Books

[superaielman]

This mud people arc has bonus cannibalism for the MAIN CHARACTER plus Kahlan being extra useless (More lying, she didn't tell him he was eating people). PLUS RICHARD TAMES HER HORMONES WITH THE POWER OF HIS REASON AND MIND SO AWESEOM-

I'd like to pause this rant about how shit the Sword of Truth is to encourage people to read a new, good series. READ MISTBORN, SLACKERS. Ahem.

--

HE OUTSMARTED THE SAVAGES WITH AN APPLE RICHARD IS SO AWESOME AND UBER

[Shale]

Oh, speaking of things better than Sword of Truth, I read one of the random freebies I got at Comic-Con, "Already Dead" by Charlie Huston. It's a noir novel with vampires versus zombies. You really can't go wrong with that.

[Lady Door]

Okay! So I finally finished Crusader (ARGH) and have enough time to post my thoughts about Elantris.

I am horrible about concealing spoilers or writing things so that I can simply make the spoilery parts blacked out, so consider yourself warned that this post is spoilerific in parts. I also reference Burn Notice spoilers at some point. >_>

First things first: I liked it! It was definitely a first novel, but it was very well written. I like character-driven narrative. It reminded me rather a lot of Andrew's writing now that I think of it, but that's more a compliment to Andrew than a bias influencing my read of Sanderson. In any case, though I do appreciate a good plot-driven narrative (see: many of Neil Gaiman's books, believe it or not), my favorite thing is a memorable character. I can forgive just about anything else in a book if the characters are awesome.

The little incidences of Old English were pretty cool. It was a pretty subtle nod (I mean, who knows Old English other than medievalists?), but the word choices were pretty solid. Hroden, for example, means something along the lines of "ornamented, adorned." Seon is the infinitive of a verb meaning (duh) "to see" but also "to experience, enjoy" and "to witness." Hrathen is somewhat spoilery, but my favorite (if a little interpretive): hræþe means "quickly," hra itself means "corpse," hreð means "glory, triumph"... [/geek]

ANYWAY.

The three(ish) points of view that carried the majority of the novel were pretty well organized. Novels with shifting perspective are hard to carry and sometimes lead to confusion on the part of the reader (see: Wheel of Time, Song of Ice and Fire), but there was enough-but-not-too-much recap to keep the threads rolling nicely. They also blended really well, and the point at which they came together was pretty cool.

It was slow in parts -- the beginning especially, but also the merger of the Raoden/Sarene threads -- and too fast in others -- primarily the ending, as climax and falling action took all of, what, 4 chapters? The slowness I attribute mainly to the SF/F need to spend time exploring/explaining a little bit about the world. I imagine he's worked on refining this a bit; there are other ways to do it instead of having the outsider come in and get a crash course on customs in exposition. Once he got enough of that out of the way, Sanderson moved on and returned to the action.

I was satisfied with Hrathen's turn. I just saw Burn Notice's season finale, and a similar thing happened: a guy who was evil for the entire season turned around in a single episode and it was really convincing. It was more of a perspective shift than a change in character, and that was really cool. We got to see Hrathen as more of the paladin-who-went-too-far guy rather than the religious zealot as he was originally portrayed.

Other cool things:
§ the sect of the priests that were half-demon and all cool. The way it was hinted at was pretty subtle but was was definitely there, though that Dilaf was one seemed very sudden (though I guess it made sense).
§ the political intrigue a la the group of nobles conspiring to take out the king
§ the development of post-Reod Elantris and the people living in it
§ that the magic system was fairly unique and pretty well-developed; that it proved central to the plot without taking it over was also quite cool

The best thing? IT ENDED. I don't mean in the sense that I hated the book and couldn't wait for it to be over. I mean that it was a fantasy novel that was self-contained and didn't see the need to lead into another book. While I'd love to read more about the happenings in Elantris/Arelon/Teod and in the lives of Sarene and Raoden, I don't need to and there didn't seem to be any reason to. The ending was sappy ("the hero gets the girl, the girl is happy, and the world is saved" cheese), but it at least wrapped up the plot threads that were set out at the beginning.

I really liked the characters and how they changed within themselves or were changed by further understanding of their contexts. That it did both was very cool. Raoden was fairly static but getting to know him, his motivations and how he reacted to situations was plenty interesting. Hrathen was similar, interestingly. Sarene was ... well, she was somewhat stereotypical ("strong female lead who isn't like the other girls and has a good head on her shoulders, and oh she can't sew or anything") but I didn't mind because it fit the needs of the story pretty well.

Overall a pretty solid freshman novel. I've just started Mistborn and I'm looking forward to reading it. I do admit this is slightly influenced by my disappointment with Sara Douglass's series, but whatever. <_<

[Cotigo]

Watchmen:  Read so I can allow myself to go see the movie.  Great book.  Not brilliant, but it's definitely a book to point to when arguing about the increasing literary merit in Graphic Novels/Comic Books.  Well done psychological profiles of nutbars, good Alternate-Future elements, good exploration of relative morality. Predestination and time theme handled a little poorly, and some aspects were handled ham-handedly (Pirate comic book parallels, etc.).  I'm a little worried as to how well it translates as a movie--if the movie is faithful to the book to the degree that I hear it is, it probably won't be a very good movie.  Should still be entertaining, but I can't help but think that it won't work when viewed by people who had not read the novel. 

Well, I guess we'll find out when I see it this week.

[Clear Tranquil]

Elantris- Started. Just finished Chapter 11. Like all three of the mains so far. I identify with Serene. Roaden's showing his leadership qualities and Hrathren's moral dilemmas are interesting. Also zombie likes in a fantasy setting. I love it.

[Clear Tranquil]

*smacks everybody upset down* Read Elantris people. Finished.

[Idun]

Picasso's Guernica - Anthony Blunt.

Guernica: Pablo Picasso - Juan Larrea.

As of now, these are great resources to my thesis. I would totally go in depth about the current chapters I'm on, but it'd be way too ranty. Let's just say I like both because they enlighten me.

[Pyro]

Faith of the Fallen had the magic statue, Shale.

Oh and by the way? Goodkind's attempt to make the plot coherent gets less and less serious as the series goes on. Bonus points if you find the scene in the third book where someone instantly recognizes another character THEY NEVER MET (or even heard of) BEFORE.

[Grefter]

Hahaha yeah I remember that one.  The third book is really pretty much where the roller coaster of amazing stupid begins THE PROPHECY DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO DIE IT MEANS I HAVE TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU DURING YOUR PERIOD.  Yesssssss.

[Lady Door]

I started Mistborn right after I finished Elantris, and it had been slow going. Reading nowadays usually is, given classes. Anyway, I'd gotten until just about the last 100 pages or so before this Detroit trip picked up. Knowing I had ~8 hours on planes/at airports ahead of me, I grabbed book #2 as well, figuring I'd finish the first and get started on the second and have enough to read on the trip back.

1) I forgot to bring Mistborn.
2) The first TWO PAGES of Well of Ascension spoil the hell out of the last 100 pages of Mistborn
3) I read too goddamn fast, even when I spend time I thought I'd be reading talking to other people.

3 refers to the fact that I am down to the last 30 pages of Well of Ascension (763 pages) and now need to find myself a bookstore before I drive back to the airport and face ANOTHER 8ish hours of airport + planes.

At least the books are awesome. I'm looking forward to what super tells me Sanderson himself calls the "Sanderson avalanche" that makes up the end of book 1, and to seeing just how it moves along. I'm a little sad it's only a trilogy, but I actually trust Sanderson -- so far -- to wrap things up when they're wrapped up rather than leaving things hanging or dragging them out for 10+ books when they don't need it.

[Lady Door]

So I'm done with all the books now. Who knew flying from Detroit to San Francisco could be so productive?

Small text for spoilers.

Though I very much enjoyed the characters and the action, I found the end to be somewhat... dissatisfying. I'm not sure exactly what it is that makes me feel that way. Maybe it's the fact that there was an extreme deus ex machina -- I mean, they TURN INTO GODS, how much more DEM can you get? Maybe it was, again, the religious pastoral thing, though this one bothered me less on the creepy side and more on the eyerolling "C'mon, seriously?" side. My cynicism regarding religion interferes with my ability to enjoy much religious reference in literature, and usually it's because the author is really heavy-handed about it. It wasn't until the latter half of Hero of Ages that it actually started to register.

Looking back, there are a lot of clever little touches Sanderson put into the previous action and discourse which references the conclusionary deductions. I am a little slow to pick up on bread-crumbing, but since I have to go back and read the last 150 (oops, more than I thought! Turns out I was just short of the Shan/Vin episode)  I'm noticing these little things about Reen's voice, about Vin's perception of what happens when she pierces copperclouds, etc. It's nice to see that he bothered to plan these things out and write the books coherently. It's an unfortunate problem much epic fantasy has: the plot is contiguous, but it's obvious the books were written out of demand for more books rather than the story's demand for more time and space. Sanderson doesn't seem to have that problem, and I'm very glad he knows when to let a story die its natural death. Even if not everyone in the book who dies stays dead, that kind of seems to be half the point. I feel like Spook was maybe a little too forced as a major -- and by the end, I mean MAJOR -- character, but I can forgive it because the rest seemed natural.

Overall, I really did enjoy reading the series. I wish I could say this led to me finding a new author, but unfortunately he's up-and-coming and he's probably quite involved with his current obligation. S'okay! I won't say he's my favorite author, but he did create what will probably be one of my favorite characters and a really enjoyable world for her to play in.

Meanwhile I grabbed a series of 4 young adult books about dragons I don't recall ever reading from the guy I went to see get married this past weekend. Maybe it'll give me a week or two to find the next thing I'll be reading. >_>

[Strago]

Just finished a novel called The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by a guy with a long Polish last name that I can't quite summon up without the book in front of me. And that I'm apparently too lazy to Google, I guess. The story is a re-telling of Hamlet, essentially, set on a farm in Wisconsin in the 1950s. Edgar, the Hamlet analogue, is a young boy who's been mute since birth. Now the point of the book is not to be a clean 1-to-1 transfer of the medieval Danish story to the American heartland, so his muteness functions as more than a clever way of re-casting Hamlet's character traits, but Edgar's inability to communicate normally is still a very interesting lens through which to view Hamlet's archetype. What is essentially an outside force compelling the character to constantly retreat into his head creates a very different character from the detached thirty-something eternal student for whom my sympathy actually vaguely peters away every time I read the play.

I found Gar, Trudy, and Claude all to be really rich characters. It's a fun experience to have characters that are so familiar also contain new multitudes and be living in a world much more like ours. Trudy and Claude's eventual romance makes much more sense than Gertrude and Claudius's ever did*, in part because the story here starts long before Hamlet actually does. Also because the author seems to have a keen understanding of grief, though, and the ways in which it changes us and forces us to make choices that change ourselves. Dr. Papineau (Polonius) and his son Glen (Laertes) aren't that interesting, and I would've liked to have more of them. Glen in particular is important at the very end in a way that his relative non-existence at the beginning makes somewhat jarring. So is Laertes, you could fairly argue. Maybe it's just my fondness for the character (a result of playing him a few years ago) that makes me wish Glen had been a bit more fully conceived. Or that he had a relationship with an Ophelia to drive him to his actions at the end of the novel.

The Ophelia character (well, only vaguely: this parallel is clear in terms of the action of the plot, but obviously not in the exact quality of of her relationships) is actually the family dog, named Almondine. Oh, that's right! The other major component of the book is the fact that the Sawtelles train and breed a fictional kind of dog, simply called "Sawtelle Dogs." There's a lot of discourse on the subject of breeding and training, specifically regarding Gar's mission of breeding a strain of dog with a more developed personal consciousness and capacity for decision-making. So as if the Hamlet stuff hadn't been enough, the book really hooked me as a dog-lover (who recently had one die back home, no less) with its obvious and poeticized affection for them. A scene between Edgar and Almondine near the end of the book nearly had me weeping.

More than that, though, the book manages to have a very light and fascinating touch with the fantastical elements of the story. The appearance of Gar's ghost is haunting (har har) and fun to read, and there's a thin but crucial tendril of fantasy and prophecy and sentient weather and semi-magic poison that snakes through the book in an energizing and satisfying way.

So, yes. A good read.

*Which reminds me: anyone who thinks this might be up their alley is also encouraged to check out Gertrude and Claudius, by John Updike. It's pretty much what you might guess, and I remember enjoying it a whole hell of a lot. Hmm, maybe I'll re-read that.

[NotMiki]

12 Kingdoms: The Vast Spread of the Seas.

12 Kingdoms is an exploration of the implications of a world where the Mandate of Heaven exists, where God essentially has created a governing system headed by immortal kings who are kept honest because they will sicken and die if they govern badly.  Hint: they do anyway.

Anyway, without going too much into the plot, a bright, benevolent regional lord devises a plan by which to take power and circumvent Heaven's checks and balances, which he plans to do because the king is unwilling or unable to govern well.

This corresponds to the 4th and final story arc of the anime.  Book's good, but there's nothing in it that's not covered just as well by the anime, and vice versa.

[superaielman]

Response to LD, Mistborn spoilers in B.

A: Sanderson has a new book due out this June and a series of children's novels. You can read Warbreaker on his website, but it's the unpublished version so it's going to have errors. Go read his annotations on his website (Dhyer you scrub, read those as well. www.brandonsanderson.com), they're a fun read and a look into his mind which is nice.

B: Agreed on Spook. He needed someone to be the main PoV character in book 3 with Vin and Eland being busy fighting the entire time and it was him by default. He worked well enough but was a definitely a step down from Kelsier/Vin. Disagree on the religious elements. I thought Sazed's general reaction to religion, including finding the Terrismen was well done. I really don't know how I feel about the godmodding at the end, but it makes sense. There was literally no other way to save the world, and so much of the setup of the books was about what happens when you gain godlike power and don't have the smarts to use it. Sazed did. The savior of the world being knowledge is a cool touch.  I think I was more bothered by Elend becoming a Mistborn than anything else in the end of the book. Vin slicing through the Steel Inquistors was a little silly. He generally kept things reasonable enough. We -know- someone has the ability to gain the power of all creation from the start of the first book, it's not like it's unexpected.

What'd you think about Marsh?

I will say reading part of the Sword of Truth infinitely improved my opinion of the Lord Ruler's recasting as a tragic hero and Elend. At least Elend can be wrong (And is quite often) and we never get an LR point of view till the last book. It makes a difference- Rashek really thinks and is doing the best he can for his people and isn't just a tyrant. We get hints of this in the first book (Namely seeing him in his hut).

[Lady Door]

Yeah, I had seen that. I've been reading through the Annotations for Mistborn and Mistborn 2, which are pretty interesting. I am at least grateful for being able to see into the whys and hows of his writing, which is a rare opportunity!

Mistborn spoilers follow.

Religious elements always feel off to me. It's a personal thing. I honestly believe Sanderson handled it extremely well through Sazed, and the look at a fledgling religion and the last vestiges of a dying one were quite well done. Sazed was personable and reasonable enough to appeal to my logical mind, but part of that was probably that he spent half the last book making his own religious journey which is about where I am, too. I'm probably just not at the point where I'm ready to find one, like he did. Well, or become one, as he did. >_>

Again, personal thing. My relationship with Christianity as a religion is heavily strained, so anything hinting at pastoralism rubs me the wrong way. Hence the eye-rolling at the "Love will save the world, the grass is green the sky is blue and we're alive" part of the ending. I totally agree that stuff was leading up to this moment -- and it was very cool that the last Keeper of the world's knowledge of successes and failures got elevated to godhood -- but I still feel the god-making was deus ex machina. Perhaps it's because I am still rattled by Sanderson's tendency to throw the resolution into the final 100 pages of an 800 page book, but it felt like it happened too quickly. Suddenly Vin is a divine spirit and Sazed inherits the souls of Ruin and Preservation and becomes God himself and... I felt like there was more to say about what happened there.

Having read some of his Annotations, I have a much better understanding of where he was coming from as an author. As a Mormon, this all makes perfect sense for him! It is beautiful even if one is not a Mormon (as I am not). I just also think it leads to a few religious/philosophical leaps that are harder for me to make than for others.

Marsh was very interesting. He seemed to be something of a throwaway character at the very beginning -- referenced, but neither dismissed nor elevated so quickly as to be remarkable. Then he showed up with Ministry tattoos and everything went quickly after that. Being able to see the progression through just about every Allomantic/Hemalurgical/Feruchemical process within him was a very cool way to handle the concrete applications of each of the magicks. My main disappointment is that he was too much a golem until the third book, meaning we-as-readers didn't have as much time to see him as a person so much as a force or a container for other impressions. Honestly? I think it worked. It's just that in a field of well-developed character, a slightly personified sketch who holds the entire weight of the lore and magic the books have been building up to feels  ... empty. Irrational disappointment, I think, as he did serve his purpose in the end and he did have enough personality for the reader to sympathize with him during his brief moments, sitting inside his own body as it was controlled by Ruin, wishing things had been different and then finally doing something about it.

I still haven't quite gotten to the Lord Ruler killing scene just yet, but from the rest of the books I can see why the turnaround. I think it was pretty subtle and successfully gradual -- there is the shock of finding out he's not who everyone thought he was at the end of book one, and then the slow realization that he really wasn't who everyone thought he was and now they had to deal with what balance -- however distasteful -- they'd upset. I wasn't entirely satisfied with how they dismissed his pretty evil acts at the end of his life as Lord Ruler, but in foil to Elend's eventual decision they work out alright.

Elend himself was a bit of a problem to me. He didn't turn out to be the character I expected him to, and I felt his transition from scholar to war leader/emperor was a little... forced. But he was likable and, if you forget where he came from, the new persona is quite awesome and definitely satisfies the story.

[superaielman]

Mistborn spoilers, etc


Yeah, you can see the justifications for the raw brutality of the final empire. Rashek was at the very end of the rope at the book, and Vin helped tip that (Giving the Inquistors power over the Obligators, which would have been extremely bad news for the world).  I suppose the natural brutality of the world makes the characters more likely to forgive the Lord Ruler, but bleh. It still doesn't sit quite right.

Sanderson commented on his board that Vin would have ended up no better than the Lord Ruler if she had held onto the power at the well, and he's likely right. Vin means well, but she's also impulsive and does what she think is right no matter what. She and the Lord Ruler make an interesting parallel in that regard. Reen's 'return' in book 3 was a nice touch. I really liked the depth put into a character that never appears in the books, especially when the Inquisitors reveal he died protecting her and her slowly figuring out that he did all that to protect her, however brutally. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Wheel of Time reread complete.

Holy crap Knife of Dreams is awesome. I knew it the first time I read it, but it improves even more when you aren't three years removed from your read of Book 10. Great pace, great atmosphere, and lots of great character work. The last chapter before the epilogue (an unexciting and minimally relevant battle) is really my biggest complaint; ... the chapter was necessary but shouldn't have capped things off. Fortunately the epilogue is good. Also, while most of the characters in this book are excellent, Egwene wins the universe.

Ranking of the books, after some reflection:
1. The Great Hunt
2. Knife of Dreams
3. The Fires of Heaven
4. The Shadow Rising
5. Winter's Heart
6. The Eye of the World
7. Lord of Chaos
(gap)
8. Crossroads of Twilight
9. The Dragon Reborn
10. A Crown of Swords
11. The Path of Daggers

Yeah. Seven excellent books and four less excellent (though each certainly has its own very good points), largely due to pacing issues, which of course remain the series' most significant weakness. Books 7-10 could probably be folded into two books.

Not much else to add, it is probably my favourite fantasy series... I should reread Robin Hobb's stuff to see how those compare, but nothing else does.

[Grefter]

Hobb's work holds up pretty well in rereads I find NEB, Fitz loses a bit of his sympathetic main feel when you aren't a teen anymore, but the writing still holds up. 

Disagree on the overall rankings of the books, but that is minor stuff really. (OH MY GOD I THINK YOU GOT 5-6 LIKE TOTALLY THE WRONG WAY AROUND!!!) Seriously though, while 7-10 are lacking in action... There is still some pretty majour events in there (taking of Ilian through to more than a few engagements with the Seancean) that need the time from the books take to happen.  Without the books there it would either require fairly out of place time skips (There... really hasn't been over the series, the whole thing takes place in like a few years?  I think the only really big time skip I can think of is from Falme to the start of Dragon Reborn and that isn't big... well there is time skips when it happens in the plot, but it is part of the plot relevance where it is and not just a plot device to skip time (Dream Pillar thing for teleportation blatantly in TSR for example, but it also happens in other places they were used).

So while I agree that the pacing is horrible and that something really should have fucking happened in those books, what did happen sort of needed to happen over a few books if that makes sense >_>

Edit - So errr should Jordan have had even more subplots floating around to tie off?  Probably not really that either.  There is a few threads he could have finished off in better timing (TAIM PLOT and last few chunks of Perrin Plot and goddamned Dragonsworn plot) by making them happen there instead of later, but still, not enough to pad out that many books I think.  So I am not really sure what I wanted to happen there really.

[superaielman]

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=19734 Three books for a memory of light? Edit: Sanderson makes some good points. I'm more annoyed at Jordan, this is where some of the extra stuff in the later books (Perrin's arc!) could've been cut to make this flow better.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sanderson makes his case well. I'm pretty pumped that there's a book coming out this year, to be honest.

[Grefter]

It is all good reasoning and I do remember hearing the 700k mark ideas floating around and wondering how ridiculously big this book is, I don't need another Man in the Iron Mask on my bookshelf (which is far to big to read practically).  Makes me a little sad to not have the cut off be 2 books though to round the series out at 13, but oh well.

[Cotigo]

That makes a lot of sense, and the case is well argued.  Having long since given up on WoT, at least until the series is complete, I could care less about the release date.  However, it is nice to see that in addition to paying the story its proper due (horrendously poor as the late-middle books may be, the world created in the first 6 books and the conflict established are very well done and deserve a proper end), the parties involved are giving the fans their proper due as well.  "Its been three years since the release of the last book, the fans deserve something" >>>>>>>> "It's been five years since the release of the last book, and the next book was basically being written concurrently, but we don't even have a tenative release date for A Dance of fucking Dragons because it's not fucking finished yet jesus christ Martin I understand not wanting to put out an inferior product but holy hell if the book is as disappointing as A Feast for Crows was I will write about it very angrily on the internet instead of ...

Oh, yeah.  What I originally came in here to write about.

Julia Kristeva - Proving that not all feminist thinkers from the 70s are whiny sophist cunts making vague nonsensical arguments about patriarchal language.  I think the article I read for this essay (Women's Time) is from the 90s but still, it is damn refreshing to read something from a pre-Butler feminist writer that isn't complete and total bollocks.

I may not do well on this essay (not for its poor quality but for it not agreeing with much of what my professor's tried to drill into us, if you'll excuse the symbol), but it is satisfying to write.

[Excal]

Ah, excellent.  Guess I'll have to start a WoT reread this summer.   Maybe try Mistborn to get a feel for Sanderson too.

Either way, this is exciting news.

[superaielman]

Start with Elantris. It's a damn good novel, and it's a standalone novel. Very well done and it makes a good lead in to Mistborn.

[Shale]

So I've apparently decided to torture myself in a new and interesting way: By simultaneously reading the best and worst comic books I can get my hands on.

The best: Walter Simonson's Thor. I've heard a lot of superlatives about his run over the years, and hell if it doesn't live up to most of them. The first major arc of the run meshes superhero comics and a mythic cast and setting in a way that's pretty near seamless. Balder's arc, the story of Surtur (flashback and present-day), the mortal cast, everything about the faerie world...he even makes an alien cyborg horse named "Beta Ray Bill" somehow fit into a Ragnarok story without missing a beat. The guy's good. As for the art...well, he's better writer than an artist, but he's not a bad artist - weak on detail (not unusual for the 80s), but very strong on composition and action scenes. I'll take it.

The worst: All-Star Batman & Robin. Yeah. Remarkably, it starts out not bad! Not the definitive Batman story of our era or anything, but Batman-as-total-psychopath is always worth exploring, and his first conversation with Robin actually has some interesting character work in it, for all that it's incredibly ham-handed about itl. Of course, then The Goddamn Batman takes over and it all goes spectacularly to shit. The monologue alone is enough to numb my brain.