Saturday, January 4, 2014

Irene Radford's "The Broken Dragon"

Irene Radford is the author of the Dragon Nimbus (The Glass Dragon, The Perfect Princess, The Loneliest Magician, The Wizard's Treasure) and the Dragon Nimbus History (The Dragon's Touchstone, The Last Battlemage, The Renegade Dragon) series. She is the author of the Stargods and Merlin's Descendants series as well, and is also one of the founders of the Book View Cafe.

Here Radford dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, The Broken Dragon:
If I had to cast The Broken Dragon, Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 today, I’d have to look both forward and backward in time as this is the middle book of a trilogy and the twelfth book in the world of The Glass Dragon.

This volume of the epic series belongs to Lily, daughter of master magicians Jaylor and Brevelan. Lily is the broken dragon, the only person in a family of formidable magicians who has no magical talent. However, Lily’s twin Valeria has been frail and sickly all her life. The two are inseparable, so no one notices that Val throws all of the magic for both of them at the University of Magicians. Lily gives her the strength to do so. Now that they are teens, approaching full adulthood, they must learn to live separately and find solutions to problems separately. Val must devise spells that conserve her strength. Lily must look for answers that don’t require magic.

So I have chosen Molly Quinn, who plays Alexis on the TV series Castle to take on the roles of both twins. She has the right delicate strawberry hair and fair coloring. I’ve seen her portray strong, organized, and nurturing as well as fragile almost to the breaking point. I don’t know if Ms Quinn can sing or not. If she can’t provide a strong and clear soprano, then we need Carrie Underwood—with the command of music she exhibited in recent The Sound of Music, Live—for the voice over.

Skeller the bard and Lily’s love interest could be played by almost any 24ish actor in Hollywood as long as Josh Groban sings his songs. No compromise there. Gotta be Josh.
As for Jaylor their father and the anchor character in most of these books, Nathan Fillion, as he is now in the series Castle, would suit admirably. The Nathan of the Firefly years, skinny and arrogant, can play his son Lukan.

There are other characters who help move this story along, all of them broken in some way. The strong actors who change every year or two in Hollywood will have to convince me they are right for the parts. Except I want Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Rejiia. A delicious villainess.
Visit Irene Radford's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue