[Lisa's Take] Lightbringer Book 2: The Blinding Knife (Brent Weeks)

It pains me deeply to say this, but I was a little disappointed by The Blinding Knife.  Don’t get me wrong – it was a great book!  Excellent!  Spectacular in some ways, even!  But taken as a whole it left me feeling a bit let down.

A bit of background: I adored the Shadow books, and then Black Prism completely blew me out of the water.  I was stunned at how much of a better writer Weeks became between his first trilogy and his second; Black Prism was a tighter, more believable story.  I suppose I had hoped that momentum would carry into Blinding Knife – but of course it’s unrealistic to expect that kind of exponential growth from anyone, even one of your favorite authors.

My gripes about the book fall loosely into two categories: gripes that are probably legitimate (when considering that this is a work of fantasy), and gripes that even I can tell are kind of silly (when considering that this is a work of fantasy).

Regarding legitimate gripes: I called every twist in the book.  There was not a single thing that surprised me, even a tiny bit.  There was one thing near the end that confused me [1] but that’s not the same thing. Also, about half way through the book I started feeling like Weeks was drawing on the same tropes he used in the Shadow books (they love each other but they can never be together!  Woe!  But now they might be able to be together if only circumstances didn’t conspire to have one of them horribly maimed! WOE!).  There was still a ton of brilliance and originality in the details of the story and the world itself, but when it comes to major themes and the ebb and flow of the action, it felt very familiar and very done.

As for gripes that I think are kind of silly… once again I hesitate to bring feminism into my book blog, but it niggled at me throughout the book so I suppose I’ll just get it out of my system.  So.  Women see colors better than men, right? Kip is the [MINOR SPOILER?]first male superchromat [/MINOR SPOILER] in ages at the Chromeria, and the teachers and his classmates all remark on it.  If that’s the case, why is the society in the book still so very male-centric? Sure, there are some strong women, but they make up only half of the Spectrum and seem to be in the minority in the Blackguard (though that is arguably realistic, since women are physically less powerful by default). But you’d think if women were so often superior with colors, they would hold a majority in positions of power.  There are even some subtle things about the speech of people in the book that would likely be different – why would a society centered around strong women default to male-gendered wording, for instance, or always assume maleness in an anonymous strong person?

Weeks took some great strides to make his female characters strong and independent, but in the end most of his female PoV characters fell victim to love or lust, as though all they needed in their lives was a man to complete them. The one exception here is [MINOR SPOILER] Teia [/MINOR SPOILER], but she was also the most minor of the PoV characters – I will be shocked (SHOCKED!) if she makes it through the next book without having a man to attach herself to.    Oh, and as a slightly more minor manifestation of the same gripe – if Gavin Guile’s internal monologue says just ONE more time “oh, she was/is/will be so easy to seduce and win over to my way of thinking” I will stab someone.  With an actual knife, not a toothless little color-sucking knife.

I can’t be more specific on “ladies who need men in their pants” without getting into spoilery territory, but color me (heh) disappointed.  For both of the items above, Weeks started with a strong idea and then didn’t take it out to its full world-buildy completion point.

Hah, boy – funny how my list of “silly gripes” doubled the length of my “legitimate gripes.”  I wonder if that is telling?

Anyway, I don’t want this review to end with any takeaway other than: I really, truly did enjoy this book!  It was great and awesome as a whole and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  I ate through almost the entire thing in a weekend. I was just a little let down since I expected Weeks to step up his game, but instead I was given another dose of “more of the same.” Which is nothing to complain about when “more of the same” is a rollicking good time, with several good gut-wrenching twists thrown in.

[1] [SPOILER] namely how the knife suddenly behaved in a completely different/inconsistent way regarding color transference[/SPOILER]

[JD's Take] Under Heaven (Guy Gavriel Kay)

Every time I read a new Guy Gavriel Kay novel, I become more solidly convinced that he is perhaps the most talented living author of fantasy that I have had the pleasure of reading. It is true, that I have in no way read the entirety of his oeuvre, and it is also likely that I have been cherry-picking his best works as I work my way through it. But the rest of the books are going to have to really suck to outweigh the brilliance of Tigana, The Lions of Al-Rassan, and Under Heaven.

Like his other works, Under Heaven takes place in a fictionalized version of a historical setting. This one is much more thinly disguised than the others I've read; it is impossible to mistake this setting for anything other than historical China (specifically, the Tang dynasty). In fact, I'd say that it's the least fantastic and most historically linked of his books that I've read. The story follows a man named Shen who... ah, I hate summarizing books when I review them, and I feel like any attempt would fall short. So I'm deleting what I had and skipping that part.

The book sparkles with Kay's usual adept characterizations and clever integration of fantastic elements with historical lands, customs, and cultures. The writing is generously sprinkled with poetry, and that helps lend the whole thing a sort of... thoughtful atmosphere. I became wholly absorbed with this book in a way that I haven't had happen in a very, very long time. I read all 600 pages of it over a single weekend (an unheard of feat for me) and was genuinely sad when I had to turn that last page. This was one of those books that had me reading the author's notes at the end just because I was loath to admit the story was over.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the story was the focus of it. Shen becomes involved with politics at the highest level, and tremendous, society-shaking events begin to happen around him. Despite the eventually revolution, the start of a decade-long war, and a fundamental shift in the country's society that happen during the book... they are never the focus of the story. This is the story of a man with a burden unasked for, a story about dealing with family and lovers and danger and your own smallness. It is not a story about war and revolution and blood and sacked cities and high politics, those are simply things that happen in the background of this one man's struggle and when that struggle finally ends... so too does the story. Long before the end of the war, without telling us much (if anything) about the large-scale events that we saw start. There are hints though, intriguing morsels narrated to let us know that his story isn't over... but THIS story is. It's a hard trick to pull off (and a hard effect to describe! Read it yourself and see what you think) but it is done masterfully here.

In short, this book is brilliant. I have nothing bad to say about it... at least not now, several weeks after putting it down. Instead, I find myself missing it like an old friend that I haven't talked to in too long.

[Lisa’s Take] Acacia – David Anthony Durham

I do so love being proven wrong about a book. I recently posted in a comment over at The Tattered Scroll:

I’m about 200 pages into Acacia right now, and I’m finding it… ok. I’m not super caught up by the plot or massively engaged with the characters, and the writing style is only so-so. The world is interesting enough that I’ll keep reading, but I do hope it perks my interest a bit as it goes on,

As promised, I stuck with Acacia… and I was richly rewarded. Eventually.

This first volume in the trilogy is broken up into 3 books, each in the 200-250ish page range. Book 1 was almost entirely setup and background, and didn’t grab me at all. The main POV characters seemed dull and one dimensional, with the exception of the relationship between Leodan and Thaddeus. It felt like the author was doing a lot of telling and not a lot of showing; I discovered a new pet peeve in the form of:

“Let’s talk, Person A,” said person B.
“How do you feel about X,” Person A asked.
Person B began to speak about {insert long exposition here}

This is an odd thing to get caught up on, but given how much I enjoy witty dialog it was extremely jarring any time a conversation progressed for 2 or 4 statements, then branched off into a long exposition that was supposed to be dialog, but not presented as dialog.

Then book 2 started and Acacia got GOOD. Suddenly the characters were no longer flat and uninteresting. The four main(ish) POV characters grew up, which helped a great deal (so often children in literature are one dimensional). Suddenly Acacia seemed less “remote historical drama” and more character-driven drama, with personal struggles and gains. From this point on I positively chewed through the book, delighting in each turn.

And then book 3 hit and we discover that David Anthony Durham has a little Joss Whedon in him – or perhaps George R. R. Martin, given that this is the book-realm, rather than the TV-realm. Durham becomes absolutely vicious and isn’t afraid to send heads flying. I don’t think I’ve felt so stabbed by in-book betrayals since reading The Lion of Senet 6 years ago. Book 3 ends in a tumult of action that surprises and horrifies, cuts, thrills, and induces shivers. The best part of all of that? The part where it Actually Ends. I get so sick of “trilogies” that are truly just a single book broken into 3 pieces with no distinct narrative arc in each book. Acacia defies that trend and leaves you with a entire story to mull (while still managing to leave you craving more).

So there you have it – I went from totally tepid to pretty pleased with Acacia. I'm going to write off the rocky start to "new trilogy growing pains." I’ll be bouncing my way over to the bookstore tonight to pick up the second and third books right away (though I may break them up with a couple of other recent releases I’m anticipating, such as The Broken Kingdom).

[JD's Take] The Black Prism (Brent Weeks)

I enjoyed Brent Weeks' first series (as he calls it: "That Ninja Book") enough that I read it back-to-back-to-back. I certainly didn't think that it was the most sophisticated or deep, but it was a really fun story and it pulled me along thanks to tight pacing and exciting action. It was, in a word, popcorn. So, I picked up The Black Prism expecting, more or less, more of the same.

Boy was I surprised.

The Black Prism introduces a world that is dominated by two things: the immensely powerful magic users (known as Drafters) that craft different colors of light into a magical substance (Luxin) with various properties and the brutal war fought 16 years before the story starts that tore the kingdoms apart as they battled to decide which of two brothers was the rightful head of the magical college that all drafters attend. To add fuel to this fire, the magical college is also the church, and its leader (called the Prism) is the pope-equivalent (and the only person capable of drafting all 7 colors).

The story primarily follows four characters. Gavin Guile, who is the Prism. A member of his elite guard who was once betrothed to him name Karris Whiteoak. Kip, boy growing up in a tiny village devastated by the war and personally devastated by his mother's drug addiction. And Liv, a student at the magical college who is from the same village as Kip.

Shockingly, I just remembered all of that off the top of my head... which says a LOT about just how into this book I got. And that's really the beauty of this novel, the world is fascinating, the magic system is well designed and deep, and the characters just draw you in, both into their troubles and their struggles and their triumphs but also into the world itself. This ends up being one of those books that you stay up too late reading, only to find yourself dreaming about the world all night.

One of my favorite things about the book was the way the war served as a backdrop, a subtext, to everything that happens. A lesser storyteller would have told me about the war, the causes of it, the battles that were fought, who won and why and how. Instead, Weeks tells the story of these characters who have all, one way or another, been totally ruined by the war. Each of them struggles to deal with the mess that the war made of their lives. The characters are interesting not because they spend the whole time angsting about it, but because they are realistically damaged goods trying to overcome that damage. This style of slow, contextual reveals of the details about everybody's past and place in the world also lets Weeks show you how these people are in the present... only to mess with your whole view of them later when their past is revealed. Everything turns grayer, more morally ambiguous, less obviously the story you think you are being told as the book goes on.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that in many ways, this book feels like a Bradon Sanderson novel. The magic system has that scientific styling and attention to detail that I associate with Sanderson. The scope and style and characterizations are similar enough that if you didn't tell me who wrote it, I'd have guessed that the Sanderson-Tron 3000 had managed to spit out yet another book without me realizing it.
This should, in no way, be taken as criticism.

Here's the part where I list bad things, but I'm not in the mood. I loved this book, and I highly recommend it.

Finally, here are some of my favorite/least favorite things that are BIG SPOILERS:








-At page 100 I guessed that Gavin was actually his brother. I was very pleased that this wasn't the Major Reveal at the end of the book as I was afraid it would be.
-I loved how my opinion of Gavin kept shifting. He kept wavering between Noble and Monster. Towards the end of the book, I think I hated/loved him on a 20 page cycle.
-The green prison. Holy shit, THAT surprised the hell out of me.
-Liv switching sides was completely in character, but surprising to me from a meta-story kinda level.
-Is it just me or are there 4 prisms alive in the world right now? Man, this religion has some holes in it.
-I hope he wraps up this "Kip keeps the dagger a secret and ruins everything" plot line in the first 50 pages of the second book. It's not going to be terribly interesting.
-In the acknowledgements he says the whole idea came from a friend saying "wouldn't it be neat if instead of [fantasy trope], [the opposite of fantasy trope]?". My current theory is "The main character is the good twin/evil twin".

[Not a Review]How Pat Rothfuss has Ruined my Life

Dearest Readers,

Remember me? I used to write reviews here all the time! I used to read 50 books a year! I used to have all sorts of passionate things to say about fantasy literature, both good and bad!

But then a mean, mean man named Pat Rothfuss came along. After a long and painful 3 year wait, he released the second book in a trilogy of his; a trilogy called the Kingkiller Chronicle. Knowing that this excellent novel would soon be in my hands, I re-read the first novel in the series. This was no mean feat, as it clocks in near 1000 pages. Then I worked my way greedily through the newest installment, The Wise Man's Fear, also quite lengthy. I laughed, I cried, I yelled, and I did nothing but read for over a week. When I finished it, I turned it over and started reading it again.

"But Lisa," you may ask, "How could such a wonderful experience possible ruin you in any way?"

Here's how, gentle readers: nothing else is good enough anymore. I've tried all of my tricks for getting out of a "reading rut" and nothing seems to work.

I've tried a little low quality smut (Two! Freaking TWO Laurell K. Hamilton books). Usually if I read something throw-away it will clear out my system and make me excited to get back to "the good stuff". But no. This time it just made me angry that such utter crap could exist and be making money when shining paragons of perfection like Wise Man's Fear exist.

I've tried reading fantasy at the opposite end of the spectrum. Surely some nice gritty, bloody, cursing-filled Joe Abercrombie would reset my fantastical moral compass? I made it to the last 80 pages of The Heroes and then I completely ran out of steam. I couldn't force myself to continue reading anything that engaged me emotionally so little. The characters were real, but they weren't lovable... and once you have loved Bast and Kvothe, how can you care about anyone less worthy?

I've tried some non-modern fantasy, in a sub-genre I've never touched before: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart is a 40-year-old novel in the lore of King Arthur and Merlin. Vastly different from almost any fantasy I've read - and still it neither moved me nor engaged me.

I've tried young adult novels, knowing they will be middle of the road, but maybe guide me back towards a good mindset (Lirael by Garth Nix). I've tried short novellas by my favorite authors set in my favorite universes (Bayan's Gold by Peter V. Brett). I've tried new, exciting looking titles (The Scar-crow Men, Never Knew Another) - nothing seems to work.

I was roused from my malaise for approximately 4 hours while I read Steve Brust's latest Vald novel, Tiassa. It is utterly unthinkable that I'd not respond to the literary voice of my favorite historian (One Paarfi). I cackled through Tiassa with utter delight; enraptured, thrilled, engaged, and happier than I had been in months. But then, 4 hours later, Tiassa was over. I started to re-read it, as well, but eventually set it aside as a futile effort: I am doomed to be forever ruined on fantasy novels.

2 months later, I'm still mournfully gazing at my stack, wondering what possibly could shake me out of this literary depression into which I've sunk. I'm looking at Daniel Abraham's newest novel, The Dragon Path... perhaps he will succeed where a solid 10 other books have failed.

Woefully yours,
Lisa the Reviewer, Forever Ruined by Rothfuss

[Mini Review] JD's Take: The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson)

The Way of Kings is the first entry in what is going to be one of those series that takes up an entire shelf in my library. Projected to be 11 books long (and this first one weighs in at 1008 pages), I've made the regrettable decision to begin reading as soon as the first book was published. Those of us who read fantasy and science fiction have a name for people who start reading long, epic series at the onset: suckers. We've been burned, you see, by the Robert Jordans and the GRRMs of the world. With luck my blind, idiot faith that Sanderson's machine-like ability to churn out words at the feverish pace to which I've grown accustomed won't burn him out in the next 12 years or so will be justified. Alright so yeah, I'm a sucker.

Sucker or not, I'm glad I decided to read this now. This book was amazing. It completely engrossed me while I read it, and I've found myself thinking about it long past the end. The world he builds is fascinating and alien and wonderful. There's so much going on that I have no doubt at all that he'll be developing not just plot threads, but world details for years to come. Roughly, it's a world populated by humans, various near-human races, crustaceans wildlife, weird flora, magic, techno-magic, creepy spirit jellyfish things that are attracted to emotions and natural events, scholars, warriors, wanderers, strange societies, echoes of history long forgotten (and barely past), and enough plot-hints that don't get developed to keep your mind churning for the year(s) it'll take the next book to come out. Oh, and the world is constantly battered by vicious storms that sweep across the landscape in semi-regular, semi-predictable cycles. And gravity magic. And vast armies, and social injustice, and morally gray decisions, and miracles, and prophecy, and....

...and it's a very full book, is what I'm saying. I loved it. I eagerly await the next book. Now if Sanderson just keeps up his writing pace and doesn't go insane in the next decade, I'll be all set.

[Lisa’s Take] Shadows of the Apt Book 3: Blood of the Mantis (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Series of books are always harder and harder for me to review the deeper I get into them, since there’s really no good way to do a good summary or recap without getting spoilery. Bear with me!

I’ll say this first: Blood of the Mantis was Good Enough. Good Enough to keep me reading the next book. Good Enough to be a pleasant diversion. Beyond that, I was fairly ho-hum about it. The story was interesting, but lacked a great ebb and flow. Tchaikovsky bounced around between characters and plot points so much that the whole book felt a bit frantic (though it did keep the pages turning). The characterizations were a little on the weak side, hanging VERY heavily on past character-building. I didn’t get a great feeling for the new characters introduced, but they also were Good Enough to stand, if not shine.

In lieu of a true story summarization, allow me to instead do a point by point recap of my thoughts on book 2 and discuss how they changed in book 3.

• Easily the first 30% of the book was spent re-capping events from the previous book in excruciating detail.

This problem is totally resolved, thank goodness. Whether it was because I waited a little while to pick up book 3 (so the recaps were needed, rather than irksome) or whether he really did tone it down a notch, over-recapping was a non-issue in Blood of the Mantis.

• The reader is introduced to several new characters and new powers come into play in the war as a whole. Personally, I did not find this change in scope appealing, as I’m more a fan of character-fantasy than epic/war fantasy.

The scope of book 3 was still more broad than the first book, but it did gravitate back towards more character and action centric than battle- and politics-oriented. I approved, with the caveat I mentioned above about character depth.

• An additional problem I had with Dragonfly Falling was that it felt like Tchaikovsky kind of ran out of new ideas for the world.

This was definitely no longer the case in Blood of the Mantis. Tchaikovsky did an excellent job introducing new parts of the world and making the entire setting more rich. I highly enjoyed some of the framework he put in place for future books.

So… yay? Overall improvement? I don’t exactly have a glowing review to give to Blood of the Mantis, but as I said before: it was Good Enough. Amusingly, I think I can just copy-paste the final paragraph of my review of book 2, and it stands perfectly well for book 3:

• > On the whole, all my complaining aside, I enjoyed Dragonfly Falling Blood of the Mantis enough that I want to pick up the third fourth installment and see where it goes. I’ll probably take a break of a few months before book 3 4 so I don’t run into the over-summarizing issue again, and I do hope the series returns to the excellence of the first book.

[Lisa's Take] The Stormlight Archive Book 1 - The Way of Kings ARC (Brandon Sanderson)

First and foremost, a plug! If you live in the Atlanta area, go check out Blue Elephant Bookshop in Decatur. They have a lovely little shop filled with a labyrinth of shelves, friendly book-geek employees, and an excellent fantasy section, especially for a smaller indie store. Plus, you’ll be in Decatur, which means you can stop and stuff yourself full of excellent food and drinks at Brickstore or Iberian Pig.

Now, why exactly am I plugging a little Decatur bookshop? You see: for reasons entirely unfathomable to me, a friend to one of my best friends decided she loves me far too much. I can tell because she works at Blue Elephant, and they received a stack of ARCs for The Way of Kings from the publisher. And friend-of-a-friend (who has now replaced best-friend in my affections – sorry, Christin!) decided to let me have one. Just over 1000 pages of unedited Sanderson-ey goodness, 2 months before the book release date. I don’t deserve such love.

*cough* Right, ok, I’m done effusing for real this time – on to the review!

Um. Wow. Where do I even begin? Sanderson has really outdone himself this time – according to his blog is has a whole pile of books to write in this series, and I am 100% thrilled by this news. Perhaps the most astounding thing about the ARC is that Sanderson tweeted his revisions (going from the ARC to the final product), and was cutting 10%-20% of each chapter, which is just unfathomable to me. Sure, there were times when he waxed verbose, but it certainly didn’t seem like the prose needed tightening up much. I’m very much looking forward to a re-read of the final draft. Either way, Sanderson has a ton of story to tell, and I am incredibly excited about it.

Goodness, I’m tangenting all over the place today: reign it in, Lisa!

The Way of Kings is everything you would expect from a Sanderson novel. There are 3 main viewpoints and perhaps 3 or 4 more supporting viewpoints, much like Elantris or Warbreaker. All of the viewpoint characters are nuanced, deep, and interesting. I really appreciated the variety of ages, backgrounds, and opinions the characters held – it was really nice not to have to follow 3 teenage urchins, or 3 noble but sheltered young women. All of the literary voices were distinct and exciting; only one viewpoint dragged at all for me (impressive in a book this long!) and even then not for long. Perhaps most impressively: Sanderson managed to create characters that bucked the standard fantasy tropes without falling off the other side, back into “your character is hackneyed, you’re trying too hard.”

Speaking of characters, the world that Sanderson has created for this book is practically a character in itself. I don’t even know how he comes up with so many ideas; the world is incredibly rich and intriguing. He investigates the country in which most of the action takes place very thoroughly, but you also get glimpses of other countries and parts of the world – tantalizing little tastes that reveal just how much story Sanderson has to tell. I also loved the sprinkling of maps and drawings that were included, it was fun to see how close my mental pictures were to what Sanderson and the illustrator had in mind.

As always, Sanderson is amazing at describing fight scenes, and he has way too much fun playing with physics. If you’ve seen Inception (the only movie I’ve seen in theaters since Christmas…) you have an idea of just how awesome fights with variable gravity can be. Sanderson has a very similar mechanism in The Way of Kings; we only get a small taste of it in this book, but it is incredibly cool. Sanderson is always great at character building and action, but one thing he also got me with in this book was suspense. He really managed to get me keyed up and on edge a couple of times… and he did so skillfully enough that I’ll overlook the fact that he kind of ganked the device from the Doctor Who episode “Blink.”

Phew. This is getting long – I should wrap up. In case you couldn’t tell, The Way of Kings pretty much rocked my face off. It was incredibly good and amazingly diverse; now that I’m finished with it I keep finding myself thinking “oooo, I’m going to read some Way of Kings! Oh, wait, it’s over, nooooo!” Perhaps the most impressive thing about the book is not Sanderson’s characters, world, or magic systems, but this: when you finish Way of Kings, you realize that all of that plot, all of that character development, all of that world building…. was still just set-up for book 2 and the rest of the series. It’s probably not fair for a setup book to be this freaking awesome.

[Lisa’s Take] Shadows of the Apt Book 2: Dragonfly Falling (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Disappointment, thy name is Book 2. After how much I enjoyed Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling was kind of a sucker punch to my enthusiasm. I started the second book in the Shadows of the Apt series immediately after completing book 1, with no room to breathe in between. This was a very big mistake. Easily the first 30% of the book was spent re-capping events from the previous book in excruciating detail. Not just little reminders to trigger your memory, but full-on rehashing of conversations, characters, and events. Every time I picked up the book I was annoyed – which is not a state of mind to enjoy anything.

The events of Dragonfly Falling pick up immediately after the end of Empire in Black and Gold, and the story quickly broadens both the scope of the characters and the breadth of the conflict. The reader is introduced to several new characters and new powers come into play in the war as a whole. Personally, I did not find this change in scope appealing, as I’m more a fan of character-fantasy than epic/war fantasy. The characters that I liked from the first book got less attention, and the characters I didn’t like got more face time. In particular, I was disappointed with Salma’s character development (he started out as one of my favorites, but the whole “Grief-in-chains” thing ruined him for me) and I was very, very bored of Totho’s whiny love-lorn drama by half way through the book.

An additional problem I had with Dragonfly Falling was that it felt like Tchaikovsky kind of ran out of new ideas for the world. In book one he had a 100% new world to explore and he gleefully ran around talking about all the incredibly cool and creative stuff in that world… but then in book two realized he had already explored everything, and there was nothing new left to talk about. He did manage to introduce a few different ideas, but they were all related to the old ideas –nothing truly original came into play.

Thankfully, after a thoroughly mediocre first couple hundred pages, the last third of the book picked up quite a bit. Totho got less whiny, Tchaikovsky quit summarizing past events, and Thalric continued his trend from the first book of being quite interesting. The book ended on a good note, and I even managed a healthy enjoyment of the more epic aspects (battle after battle after battle).

On the whole, all my complaining aside, I enjoyed Dragonfly Falling enough that I want to pick up the third installment and see where it goes. I’ll probably take a break of a few months before book 3 so I don’t run into the over-summarizing issue again, and I do hope the series returns to the excellence of the first book.

[Spring Cleaning][Lisa’s Take] The Long Price Quartet – Daniel Abraham

Gods. I don’t even know how to begin to review this series. I read books 1 and 2 over two years ago and never got around to writing full reviews for them, though they richly deserved it. A few months back I tried to start An Autumn War but put it down after 30 pages because I was afraid I didn’t remember enough about book 2 to enjoy book 3. Eventually my curiosity at all the buzz overwhelmed my reservations and I tried again – and ended up reading An Autumn War and The Price of Spring basically back to back.

I won’t attempt a plot summary of 4 books that span 50 years – instead I’ll just ramble on a bit.

Never in all of my reading history have I seen such amazing character development. I’ve certainly read other books that span many years (or even a lifetime). The Long Price Quartet blows all others out of the water. His core cast of characters mature from teenagers to old men over the course of the 4 books – and they actually change and mature. Their outlooks and maturity levels vary, as do their handling of situations.

[Reviewer’s Note: this is where I set the review down and neglected to come back to it]

There’s no way I can pick this review back up and do The Long Price Quartet justice, and for that I apologize. It’s been a long time since I finished a book series and the hand a good cry (the last one was The Khaavren Romances, by Steve Brust, if you’re curious), but I finished The Price of Spring, closed the book, and then sobbed my eyes out. Finishing this series left a hole in my heart, like losing an old friend. Watching the characters grow and change, the way they interacted with each other and handled situations, their love of the vibrant world – it all had a huge impact. Sure, the books had flaws and weaknesses, but the overall picture they painted was astoundingly good.

I absolutely cannot wait for Abraham to get another book in the works – he has vaulted into a very high position on my list of favorite authors.

[Lisa's Take] Otherland - Tad Williams

There’s been a bit of review silence from me lately, by and large because I was reading the last two books of Tad Williams’ Otherland quartet: two books that totaled 1850 dense pages. Needless to say, these novels slowed down my usual rate of bookish consumption for a few weeks, thus why I’ve been so quiet.

When it comes down to it, I wasn’t actually planning to do any sort of review of the Otherland books (in order: City of Golden Shadow, River of Blue Fire, Mountain of Black Glass, Sea of Silver Light). I read the first book 2 years ago, took off a year before reading book two, then took off another year before picking up book 3. Each book is so very thick and robust that I needed the reset time between stories. I fully intended to take another year long break between books 3 and 4, but found that I couldn’t focus on any of the books I tried to pick up after Mountain of Black Glass, so I gave in to the inevitable and finished it off.

Anyway, the scope and content of these books is so epic and ranging that I was going to wimp out on a review simply because there was SO MUCH content that I was daunted by trying to summarize anything. However, chatting about the story with JD the other night I realized that I had quite a lot to think about, so I figured I may as well put down a few thoughts. No plot summary or character recap, but allow me to ramble on some themes.

Thought the first: Otherland should be Required Reading for anyone who considers themselves and fantasy or sci-fi fan. The books are definitely a blending of the two genres, and they epitomize epic scifi/fantasy much in the way George R. R. Martin’s work epitomizes “hard” epic fantasy. The story in Otherland is enormous in scope and unbelievably imaginative. I often talk about books being multi-genre, but Otherland covers all of the ground between fantasy and science fiction and goes down several rabbit holes even further into their sub-genres. Tad Williams pretty much hits all of the bases.

Thought the second: pacing. How impressive is it to maintain acceptable pacing through 4 books that range from 600-1100 pages? It’s a feat in and of itself to tell that huge of a story and only very rarely have it drag. I will gripe a bit that each book was not a stand-alone package – the books had nice swells and lulls in action, but each one definitely ended on a cliff-hanger and the next book picked up right where it left off. A small gripe, but still something that irks me. That said, the last book still managed one of the more impressive resolutions that I’ve seen in a series. All of the loose ends were neatly tied off and resolved, but each in a believable fashion. It was not a stretch to see how each storyline was resolved, and none of the many, many resolutions seemed contrived.

Thought the third: characters. There are a LOT of characters in Otherland. If I were they type of person to re-read books, I’d re-read Otherland and keep a huge diagram of characters and how/when they meet other characters. Tad Williams does a very impressive job of making each character very memorable, in spite of such a large cast – even with year-long gaps between the books, I was always quickly reminded who was who. Even more impressively, all of the characters are realistic, flawed and individual. I can think of maybe 2 characters that seemed at all flat to me, which is quite good in a cast of 30ish. Williams also managed to create some characters that I truly despised, as well as using them on-screen without burning me out on having to deal with them. Additionally, he wrote one of the scariest mother-loving bad guys of all time.

Thought the fourth: relationships. Much as all of Williams’ characters were interesting and distinct, so were his character interactions and relationships. Everyone had very different chemistry, and he illustrated many of the different aspects and levels of love and hate. More than anything, I was impressed by how varied and nuanced the relationships in the core characters were, especially when everyone’s threads started crossing during the third book. My emotional string were definitely played like a harp. Rarely have I seen an epic work that developed its characters and relationships as carefully as its world.

Well. I guess I did have a lot to say – this ramble has gotten quite long! More of a discussion than a review, but whatever you call it I’m going to bring it to a close. Otherland is a spectacular set of books and you owe it to yourself to read all four if you are a fan of the fantasy/sci-gi genre!

[Lisa’s Take] Mistborn Book 3: Hero of Ages (Brandon Sanderson)

I kind of thought I’d have a lot to put into my review of the final book in this trilogy, but now that the time has come I don’t have all that much to say. I can’t do a plot summary without spoilers, and there just isn’t much that I feel like waxing poetic about. If you’ve read my reviews of books 1 and 2 you know that I adore the story, and book 3 continues to deliver on that promise. I didn’t enjoy it as much as book 1 (like book 2, book 3 is Good but not Great), but it was an entertaining tale. I’m pleased that the ending brought such great closure, and I was very surprised by the bold strokes that the author took in wrapping up the story.

Oh, I did have one little gripe: did anyone else feel that there was a pretty serious screw up (retcon?) in the capabilities of allomancy during one of the big final battles? Trying to remain unspoilery: the one involving a lot of Inquisitors? Maybe I was racing through the book’s climax so quickly that I missed the explanation of why this particular thing worked in that battle, but didn’t work in a number of other battles – I’d like to think that surely the author and the editor couldn’t both have miss it. Regardless, the fact that I got fixated on it in a “that’s not supposed to be possible” sense really broke up the book’s climax for me.

Anyway, at this point I’m really just rambling because I don’t have the juice to do a full review of Hero of Ages. I’ll wrap this up by reiterating that in spite of its (very few) faults, the Mistborn trilogy is truly excellent. It’s definitely the best fantasy trilogy I’ve read in a couple of years, sporting a compelling plot line, an amazingly awesome magic system, epic scope, and very well developed characters. I look forward to reading more of Bradon Sanderson’s work in the future.

[Mini Review] Lisa’s Take: Mistborn Book 2 - The Well of Ascension (Brandon Sanderson)

I suppose I should post just a brief note on the second book of the Mistborn trilogy, as I’m already ¾ of the way through the final book. I’ll keep it short, and forgo the potentially spoilerfull plot summary.

The Well of Ascension was a Good Book, though perhaps not a Great Book. I felt it wasn’t as impressive as the first book for a couple of reasons, the biggest one being that it’s hard to rival the slow reveal of a world and magical system that took place in book one. There were still some cool new concepts in book two, but you didn’t spend 200 pages learning about Allomancy and going “Oh, awesome!!” so the overall novelty was lower.

I was also kind of annoyed by how Sanderson handled the relationship aspects of book 2 – a lot of the back and forth just annoyed the hell out of me, regardless of how much you could argue that it was in character. For about two thirds of the book I ground my teeth whenever the Elend/Vin dynamic came up, and the weird conservative overtones that snuck into the narrative rubbed me the wrong way.

Luckily the end of the book did a lot to rectify my gripes; when I finished The Well of Ascension I had a very “Empire Strikes Back” feeling in my chest. I wasted no time getting my hands on book 3, which I have been summarily tearing through. I also feel it worth mentioning that Zane might be winning the “Lisa’s favorite character of the year” award – some of the aspects of his characterization were really great.

Right, that’s it. Keeping this short, with the expectation of a longer ramble when I wrap up The Hero of Ages in a day or two.

[Lisa’s Take] The Nessantico Cycle Book 2: A Magic of Nightfall (S. L. Farrell)

Even though my reaction to A Magic of Twilight was rather lukewarm, when I saw A Magic of Nightfall in the bookstore I was excited and picked it up right away. For all of the flaws in book 1 it still left me wanting more, so Nightfall got prioritized pretty quickly in my stack.

I’ll say one thing for A Magic of Nightfall – it’s ballsy. Book 1 didn’t exactly end of a cliffhanger, but it did leave off in the midst of some action, and I was fully expecting Book 2 to pick up right where that action left off. Farrell, however, had other ideas, and Nightfall starts after about a 25 year gap in time. Needless to say, I was quite surprised…. but Farrell pulled it off pretty well. I was impressed by how naturally and organically the jump in time was executed. The characters had all aged and changed and developed in the intervening period, and I think the gap was necessary to move the story a long and really take it to the epic level that Farrell was aiming for.

Speaking of ballsy, the author makes a couple of moves within the first few chapters that left my jaw hanging open – I won’t elaborate since it would be impossible to do so without spoilers, but I will say that Farrell really stepped up to the plate and showed that he’s not afraid to take charge of his characters. Very Martin-esque in that regard.

For all the panache and promise that Nightfall started out with, I had high hopes for the book. Unfortunately, a lot of my gripes from the first novel wormed their way back into play. The biggest trouble surrounded characterization, yet again. Much like in Twilight, I didn’t feel all that attached to any of the characters and I felt like they had some inconsistencies. Farrell did a better job this time around of making his characters motivations make sense (and some of the motivational ambiguities from the 1st book were cleared up), but I just didn’t feel an emotional “umph” around any of the characters. Even some of the characters that I had started to sympathize with in the first book just didn’t quite make a connection with me during book 2. It was frustrating – I wanted to be emotionally wrapped up in the characters and their plight, but there was just something missing.

Character gripes aside, the story itself was (much like the first book) pretty solid, pretty engaging, and pretty good.
“Pretty” is cropping up a lot in this review – I should work on my synonyms. Fairly solid. Somewhat engaging. Moderately interesting. Reasonably good. A decent variety of words to express how I felt about the other aspects of the story. It had a nice ebb and flow with good buildups and lulls, all climaxing towards a solid finish. That said, by the end of the book I was kind of ready for it to be over. I raced through the last 80 pages not because I was on edge about how the story would end, but because I just wanted it to be done with already. I think this might be a personal problem, rather than a problem with the book itself – I do know better than to load too much epic fantasy into one month, so it may be that I just didn’t get enough variety in literature the last few weeks since I packed in both Twilight and Nightfall.

Well. A lot of that text sounds mediocre-to-negative, but believe it or not, A Magic of Nightfall was a good book. If you enjoyed A Magic of Twilight you’ll certainly enjoy its sequel, and (like me) will probably appreciate some of the polish to the characters and the risks that Farrell was willing to take as an author. I very much approve of the epic scope the Nessantico Cycle, and I look forward to seeing where the author takes his readers for book 3 – since just at this moment I have no idea where the plot could be headed! The bottom line: read it, but maybe give yourself a sufficient breather between books 1 and 2. Fill the gaps with some nice funny Pratchett or clever Doctorow, then be ready to plot head-long into the more dense epic fantasy that Farrell provides.