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If you get the chance to go to Australia, you shouldn’t miss Bruno’s Art and Sculpture Garden in Marysville.
Bruno Torfs’ garden began with a couple of terracotta sculpture but today there are more than a hundred pieces on display, each and every one unique and beautiful. You can also take the trip in a cheaper way, by buying the official book here.

This amazing place was almost destroyed last year by a bush fire but fortunately the artist managed to restore most of the sculptures. You can read more about the case on the official website, where you can also find some images taken after the fire.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes    look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.

This is the most important lesson Terry Pratchett has to offer in Lords and Ladies, the 14th book in the Discworld series, and Granny Weatherwax knew it all along.

For those who traveled to the Discworld before, especially to the tiny kingdom of Lancre, this is probably all you need to know about this book: you’ll once again be a part of the Granny – Nanny Ogg – Magrat Garlick trio, but this time some of the wizards decide to come along.

All is fine in the Kingdom of Lancre and Magrat the witch is getting ready for the big wedding with King Verence. The respectable wizards from the Unseen University were invited and Mustrum Ridcully, esteemed Archchancellor, decided to come along with Ponder Stibbons, Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic, the Librarian, intelligent ape, and The Bursar, poor man in dire need of some dried frog pills to calm his nerves.

The problems start when Diamanda (known by her parents as Lucy, but that was too boring in her opinion) wants to be a better and cooler witch. Who does magic by using simple kitchen implements? Magic is not done by those witches who put together basic remedies and help deliver babies! Magic should be properly spelled as magick with a k. It’s something more interesting and something that should be practiced by special someones who wear occult symbols, have magic daggers embellished with runes and paint their fingernails black!

This girl – who practices the “truest” form of magic but is probably incapable of pulling a stuffed rabbit out of a wizard’s hat – decides to do something really stupid. She summons elves into the land, thinking that they are charming, beautiful and willing to increase her magic powers. They are charming and beautiful but by no means they are good. They treat people like slaves, they enjoy torturing, killing and dancing in circles with glee at the human’s misfortune.

Since the silly little girl caused the kingdom to hide indoors and hang horseshoes over their door hoping the iron will scare the elves away, it’s time for the boring old witches to fix things and ensure that Magrat marries Verence. Here the adventures begin and I don’t want to slip any spoilers so I’ll refrain from typing something else.

Lords and Ladies starts off with fantasy and then teaches you some valuable lessons. There’s more than meets the eye and sometimes amazing things can be achieved with the simplest means. Never cross your elders because they can kick your ass  no matter what runes and occult bracelets you wear.

Oh, and the final one. Never, but never enter a staring contest with Granny Weatherwax because, like Pratchett said before – “she threw a couple of logs into the fireplace and glared at them until they burst into flame out of sheer embarrasment .”

Lords and Ladies was published in 1992 and although it’s old, it still has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. Witches, wizards, silly pretentious girls and terrific elves await you at the turn of every page.

“The beautiful adventure game The Whispered World whisks the player away to a fascinating fantasy world. Sadwick is a young clown but often far from cheerful. One night, a strange blue creature speaks to him in a dream, and sends him on an adventurous journey. Many dangers await Sadwick, for the world he knows is doomed to crumble and fall.

In classic point & click tradition, gamers steer Sadwick and his companion Spot through the game. Little Spot never leaves Sadwick’s side and is integral to solving many puzzles. He can take on many different forms throughout the game, which the player can pick and choose at will, once they have been learned.

Hand-painted backgrounds filled with animated details and lovingly crafted characters in the style of classic animated movies like Spirited Away bring the story to life. The Whispered World mixes fairy-tale elements with melancholic tones to create a tale of epic proportions.”

You can download the demo here, visit the official website here and check out some more images below.

For those of you familiar with the series, you only need to know that this book features some more adventures of Unseen University’s wizards, led by the infamous yet lovable Mustrum Ridcully.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of exploring Pratchett’s imagination:
The Last Continent is a fantasy book which mock time traveling, Australians, marmite and fat self-absorbed people, codenamed Wizards.

The story starts off with Rincewind, an incredible coward wearing a hat that spells “Wizzard” in sequins. He was unfortunately teleported by his fellow magic practitioners at the beginning of time, when the Creator just started drawing the creatures living in Australia – never actually named in the book but hinted subtly like a brick in the back of the head.

Rincewind tries to lay low and enjoy his new life on a deserted island but fate – or the Creator – has different plans for it: a weird shape-shifting kangaroo wants him to bring rain to this land and be a savior. Coward being his middle name, Rincewind runs away, but only manages to get arrested for trying to steal a sheep, although he’s completely innocent. Here Pratchett pokes fun directly at the old Australian Ballad “Waltzing Matilda“, a very nice song also interpreted by Tom Waits.

Meanwhile, Rincewind’s fellow wizards are trying to find him so that he can help them turn their Librarian back into an ape. A long story that can’t be told without spoilers, so I’ll refrain from now on.

The motley yet respectable crew is made up of Archancellor Mustrum Ridcully, a mean and self-assured man, The Dean, very fat and prone to adolescent rebellion, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, a man who bickers constantly, The Senior Wrangler, who has had enough celibacy for two lifetimes and falls in love/becomes sexually obsessed with the Chief Maid, Ponder Stibbons, the only half-sane mind of the house  and last but not least, The Librarian, a man turned ape who now has issues controlling his shape and changes into an red-furred armchair whenever he sneezes.

If you’re still here by now it means that you like a read that leaves you feeling as though you just stepped out of a rollercoaster, so go ahead and try The Last Continent, before I go and spoil it all for you. If you abandoned the ship and went off to find something else to read, then I know how you feel: Terry Pratchett can be mind-boggling and you never know what it has to offer reading a review, because the actually book will turn your brain into Jell-O. Only God knows how many times my boyfriend tried to explain the Discworld to me and I chose to read another book, not knowing what I was missing out on.

PS: If you like the cover art go to Josh Kirby’s homepage, because he’s the guy behind every fantastic Discworld illustration.

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More illustrations:

Cornacchia’s website

This charming game is already available on Xbox Live Arcade and Steam (for the PC). If you don’t have a console, you can grab the PC version on Steam for about 5 dollars/4 euros. What’s five bucks when you can gobble as many cobblers you want? Check out some more images below and if I convinced you, buy it here.

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Official website / developer’s website

I, for one, didn’t, and now I keep asking myself how one writes about violence, lack of hope and loneliness and then, after decades of sharing dark emotions in prose, one suddenly finds God. Although you’d expect a reborn christian to be preachy and self conscious about his/her previous lifestyle, Anne Rice embraces her Vampire Chronicles and Mayfair Witches, keeps saying that homosexuals should have nothing to be ashamed of and offers plenty of advice about writing, faith and whatnot.

“Evil is never glorified in these books; on the contrary, the continuing battle against evil is the subject of the work. The search for the good is the subject of the work… Interview with the Vampire… is about the near despair of an alienated being who searches the world for some hope that his existence can have meaning. His vampire nature is clearly a metaphor for human consciousness or moral awareness. The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part”, she says.

Reading this bit from an interview she gave a while ago made me feel a lot better about my fantasy books fetish – I always come across people who find this particular hobby childish and, while I don’t disagree with this view because being a kid is not supposed to be something bad, I tend to get frustrated because behind most fantasy works lie great insights and great views about the world.

Anne Rice summed up perfectly what I feel when people raise their eyebrows and dismiss my biggest passion as a mere quirkiness, although she must have heard worse, being a fantasy author herself: “I never dreamed that the word, vampire, would prevent people from examining this book as a metaphysical work. I thought the use of the word was a powerful device.”

So, if an author that wrote more than a dozen books with vampires, bloodsuckers, demons and witches can become a respected pillar of her community and have people taken her seriously, then there’s a remote chance that one day, when I tell someone what I love doing most, that someone might just ask me to lend them a book. I really find that an encouraging thought, but until then I guess it’s time to get back on The Vampire Chronicles and remember better why I loved Lestat and Vittorio so much. If you haven’t read anything from the series or haven’t watched Interview with a Vampire / The Queen of the Damned I strongly recommend them to you. I promise, they don’t have sparkly vampires or teenage drama and they’ll leave you thinking about “evil versus good” or make you dream of meeting a vampire and accessing hundreds of years of human history experienced first-hand.