Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson

So I fell in love with Brandon Sanderson's books when I read The Way of Kings. That book led me to a bunch of his other books which I have loved equally. However, with Words of Radiance I believe he has outdone himself. I was expecting it to be on the same level has the first in the series, but it was just amazing. The length of the book allowed for you to learn even more about the characters, especially after thinking that you knew about them pretty well at the end of the first book. It was amazing to see some people actually start to change, I thought it was amazing to see the change in Gaz when Shallan actually gave him a chance.

Now to back this up a little bit, I am a very avid reader in case you had not noticed. And so I can judge how much I loved a book on a few different things. And when everything is met, it really makes me realize how outstanding a book is. So for starters, I had started reading it on the evening of Thanksgiving. On Friday I read a nice little chunk. And today (which really by the time I post this it will be Sunday but that is just a technicality) I finished it. I read a good 2/3 of the book in one day, despite thinking about how I wanted to vary my long weekend. I just put the book down and work on some of my other projects, oh I should but this book down and maybe play a little bit of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Nope. None of those happened. I had issues actually wanting to take time out to prepare something to eat. Now this generally happens with good books that take a little bit of time to read. And so this is sometimes easily met.

I was on such an emotional rollercoaster, it is not even funny. There was a nice amount of humor, there were times I was so upset I would protest verbally (startling my cats) to something that happened. I got immensely giddy upon some of the different things happening. This book single handedly bumped him up to the level of Steven Erikson. And yes, I am starting to rate books on the scale of that series.

A wonderful thing that he did were the Interludes and the flashbacks. The first book was all about Kaladan's flashback, and really allowed us to see into what his past was like. This second book was focused on Shallan. It definitely made me understand her a little bit more through these flashbacks and seeing a little bit more from her point of view. The Interludes were nice breaks from the current story and showed things that were happening in different parts of the continent; which is extremely important in making everyone realize that there is more to that world than the Shattered Plains. It also allowed us to see some things from Szeth's point of view, and to see the conflict that he has been living through his whole life. The ending for him was really heartbreaking in a sense. 

But I must go back to the fact that the changes and progress so many of the characters managed to undergo was just breathtaking. And it really brought out meaning behind the first oath of the Radiants. And one I will not put down here in hopes of tempting you the read the book. What I found extremely interesting was how connected to a lot of things Wit was. He most definitely played a key role in helping both Kaladan in the present, and Shallan in the past to get to where they were. And I sincerely hope that he does not take nearly as long to make the third book as it took for him to get this second book out. In the end I would say this book definitely deserves a standing ovation, especially for the very interesting ending.

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Now I generally do not come back to alter these posts after posting, but I had to do a quick bit of Googling. My bookworm heart was sent aflutter upon the news that this series is supposed to be a 10 books series. I believe Steven Erikson will have some very good competition in here for my #1 book spot. 

Society/Culture of Alethkar - The Way of Kings

Map from http://stormlightarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Roshar

In both real and fictional worlds there are generally at least some sort of divide between the sexes, Alethkar really takes it to the extreme. Which in turn makes it a very interesting country to look at. It is pretty much the furthest east you can go on the continent, which as far as I can tell is a lot like Pangea, the super continent. Outside of the Unclaimed Hills and the Shattered Plains, there is nothing further east which means Alethkar gets most of the brunt of the highstorms. Now to the main topic of the post.

Now I am going to let you know where I am in the book, beginning of Chapter 54. So as of this point, assuming Dalinar's visions are true (which I am sure they are), we know that the Knights Radiant had women in their ranks and that really surprised Dalinar. So in the distant past there did not appear to be such a severe divide between men and women. Or at least they made an exception. In the present however, things are very much different.

Picture of Shallan by Johanna Rupprecht

Now the most noticeable difference will be clothing, generally you do not find many women wearing pants. Which is not that surprising, the whole dress or long skirt fashion being worn by every woman around you is a pretty good indicator of some things. The MOST interesting thing about their fashion however is the idea of a safehand. The safehand is their left hand and it is covered by a long sleeve or if you are going to be a little risque a glove would work. In their safehand sleeve there is a pouch, which is very private. And to look at a woman's safehand pouch, it is almost synonymous with strip searching her. And as you can imagine, prostitutes and the such do not have their safehand covered. This essentially has the same effect when women's fashion used to be conservative and when someone wore something significantly less so it made it very alluring in some sense. When out in public or having a nice little gathering at home, it would be very important for the woman to wear her hair up. And again, the more risque of the females would wear it either semi-up or even just not care and wear it down to the amazement of those around them.

And to even take this divide even further, the foods they ear are very different. The women typically eat the sweeter and more delicate foods. The men on the other hand eat more spicy heartier foods. If you were a man it would be social suicide to be caught eating sweetbread and jam. The only exceptions are the male ardents, they are allowed to eat the food that women eat. And in one of the interludes there is a man whose calling has to do with chemistry, and he decided to use cooking as a way of achieving it and he makes sweeter foods to taste.

The women partake in reading and writing, while the men only learn to decipher glyphs. It is seen as very strange for a man to want to read let alone learn how to. So all of the history books are written by women who are writing down what some man is saying. The very interesting thing about this however, is that it gives the woman who is scribing the leeway to make notations at the bottoms of pages to interject her own opinions or to clarify something. And scholars who delve into the history books as you can imagine are mostly women. However, not all scholars are those who read history, there are those who do more in the field research and have female assistants to write down what they found. Speaking of which, there are even some scholarly pursuits that are scene as more feminine than others.

Now this is just a basic broad overview of the society that is Alethkar, mainly because to do more indepth would require a significantly longer blog post that I am sure no one else would want to read. It is amazing how different the culture is between the different countries across the whole continent.

Currency - The Way of Kings

First off...I am going to apologize for being MIA. It has been a pretty busy time for me right now, and I am trying to get into a sort of groove so that I can actually do the things that I really want to do. Like this blog. So without further ado....

Out of all the books that I have read, if I had to choose a book world to live in based off of the currency I would choose this one. In Roshar, or in other words that world. Nothing screams magical and amazing like their form of money. So picture it, it is a sphere that has a gem piece or shard in it, such as diamonds or emeralds. And not only is this pretty piece of gem suspended in this clear sphere...it GLOWS. It can be used as a source of light, a source of magic for those who can use it, and money. I would not want to spend any of it because of the sheer amazingness. And they range from being like the size of your thumb nail to a little bigger based off the value, and the gem inside is a different size in the bigger ones.

Outside of being able to use it to buy items, it is the most useful currency ever, especially if you either have a lot or have a few of the higher denominations. One scene that I really liked is described by Shallan when she is in the Paladeum (the giant library she is studying in). You have these little hidey hole cubby areas for you to sit in, and in the table in the center you can just poor your spheres into it and use them to read and study by.

The one problem is that as time goes on, the stormlight inside that makes them glow wears away. And that makes it a big issue when it comes to trying to spend them, because that would be a potential sign that if you are spending spheres that don't glow they might be counterfeit. However, that is not the end...in order to recharge the spheres you can either trade them in to someone who is able to determine what you have is not fake OR you leave them in a hopefully secure manner during those nasty storms I mentioned earlier. When you do that you risk either having them blow away, or some enterprising sneaky person comes out before you do and steals your spheres. And then you are extremely out of luck.

And in order to make this post a little longer...because I don't want to feel like a slacker and there is not much more I can say about the topic without pretty much just find the wiki page for this and pointing you to it. I mean come on, it is amazing glowing glass with gems inside...it really does speak for itself and the imagination brings it to life. Another scene that I thought was pretty interesting involving the spheres was during a memory chapter for Kaladan. It is late at night and he is up with his father when a group of people come in the night and bang on the door and when his father opens it they attempt to coerce him into giving them the money. The money in question is the money the late mayor left to them...with a little pushing from the father during the mayor's weakest moment. But anyways, the money was a substantial amount so that Kaladan could go away and become a surgeon. So his father goes to grab the giant bowl and throws off the blanket which causes a giant flash of light blinding those trying to intimidate them. And it reveals them to be those that they know and have taken care of and those fellow townsmen then run away.

One thing that I always wonder about, and maybe they mention it in the second book...but what the origins for the spheres are. I feel like it takes a lot of creativity to come up with the idea of a glass ball with a gem inside that holds light as a way to pay for goods. Or maybe it is possible that when more people could use the Stormlight for magic, and infused the gems in light that that was how it came about...or even a third option it started as a rechargeable light source, and the value in and of itself caused it to become a currency. This is something that I hope gets mentioned at some point.

Anyways, for those who celebrate Thanksgiving have a very nice and filling Thanksgiving. For those who do not, I hope you have just a nice day in general either by yourself or with family. And those who celebrate black friday, may the deals ever be in your favor.

The Unimaginable - Dina Silver

 

The Unimaginable was the book that I chose for the Amazon Prime early book pick. Like I have said before in other reviews for books from this opportunity offered, I am going to try and pick books that I do not think I would enjoy to force myself to broaden my reading repertoire...and because I feel like it might make me look like a more fair blogger if I do come out with bad reviews. Now...with that being said, I was pleasantly surprised with this one, but also a little disappointed. It is more along the lines of a 75/25 (good/bad).

Now I believe we should start with the good news. The book was well written, and the side characters were definitely a hoot. Quinn, Sophia, and Niran I just could not get enough of. The story itself had me laughing, enjoying the ride, getting a little hot and bothered, being very upset, crying, back to being okay, a little upset, and back to enjoying the ride with pleasant feelings. Definitely had me on a little bit of a rollercoaster, which is something that I appreciate in a book.
I was not disappointed in the character of the love interest Grant, and the main character Jessica actually was a good character. I do not really believe I disliked her at any point and she was believable. She is capable of being brave, understanding, she struggles with her own past issues she is working through, and she broke down when any other person would have. I think that is what makes her such a wonderful character for the story being told, she is an 'average' person in a sense. Which made it really touching that in the darkest point in the book she actually was able to come to terms with the relationship with her mother, and that scene was very heartfelt. I will probably show myself as being a nerd or geek at this point, but it reminded me of what Aang said to Korra in The Legend of Korra when she lost her bending; which goes something along the lines of - when we are at our lowest point we are open to the greatest amount of change. Jessica in this book pretty much had accepted that her mom never loved her, and they never had a good relationship, but when the pirates were on the ship and the circumstances caused her to hallucinate (or her mom's spirit came to see her, either one) opened her eyes to some things about their relationship.

Grant is wonderful. For some reason I definitely pictured Grant has being similar in looks to either Hugh Grant or Colin Firth; very attractive. He is a 38-40 year old man in this book, which also gave the romance a nice spin to it. He is a well lived older man, she is a younger woman who finally found herself on the path she wants to journey life through. He is also dealing with his own past issues, which I will not talk about so I don't ruin too much of the story before you read it. There was also a time where I just wanted to slap him across the face for being an idiot, but you can't help but forgive him because of what he has been through and what he is feeling guilty about.

I really enjoyed the ending, which did the same thing Playing it Safe by Barbie Bohrman, where the final chapter is from the point of view from the man. It was really nice and refreshing.

There was a few kisses, and a total of two sex scenes. From the description I was expecting a bit more, but that was not what disappointed me in this book. It was nice to expect it to be a little smutty and having the scenes be very well done. And I felt like it was a good move, and a realistic one based off of how the story really is.

The one thing however that did disappoint me was that for some reason I felt like it would be a little deeper than what it actually was. There was some depth, don't get me wrong, but I feel like it could have been deeper. There was a little resonating, but not as much as I wanted. It was not on the same level as The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens. That was really the only thing that disappointed me. On the other hand, when you read the end and it talks about where she got the idea for the book it really makes up for it. She based it off of real people and real events, which inspired her, and she decided to use those events as the plot for the story.

I would definitely recommend this book as being a very nice read. And please, if you read the book, make sure to read the very end which talks about all of the events that inspired the book.

On a very side note, I will probably be posting another The Way of Kings book post sometime this weekend or early next week.

Environment - The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Here is a little update for everyone: So The Way of Kings and it's sequel are very big books, just in case none of you have ever really looked at them let alone read them. It definitely will not take me nearly as long to read them as it did for me to read the Malazan Book of the Fallen, but it will definitely take some time. So I am going back to the idea of picking parts of the books that interest me and doing a post about them. And so the first series of posts to go with the book starts today, YAY :)

The Environment

Now I do not want to sound like I am bragging when I say that I own a lot of books, specifically over 300. And so I want you to realize that out of ALL of those books that I have read, none have had such creativity in the environment as the books by Brandon Sanderson (specifically though this series, however his other books that I have read definitely do not lack in creativity). The only other authors who I have read that have this much creativity behind it is Steven Erikson and Terry Pratchett (I mean come on...a turtle with four elephants and a very very flat world...).

art by satarariley d79skuc

We all know that it takes a very creative person to write a good book. But when you have an environment where mostly everywhere over the continent the grass hides in the ground as you walk through it to only appear again is very unique. And there are these storms that are so scary to be in that everyone runs and hides the second you see it on the horizon. And this is how it is throughout almost the whole continent. Those storms have so much energy behind them that it has caused the environment to have those sorts of defense mechanisms behind it. To top that there is even more  magic to the world. There are spren. I love this idea SO much. I think of them as wispy sprites or fairies.

This is the closest picture I could find that matches the description the best and how I envision them in my head. This specifically is a wind spren, and for the most part they are carefree, tricksy little buggers who enjoy pulling pranks on people from time to time (why they remind me of sprites). And usually they are not the most intelligent of beings, and have a memory worse than a goldfish. There is one exception, pictured above, but we will talk about her later in a character post. There are other varieties of spren too; there are rot spren, creativity spren, life spren, and fear spren to name a few.

 And the animals that roam the world...it is a wonderful thing that throughout the book there are sketchbook like pictures of the different creatures and plants. And for that alone I would say this book is amazing, I am a sucker for books that include extra stuff like this (on a side note I squealed when I saw the hardcover version of the sequel with the sketches IN COLOR, do not know about paperback though). Like chulls...these are essentially their version of the beast of burdens cows. They remind me of gigantic hermit crabs (think about 10-12 ft. tall, with their shell being made of essentially rock). They are slow, and they are really one of the few creatures that can be used for travel that are able to survive outside in a highstorm (those gigantic hurricanes on 5 doses of steroids).

Now the further east that you travel, the less ferocious those storms are. There is a town that you come across were it sounds like all of the residents' feet should have rotted off by the age of 5. They essentially live in the shallows of a giant lake. Their buildings continually have about a couple inches of water, and it seen as strange to have a house that is high enough off the ground that in a low tide it drains out.

You make it to about the middle of the book where you are reading from the point of view of a trader in training, and they cross the final mountain range the furthest east you can go. You have gotten used to the idea of steroid storms, environment that is better at surviving those storms than you, and creatures that are just plain weird. You cross this final mountain range and BAM! You are in a world where the storms are normal, and the grass has the audacity (or stupidity if you take into account the trader's thoughts) to not sink into the ground when you move. And it is a world where chickens can thrive! In other words, everywhere west of that mountain range pays extremely high prices for chickens...because we all know that chickens would shoot out those eggs and die of a heart attack during one of those storms and then you are left with shattered eggs and dead chickens. But the strangest part, is (at least for me) that you start to agree how strange that land is beyond the mountains.

Brandon Sanderson has done a very very good job on the world that he created, showing how the environment has had to adapt to these storms. And really showing that there are different regions that are stark contrasts from each other. I definitely look forward to doing some more of these posts, and if you have a general theme you want me to write about let me know in the comments below. Have a nice day :)

Glass Series - Maria V. Snyder

                            
It happened again...It came down to the thought process of: "gee, I should probably write the post for the first book...but in that time I could instead read some of the second..." and it all went downhill from there. I had honestly forgotten how much I enjoyed the Glass Series. The main character, Opal, was a character that showed up in the Study series. So it was really enjoyable to know where she started off and to see how she was affected by the events in Fire Study.

Opal definitely has the same sort of spunk that Avry and Elena do;  but you can definitely see that hers starts off as subdued and she has to deal with the damage that was done to her when she was kidnapped but also with the feelings of guilt for pricking Yelena with the curare. I believe out of the three of them though, Opal definitely seemed to make the most change from start to end in the series. She also had to deal with the situation of losing her magic, and not know exactly what her life should entail. Her struggle to sort of deal with who she is as a person now.

It was extremely surprising to see that the people who helped her the most with finding her place were Valek and even more surprisingly Devlen (the man who had tortured her). It was a twist that I never really saw coming. When I first read the book I was all with her in the not trusting department when he tried to tell her he was reformed. But to also then realize that he really has changed from that monster and then growing to really like him as a character. For me, Devlen once he was good reminded me a bit of Valek, especially with what he was able to do with the self image Opal (or in Valek's case Yelena) had of herself.

It was also great during this series to get a nice healthy dose of seeing Valek, Yelena, Janco and Ari. This series also made me really dislike the Council.

One thing I can say though is that so far I have not been at all disappointed in any of her books. I do however feel that her Glass and Study series were the best ones so far, which is part of the reason I am extremely excited for her to return to the Study series. I particularly want to see Opal and Devlin make an appearance hopefully, definitely keeping my fingers crossed!