Fantastic News

John C Wright just posted:

It appears that, unbeknownst to me, SWAN KNIGHT’S SON is up for the Planetary Award. If you maintain a blog, you can vote.

I just finished Swan Knight's Son, the first of the Moth and Cobweb books, and absolutely love it. It is easily as poetic and vivid as anything of his I've read. If anything, it has the deepest contrasts without pushing to extremes. For all that I love the Metachronopolis or Night Lands stories, they are about finding light in the darkness. Sure, Metachronopolis looks prettier, but it's a thin veneer over ugly. In the Night Lands, it is even more extreme. There is a wide, sparsely populated gulf between the dark, and the point of light we cling to.

In SKS, not only do we see the extremes - and the dark can be very dark, and the love, the warmth, very bright - but a lot of the gamut in between. Every bit of it, from the conversations with animals as a-matter-of-course, to the beauty and darkness of the elf battle and the final fight to protect a kidnapped infant, evokes life, breathes poetry, and a depth of myth and vision behind it weighted with the progress of time. I especially loved the conversations with Ruff, the dog, who like most things in magic, is not all he seems either.

Do yourself a favor. If you haven't read JCW's Castalia works, go pick up Awake in the Night Land, City Beyond Time, The Iron Chamber of Memory, but first, read Swan Knight's Son. 

Oh, and go vote.