This is a high fantasy novel about Iníon Ríúil, a girl who discovers she has the ability to manipulate magic. Two weeks before Iní­'s seventeenth birthday, thieves attack their home and her grandmother is murdered. After her grandmother's death, Iní­ goes in search of the father she has never met and ends up joining the Magical Alliance, where she learns more about her unique skills. Iní­ is a full conduit, someone who possesses all four of the possible conduit abilities: shielding, absorption, transformation, and amplification. Because someone has been kidnapping other conduits, the Magical Alliance assigns guardians for her protection: a goblin, an elf, and another being whose exact race is unknown. Iní­ and her guardians are assigned to find out more about the bloodstone, an ancient relic made to function the same as conduits, something the Races thought long destroyed. They suspect the dragons to be looking for the bloodstone and worry its discovery could start a war. The culminating challenges in the novel involve Iní­ finding the bloodstone and learning the identity of her father.

In recent years, fantasy baseball has seen an explosion in popularity. Major League Baseball, with its long, storied history and the enormous quantity of data available, naturally lends itself to the modern-day recreational activity known as fantasy baseball. Fantasy baseball is a game in which participants manage an imaginary roster of real players and compete against one another using those players' real-life statistics to score points. Early forms of fantasy baseball began in the early 1960s, but beginning in the 1990s, the sport was revolutionized due to the advent of powerful computers and the Internet. The data used in this project come from an actual fantasy baseball league which uses a head-to-head, points-based scoring system. The data consist of the weekly point totals that were accumulated over the first three-fourths of the 2011 regular season by the top 110 hitters and top 70 pitchers in Major League Baseball. The purpose of this project is analyze the relative value of pitchers versus hitters in this league using hierarchical Bayesian models. Three models will be compared, one which differentiates between hitters and pitchers, another which also differentiates between starting pitchers and relief pitchers, and a third which makes no distinction whatsoever between hitters and pitchers. The models will be compared using the deviance information criterion (DIC). The best model will then be used to predict weekly point totals for the last fourth of the 2011 season. Posterior predictive densities will be compared to actual weekly scores.

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Taking up Henry Giroux’s call for an “enobling [sic], imaginative vision” and a “language of possibility” with which to generate hope and a plan for improving education in North America, this thesis presents Lev Grossman’s fantasy series – the Magicians trilogy, consisting of The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), and The Magician’s Land (2014) – as providing this ‘vision’ and ‘language’ through its representations of education. Using a close reading practice alongside the method of thematic criticism outlined by Farah Mendlesohn, key passages in the series are analysed to explicate an “imaginative vision” of an ideal, alternative education and present this vision – alongside a plan for achieving it – to educators. I argue that the series can be a pedagogical tool to serve educators in recognising the issues inherent in the current North American education system and the need for reform, in facilitating and motivating the implementation of an ideal alternative in their classrooms – an autonomous education practice based on the theories of Paulo Freire and John Holt – and in aiding with explicit instruction on the concept of agency to foster student success within the new classroom practice. Through a process of literary analysis, the Magicians series is presented to educators to help them understand and implement theories such as liberating and dominating praxis, banking education, and autonomous education. Rather than waiting for institutional-level or school-level reforms, this thesis helps educators reform their classrooms immediately, improving education outcomes for students and demonstrating the possibilities and benefits of adopting an autonomous education practice. In addition to presenting the Magicians series as a pedagogical tool to address the issues in education, this thesis also posits fantasy fiction as a valuable body of literature for seeking solutions to real world problems by demonstrating the applicability of fantastic representations of education to solving real world issues. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis presents Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy as a tool for teachers, scholars, and students to use in addressing the problems in education in North America today. Starting with Henry Giroux’s research and writings on the problems with North American education, the Magicians is presented as the “imaginative vision” Giroux says must be located in order to inspire hope and present a plan for addressing these issues and modifying education to improve the outcomes for every student. Combining the theories of educators Paulo Freire and John Holt with the practice of literary analysis, this thesis examines the Magicians and argues that a critical reading of this fantasy series can serve educators by identifying the current problems and the need for reform, by introducing a new autonomous education practice that can be used in individual classrooms, and by supporting students in this new system through teaching the concept of agency directly.

Syftet med denna analys är att undersöka de genretypiska dragen inom quest-fantasy genren och hur det framkommer som satir i The Dark Lord of Derkholm av Diana Wynne Jones. Hur används romanens handling och karaktärer för att kritisera och kommentera på klicher inom genren? Detta arbete är en genrestudie som görs genom en närläsning av verket och komparativ analys mellan The Dark Lord of Derkholm och Tough guide to fantasyland som också är skrivet av Diana Wynne Jones. Respektive verk delar samma berättelsevärld och ger olika perspektiv på hur en fantasyvärld och äventyr förväntas se ut. Resultatet visar att läsarens bekantskap med fantasygenren och läsarens genreförväntan påverkar hur väl de satiriska elementen känns igen i verket men att romanen skrivits för att kunna läsas även utanför ett satiriskt perspektiv. Författaren prioriterar att bygga upp en genuin berättelsevärld som kan stå på egna ben utöver att bara vara ämnat för att kritisera genren den var skriven för. De centrala teman som undersöks är: Genretypiska troper inom quest-fantasy genren, genreförväntan och satir.

"Strange Beginnings" is a short story collection consisting of four short stories. Some of these stories go together and some stand alone. All of them aim to evoke something in the reader, whether it be shock, joy, unsettledness, or something more.

The Sanctities of Light is a space opera novel (the first in a series) narrated by Ilona Celesta, a young woman who inherits the title of Enlightened One, the head of her people’s ruling body, after the death of her predecessor. The first in her family to rule since Meira, who is remembered as a hero for banishing an unspeakable evil, Ilona finds herself on the frontlines of a war that has been brewing for generations. She is determined to prove herself worthy of carrying on her family’s legacy. But after she is captured in combat, she learns that her enemies’ leader has overwhelming evidence that she may be fighting on the wrong side of history. The reach of the evil her ancestor battled has traveled farther than she realized, and the lies that built the Celesta name are just the beginning.

Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka vilka livsfrågor som kan tematiseras i fantasylitteratur och hur dessa kan användas i religionsundervisning. En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av fantasyromanerna De utstötta och Glastronen har utförts. Uppsatsen har inte haft för syfte att utgå ifrån Skolverkets skrivningar men de är ändå av viss relevans för att förstå livsfrågornas del i undervisningen. De teorier som använts för att analysera och tolka resultatet relaterar livsfrågorna och tematiseringen till undervisning och litteraturläsning för att kunna tolka fantasylitteraturens användbarhet i just undervisningssyfte. Resultatet visar att fantasylitteratur innehåller en hel del livsfrågor som alla går att tematisera under ett visst huvudtema. Genom den tidigare forskning som presenterats har fantasylitteraturens användbarhet i undervisning om livsfrågor visat sig ha stor potential.

This essay will study how the two main characters Eragon and Roran in Christopher Paolini’s fantasy series The Inheritance Cycle conform to the literary ideal of the hero and traits of a traditional male according to Jeffrey A. Brown and Leanna Madell who both use Hegemonic Masculinity Theory. The essay does this by a qualitative reading of Inheritance which is the final part in a fantasy novel series and studies how Paolini’s characters fit within the Hero archetype and if their masculinity could be considered hegemonic as per Brown and Madell’s definition of the term.

High school is bad enough with cliques, coursework, and the impending threat of college – now some old evil is coming to Solomon Starek High School (SSH for short). It’s up to transfer student Ella, older than time and unthinkably powerful, to stop it. Ella’s certainly up to the task, but the world’s changed since the last time she was in it. Society has merged magic with science, and Ella’s not sure she’s up for that. Can her new classmates help her stop what’s coming, or will they fall short? This excerpt tracks Ella’s first days at school, and sets the stage for the chaos to come.