BW41: Language

 

Happy Sunday!  I enjoy reading stories that play with language, and create fascinating and creative words to fit their world.  I recently finished Neuromancer by William Gibson which reminded me of the Matrix and was filled with invented terminology which had me lost part of the time, but was able to figure out the meaning with the action. A few years back I read the The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall in which he created a world of language where the words on the page created visual images of meaning. Another fascinating story about communication is Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dun in which as the 26 letters of the alphabet fall from a sign, the island residences are forbidden from using them in conversation.   

From Star Trek to Dune to Lord of the Rings to Embassytown to 1984 to The Fifth Season, science fiction and fantasy is riddled with made up language. 

Ten Great Books With Their Own Languages

Novels where the worldview is highly affected by a SF-created language.

20 of our favorite fictional languages from brilliant fantasy worlds

A book with a made-up language.

Happy Reading! 

BW40: October dragon of the month: Furtia Stormcaller

 

Happy Sunday!  Yes, I changed our Dragon of the month to Furtia Stormcaller, a Seiikinese sea dragon from Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree.  Once I started reading Priory of the Orange tree, couldn't put it down. From Tane to Ead to Nicholas to Loth to the dragons to high seas adventures with pirates to court intrigue, Shannon built an interesting and intriguing world which totally sucked me in. 

“To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.”

I've always been fascinated by dragons, whether good or bad, considered a god or a means of transportation. Thought I'd leave you with a few quotes about dragons:

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”  ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“A dragon without its rider is a tragedy. A rider without their dragon is dead.” ~ Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing.

“Jason scratched his head. "You named him Festus? You know that in Latin, ‘festus’ means ‘happy’? You want us to ride off to save the world on Happy the Dragon?” ~ Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero

Happy Reading!