Siderite's Blog

and has 0 comments
I think I am way too trusting of book reviews, as I was with the one from Andrew Liptak about Becky Chambers' debut book The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. He said it was the most fun space opera book he'd read last year and the review was published in September, so I just automatically added it to my list without reading further for fear of spoilers. It was a bad idea.

The book is the space opera version of romance novels. There is a ship run by a quirky team of multispecies crew on their way toward a planet that is to become the interface point between the galactic federation analog and a new species of warring and incomprehensible aliens. So far so good. The problem is that the book is all about the one year trip there with the focus solely on the personal histories, dramas and emotions of the crew members. They fall in love with each other, they transgress stupid specieist prejudice, love conquers all, that sort of thing. Then the book ends, with everybody nicely paired and friendly towards everyone else. That's it. I mean, that is literally it. The book ends when one is already bored to death and waiting for some interesting stuff to happen. And it never does!

While I have to admit that 50 Shades of Grey was way worse and sold a lot better, that is in no way a recommendation to read this book. It is technically obsolete, morally ridiculous and abhorrently politically correct. It becomes pathetic to see how the author attempts to justify interspecies romance and sex and to condemn biases about other sentients, even inventing new pronouns, only to fall into other more boring clichés about what our future society should be like and how people should behave with one another and how nasty people look (unkempt fair skinned dark haired antisocial techs or chitinous insect like creatures) and how inner beauty translates to outer beauty and the making of easy friends and so on. It felt like a highschool story with aliens. I mean there was a moment when their ship is boarded by pirates and the resolution is to politely talk to them and reach an agreement, because this particular species was culturally bound to only take what they need and no more. Really?

Bottom line: it is a puerile make believe fairy tale about space lovers which has almost no science in it. It is a another fantasy novel that tries to trick readers in by posing as science-fiction, only it is a romance fantasy novel. And if you are eager to read passages of interracial space sex, forget it, the most controversial word you will see printed in this book is "banging" and I believe it is used but once.

and has 0 comments
I don't remember where I got the idea to read Finity's End, but I had no idea it was one book in a long series of Merchanter Aliance/Union books. So at the same time I liked that it started with a rich world and a very clear idea where it was coming from and going to, but also felt the missing information that I would have had if I had read the series from the beginning.

That being said, I have to say I liked the book. I found C.J.Cherryh's world building extraordinary and considering she has written more than 60 books, her attention to detail and the way things click was really nice. Yet at the same time, this made the story slower, more grounded in a larger reality that didn't really interest me.

The story of Finity's End is of a young boy who wants to live on a planetary station and study the intelligent indigenous life with which he made the only personal connection he values. Instead, he is being pulled up to a spaceship he doesn't care about for the only reason that his mother was originally born there. Faced with prejudice and culture shock, his story of adapting to the new environment is a lot more interesting that the political and economical dealings the ship is engaged with and often I felt that, while I appreciated the realism of the plot, I couldn't wait to get to the personal part, with the characters I really cared about. Perhaps if I had read the entire series I would have felt more connected to older characters and less to this adolescent coming of age subplot.

I found it interesting the author's description of two entwined cultures that live in different space and even different time: there are the planet and station folk and then there are the space ship people. They interact, but for most of their existence they are almost different species. Perhaps if the viewpoint on this was more modern I would have enjoyed it more, but as such, it felt like a book written in the 70s.

Bottom line: I liked the book, but not so much that I will start reading the others in the series. I liked the world building and I loved the way the characters subtly evolved in their interaction with each other. I didn't really connect with the larger plot of trying to bring peace to the galaxy and I felt nothing towards the Mazian boogieman who never made an appearance in this book. While I believed the possibility of a future like that, the technological part of the book felt quite obsolete to me, even if the publishing date for Finity's End is 1997.

and has 0 comments
A friend of mine recommended this as one of his favorite books, so of course I went into it with very high expectations and of course I was disappointed. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, just that I expected more than I've got.

In Song of Kali, Dan Simmons describes Calcutta as a place of evil, in a culture of filth and senseless violence and death. He goes there with his Indian wife and their infant child when he is called to retrieve a new manuscript from a supposedly dead Indian poet. A lot of culture shock, a lot of weird mystical events and some weird and horrible people that do horrible things is what the book is about.

In 1985 this was perhaps a fantastic story, I don't know, but now it feels a little bit cliché: American man goes somewhere he sees as completely alien and where he feels out of place, usually going there with the family, so that the empathy and horror can be heightened, and where abnormal things he has no control over happen. It also part of a category of stories that I personally dislike: the "something that can't be explained or controlled" category, which implies absolutely no character growth other than realizing there are situations like that in which one can find themselves. And indeed the book is all like that: stories that make little sense, but somehow are linked to the perceptions and experiences of the protagonist, mysterious characters that do things that mean little unless the story takes them exactly to a certain point, at which you are left wondering how did they know to do that thing, and a lot of extraneous details that are there only to reinforce the feeling of disgust and dread that the character feels, but do little to further the story.

In the end, it is just some weird ass plot that makes no sense, a bunch of characters that you can't empathize with (some of them you can't even understand) and a big fat "It is so because I feel it is so", which is so American and has little to do with me. Others agree that the book is most effective when describing the humid fetid heat of the city and the inhumanity of its inhabitants and less with the so called "horror" in the text or the connection the reader feels with the characters. It brings to mind Lovecraft and his strong feelings about things that now are banal and CGI in every movie. Some are even more vehement in their dislike of the book. Here is another review in the same vein.

So how come so many people speak highly of the novel? Well, my guess is that it affects the reader if they are in the right frame of mind. My friend told me about the part that he liked in the book and, frankly, that part is NOT in the book, so whatever literary hallucination he had when reading the book I had none of it. My rating of it cannot be but average, even considering it's a debut novel that won the 1986 World Fantasy Award.

and has 0 comments
So I heard that there is this fan made cut of the series, two hours long, that encompasses the entire story of Breaking Bad. I got a hold of it and watched it. Pretty good. Just some lazy editing in some places, but overall good quality. Therefore, if you want to see what happened in the series overall, without bingeing on 62 hours of TV show, you might want to check it out.

My problem with the film is that it validated my decision to stop watching the series. It focused primarily on Walter's decision points, which were mostly related to his problems with his family (mostly his bitch of a wife that I believe is one of the most irritating characters of all time), friends and coworkers. The only part that I really enjoyed about the series was the first season, where there was actual chemistry involved. Just like other shows that start off with a brilliant specialist that is rather annoying otherwise but gets away with it because he is a flawless craftsman, it begins great then devolves in stories about his personal life. Why would anyone want to for years follow the personal issues of someone who they only became interested in because of their work story is beyond me, but this is what happens. Dr. House, Numb3rs, Elementary, Weeds, even lawyer, doctor and cop shows slowly force their heroes to stop doing their work and instead deal with all kinds of problems in their off duty life; they all lose me at season two, usually. Because of this focus on personal life, the chemistry part got removed from the movie, which makes is all the more boring.

Anyway, my duty is complete on informing the Internet on this film. It is amazing how people spend their time doing something like this for nothing as much as recognition (because then lawyers would bust their chops about using copyrighted content), but do such a lovely job. I would love to have this sort of edits for every show on the planet. Then I would be able to keep up with all of them! :D Also interesting is that there is an IMDb page for the movie found by Google, but then when you navigate to it you get a big 404 page, meaning someone probably created it and then it promptly got deleted. Even if illegal, it is still a movie, assholes! Here is the Google cached version, for how long it will work.

And BTW, if you want to still write a review on the movie, as deleted as it is, you can do so by following this link. Maybe that will force the guys from IMDb to undelete the page.

and has 0 comments
In Fevre Dream, George R. R. Martin writes about a fat bearded guy with a large appetite and a passion for food that loves to be a boat captain. Write what you know, they say. Anyways, this book about vampires in the bayou feels really dated. It has been described as "Bram Stoker meets Mark Twain", so you can imagine how much; written in 1982, it feels like written by a Lovecraft contemporary.

I love Lovecraft, but it gets worse. None of the characters in the book except maybe the main protagonist are likable. They come off as either high and mighty or ridiculously servile. And I understand that in a story where vampires have a master that can be all controlling this is to be expected, but at the same time the hero of the story, without being "compelled", still acts like a servant, enthralled (pardon my pun) by the aristocratic majesty of his vampire friend. One has to get through pages of tedious description of architecture and food and home improvement to get to the succulent part (OK, couldn't help that one) but which then feels cloyed and unsatisfactory. So many interesting characters get just a few scenes, while most of the book is how much the captain loves his food and his ship. And while it discusses some social issues, like slavery and how easily people died or disappeared at the time, it also promotes this idea of personal nobility that justifies other people getting used. This focus on aristocracy is something one sees in A Song of Fire and Ice as well, but less pronounced.

I could have given it an average to good rating if not for the abysmal ending. While at the beginning I had applauded the way the author was building tension and apparently providing a solution only to snatch it away at the last moment, the ending destroys all of it by pretty much invalidating much of the foil of the characters and a major part of the story. The time displacement also accentuates this feeling, as I thought "waited so much for this?!", and by that I mean both me as a reader and the main character in the book.

Bottom line: uninteresting vampires in a slow paced story that probably appeals to Martin fans only. It manages to insert the reader in the eighteen hundreds and the river boat mentality, but there is nothing much else to learn or enjoy in the book beyond that.

and has 0 comments
I've seen several very positive reviews of The Call, by Peadar Ó Guilín so I started reading it. A few hours later I had finished it. It was good: well written, with compelling characters, a fresh idea and a combination of young adult and body horror mixed with Irish mythology that hooked me immediately. I was sorry it had ended and simultaneously hoped for and cursed the idea of "trilogizing" it.

So the book follows this girl who can't use her legs because of polio. She is a happy child until her parents explain to her the realities: Ireland is separated from the world by an impassible barrier and the Aes Sidhe, the Irish fairies, are kidnapping each adolescent kid once, hunt them and hurt them in horrific ways, as revenge for the Irish banishing them to a hellish world. When "the call" comes, the child disappears, leaving back anything that is not part of their bodies and returns in 184 seconds. However, they experience an entire day in the colorless, ugly and cruel world of the Sidhe where they have to fight for their lives. In response, the Irish nation organizes in order to survive, with mandatory child births and training centers where teens are being prepared for the call in hope they will survive.

One might think this is something akin to young adult novels like The Maze, but this is much better. The main character has to overcome her disability as well as the condescending pity or disgust of others. She must manage her crush on a boy in school as well as the rules, both societal and self imposed, about expressing emotion in a world where any friend you have may just disappear in front of you and returned a monster or dead. Her friends are equally well defined, without the book being overly descriptive. The fairies have the ability to change the human body with a mere touch, so even the few kids who survive returned mentally and bodily deformed. The gray world itself is filled with horrors, with an ecosystem of carnivorous plants and animals that are actually made of altered humans, from hunting dogs and mounts to worms and spiders which somehow still maintain some sort of sentience so they can feel pain. I found the Aes Sidhe incredibly compelling: they are incredibly beautiful people and are full of joy and merriment, even as they maim and torture and kill and even when they are themselves in pain or dying, a race of psychotic vengeful people that know nothing but hate.

So I really liked the book and recommend it highly.

and has 0 comments
Inspired by the writings of classics like Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke, Arkwright is a short book that spans several centuries of space exploration and colonization, so after a very positive review on Io9, I've decided to read it. My conclusion: a reedited collection of poorly written shorts stories, it is optimistic and nostalgic enough to be read without effort, but it doesn't really teach anything. Like many of the works it was inspired from, it feels anachronistic, yet it was published in 2016, which makes me wonder why did anyone review this so positively. Perhaps if reviews would not word things so bombastically: "sweeping epic", "hard science fiction", etc. I would enjoy books that are clearly not so more.

Long story short, is starts with a group of 1939 science fiction writers, one of which eventually has a huge success. On his dying bed, he leaves his entire fortune to a foundation with the purpose to invest and support space colonization, in particular other star systems. Somehow, this seed money manages to successfully fund the construction of a beam sail starship which ends up putting people on another star's planet. Most of the book is the story of the family descendants who "live the dream" by monitoring the long journey of the automated ship.

First of all, I didn't enjoy the writing style. Episodic and descriptive, it felt more appropriate for a history book or a diary than a science fiction novel. Then the biases of the writer are more than made evident when he belittles antiscience protesters and religious colonists that believe in the starship as their god. It's not that I don't agree with him, but it was written so condescendingly that it bothered me. Same with the "I told you so" part with the asteroid on collision course with Earth. Same when the Arkwright descendants are pretty much strongarmed into getting into the family business. And third, while focusing on the Arkwright clan, the book completely ignored the rest of the world. While explaining how they designed and constructed and monitored a starship for generations, the author ignored any scientific breakthroughs that happened during that time. It is like the only people that cared about science and space expansion were the Arkwrights. It made the book feel very provincial. I would have preferred to see them in a global context, rather than read about their family issues.

I liked the sentiment, though. The idea that if you put your mind to something, you can do it. Of course, ignoring economic, technical and probabilistic realities does help when you write the book, but still. The story is centered on an old science fiction writer who takes humanity to another star, clearly something the author would have liked to have been autobiographical. It felt like one of those stories grandpas tell their children, all moral and wise, yet totally boring. It's not that they don't mean well and that the moral isn't good, but the way they tell it makes it unappetizing to small children. If I had to use one word to describe this book it is unappetizing

Funny thing is that I've read a similar centuries spanning book about the evolution of mankind that I liked a lot more and was much better written. I would suggest you don't read Arkwright and instead try Accelerando, by Charles Stross.

and has 3 comments
As you probably know, whenever I blog something, an automated process sends a post to Facebook and one to Twitter. As a result, some people comment on the blog, some on Facebook or Twitter, but more often someone "likes" my blog post. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the sentiment, but it is quite meaningless. Why did you like it? Was it well written, well researched, did you find it useful and if so in what way? I would wager that most of the time the feeling is not really that clear cut, either. Maybe you liked most of the article, but then you absolutely hated a paragraph. What should you do then? Like it a bunch of times and hate it once?

This idea that people should express emotion related to someone else's content is not only really really stupid, it is damaging. Why? I am glad you asked - clearly you already understand the gist of my article and have decided to express your desire for knowledge over some inevitable sense of awe and gratitude. Because if it is natural for people to express their emotions related to your work, then that means you have to accept some responsibility for what they get to feel, and then you fall into the political correctness, safe zone, don't do anything for someone might get hurt pile of shit. Instead, accept the fact that sharing knowledge or even expressing an opinion is nothing more than a data signal that people may or may not use. Don't even get me started on that "why didn't you like my post? was it something wrong with it? Are you angry with me?" insecurity bullshit that may be cute coming from a 12 year old, but it's really creepy with 50 year old people.

Back to my amazing blog posts, I am really glad you like them. You make my day. I am glowing and I am filled with a sense of happiness that is almost impossible to describe. And then I start to think, and it all goes away. Why did you like it, I wonder? Is it because you feel obligated to like stuff when your friends post? Is it some kind of mercy like? Or did you really enjoy part of the post? Which one was it? Maybe I should reread it and see if I missed something. Mystery like! Nay, more! It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is personal interest in providing me with useful feedback, the only way you can actually help me improve content.

Let me reiterate this as clear as I possibly can: the worse thing you can do is try to spare my feelings. First of all, it is hubris to believe you have any influence on them at all. Second, you are not skilled enough to understand in what direction your actions would influence them anyway. And third, feeling is the stuff that fixates memories, but you have to have some memory to fixate first! Don't sell a lifetime of knowing something on a few seconds of feeling gratified by some little smiley or bloody heart.

And then there is another reason, maybe one that is more important than everything I have written here. When you make the effort of summarizing what you have read in order to express an opinion you retrieve and generate knowledge in your own head, meaning you will remember it better and it will be more useful to you.

So fuck your wonderful emotions! Give me your thoughts and knowledge instead.

and has 0 comments
I want to let you know about the latest features implemented in Bookmark Explorer.



The version number for the extension is already 2.9.3, quickly approaching the new rewrite I am planning for 3.0.0, yet every time I think I don't have anything else I could add, I find new ideas. It would be great if the users of the extension would give me more feedback about the features they use, don't use or want to have.

Here are some examples of new features:
  • Skip button - moves the current page to the end of the bookmark folder and navigates to the next link. Useful for those long articles that you don't have the energy to read, but you want to.
  • Custom URL comparison scheme. Useful for those sites where pages with different parameters or hash values are considered different and you get duplicate notification warnings for no good reason.
  • Duplicate remover in the Manage page. This is an older feature, but now the button for it only appears where there are duplicates in the folder and with the custom URL scheme it's much more useful.
  • Option to move selected bookmarks to start or end of folder, something that is cumbersome to do in the Chrome Bookmark Manager
  • Automatically cleaning bookmark URLs of marketing parameters. This is in the Advanced settings section and must be enabled manually. So far it removes utm_*, wkey, wemail, _hsenc, _hsmi and hsCtaTracking, but I plan to remove much more, like those horrible hashes from Medium, for example. Please let me know of particular URL patterns you want to clean in your bookmarks and if perhaps you want the cleaning to be done automatically for all open URLs

As always, if you want to install the extension go to its Google Chrome extension page: Siderite's Bookmark Explorer

and has 0 comments
I'll be honest, I only started reading the Culture series because Elon Musk named his rockets after ships in the books; and I started with The Player of Games, because the first book was in an inconvenient ebook format. So here I was, posed to be amazed by the wonderful and famous universe created by Iain M. Banks. And it completely bored me.

The book is written in a style reminiscent of Asimov, but even older feeling, even if it was published in 1997. My mind made the connection with We, by Zamyiatin, which was published in 1921. Characters are not really developed, they are described in few details that pertain to the subject of the story. They then act and talk, occasionally the book revealing some things that seemed smart to the author when he wrote it. Secondary characters have it even worse, with the most extensively (and uselessly) cared for attribute being a long name composed of various meaningless words. The hero of the story is named Chiark-Gevantsa Jernau Morat Gurgeh dam Hassease, for example, and the sentient drone that accompanies him is Trebel Flere-Imsaho Ephandra Lorgin Estral. Does anyone care? Nope.

But wait, Asimov wrote some brilliant books, didn't he? Maybe the style is a bit off, but the world and the idea behind the story must be great, if everybody acclaims the Culture series. Nope, again. The universe is amazingly conservative, with the important actors being either humanoid or machine, and acting as if of similar intellect. The entire premise of the book is that a human is participating in a game contest with aliens, and even engages in sexual flirting and encounters with them, which felt really uninspired and even insipid. I mean, compare this with other books released in 1997, like The Neutronium Alchemist (The Night's Dawn Trilogy, #2) by Peter F. Hamilton or 3001: The Final Odyssey (Space Odyssey, #4), by Arthur C. Clarke or even Slant, by Greg Bear. Compared to these The Player of Games feels antiquated, bland. Imagine an entire book about Data fighting Sirna Kolrami in a game of Stratagema. Boring.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the book is also the least explored: the social and moral landscape of the Culture, a multispecies conglomerate that seems to have grown above the need for stringent laws or moral rules. Since everybody can change their chemistry and body shape and have enough resources to have no need for money, they do whatever they please when they please it, as long as it doesn't disturb others too much. Now this threshold is never explained in more words than a few paragraphs. The anarchistic nature of the post scarcity society Banks described, and indeed the rest of the book, felt like a stab of our current hierarchical and rule based order, but it was a weak stab, a near miss, a mere tickle that went ignored.

Bottom line: my expectations for well renowned books may be unreasonable high, and maybe if I would have read The Game Player when I was a kid, I would have liked it. However, I wasn't a kid in 1997 and I chose to read it now, when it feels even more obsolete and bland.

and has 0 comments

The unthinkable happened and I couldn't finish a Brandon Sanderson book. True, I had no idea The Bands of Mourning was the sixth in a series, but when I found out I thought it was a good idea to read it and see if it was worth it reading the whole Mistborn series, for which Sanderson is mostly known. Well, if the other books in the series are like this one, it's kind of boring.

I didn't feel like the book was bad, don't get me wrong, it was just... painfully average. Apparently in the Mistborn universe there are people that have abilities, like super powers, and other that have even stronger powers, but use metal as fuel. Different metals give different powers. That was intriguing, I bought the premise, I wanted to see it used in an interesting way. Instead I get a main character that is also a lord and a policeman, who is solving crime with the help of a funny sidekick at the request of the gods, who are only people who have ascended into godhood, rather than the creators of the entire universe. The crime fighting lord kind of soured the whole deal for me, but I was ready to see more and get into the mood of things. I couldn't. Apparently, the only way people have thought to fight people who can affect metal is aluminium bullets, which is terribly expensive, or complex devices that nullify their power. Apparently bows and arrows or wooden bullets are beyond their imagination.

But the worst sin of the book, other than kind of recycling old ideas and having people behave stupidly is having completely unsympathetic characters. I probably would have been invested more if I would have read the first five books of the series first, but as it is, I thought all of the main characters were artificially weird, annoying and uninteresting.

Bottom line: around halfway into the book, which is short by Sanderson standards anyway, I gave up. There are so many books in the world, I certainly don't need to read this one. The Wikipedia article for the book says: Sanderson wrote the first third of Shadows of Self between revisions of A Memory of Light. However, after returning to the book in 2014 Sanderson found it difficult to get back into writing it again. To refresh himself on the world and characters, Sanderson decided to write its sequel Bands of Mourning first and at the end of 2014 he turned both novels in to his publisher. So the author was probably distracted when he wrote this book, perhaps the others are better, but as such I find it difficult to motivate myself to try reading them.

and has 1 comment
Uitindu-ma la protestele de ieri am fost surprins ca nimeni nu face legatura dintre altercatiile cu fortele de ordine si Revolutia din 1989, singura perioada in care tin minte ca ar mai fi fost asa ceva in Romania. Ieri se vorbea de Colectiv, de cit de nesimtiti sint la PSD, ca jos Dragnea. A fost Colectiv atit de departe incit nu mai tinem minte cum era? Lumea era in strada scandind impotriva clasei politice in general. Acolo nu s-au bagat ultrasii sau jandarmii, iar lumii ii era lehamite de orice forma de politica. Acum, insa, lupta e polarizata, jos unul, sus altul, si am cazut iar in ciclul ala puturos din care nu am mai iesit din '90 citeva decenii: un permanent vot impotriva, punindu-ne bolnav sperantele in cealalta directie, ca si cum citeva rocade intre partide ar fi rezolvat ceva. La Revolutie am dat jos un sistem, iar acum, cred eu, orice mai prejos de atit este un rateu gigantic.

De aceea nu o sa ma vedeti prin piete scandind impotriva unuia sau altuia. Sint toti la fel. Singura solutie este castrarea politica: sa nu mai aiba nimeni posibilitatea de a da legi nediscutate, sa poata introduce oricine o lege sau un veto la o lege cu un anumit numar de semnaturi, sa eliminam posibilitatea, prin Constitutie, ca un presedinte sa tina parlamentul blocat sau ca un parlament sa se joace cu legislatia pe cintecul vreunui partid sau ca DNAul sa tina parti si tot asa. Sa tragem la raspundere oamenii pentru vorbele, promisiunile si faptele lor. Nu cu legi si inchisori, ci public, colectiv. Cumva am uitat ca alegerile politice sint doar o abstractie a vointei populare care se poate schimba in orice moment.

Ce faci cu cineva care ti-a inselat increderea? Nu i-o mai acorzi. Daca ii dai cheile de la casa si te fura, ii iei cheile! Poate il si bati mar, dar in mod clar nu il mai lasi in casa ta. Solutia nu e nici sa dai imediat cheile altuia, ci sa le tii tu si gata.

Repet: Protestele de dupa incendiul de la Colectiv erau o explozie de indignare impotriva intregii clase politice, Revolutia de la 1989 si ce a urmat imediat, singura perioada in care imi aduc aminte sa fi fost jandarmi cu tunuri cu apa si gaze folosite impotriva manifestantilor in Romania, a fost o explozie de indignare impotriva intregului sistem politic. Ma pis pe manifestantii din Piata Victoriei daca tot ce vor este sa il dea jos pe Dragnea cind pleaca de la servici, daca asta e toata ambitia lor.

and has 0 comments
Brandon Sanderson does not disappoint with the sequel to Way of Kings. Quite the opposite, in fact, weaving more and more into the vast tapestry that is the world of the Stormlight Archive series. The characters converge towards a point in time and space where everything and anything will be decided, the fate of the entire world, with just a few courageous people standing between life and complete desolation.

Words of Radiance focuses more on the main characters, with less distractions that might take the reader out of the flow of the story. However, even if the scope of their achievements explodes, the power of their stories loses a bit of the desperation and energy from the first book. We no longer have powerless broken people trying to survive, but magical beings full of strength doing extraordinary things. Ironically, it is their success that makes them less easy to identify and empathize with. The author throws challenges in front of them, but they seem inconsequential compared to the ones in Way of Kings. I feel like he has grown attached to them and finds it difficult to torture them as a good writer should. On the other hand Sanderson is a positive person, most of this writing being lighthearted and less dark and brooding, so this is not a disappointment.

The climax is a gigantic clash between forces that have slowly grown since the beginning of the series. Sanderson does a wonderful job tying the separate strands of his world into a single story, maybe a bit too much so. The Roshar and Helaran connections felt a bit strained, not unlike Luke Skywalker discovering his greatest ally and greatest enemy are family members. The author better be careful not to put immense effort to create a vast universe, only to shrink it by mistake by connecting everything with everything and everybody with everybody.

And again the final pages of the book feel weak, as they come after the powerful climax, yet they are necessary to tie in some story arks and seed the beginning of others. Yes, the book ends with a promise that what happened in it is just the mere beginning, a small part of the larger picture, so expect little closure. Sanderdon is a prolific author and I am sure he will write the next books in the series fast enough to keep me engaged, but be aware the series is planned to be at least ten main books with about just as much companion stories and novels. This... will take a while. Oathbringer, the third book, is scheduled to be released in November 2017.

Bottom line: I recommend the book and the series and the author. No fantasy reader should ignore Brandon Sanderson if they are anything like me. Just make sure you are ready to get invested in the story only to wait every year for the next chapter to be released.

and has 1 comment

I am hearing more and more this expression that leaves me baffled: "Check your privilege!". It is directed at us, White men, by women, colored folk and gays. It is intended to make us aware of our superior position in order for us to feel guilty over it. Really? That's what you got?

First of all, shit doesn't just happen: it takes time and effort! Do you think that God bestowed our supremacy onto us or something? No! If you believe that you have bought into all the stories we've fed you. We worked hard to get where we are! What have you done? Black people have been the majority of people on Earth for millions of years, but when does humanity grow exponentially together with the living standards? That's right! When the White Man takes control. Women have been ruling the Stone Age for millennia. Where did that get us? Nowhere, that's where! Stone fashion didn't do well, did it? And now you have the gall to ask us to check our privilege? Now the shoe is on the other foot and you are sour about it. Deal with it! Facts, bitches! Not alternative ones, either. The White Man management has brought this enterprise to new heights. Everything you have now is the direct consequence of our leadership. You are beneath us because we put you there!

Every time you people complain you call yourselves "minorities". No, you're not! Women are more numerous than men and White people are fewer than blacks and browns and yellows and whatever else there is on this planet. You know who's a minority? White Men! And still the privilege is yours, since we clearly allow you to exist and complain. The only group of people that have consistently been persecuted and have been a lot fewer than other folk are the homos. They are the only ones who have the right to whine. That's why everybody says whining is gay. It's true!

Yet when we complain, we are derided! You really think it is easy to keep under boot a majority of people on Earth. You think hitting women or slaves is fun? It fucking stings! You have to take all empathy and push it way way down, swallow your tears and do the right thing for everybody, because in the end we have led human kind into its Golden Age, all through our sacrifice. And if you don't like it, that's too bad, but it's mostly your fault, anyway. You make us behave like that, even when we hate it, because you keep getting above your station.

When the most powerful man on Earth is a White Man who rightfully knows the truth about the world and our place at its helm, you act all outraged. We even allowed you to vote the person you wanted and still you chose him. Oh, he lies, you say. He's a sexist racist White Man who twists the truth to further his needs. Have you even met politicians before? They are mostly White and mostly male because, statistically proven, we rule the world best. If you do something, at least do it right!

So you check *your* privilege! You get to complain, to fight for your rights, to live, all the while basking into the glory of the White Man and reaping the fruits of his labor and sacrifice. We carry you into tomorrow like a cross on Golgotha, never complaining, being spit at all the way up, but up we climb and high we reach. If you want to get to where we are, work for it like we do. Enslave some people, cull others, smack some around in the name of God. It's not fun, but it needs doing, for the betterment of humanity as a whole. In the end, you are where you are because you know it's the right place for you, otherwise you would have done something about it. You slack away while we run things for you, it's just the way of the world. Start complaining after a few million years, when you get your turn.

and has 0 comments
Brandon Sanderson proves again he is a brilliant writer. His Stormlight universe is not only vast and imaginative, but the characters are both compelling and well written.

Way of the Kings has some slow parts, though, and even if I kind of liked that, it is uneven in regards to its characters: some get more focus, some just a few chapters. That means that if you identify with the lead characters you will enjoy the book, but if you empathize with the lesser ones you will probably get frustrated.

I particularly enjoyed the climax. It was as it should be: the tension was rising and Sanderson just wouldn't let it go, it just kept pushing it and pushing it, filling in the motivations of the character, adding burden upon burden, making choices as difficult and as important as possible before finally allowing the release of his characters making one. Alas, the wonderful ending is followed by epilogues, several of them, which just seem boring afterwards, in comparison.

Great series, though, I recommend it highly.