manga series (and I’m not just saying that because I work on the English version!), but for some reason, the first anime adapation never clicked for me. The new series, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which launched earlier this month, on the other hand, really nails it. This version isn’t a perfectly faithful adaptation either, as evidenced by the first episode that introduces an all-new character and storyline, but right away it captures the pitch-perfect tone that the manga took many volumes to perfect.

The first three episodes are up at Funimation’s website, so whether you’re a longtime Hagaren fan or new to the series, do yourself a favor and check it out.

The Nebula Awards were held over the weekend and I was very pleased to see that Flora’s Dare by Ysabeau Wilce (reviewed here) took the Andre Norton award for best YA novel. It really is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years, YA or not, and hopefully this award will help it find even more readers.

I spent my Sunday afternoon around a not so YA bunch of senior dames, many capped with gaudy red caps, at a charity tea party. It was a thoroughly white bread affair — crusts removed — and I’m not just talking about the finger sandwiches. The charity in question involved preserving an old navy chapel on the (radioactive?) Mare Island, the walls of which are adorned with Tiffany stained-glass (including Sir Galahad as Jesus’ right hand man, but sadly no Sir Robin). When the pre-tea history lesson dragged, I skimmed the handy NIV with the fiancee to try and find the best possible biblical name. The winner? I’ve got to go with “Zerobabel Jokereth-Nazzebain.”

In Return to Labyrinth news, I’m working furiously on volume 4 this week, making some revisions based on notes from the Henson studio folks. A few notes are pretty major, but they’ll make for a much better conclusion, I’m sure. I don’t want to talk much about volume 4 before you’ve even had a chance to pick up volume 3, but rest assured that the Labyrinth train is moving at full-speed. Oh, and speaking of volume 3, my copies (and the prizes for the “Spoiler Alert” contest) should be arriving momentarily!

From about the fourth grade when I graduated from mostly kids books to mostly mass-market paperbacks through high school, the Fantasy/Sci-Fi aisle was my bookstore haunt. I’ve always found it a little bit odd, if admittedly efficient, the way that Balrogs, Skrulls, Gethenians and D20 dice are all lumped together in a nerd ghetto. Would aliens (or elves) classifying all Earthly literature with fresh eyes (assuming these aliens have eyes) ever conceive of a classification system that would put Ben Bova and Terry Brooks side-by-side? In any case, it worked pretty well for a while. These days, nerds are pretty much taking over the bookstore, as evidenced by the boom of YA fantasy, Sookie Stackhouse and graphic novels.

It was shortly after graduating from high school that I turned my back on the old Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves. I still lined up for the latest genre movie, but with the exception of stopping by a few times for Neal Stephenson’s latest, I started giving my old haunt a wide berth. On the one hand, it was high time I broadened my horizons, but I was trying a bit too hard to “mature” my tastes. I probably went a full ten years without reading a book with spaceships!

Long story short, picking up where my reading habits left off, I just discovered Joe Haldeman’s seminal sci-fi novel The Forever War and it knocked my snooty spaceship-and-military-fiction-averse socks off. Quick summary for those who haven’t read it yet, the Forever War is about one soldier’s experience in a war between humans and an alien race that, due to time dilation from faster-than-lightspeed travel, lasts over a thousand years. While there are a few battle scenes, the novel isn’t about tactics or technology at all, but rather it’s a timeless soldier’s story about loss, alienation and hurrying-up-and-waiting, very much like recent films Stop-Loss and Jarhead , or the classic Full Metal Jacket. While Haldemam wrote the novel in response to Vietnam (himself a Vet), The Forever War feels even more relevant for today’s world, where war is paradoxically both more clinical and abstract than ever. It’s a fast read, but one that sticks with you. It would make a great film or miniseries, provided the filmmakers were more Terrance Malick than Michael Bay. Anyway, I know most people who come to this site are more into faeries than phasers, but if you’re at all hard SF tolerant, give The Forever War a read!

Next up on my genre reading list — Bones of Faerie. I’ll report back soon.

As Return to Labyrinth Volume 3 is due to hit stores in days or weeks, this will be the last teaser post. This first image is the title page for Chapter 5 (title removed to avoid spoilers ), which I absolutely love — Great work, Chris! Ever since seeing this page drawn, I’ve been itching to make a real deck of Labyrinth Tarot Cards. Maybe I should look into that…  The second one is slightly spoilery as it introduces a new character, so it’s hidden behind this link.

Hope this whets your appetite!

And, of course, all images are drawn by Chris Lie and (c) The Jim Henson Company.

So I tried out this hearty new cereal from Whole Foods that boldly proclaims to be “50% fruit and nuts!” Two scoops of raisins? More like TEN scoops. I’ve never been a big fan of raisins, but as my taste buds have matured, my raisin-tolerance has increased to the point where I will not automatically reject cookies or cereal with them. That said, when eating cereal with raisins, I always try to clump them together into as few spoonfulls as possible, getting them out of the way so that I can enjoy more spoons of raisin-free grains. Sort of like my tastebuds are taking one for the team with those initial raisiny bites. Just so you know, this doesn’t really work when your cereal is 50% raisins, as then you spend half your breakfast eating nothing but soggy dried grapes, and chances are, you’ll still have missed a few, and in the process of being so methodical about fruit/grain segregation, you probably went and let your oats get soggy, at which point the whole delayed gratification is sort of moot. It’s enough to turn one back of raisins altogether. Next time, my limit is 30% fruits and nuts, and even that is pushing it.

Since she pointed to it in the comments already, I don’t think Mollie would mind me posting, so here you are — the first (to my knowledge) cinematic trailer for Return to Labyrinth! What a great collection of clips. I think you captured the feel of the manga spot on. If Lady Gaga plays Moppet, though, that kind of spoils the big scene in volume 4 where Moppet saves the day through the power of wearing pants. Oh well. No adaptation is perfect. Nice work!

First the good news. On the resolution front, several serendipitous leads are making my list of writing goals look surprisingly realistic! Still too early to announce anything, but the past few weeks have been very productive indeed.

Now for the bad news — I’m a total spaz when over-caffeinated, and spaz + laptop + hot mug o’ coffee = an $800 blunder. Fortunately, I don’t think there’s anything critical that’s lost, but for the next couple weeks I’m going to have to spend most of my time writing the old-fashioned way.

There are only a few webcomics that I follow daily, but sometimes I discover a new strip or story that just hooks me and has me spending hours going through the archives. Such a comic is The Princess Planet by Toronto artist Brian McLachlan, a weekly gag strip that takes place on a planet of princesses and fantasy hijinks. Think… Fables meets Perry Bible Fellowship?

Of coruse, as soon as I saw the following , I knew it would be a hit with Gobblin readers:

Click on the comic above for the rest of the strip and be sure to return often — I know I will!

Twenty-nine entered, but only three will win free copies of Return to Labyrinth volume 3! It was a lot of fun reading through the entries, but picking just three was pretty nerve-wracking. In the end, I just had to go with the three that made me smile tonight (with a little help from the fiancee for tie-breaking). So without further ado… Read more…