Review: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Published : Tor, 2010

Series : Book 1 of The Stormlight Archive

The Book : 

“Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.” ~WWend.com

This is the first book I’ve read by Brandon Sanderson, and it kicks off the Stormlight Archives series, which is planned as a 10 book series.  The series further fits inside a 36-book set of novels set in the same universe (which includes Elantris, Warbreaker, and the Mistborn trilogy).  I will probably read more of the Stormlight Archives, but I think I’ll probably space out the reading. I participated in a 10-week-long read-along of The Way of Kings, and much spoiler-filled discussion can be found in the 10 previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

My Thoughts:

It’s clear that a massive amount of thought went into building the physical world of Roshar, its cultures, its magic and its history.  It seemed that there were always more details to uncover, and I feel certain that there is still much left to be explained. The magical ‘highstorms’ evolved wildlife that makes me think of the ocean; there are many creatures with exoskeletons and plants that can retreat from the storms.  Several sources of magic are introduced, and it seems likely that they are all connected.  There are also mysteries about the warlike Parshendi species, and their possible connection to the passive, placid slaves kept by the people of Roshar. Another class of species that seem likely to become very important in the future are the ‘spren’, which appear to be attracted to (and/or cause) various things, such as fear or inebriation.  There’s obviously far too much for me to go into everything here, but I was impressed with the wealth of detail lavished on building the world of Roshar.

It seemed to me that some of the sillier cultural quirks in this fictional world might be intended to quietly illustrate the absurdity of various traditions that exist in reality. For instance, many real aristocracies are based on heredity, while Alethi nobility is explicitly conferred by eye color.  The system is not so different, in the end, but defining nobility by the possession of light-colored eyes somehow seems more ridiculous.  There are also weird gender-specific traditions, such as well-bred women having to keep one of their hands idle and concealed, or defining completely separate foods for men and women, since “women like sweet things”.  I’m not sure if these quirks intended to mock reality, to show Roshar as a world of extremes, or both.

The story followed a number of different characters, some of which appear only for one chapter in the ‘interlude’ sections.  Some of the stories converge in this novel, others show clear signs of doing so at some point in the future of the series, and others appear to have been one-off stories to show some aspect of Roshar.  The one-off chapters contributed to making this a somewhat overlong novel, but I’m hoping the context they provide will be nice to have in the future of the series.

The heroes seemed to be very typical of the epic fantasy genre, but they are still very likeable. First there is Kaladin, a very young, humbly-born man who carries great power and seems to have an important destiny.  He meets with a lot of difficulties throughout the story, but his magical spren companion and his natural amazing skills help him through. I liked that the story eventually began to address his youthful sense of self-importance, though. The highprince Dalinar and his son Adolin provided a viewpoint from the opposite end of the Alethi hierarchy. Dalinar serves as a beacon of honor in the otherwise pathetically corrupt nobility, and his adherence to propriety hampers his ability to politick, to his son’s dismay.

The heroine, Shallan, was the most interesting character to me. She is a noble from a relatively unimportant house, who is determined to become the ward of the king’s sister—and then to steal something precious from her. Shallan is clever, though she has mostly been forced to educate herself.  She makes quite a lot of her ‘wittiness’, which always struck me as just a little too awkward and wordy. Shallan’s story holds a lot of mystery, plenty of tension as she interacts with her mentor/target, and a lot of internal struggle, as Shallan tries to balance various desires and responsibilities that would require mutually exclusive decisions.

As might be expected for such a long novel, the story moves at a pretty slow pace. In the case of Kaladin, I think the pace helped to make his eventual triumphs seem more hard-won and believable, but Dalinar’s story sometimes seemed to be treading water.  However, the last hundred pages or so ramped up the energy and momentum impressively, delivering a very exciting climax and resolution to all three of the major storylines.  I don’t know if I’ll be on board for all 36 novels or not, but I will certainly grab a copy of Words of Radiance.

My Rating: 4/5

The Way of Kings is a very long epic fantasy novel that kicks of a 10-book series, within a 36-book set of novels set in the same universe.  Many of the main characters aren’t particularly out of the ordinary for epic fantasy, but they are still easy to like and fun to follow.  My personal favorite main character is the conflicted minor noblewoman on the edge of ruin, Shallan, who I hope to see more of in the coming novels.  The world of Roshar is imagined with an impressive amount of detail, and I feel sure that even after over 1000 pages, there are still many secrets that are left to be discovered.  I felt that the novel was longer than it probably needed to be, and several of the plots seemed to drag at times.  However, the conclusion was very exciting, and has left me looking forward to see what will happen in the next volume!

Review: Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Published: Angry Robot Books (2012)

Series: Book 1 of Miriam Black

The Book:

“Miriam Black knows how you’re going to die. She’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, and suicides. She merely needs to touch you — skin to skin contact — and she knows how and when you’ll die.  But when Miriam hitches a ride with Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be murdered while he calls her name. Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.” ~TerribleMinds.com

This is the first novel I’ve read by Chuck Wendig, and it kicks off a series of three books about Miriam Black.

My Thoughts:

I think that a lot of whether one likes Blackbirds or not may come down to one’s reaction to the heroine, Miriam.  She’s definitely not an admirable character—a foulmouthed drifter that robs people who come to untimely deaths.  However, she is very aware that she isn’t a good person, and that knowledge is slowly destroying her.  She seems to be sort of a victim of learned helplessness, in that she hates herself and her situation and is convinced that she is completely incapable of effecting any kind of change to either.  This made her a frustrating character to follow sometimes, but I also really wanted to see her find some way to begin to rebuild herself and her life.

The conversational style of the prose in Blackbirds is clearly flavored by Miriam’s voice, though she is not the narrator.  The style is pretty simple and blunt, with quite a lot of profanity, which suits Miriam’s abrasive personality and sarcasm.  Miriam’s depressed, jaded view of life is reflected in the grungy descriptions of cheap diners, truck stops, and motels where she spends much of her time. There’s a lot of focus on trashiness, complete with descriptions of cockroaches and “piss-yellow” lights.  Due to Miriam’s ability, the story is also peppered with pretty gruesome descriptions of people dying.  The violence and dirtiness was unrelenting throughout the story, and it could be wearing at times.

Miriam’s story in Blackbirds is a relatively straightforward thriller, with the paranormal flair of her curse. Miriam’s involvement with Louis’s impending death is connected to her unwilling entanglement with a pathetic conman that is being chased by some over-the-top evil gangster types.  The tension and the action scenes seem like they would work well in film, which might be due to the fact that this version of the novel is preceded by a screenplay version. However, none of these side characters seem particularly nuanced: Louis is nice, the conman is sleazy, and the gangsters are basically evil.  This fits the cinematic nature of the story, but is less satisfying, to me, in a novel.  I enjoyed how the story ended, though, and how the events of the story enabled Miriam to regain some sense of power over her own circumstances.  While there is clearly more to Miriam’s story that can be explored in future novels, I felt that Blackbirds concluded satisfactorily as an individual novel.

My Rating: 3/5

Blackbirds is a very grungy story featuring a deeply flawed protagonist—vulgar, unkind Miriam Black is not an easy heroine to like.  I appreciated that her negative traits are acknowledged in the story, though, and that she is not happy with the person that she has become.  A major question throughout the story concerns whether she is capable of improving herself and her situation, or if ‘fate’ will have the last word. The story is mostly a relatively straightforward thriller, one with a pretty large amount of profanity, general dirtiness, and violence.  Blackbirds sets the stage for more stories of Miriam Black, but it also works fine as a standalone novel.  

Review: The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro

The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro

Published: Tor, 2000

Series: Book 6 of the Saga of the Skolian Empire

Awards Won: Nebula

The Book:

“Kamoj Argali is the young ruler of an impoverished province on a backward planet. To keep her people from starving, she has agreed to marry Jax Ironbridge, the boorish and brutal ruler of a prosperous province. But before Argali and Ironbridge are wed, a mysterious stranger from a distant planet sweeps in and forces Kamoj into marriage, throwing her world into utter chaos.” –WWEnd.com

I read the first novel of this series, Primary Inversion, about fifteen or so years ago.  Since then, I have read Catch the Lightning (I think not long after it came out), and have wandered away from the series since. My tastes have diverged from science fiction romance, but I figured the 2014 challenges were a good opportunity to check out the Nebula Award winner of the series, The Quantum Rose.

The Book:

The novels that I’ve read of the Skolian Saga seem to stand alone fairly well as independent stories, but I believe it helps to be already familiar with the universe. In the case of The Quantum Rose, the mysterious stranger explains the lay of the galaxy to his young bride, so it is possible to understand the wider political situation without having read previous novels. All the same, I think it would help to already be invested in the situation between the Skolian Empire, the Traders, and the Allied Worlds of Earth.  While most of the story is driven by a romance on a backwater world, there is a return to interplanetary politics in the latter part of the novel.

Most of the novel is driven by a pretty conventional fantasy-style romance, where some of the science fictional elements enforce various romance clichés.  For instance, the physical beauty of the lead characters—as well as the submissiveness of the heroine and the dominance of the male villain—are the result of genetic engineering.  There are also other standard romance elements to the story: a love triangle, a heroine who feels compelled to marry for the good of her people, and a traumatized hero in need of sexual healing. On an interesting note, though, the interactions of this particular love triangle mirror quantum scattering theory, which is explained in more detail in an essay after the novel. I thought that was a neat idea, but it didn’t help the fact that the romance was extremely predictable.

The novel was definitely a light read, but there were things I enjoyed along the way.  The main characters were fairly likeable, and the plot moved along at a nice clip.  Along with the romance, there was also a fair amount of action (occasionally involving Kamoj being kidnapped).  In the setting, I thought it was fun seeing how Kamoj’s home world had adapted old concepts into new social constructs, where they no longer really understood the original meanings.  I think this novel would probably be more suited to the tastes of romance fans (or science fiction romance fans) than it was to mine, but I still found it to be a pleasant story to read.  

My Rating: 3/5

The Quantum Rose tells the story of a young female ruler on a backwater world, who is swept off her feet by an off-worlder telepath of the Skolian Empire’s ruling family.  I think The Quantum Rose stands alone well enough to be read outside the series (though it does contain spoilers of previous novels), but some familiarity with the general setup of the universe would come in handy.  The story is mostly a conventional sort of romance, so I think it would probably fall more into the tastes of romance fans.