The Emperor's Soul is set in the same world as Elantris, but for all intents and purposes it is a standalone story. It's not a full size book, but it's a bit longer than a short story. In it we find a type of magic called Forging, by which someone can carve and use a complicated seal to change the history of an object or, indeed, a soul. The forging needs to be very precise and as close as possible to the actual history of the target, otherwise the magic doesn't "stick". So what must a brilliant forger do in order to do the forbidden soul forging? They must know their target so intimately that they can't ultimately hurt them.
An intriguing idea, yet Brandon Sanderson does what he does best and focuses on the characters, while the story itself reveals the underlying motivation of each and how it affects the final outcome. The descriptions are minimal and the ending is optimistic and personal as Sanderson often likes his finales.
Since the story is short and I had no trouble reading it in a single evening, it is almost a pity not to read it, even if in itself is just a tiny "what if" tale and offers nothing spectacular.

I've read the book in a day. Just like the other two in the series (Steelheart and Firefight), I was caught up in the rhythm of the characters and the overwhelming positivity of the protagonist. Perhaps strange, I kind of missed descriptions in this one, as both locations and characters were left to the imagination and everything was action and dialogue.

Brandon Sanderson ends (why!!?? Whyy?!!?) the Reckoners series with this third book called Calamity. You absolutely have to read the other two books to understand anything about it. In fact, Reckoners feels more like a single story released in three installments than a true trilogy. In it, the team has to reckon (heh heh heh) with their leader going rogue and have a decision to make: either bring him back or kill him. All this while fighting off various Epics in different stages of madness.

I can't really say anything about the story without spoiling the hell out of it. I loved the first two books and I loved this one. Indeed, I have yet to find a Brandon Sanderson book that I don't like. If you are into superhero stories, the Reckoners series has a refreshingly original plot, a wonderful main character and true debate about what heroism really is. I recommend it highly!

The Cycle of Arawn is a three book story arch written by Edward W. Robertson. I have no memory on where I got the idea of reading this series, but now, after researching a bit, I realize is one of those self published books that caught on sooner or later. Robertson is a 30 something guy who wrote a surprising number of books besides Arawn, but he is still young and that may explain the quality of the writing. I mean, he has a blog on Blogspot, for crying out loud! Who does that? (clarification: at the time I had this blog on Blogspot)

The story is about this young orphan who lives his life by the day, stealing, mugging, surviving. One day, though, he sees a wondrous thing: a man resurrecting a dog from death. He then decides, just like that, to find out what that is about and so he learns about the nether, the opposite of ether, which is the normal stuff of wizardry. The writing is not bad, but not good either. The characters are very thinly fleshed out and they change their behaviour as dictated by the plot, rather than be their own people. One thing that immediately jarred me is that the language of the writing is quite modern, while it presents a medieval magical world. The disconnect grows when all the people in the land, including men, women, different nations, different species, seem to have the same sense of humour. But what really annoyed me about The Cycle of Arawn is the inconsistency of the characters and even the story. In a three book series about nether users, ether is merely mentioned in a few places, although it was supposed to be most of the magic used in the land, for example.

Let's start and stop with the main character: Dante. He starts off as a poor street thug, but he can read, learn new languages, go to places to get books and find references on how to translate an ancient tome, all while being chased around by the owners of the book. He is 16 at the time. I would find that difficult to believe even if he were a modern 16 year old, but one living on the streets in medieval times? All the learning that is done after this point, though, is completely different: pompous old people give him hints and let him work it out in the most convoluted unprofessional educational system that ever existed. At every point, when people with vast difference in hierarchical position interact, they joke and make fun of each other like drinking buddies. This ignoring of the way structured societies work makes Dante become the leader of the nethermancer city, the first human member of a clan of non-human tribe, the starter of a war, the ender of the war, the ender of another war, all by the time he reaches 26 and while going around the world doing dangerous stuff. Which is all nice and neat, but completely absurd. At the end, it seems like the reading of the book that started it all wasn't even necessary or even the best way to learn to become a wizard. One begs the question, what exactly did the order of the nethermancers with the magic before encountering an uneducated kid from another country?

One might think that, being a young adult thing, this book has a lot of action, adventure, romance. It is not true. Dante is essentially a geek, a book buff that got superpowers. The most interesting portions of the cycle is when he reads something new or finds new ways of using the magic. He doesn't have any romantic relationship of note from start to finish and the only girl he kind of likes becomes the girlfriend of another and then he accidentally kills her and then he just moves on. The action sequences are poor, uncoordinated, uninspiring and worst of all: not using things the character has learned how to do in previous sections of the story. One thing that permeates the cycle: nobody gives a damn about anything, really. They proclaim some things, then they just brush them away like nothing happened and move on to make the plot work.

Bottom line: it was a classical "boy find special powers" kind of myth, but went all over the place. It was easy to read, even if some descriptions of non essential stuff took pages! (in my mind I renamed it to The Cycle of Yawn), and the series had a finality, sort of, with the third book, so I don't have to read 14 books to get to the end of the story (*cough*Wheel of Time*cough*). I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, really, even if it wasn't completely bad. It was bad, though.

The second book of The Reckoners series revolves around Firefight, a character from Steelheart, the first book, that I cannot explain without spoiling it. Brandon Sanderson outdid himself, managing to describe a dark world of bright colors, a desperate and dramatic situation in which hope shines through, an impossible romance inside a war story and a totally positive view on fear. Contrasts everywhere, like a bad metaphor that discovers it is a simile before a book ends. Well, if you read Firefight you will get the reference.

The action and plot of the book are much more detailed and a level above what happened in Steelheart. The villain is more interesting, the interactions between the members of the team are more complex, with various shades of conflict, plus an interesting new location in a sunken city filled with glowing plants that feed the people and provide light at the same time. I can't wait for Calamity, the third book in the series, to appear in 2016.

I am starting to like Brandon Sanderson. Only at the end of Steelheart did I realize that he kind of used the same plot device that he used for Elantris: the ten-years-ago one. Ten years before the action of the book, Calamity struck: a red star-like light in the sky that gave random people immense powers. The governments of the world tried to fight back, but all of them ended up capitulating, declaring "epics" as impossible to control as natural disasters. Enter David (the name probably not chosen at random) an eight year old child who witnesses the death of his father at the hands of an epic that then proceeds on taking over Chicago as his personal fiefdom. Now, at 18, David meets with The Reckoners - a group dedicated to fight back - in order to avenge his father.

First book in The Reckoners series, which is a planned trilogy, Steelheart is a very refreshing take on the superhero genre, original in the sense that it takes its name after the main villain and follows a young boy who advances in life using his cunning, knowledge and personal effort, not some random superpower. The characters are easy to sympathize with and the story is very nice. Not everything is perfect, as the story contains many political, economic and even technical plotholes. However, the writing is very well done, easily making the reader forget and forgive any inconsistencies between reality and the storyline.

As with Elantris, I listened to the audio version of the book. Classical narration, but was very nice. The book is a sort of young adult thing, but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless. I can't wait for the second book in the series: Firefight. I may have to first read Mitosis, a short story placed in the same universe.

In a world dominated by trilogies and quadrilogies and sagas, it is refreshing to see that some people are writing stand-alone fantasy books. I've first heard of Brandon Sanderson when he ended up writing the last books in the Wheel of Time series, after its initial author died; those books were the best in the series, even if he had to work with Jordan's notes. Recently, I've stumbled upon this audio adaptation of Sanderson's book Elantris, produced by Graphic Audio, a company that doesn't just created narrations of books, but full audio plays - while changing nothing of the initial text.

Despite some parts being a bit too optimistic, some too slow and some really obvious - waiting for a character to catch up with you is not fun - the book was really entertaining and original. It also was Sanderson's first widely released book, so I can forgive his lack of perfection :). I really liked the story and the characters in the book. In truth, the book's message is one of hope, one of encouragement toward the human spirit becoming the best it can be. I couldn't help thinking that Sanderson probably portrayed himself in Raoden, and that guy is great.

Anyway, the plot revolves around the magical city of Elantris, populated by God like creatures that shine with the light of magic and are almost omnipotent. However, the story starts ten years after a horrible collapse of said city, which transformed every Elantrian into an immortal husk, heart not beating, hair falling, skin blotched by dark spots, incapable of healing the smallest cut or bruise, but fully capable of pain, unneeding of food, but fully able to feel ravenous hunger at all times. The process, called Shaod, has not ended, it still occasionally picks people at random and turns them into these creatures of eternal pain. The human inhabitants of nearby towns have quarantined Elantris and anyone affected by the Shaod is thrown inside the rotting city.

There are two main characters: prince Raoden and his bride to be, princess of a nearby kingdom, called Sarene. Not only them, but almost every actor is full of spirit (pun intended) and really likable, even the antagonists can be understood and sympathized with. The story is full of events that lead to character development, politics, smart plotting, drama and comedy.

Well, in the end, with all my talk of stand alone books, I was a bit sad to see the story end. I wanted more, and that's a good sign, right? Sanderson is supposedly considering writing a sequel, but it's not something that will happen soon and it will involve different characters. I liked Elantris and I recommend it to all fantasy fans.

I met a few friends for a drink and they recommended to me (or rather seemed amazed that I had not heard of it) Dragonlance. I looked it up and, to my chagrin, found that it is a huge series with over 20 books and a lot of short stories - actually, in 2008 there where over 190 novels in the same universe. Resigned myself to read them all, I googled for the right order in which to read the saga and came up with Chronicles, which is a trilogy of books, as the correct starting point.

As in the story, there is balance between the good and the bad in my assessment of the books. For one, I will not read the rest of the books and waste a lot of my time, but for the other, I already start regretting reading the first three. You see, the entire plot seems to have the only purpose of supporting a canon of the classic fantasy genre that the writers have thought up.

Probably emerging from games of Dungeons and Dragons, like many fantasy universes, the world of Krynn has nothing remotely original. There are elves, humans, dwarves, goblins, dragons, pegasi, unicorns, centaurs, and other races like that. From the very first pages, you meet the heroes that form the quest party and they seem to have gathered all the possible cliches in the genre in their travels: the dwarf is old and grumpy and complains a lot, the half-elf is tortured by his double ancestry, the knight is rigid and honorable, the mage is tiny and frail and frustrated about it, his big (twin) brother is huge and completely non-magical, etc. In fact, the mage character is the only one which seems remotely interesting, all the other being busy posturing most of the time, like real size commercials for their D&D class and specialization.

But what I thought was the most offensive of all was the premise of the trilogy. Beware, here be dragons... and spoilers. Do not read further if you think you might want to read the books.

You see, the world has been reeling after a huge Cataclysm, a fiery mountain hitting the planet and causing havoc. At the end of the book we learn that the gods, in their infinite wisdom, did that because the world was too unbalanced towards good! And we learn this from the good god, who for the entire duration of the story just nudged our heroes in one direction or the other while the evil god was amassing armies and killing everybody. How is that for balance?

Even so, you can hardly complain about a book being cliché if you don't read more of the genre and, to be honest, except for a few books, I didn't really read much fantasy. So I had an opportunity to enjoy this, even if the writing was simplistic, the characterization almost non existent and the story bland. But there was something in the books that kept me at arms length from enjoying it. It finally dawned on me in the middle of the second book, when, after reading about the emotional turmoil of everybody, having the men pair with the women - unless they were there for comic relief, like the dwarf and the kender (which one could consider a pair, if I think about it) - and making chaste promises to one another (like not having sex until they can focus on the relationship and stuff like that)... after all that, I realized that Dragonlance was written by two women. (Even later I realized that one of the women was actually a man. Shame on me! The rest of the review stands)

I don't want to sound misogynistic here, I really wanted to read something cool written by women, but for a series entitled after a weapon - albeit something long and thin, with a thick bulbous appendage at the tip - the story was surprisingly devoid of any detailed battles, tactics, strategy or even decent brawls. The heroes are always running around, talking about their feelings or thinking about them and, in case there is a huge battle between the forces of good and evil, quickly skips forward to the conflict between the two women that love the same man.

Also, as if it all wasn't formulaic enough, no one really dies from the group, unless it is something that fulfills their purpose in life, while the support cast keeps perishing without anyone actually giving a damn. Check out the bit where an entire ship crew - including the woman captain and the minotaur second that I had read a lot about in previous pages - just die without the characters even remembering it. Or the battle of the knights with the dragon armies, where one phrase describes how the knights held, but half of them died. Just like that. I may have written more about that bit than there was written in the book.

To end this terrible rant, if you thought Wheel of Time was childish, as I did, this is worse. T'is true, the fair maiden that hath captured my heart and recommended the books hath read said scrolls of wisdom when she was 16, so that might explain her fond memories and my tortured journey towards the end of the story. I also really really wanted to believe that by writing more, the authors would become more skilled at it. It didn't seem to be the case. I refuse to read another dozen books just to keep the faith.

In conclusion, I cannot in good conscience recommend this to anyone, including children or young adults - to which I think the story would be tantamount to poison, teaching all the wrong lessons in the worst possible way. These books sucked lance!

Finally, it is all over! The Dark One is defeated and all the character stories have come to an end. Funny enough, having Brandon Sanderson write the last two books made me want to read more. You may have noticed that in the title I give no credit to Robert Jordan; I know it's his story and that he left a lot of notes on how the book would continue before he died, but Sanderson has made it a lot better and it feels a waste to end it just when it got good.

The last book of the Wheel of Time saga, A Memory of Light, continues where Towers of Midnight left off, pits everyone against everyone and ends all threads. The battle of the end is epic and, except some slight miscalculations, is pretty much consistent with the other books. No Nynaeve braid pulling or needless spanking or otherwise humiliating women in this one, instead a lot of characters blooming from the dried up husks that they were becoming in the last Jordan books. As before, I loved Mat's character, but also Perrin is now a lot more involved, intrigues abound, people die (even important ones) and the ending is... let us say intriguing. One may still hope some offshoots of the story. There were some unexplained or otherwise inconclusive bits. For example there is a scene where Mat sends a lot of villagers to die protecting a river, then, when it matters most, the same villagers return through a gateway. I have no idea what that was about. Also there was a little bit of a story with some soldiers that had all their metal turned to something squishy. It just went and gone without much continuation. Then some ideas of the battle seem brilliant at the end of it, but not used during it, making the entire "Mat's strategical genius" idea a bit flimsy. Also, Demandred almost kicked his ass (and a lot of others as well) before he got killed. If there is something that felt a bit off, it was the women. Robert Jordan was obsessed with the women and he often wrote the story from their point of view. Sanderson is clearly a man's man :) Women had pretty small roles and little introspection.

Bottom line: a fourteen book saga is a lot to read. As much it pains me that it is over, it makes me even more glad that it is over. Sometime you just have to learn to let it go. The quality of the writing is very good and I dare say that this is probably the best book of them all, which makes it a fitting finale. It is also very long, the third in length from the entire series, at approximately 360000 words. If you have read The Wheel of Time so far, there is absolutely no reason to not read the last book. If you haven't started to read the series, you might want to think it over if you want to spend so much time doing it, but I don't think you will regret it. And lastly, if you have started to read it and then abandoned it for whatever reason, the last two books are a level higher than the rest of them and should provide motivation to carry on.

Oh, and you if you wonder if I am going to read the prequel and the companion books: no, I won't! If you do, though, please make the effort to comment on one of the Wheel of Time posts. Thank you!

Towers of Midnight, the 13th book in the Wheel of Time series and the book before last in the saga, was a great read. As the second volume written by Brandon Sanderson after Robert Jordan's death, it benefited a lot from Sanderson's fluid writing style and the fact that all the stories are coming to their end.

The plot was interesting, too, with all three ta'veren characters doing their part, all the girls (except Nynaeve!) being involved and quite a few Forsaken as well, with interesting gimmicks the Darkfriend previously known as Luc and even a gholam!. The entire Trakand clan is represented and there are blessedly few Aiel. In this book Moiraine is found, there is some news of lovely and terrible Lanfear and someone dies (although, of course, nobody important and they die quite uselessly) while battling Aelfinn and Eelfinn, while The Final Battle approaches, with the revelation of red veilled dark Aiel?

My feeling of the book was one of discovery. Brandon Sanderson is writing this book with the enthusiasm of someone that just started work on a story (because he did!), yet with all the legacy material from Robert Jordan to build upon. No wonder the last part of the series was supposed to be just one book and resulted in three at the end. That means the story feels fresh, even if I have been reading it for the last four months. Also, it is no surprise that Sanderson could not maintain the fearful and deferential view of women that Jordan cultivated in the previous books. Oh, don't worry, they continue to meddle in all the affairs of others and their behaviour is just as erratic and irrational as before, it's just that men don't act like cowed idiots anymore and actually have a backbone. I don't know if this was supposed to happen in the original author's view, but I am willing to bet that it was not. Actually, this is one of the worse points of the story, when Elayne (the queen of Andor), Egwene (the Amyrlin seat) and Faille (Perrin's wife and princess of Saldaea) are plotting and acting like they own the world, while at the same time putting themselves in all sorts of dangers where they have to be saved by others. Of course, the others more often end up dead, but there is always some handy rationalization for behaving like an idiot. Amazingly enough, though, Cadsuane and even Moiraine are behaving quite well. The End must really be coming!

The bottom line is that I have finished reading the series. The last book won't be published until 2013, so now I am free to read other books. Yatta! I've gathered a technical book about refactoring, The Rites of Passage, by William Golding, and The Checklist Manifesto, which I hear is both instructive and interesting to read (not to mention short). So, I guess the wheel won't be turning as the wheel wants until next year. Meanwhile, you're stuck with me!

The Gathering Storm is the 12th book in the fantasy series Wheel of Time and the last in the saga to be written (partially) by Robert Jordan. The guy died while writing it and the book was continued by Brandon Sanderson. The result? A better book! I firmly believe that Sanderson is writing better than Robert Jordan, while at the same time retaining enough of his style to not feel too much of a disconnect. I wish I was a literary critic right now, so that I could tell you what was better, but I am not; as a reader I can only tell you that I felt less like crawling through thick fluid and more like swimming. There is proof: I've finished reading this book almost a week ago and, while not having time to write this post, I did get two thirds in the thirteenth book of the series.

Ok, I must admit that being a series finale, it was bound to be more interesting, however more focus on the action and less on Nynaeve's braid pulling helped a lot. The plot revolves more about Rand and Egwene and less on the others. Rand is getting more and more erratic do to his obsession for eliminating his emotions. Instead, he buries them within, causing more and more insanity. Luckily, he gets over it, and not by psychotherapy, either. Egwene, instead, having been captured by the White Tower, has been demoted to Accepted and forced to do chores and beatings in order to stop calling herself Amyrlin. She uses her enormous ego and Aiel teachings to overcome the hurdles and reunite the Tower with the unexpected help of Verin, as we finally learn who she was.

The story of this book is interesting in itself. It was supposed to be the last book of Wheel of Time, but then it grew too much and it was decided a split into no less than three other books. The initial target was 200000 words, but the final estimation reached 750000. That means most of the book was written by Sanderson. The reception for the book was positive, since many of the threads left unended in the previous books were clarified.

Right now I am almost at the end of the final published book in the series, Towers of Midnight. The fourteenth book is supposedly ending the saga and will be published sometime at the beginning of 2013. So in about 9 months it will all be over :-)

Knife of Dreams is the last book in the series written by Robert Jordan. He died after finishing it. It was one of the nicer books in the series, mostly because it prominently featured Mat, who is one of the few characters in the Wheel of Time series I can empathise with.

The obvious and unnecessary story arch with Perrin's wife abduction by the Shaido Aiel finally ends, Elayne, Egwene and Nynaeve are all acting like they know everything and some get abducted by the Black Ajah and the White Tower, only to deny any wrongdoing or link to the cause of their predicaments. Cadsuane continues to be a pain in the butt, without actually providing a good return of investment and Min is either worrying without cause or acting stupidly and precipitating harm to Rand. Aviendha is not much better, but she rarely appears in this one. In other words, all the women are pompous idiots in Knife of Dreams, while Rand and Perrin act like buffoons. So the only satisfying story arch remains that of Mat.

I've started to read the last three books, which the new author (working on the basis of very detailed notes left by Robert Jordan and big fan of his) points out are three pieces of the same story, only one larger than a single volume could have contained. After that, I am free of the Dark One and the taint will be gone!

The tenth book of the Wheel of Time series was by far the least interesting. The action is taking place simultaneously or a bit after the events in Winter's Heart. I had waited to see what is going to happen next only to get a "parallel" book that only showed how everybody is taking their sweet time before doing anything. Of course, we know by now that Rand has finally done what needed done a few books ago, but what about all the not interesting characters? Well, we will get to know that in Crossroads of Twilight.

Having finished it, I embark on reading the last few books and see how the hell it is all going to end. That is the problem with stories based on prophecies. By the time the book gets anywhere, you know how it is going to end.

My blog becomes boring as I fly through the Wheel of Time series and it seems this is all I write about. The truth is that the feeling that started creeping in from books four or five, the "let's get it over with" feeling, has become stronger and undeniable. I don't want to stop reading the series, but I want to finish it soon, so I get to something that is truly interesting.

Winter's Heart is somewhat fractured. It continues where Path of Daggers left it and again it ends without a definite book boundary, just like a simple episode from a series. There is a rather important situation right at the end of the book, but it is underwritten, leaking important knowledge matter-of-factly and barely describing what should have been glorious fights with the One Power.

My impressions: Mat's storyline becomes intriguing, after a bit of utter boredom. Perin's story becomes ridiculous, with choices no sane man would make, not to mention women, and the obnoxious Aiel again getting a foothold in the plot. It has reached a point for me where any mention of Aiel just rubs me the wrong way. Rand is trying to make his enemies unsure of his plans, therefore he acts erratically, but that means he doesn't really do anything, until the end of the book. The girls are all doing whatever they feel like it, without coordinating with the boys, but still assuming they don't need to. The worst are the "evil ones" which seem to have fallen asleep. Fain tries to kill Rand, but not when he has him alone somewhere, only when he can "lure" him into a trap, together with all his friends.

Some ideas do come up. One is that Shai'tan is nothing more than a force of evil, not unlike Sauron, nothing corporeal or even conscious. All the evil in the book is done by people "doing the Great Lord's work" and their minions. The idea that the Dark One is imprisoned and that is why his actions make no sense is moot. Also, it seems that the Chosen are being reincarnated almost as soon as they die, only in other bodies. They call themselves differently, for some reason, but they possess the power and knowledge they had before death. They fear death, also, which make no sense at all. Robert Jordan's talent here is to make the evil side act stupidly, but without letting the reader feel so, and he manages it pretty well. Too bad I am more of a rational person.

I really like the idea that the One Power (which was always two, one male, one female) has an evil equivalent (the True Power - who comes up with these names?). Being of a Western origin, it is likely Robert Jordan will feel the need to unite all of these powers under "one God", so interesting interactions and hybrids might appear later. A tantalizing hint that Moiraine might be alive is also presented, when a reincarnation of Lanfear appears. Now that more annoying characters have popped up, I almost miss her, not to mention Lanfear herself, which is my favourite evil insane female character in the book :)

The one word that comes into mind when I think of the book is "frustrating". Having abandoned any semblance of independence between the books, Robert Jordan continues in The Path of Daggers many of the story arches began in A Crown of Swords and I don't know if he ends any. All the characters are acting like proud chickens, lacking any thought. They are emotional, weak, playing games when important issues are at stakes, taking serious offence from irrelevant words. I am sick of people "educating" others via beating, switching, shaming, pompous posturing, power plays and torture. The fate of the world is at stake and each and every one of the heroes of the story act like they still have other options. And while they are disgusted by people doing that very thing, but not seeing it in themselves.

At this point I am left with no other choice than to "watch" the story unfolding like on TV, because I feel no connection with it whatsoever. My wife asked me which of the characters in the book I most identify with. And I couldn't think of any. Even Shai'Tan doesn't make any sense at all. I've already started Winter's Heart and it continues in the same way.

The seventh book of the Wheel of Time series is a direct continuation of the sixth. I was saying in a previous post that book six, Lord of Chaos, was long and it doesn't even have a complete ending; A Crown of Swords overlaps Lord of Chaos a little, then opens up some other doors and doesn't close them either. Either this is the pattern (pun not intended) of the next books, or this is actually a weave (ok, now I was doing it on purpose :) ) of at least three books that are strongly coupled to each other.

A Crown of Swords is back to a size closer to the average of the other books, but since it is so connected to the books before and after, it doesn't really matter. There is a lot happening and some of it is captivating. I can't really empathize with most of the characters, though, except maybe Mat, and he is very present in this book. A new evil type of darkspawn appears, along with an advanced type of Myrddraal. The girls are hunting ter'angreal, the Seanchan are stirring again and a new battle against Forsaken is close. Also an Aes Sedai hero is approaching Rand and completely dissing him. Fun stuff!