Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Ryria Revelations: When's the TV series?

I have finished reading Sullivan's The Ryria Revelations, and I am wondering when the TV miniseries will happen.  These books call for a TV series.  Someone should answer that call.

It won't be on HBO, though.  This is not an internecine policial plot-driven, epic, dynastic struggle across the decades.  This is fun, sometimes campy, occasionally grouchy, characer-driven fantasy comfort food-type stuff.  More Belgariad than Game of Thrones.  Definitely not HBO.  Maybe USA, as they've done good things with odd-couple humor (think Psych) and bad boys who destroy things (Burn Notice).  Elves and dwarves would be a change for them, but the same feeling of "characters welcomed" is there, if they even still use that tag line.

I hope no one ever really tries to make a movie of the thing or even a trilogy.  The series was designed to be one story across six books, and the overarching plot reflects that.  If you're looking for a full character journey in book one, you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for a character arc across all 6 books, there you'll find something worth looking at.  I mean, maybe you could do the first one as a movie and then the rest as a TV series.  Anyway, you need room for most of the plot threads to be there and slowly coming to a boil.  Some of them could be trimmed, but not many.

This series could be a good opportunity for a couple of guys in their late 30s to be awesome action heroes.  That doesn't happen very often, really.  Usually it's the young guys who get tapped, but these characters would fail if the mythical movie/TV creators tried to make them younger.  These guys have lived life.  They've known each other for years as adults.  They are a team, broken and battered but still wisecracking.

An interesting fact about this series is that it started as a self-publishing thing and then got a little crazy and landed a formal publishing deal for the last book (and then all the previous ones under different names, so good luck with that).  Here's hoping the editing and layout issues will be solved by professional editing and layout people! 

Another interesting fact is that the series claims to be sort of reacting against the dark fantasy that's becoming more prevalent.  This does not mean there is a low body count.  People you like die and kill, sometimes brutally, but the author tried to keep things PG-13 and mostly succeeded, so kudos for that.

A good thing about this series is that all six books are out.  Yes, not since the Night Angel Trilogy have I been able to sit down and read a whole series over the course of a month.  No forgetting names and places (well, not much anyway) or wondering who this character is or what incident they're talking about from a volume that came out years ago.  It was nice.  (Thanks, P!)

If you are looking for super-epic and ground breaking fantasy, go look somewhere else.  If you want a good-natured, completed series of familiar fantasy fun, stick around.  I promise Arista gets better.  Eventually.

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