Zorro! Your wife called!

Roger Ebert is disappointed with the new Zorro movie. However, it is a smashing good review. But then, any written piece that includes:

The circumstances under which Zorro and the villain fight a duel with polo mallets is unprecedented in the annals of chivalry

is a joy and a pleasure to read, even if the movie that it describes is not.

The review

All gullible half-wits glance aft NOW!

Just back from a cruise, and in the midst of writing a little piece poking great fun at a really snobby cruise critic, and this bit of oceanic goodness comes up:

I've been reading Scott Lynch's LiveJournal for a while now. At first it was for the vivid descriptions of training to be a firefighter. As the pressure of graduating and getting a firefighting gig eased up, I learned the awful truth: he's a new novelist, and a damn good one as well.

He's got two books in the pipeline, and I simply must have them. This excerpt will explain why:

Zamira looked down in response to a sudden tug on her breeches and found Paolo clutching at her, unselfconsciously.

"Mommy, what's going on?"

Zamira smiled and swept him up off the deck, cradling him against the lapels of her jacket. She turned toward the stern of the Poison Orchid and let the following wind push her hair out of her face. The Dread Sovereign heaved and swayed beneath the hot cloudless sky, implacably clawing across the distance between them.

"Paolo, love, mommy needs you to go to her cabin and fetch her buckler and her sabers. Can you do that?"

The little boy nodded, and Zamira kissed him on the forehead, burying her nose in his tangle of short dark curls with her eyes closed.

"Oh, good," she said a moment later. "After that, I need you and your sister to hide yourselves in the rope locker on the middle deck, all right? Because mommy needs to go board that lying motherfucker's ship and burn it to the waterline."

Here are the two excerpts published since August: Excerpt 1 Excerpt 2

And now he's completely legitimate:

I received my very first batshit crank critic e-mail this morning! This is awesome. Some entity (I honestly don't know if this person is male or female, and I am leaving out the e-mail address and their pseudonymous handle) seems to have taken exception to the bits of Red Seas Under Red Skies I posted earlier. Weeks earlier, I should add. Why they suddenly care now is a mystery to me, but their bitching is something to be savored. Since this individual clearly reads my LJ (though perhaps not very well), I post their note and my response here.

Read the whole response here.

The first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora will be published June 27, 2006. I can't wait.

On Vacation

See you sometime after October 25. Thanks.