Editorial Staff
Denise Dutton
Cat Eldridge
Cat Rambo
Jennifer Stevenson
Robert Tilendis
Gary WhitehouseSearch
-
Recent Posts
- What’s New for the 9th of December: Lots of Tull, Haydn’s “The Seasons”, Questions About Angels, a country house mystery, and other matters for you to consider
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Estate Canines
- What’s New for the 2nd of December: Live music from Iron Horse, Peter Pan, Swamp Thing, The Beatles, and other comforting things as well
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Herne
- What’s New for the 25th of November: Doctor Who goes Victorian, cornbread, music from Nightnoise, concert hall staples, color photography, and there’s a bite on the air
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Guest Lecturer
- What’s New for the 18th of November: A Tull concert, limited edition Ritter chocolate bars, Novels from Ursula le Guin and Patricia McKilillip, German style sausages, ‘Take This Waltz’ by Leonard Cohen and other later Autumn matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: The Calamity Janes
- What’s New for the 11th of November: TCHO dark chocolate, music from smallpiper Kathryn Tickell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Korean manhwa, Peter Beagle on J.R.R Tolkien and other matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Bonfires
- What’s New for the 4th of November: Charles de Lint’s Dreams Underfoot, Jakob Bro at the Old Church, Poetry by Robert Frost, Guy Fawkes Day and music in remememerence of, Joni Mitchell’s 1970 Isle of Wight performance, Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’, Season of the Witch candy roundup and other matters of November
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Riddles (A Letter to Elizabeth)
- What’s New for the 28th of October: All Hallow’s Eve Edition
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Jack O’Lanterns
- What’s New for the 21st of October: An Aaron Copland cornucopia, Justice League Dark, Yolen’s favourite Tolkien, contemporary urban fantasy from Tanya Huff, Leonard Cohen live, Halloween candy, Rock from Down Under, and other hopefully tasty matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: All Hallows‘ Eve
- What’s New for the 14th of October: Rolling Stones do Aaron Copland’s ‘A Fanfare for The Common Man’, chilies and chocolate, H.P. Lovecraft, Québécois Style pork pies, Ray Bradbury and Other Matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: A Punjabi Meal
- What’s New for the 7th of October: A short story from de Lint, a rare Russian ale, Buffy’s first season, Danish jazz and other cool matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Why Contradances?
- What’s New for the 30th of September: the Two Fat Ladies DVD set, Clifford D. Simak’s City, two de Lint novels, Chinese jades, and other Autumnal matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: On Tolkien
- What’s New for the 23rd of September: Earle Stanley Gardner, Concert swag, a China That Never Was, Old Hag tunes, Benjamin Britten, Kedgeree, an Elizabeth Hand novella and other neat stuff
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Chasing Fireflies
- What’s New for the 16th of September: Tull live, a really big chocolate treat, a favourite reading space in Kinrowan Hall, Irish music books, good milk chocolate, live music from De Dannan, an excerpt from de Lint’s Forests Of The Heart and other matters as well
- An Kinrowan Estate Story: Mushroom hunters
- What’s New for the 9th of September: Summer hambos, A Tombstone fiction, Charlie Daniels’ ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’, Junior Superheroes, and other matters of an Autumn nature
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Oh That Biography
- What’s New for the 2nd of September: Steeleye Span’s ‘Robbery With Violins’, New Zealand candy, Colombian music called vallenato, a Benjamin Britten bio, First chapter of James Stoddard’s The High House and Autumn is Coming
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Biscuits
Tag Archives: myth
Jane Lindskold’s Legends Walking
Jane Lindskold has followed up Changer with Legends Walking, which opens a few weeks after Changer closes. The same characters appear, many in expanded roles, new athanor characters participate, and the story takes on added complexity as several plot lines … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged contemmporary fantasy, fantasy, myth, urban fantasy
Comments Off on Jane Lindskold’s Legends Walking
Jane Lindskold’s Changer
Urban fanstasy is a subgenre with as many sets of criteria as there are practitioners. Ranging from the Celto-Amerindian universe of Charles de Lint’s urban Canada and Neil Gaiman’s eclectic universe of the Dreaming, with even hybrids such as Mark … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged contemporary fantasy, fantasy, myth, urban fantasy
Comments Off on Jane Lindskold’s Changer
Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension
The Flight of the Wild Gander is a series of essays produced betwen 1944 and 1968 in which Campbell was, he says, “circling, and from many quarters striving to interpret, the mystery of mythology.” The “mystery,” as comes clear as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, myth, mythography
Comments Off on Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension
Jane Lindskold’s Nine Gates
Ever since their exile from the Lands Born from Smoke and Sacrifice a century ago, the Thirteen Orphans and their descendants have done their best to blend into the cultures of Earth, striving to maintain their bloodlines and protect their … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged contemporary fantasy, fantasy, myth
Comments Off on Jane Lindskold’s Nine Gates
Jane Lindskold’s Five Odd Honors
Five Odd Honors continues the story begun in Thirteen Orphans and Nine Gates, leading the Orphans and their allies back to the Lands of Smoke and Sacrifice from which they were exiled years before. Five of the Orphans need to … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged contemporary fantasy, fantasy, myth
Comments Off on Jane Lindskold’s Five Odd Honors
Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness
Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness is one of the more bizarre science fiction novels in the canon. I should point out that before the advent of the New Wave writers in the 1960s, science fiction reserved its adventurousness … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged myth, science fiction
Comments Off on Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness
Alex Irvine’s The “Supernatural” Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls
I seem to be faced with another one of those television spin-offs, this time from the series Supernatural, about two brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester, who hunt demons and other nasty customers not entirely of this world. For those who, … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged folklore, myth, supernatural creatures
Comments Off on Alex Irvine’s The “Supernatural” Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls
Glen Cook’s Shadowline
Glen Cook dedicated Shadowline, the first volume of his Starfishers trilogy, to Richard Wagner. Yes, that Richard Wagner. Think Götterdämmerung. It’s hard to know where to start with this one. Let me give you a setting: the “now” is the … Continue reading
Elizabeth Hand’s Black Light
Elizabeth Hand’s Black Light is a foray into the world of dark gods, misty legends, and deep secrets. Lit Moylan (her real name is Charlotte) is about to finish high school. She lives with her parents in Kamensic, New York, … Continue reading
Laura Shamas’ We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters
Forest, trees: there is a certain brand of scholarship that tends to focus on minute examinations of trees in the attempt to discover a forest. I am the last to decry the idea of analyzing parts in the hope of … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged folklore, myth, Shakespeare
Comments Off on Laura Shamas’ We Three: The Mythology of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters
Halldór Laxness’s Wayward Heroes
Halldór Laxness is, of course, Iceland’s greatest and best-known writer and the island’s only Nobel Laureate. I say “of course” although I only started reading him about 10 years ago. Interest in him and his works has increased in the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Halldor Laxness, myth, Nordic culture, Nordic myth
Comments Off on Halldór Laxness’s Wayward Heroes
Elizabeth Bear’s By the Mountain Bound
By the Mountain Bound is a prequel to All the Windwracked Stars, and takes quite a different cast. It is a pure fantasy, with none of the science-fiction aspects of the latter book, and leads one to think about possibilities … Continue reading
Elizabeth Bear’s All the Windwracked Stars
Take an event that we know from mythology, although it might have really happened. Let’s call it Ragnarok, just to give ourselves a point of reference, the final war when the Children of Light fought their brothers and sisters, the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged fantasy, myth, science fiction
Comments Off on Elizabeth Bear’s All the Windwracked Stars
Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Cassandra Complex
I’m sure you’ve heard the song “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate. Well, in the case of Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street, it should go “Brush Up Your Aeschylus.” And Sophocles. And Euripides. Because you’re going … Continue reading
Posted in Graphic Literature
Tagged comics, folklore, myth
Comments Off on Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Cassandra Complex
Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Blood Calls for Blood
Greek Street: Blood Calls for Blood is the first compilation of the individual numbers of the comic series. It offers another retelling of the Greek myths, translated to the seamy underbelly of a contemporary city — in this case, London’s … Continue reading
Posted in Graphic Literature
Tagged comics, folklore, myth
Comments Off on Peter Milligan and Davide Gianfelice’s Greek Street: Blood Calls for Blood
John Ney Rieber’s The Books of Magic
John Ney Rieber, Gary Amaro, Peter Gross, The Books of Magic: Bindings (Vertigo, 1995) John Ney Rieber, Peter Gross, Peter Snejbjerg, Gary Amaro, Dick Giordiano, The Books of Magic: Summonings (Vertigo, 1996) John Ney Rieber, Peter Snejbjerg, Peter Gross, John … Continue reading
Posted in Graphic Literature
Tagged comics, fantasy, myth
Comments Off on John Ney Rieber’s The Books of Magic
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey
I’ve been reading Joseph Campbell’s books for decades, beginning with the massive, four volume The Masks of God in the late 1960s or 1970s. (I’m not sure what it says about me that I would jump right into a 2,000 … Continue reading
Gareth Hinds’s Beowulf
If you don’t know the story of Beowulf by now, I have no sympathy — as a freshman at university, I had to read it in Old English. This version, adapted by Gareth Hinds, uses the 1904 translation by A. … Continue reading
Mike Carey and John Bolton’s The Sandman Presents: The Furies
Mike Carey’s The Furies, illustrated by John Bolton, is another spin off from Neil Gaiman’s series The Sandman, and captures that same blend of myth and everyday life that was such a striking feature of Gaiman’s work. The story in … Continue reading
Posted in Graphic Literature
Tagged comics, myth
Comments Off on Mike Carey and John Bolton’s The Sandman Presents: The Furies
Joseph W. Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Where to start a discussion of a book on mythology that is itself nearly a legend? Joseph W. Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces is one of those landmark works of twentieth-century thought that have opened up new territory … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged myth, nonfiction
Comments Off on Joseph W. Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell: Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal
Joseph Campbell, to those who have an interest in mythology as something other than stories, is a name that should be instantly recognizable. Through his writings he has pulled together the strands of mythology, folklore, psychology, and how they all … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged myth, nonfiction
Comments Off on Joseph Campbell: Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal
Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules
Once upon a time, after having been pretty much housebound for most of a week, I decided to go to the movies and wound up seeing The Legend of Hercules. No particular desire on my part to see it, but … Continue reading
Allan Marett: Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts — The Wangga of North Australia
First, a brief demurrer: “Ethnomusicology” can be a really scary idea, drawing together, as it does, the formal study of music and its forms, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and possibly a couple of “ologies” that I’ve overlooked, all discrete disciplines … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged foklore, myth, world music
Comments Off on Allan Marett: Songs, Dreamings, and Ghosts — The Wangga of North Australia
Ciaran Carson’s The Táin
The process by which epic poems take their form is complex and relies as much on the efforts of poets, historians, and scholars as on any organic unity of the stories themselves. A good example of this process is described … Continue reading
W. R. J. Barron, editor: The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend and Medieval English Life and Literature
Originally published in 1999, The Arthur of the English is the second volume in a series of scholarly anthologies centered on the Arthurian literature of the Middle Ages. The series as a whole is a cooperative effort of the University … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged criticism, English history, myth, nonfiction
Comments Off on W. R. J. Barron, editor: The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend and Medieval English Life and Literature
John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg’s A God Somewhere
Gods have started showing up regularly in comics and graphic novels, everything from Thor and Loki in the various Avengers series to Titania and Auberon in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman andThe Books of Magic (no, they’re not gods now, but they … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Graphic Literature
Tagged myth
Comments Off on John Arcudi and Peter Snejbjerg’s A God Somewhere
Daithi Ó hÓgáin’s The Lore of Ireland: An Encyclopedia of Myth, Legend and Romance
The Lore of Ireland is a magical phrase, calling up images of heroic deeds and fey enchantments, bloody treachery and shining honor, great warriors, cold queens of the Sidhe, leprechauns, cattle raids, enchanted groves, bards, prophecies — it’s sobering to think … Continue reading