Happy New Year to all my followers! Today, I continue my series on J.R.R. Tolkien with a tribute to Tree and Leaf, one of his lesser known works--a book that contains an implicit New Year's message. . What's your New Year's resolution? Chances are, if you've made one at all, you've made a decision regarding …
Continue reading Turn over a New “Tree and Leaf” this New Year with J.R.R. Tolkien!
I hope you all had a merry Christmas. Now, while you're still warm with Christmas feeling (perhaps you are snug by the fire with a cup of hot cocoa, or a drink of rum and eggnog, experiencing a similar but not altogether identical feeling of warmth) let me take you down to Memory Lane to …
Continue reading 13 Things I Learned Writing My First Novel: Battles of Rofp
Merry Christmas! From Santa and his "Huldufolk" (I mean "elves").A merry Christmas to all! For Part 2 of my series on J.R.R. Tolkien, I take you to the frozen rocks of the North: to Iceland, the land that inspired so much of Tolkien's Middle Earth. I stumbled upon a fascinating article in today's Montreal Gazette. …
Continue reading What Icelandic Elves can tell us about Christmas and the Environment
The Vinciolo Journal turns 1 year old January 5th, two days after J.R.R. Tolkien's Birthday, so in celebration of both events, I am making a series of Tolkien-related posts. This is the first of several ... 7 ways Saruman resembles Queen Elizabeth's court astrologer and geographer John Dee. . In comparing these two figures (the …
“War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On earth, a century ago, in the year 2020, they outlawed our books.” -Edgar Allen Poe, in Ray Bradbury's “The Exiles.” Edgar Allan Poe fights rocket men on a Mars mission to annihilate everything fantastic or non-realistic, in Ray Bradbury's short story “The Exiles.” Bradbury's short story stands with …
My hardcover of River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay We first see Ren Daiyan, the heroic protagonist of Kay's newest novel, as an angst-ridden adolescent in a grove, wielding a bamboo sword to channel his anger. Living in a time of famine, and of war against the barbarian Kislik tribe, he is deeply aware …
In The Darkest Road, Kim makes the acquaintance of a survivor of Eridu, a land that has been annihilated by a poison rain caused by cauldron of Kath Meigol. She then quests to liberate the Paraiko, a primeval race of giants, from suffocation in their caves at the hands of svart alfar. Although pacifists, Kim …
Continue reading The Fionavar Tapestry Book III: The Darkest Road
Shameless book cover aesthetic for The Summer Tree (March 2022 update) Last summer, I read all of Guy Gavriel Kay's historical fantasy novels that had been published up until then (River of Stars was only published this year), but a large blank spot was left in the Kay canon where I had not read. This …
Continue reading The Fionavar Tapestry Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
Though this novel is quite different from the other books I have reviewed, which tend to belong to the fantasy genre, I nonetheless was intrigued to read it, because of three things: the bizarre cover, the awards it has won, and descriptions I had heard about its graphic depiction of violence. Actually, fantasy readers might …
The Build-Up to my Honours Thesis I was in my second year at McGill University, struggling to find a mentor for my Honours thesis in English literature. I'm in an advanced program, and I needed it to graduate and to develop my own critical voice. Oh, the ambition! My mission was to write on fantasy …
Continue reading History as Fantasy: My Honours Thesis on Guy Gavriel Kay Summarized
Matthew Rettino 