After almost a year, I have finally finished reading the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. As a short summary, it is excellent. While many look at The Lord of the Rings as the ultimate fantasy trilogy, typically because it was the first major fantasy epic of its kind, Tad Williams has easily written a story that tops it in every angle. Instead of trying to imitate Tolkien, Williams takes the cliche and turns it on its head, making the world of fantasy feel new, fresh and exciting again.

Of course, the main trial of the series is just how long it is, and how long it takes for anything to happen. In a world where people demand instant satisfaction, Williams’ book will have a hard time keeping interest.

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For years I’ve been told I need to read Watchmen, and when I saw the trailer earlier this summer I told myself “I need to read Watchmen”. This week I grabbed myself the graphic novel collection, read it, and loved it. It is the first piece by Alan Moore (what a hairy bastard) I’ve ever read, and it has urged me to go out and grab a copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as soon as I could. It’s such a great and well executed graphic novel, and there’s so much to say and discuss about it. I guess DC comics really does have more than Batman going up their sleeve, it’s just not in their mainstream super hero department.

However, since the trailer I’ve been hearing quite a bit of discussion and negative views on how well the graphic novel could transfer to film form, or people nitpicking over certain photos released (particularly seen on their Flickr account), etc. Now, I think this movie could do a fantastic job going from comic to movie, but then again, nothing has truly jaded me since I read The Lost World and then saw “David Koepp has some dinosaurs on a jungle and then a T-Rex in San Francisco and Steven Spielberg thinks it’s an awesome idea”.

To those who haven’t yet read Watchmen, note that there will be spoilers beyond this point, so I suggest you don’t read them unless you don’t care about that sort of thing.

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