Reading and the New Year

So first and foremost I wanted to apologize for being a slacker on the reading. I have been busy finishing up the last presents I have been making for my family. Or else I would have been done with this series already. So I have been thinking about whether or not I want to continue with my current reading list...and I have decided for right now it is going to go on a hiatus. And I have had a very strong urge to go and read some books that take my down memory lane. This is in the sense where it has been years since I have read them; not because they aren't good but because I just hadn't had the urge to revisit them. Most of them were books that I bought when I was in high school and middle school and read them to death. There is one book in particular that I did not ever finish, but that was because at the time I recognized it was beyond my reading comprehension (a book my mom bought me when I was probably 6th grade). And I just never came back to it, and decided to hold on to it.

So anyways, the whole idea of the new year is to go about doing new things. Starting anew. And maybe I will get a nice new perspective on some old favorites. I will list the main ones that have been whispering to me to read them...well not really whispering...that is just what I call it when I look at my bookshelves and certain parts of a book just pop into my head. And that is when I know it is time to read them. So what books are whispering to me?

1) Random Terry Pratchett books...I haven't decided which ones yet. I always loved Going Postal and Reaper Man. I think I will probably throw in some random Terry Pratchett as it suits me.

2) A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

3) The Dragon Quartet by Marjorie B. Kellogg

4) The Quickening Trilogy by Fiona McIntosh

5) All of my Michael A. Stackpole books. Which consists of a duo, a prequel, and a series that follows after the prequel.

6) The Path Trilogy by Diana Pharaoh Francis

These are the main ones to name a few. I might even embark on my Anne McCaffrey books; the Dragonriders of Pern, the Freedom Series, and the Mysteries of Ireta.

However, I don't know how far I will get. Now that I have a new job I see myself going on a book buying spree for my birthday. I could even write a book haul...I have quite a few series that I need to get updated on. Specifically my Circle series by Tamora Pierce. I started in the middle and promptly stopped once I realized that I need to buy the beginning series.

If you want to throw in a word about the books I plan on reading, please do so. OR if you just want to share a book you haven't read in awhile but plan to do so, please share. :) Everyone have a happy holiday season if you are celebrating. Or just enjoy the end of 2014, and get ready for hopefully a better year with 2015. 

The Summoner - Gail Z. Martin

This is definitely an interesting series. To start things off, the series starts as a story of revenge. And generally with a lot of revenge stories that are in movies, tv shows and books; which tend to be really focused on beating the bad guy not because they are bad and evil but because they did something to me. And this is how it starts. But what I really like is that Tris, the main character, starts to see that by trying to make this all about him when there is definitely a bigger picture that it will do much more harm than good. There is one touching moment where Tris is training with Carina and the witch which is kind of crazy and she poses this question to him. Tris breaks down with the realization that he needs to let go of the revenge aspect and become something greater. She also meant business because if he had not let go, she would have killed him right there because seeking power for revenge is definitely a good way to start the path to evil and darkness.

The religion of the Winter Kingdoms (sort of brings to mind Winterfell >.>) is one that I really find rather appealing. The idea is that there is the One Goddess, which is very nice change away from there being a god instead, and that she has many aspects. Each kingdom sort of reveres the different aspects of her as it fits the way that they as a people live and worship. There are eight different aspects: Chenne the warrior, The Lover, the Whore, the Crone, the Childe, the Dark Lady, and the Mother are the ones that are worshiped the most. What is very appealing to this is that everyone recognizes that these aspects are of the same goddess, which outside of exterminating a cult that is secretly probably still worshiped in Nargi it takes the religious motivation for some wars out of the equation. It makes it much more apparent that wars between countries really comes down to either selfish rulers or in this specific case the aim to remove a tyrant.

The characters that stand out the most in this series and specifically the first book are Tris, Kiara, Carina and Vahanian. I believe that is mainly because they have pretty much a bigger back story versus the others. Who, do not get me wrong, make very nice support characters, but pretty much only that.

There is not much wasted on the description of areas, which essentially means that there is description enough to get you started on using your imagination. Which can be both good and bad. Good in the sense that you can imagine a given area more to your tastes of how you think it should be. But bad because it doesn't show you exactly how the author imagined it

The basic story line that is shown you by the end of book one is that all roads lead to getting Jared and Foor Arantola gone for good. And with no surprise there is a very short time limit in the long scheme of things. Sort of in the sense of Avatar the Last Airbender where Aang needs to master everything by the time of the comet. Tris similarly has to master this amazing Summoner/Good Necromatic power that he has inherited from his grandmother the famous Bava K'aa in order to destroy Foor Arantola and the Obsidian King once and for all.

Switching gears I am generally not a fan of stories with vampires and werewolves. Out of all my books, there are only 3 series that have vampires (one of them really doesn't count because they are more like mecha vampires, but  still...). It has never struck me as very interesting, and so I have to be pretty impressed with either how they are handled or the story line in general to stick with a book with vampires. In the Summoner there are vampires, which go by the name vayash moru. Personally, I think that is a much cooler name then 'vampire' but that is my opinion. I believe that the only reason I do not get put off by them (outside of the cool name rebranding) is specifically the two main vayash morus; Gabriel and Mikhail. As the series goes on, they make the whole vampire aspect in this book okay.

This book specifically is a relatively fast read, and a good one at that. It is one of those books for me where the story is good...but easily outshined by other books I own...but is one where I come back to because of specific characters I feel like reading about. I have books that I keep because the story blows me away, both the story and characters blow me away, or the characters are the kind that I like to revisit now and again. And the whole series for the Chronicles of the Necromancer is one where the characters are what keeps me coming back.

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.