Hosted by the awesome folks as The Broke and the Bookish, Top Ten Tuesdays is a weekly meme celebrating all things book.

This week, it’s all about great characters with great names. Names that you like enough to potentially inflict on your children. These are the top ten characters/literary peeps that I’d theoretically name my kids after:

Let me preface this by saying I met a guy called Oberon the other day. Hem. And that’s not what I’m looking to inflict on my theoretical children. (Mostly…)

I don’t think I could call my daughter Vin. But I love the name Elend for a boy. Although, again, probably not Kelsier for a boy. Also, have you read the Mistborn series yet? If you love high fantasy with strong characters, a plot that just keeps escalating when you don’t believe it can, and hands-down the best magic system I’ve ever seen – what are you waiting for?! SO GOOD.

I’ve always wanted to call a kid Sabriel. Or maybe Lirael? They’re just lovely names! And the fact that this is a less well-known series means not too many people would get the connection, and I’d just be really cool. Right?!

In a series the size of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time there are going to be a fair few character names to choose from. For my part, I’d be happy with a girl called Egwene or Nynaeve, or even Moiraine (I actually love Moiraine!) But not so impressed with a boy called Rand. Or Perrin. Or even Lan – way too easy to tease people called Rand or Lan!

Avry is an excellent name! For an AMAZING character. And I’d love it – for a girl or a boy. I also think Loren and Quain are awesomesauce names. But I don’t think I could inflict them on a child. Maybe Quain for a girl if I was a little mean…

Not so much for the Katniss factor. Everybody’s gonna have a Katniss, like all these small humans running around called Hermione. But I think Gale makes a fine boy’s name.

I just like the name Clary – it’s actually a normal name, especially compared to the others on this list, which makes sense as City of Bones is modern urban fantasy. (Make that, kick-ass modern urban fantasy!) Also Jace. Because Jace.

Again, Austen names are classic (see, I said this list wasn’t going to be all about inflicting childhood scars!). I’d love a Jane, or an Elizabeth, or an Anne – with the ‘e’ at the end. I insist! And I’m back and forth on whether a boy called Darcy is a bit cute or a bit awful – or a bit both…

I’m reading the (freaking awesome) Gameboard of the Gods at the moment, and the Praetorian female protagonist, Mae, is just fantastic. Also Mae is a family name, so I could totally get away with that for real! The male lead, Justin, is pretty messed up and great too…

Because Dexter is a great name for a boy. Dammit, that’s a normal and boring reason. If it helps, I’d be reluctant to do this because of the TV show Dexter. Just a little too creepy for me…

Oh, well. Not really, I guess… But I TOTALLY want a kid called Kvothe because Kvothe and The Name of the Wind are both made of awesome and I’d like to think that’d rub off on the child lucky enough to bear his name. A girl called Kvothe might just work, don’t you think??

What names would you like to inflict on give to your future kids? Tell me all about it in the comments!

For my first review, I was all set to review a book by Brandon Sanderson. I outlined what I liked about the book, what I thought Brandon Sanderson brought to the table, where his writing felt flawed, and so on. And then I tried to introduce Brandon Sanderson. I couldn’t do it. To talk about what Brandon Sanderson does right and wrong was something I had only ever learned to do in contrast to Robert Jordan, and anything I could write about Brandon Sanderson would be overshadowed by my 5 paragraph intro about Robert Jordan. Brandon Sanderson is a spectacular author in his own right, and deserves to be written about on his own, without a page of intro about somebody else. So instead, I find myself writing about Robert Jordan.

Really, it’s hard for me to write about anything in the world of fantasy without first paying homage to Robert Jordan (well, let’s not get into Tolkien today). Robert Jordan was one of the most influential modern writers of epic fantasy. I grew up with Robert Jordan’s writing, both literally and literarily. The Eye of the World came out when I was not even half a year old, and I started (and stopped 50 pages in, out of boredom) reading it when I was too young to properly remember. I later picked it back up at the age of 10, blazed through the whole series, and waited in anticipation for each book as it came out. Robert Jordan lived and died by the epic style of fantasy, and much like Tolkien, seemed to get lost in the lofty and airy tones of background, history, and world-building. When you read The Wheel of Time, much like when you read Tolkien, you are reading a masterpiece not of literature, but of attention to detail. You are immersing yourself in a living, breathing world. It is not for everybody. It can feel tedious and stressful and frustrating. The gap between books meant you had to re-read them with every new book, just to refresh your memory on the wealth of minor characters. Sometimes, when a plot twist happens, you don’t even realize it’s a plot twist, because you had lost track of that character and his/her storyline. For example, when <SPOILER> decided to <SPOILER> right before she <SPOILER>, my first thought was “oh, was <SPOILER> one of the <SPOILER> that <SPOILER> was trying to stay away from?” Then I re-read all of the books, just to make sure I knew what was going on, and continued on. Of course, I could have just looked at the ‘wiki’, but that would really have ruined the fun of Wheel of Time, keeping up with all of the characters like you’re reading Tacitus and you don’t know who’s going to go crazy and who’s going to end up a Roman Emperor.

For me, works like Wheel of Time (WoT) and Lord of the Rings (LotR) simply serve a slightly different purpose than much of traditional fantasy and science-fiction. Much like the point of literature and high school English classes is to teach you HOW to read books from the perspective of analysis, WoT and LotR are exercises in attention to detail. Any aspiring world-builders should read Tolkien and Jordan because of their attention to all details of the world, not just the ones directly related to the plot at the moment; contrast this with George R.R. Martin, who has explicitly said that any information he puts into his Game of Thrones (GoT) series is going to be important at some point. It seems that Jordan, much like Tolkien, revels in the ancillary details, the unnecessary and the gratuitous. And it is this detail that fleshes out his series and has made it a classic. In GoT, the world exists to forward the plot, but in WoT, the plot exists to explore the world.

In many ways, WoT is a very trope-filled world. Eye of the World resembles the traditional Tolkienian monomyth, with small, unremarkable protagonists who originate from the unlikeliest locations, but rise to meet challenges. WoT borrows heavily from Norse mythology, history, traditional fantasy like LotR, classic sci-fi like Dune, and as such, it has great appeal to geeks of all kinds, who will enjoy finding and analyzing the allegories laced liberally throughout the story. On the other hand, WoT also violates many tropes, with peaceful ‘ogres’, a romanticized age of technology (and much technology on the side of good, rather than evil), and like GoT, a wealth of violent conflict between important named characters.

WoT has characters who are very well-defined and very repetitive, and yet rarely one-dimensional. Most interesting to me is how much work Robert Jordan put into fleshing out the world, from its history to its dead languages to the breadth of cultures it houses. Its locations manage to avoid feeling too similar, all having distinct-feeling cultures, without having the forced exoticism that plagues so many fantasy worlds.

Its magic system avoids many of the pitfalls that other fantasy worlds fall into. As new magic is discovered, it is used in conjunction with technology and intuition. In far too many universes, magic is used unintelligently as a blunt tool. As well, WoT‘s magic system at least has the semblance of rules, so the uses of magic feel logical, and flow from a natural understanding of the universe (and those few occasions which don’t are notable).

Finally, Jordan has a flair for the epic. Not only was the scope of the series epic (the completed series surpassed 4 million words), but so many of the scenes are charged with a palpable “DID THAT JUST HAPPEN? THAT JUST HAPPENED!” For those of you who have read the book, you will recognize “kneel or be knelt” as a particularly strong line in the context of the surrounding scenes; its brevity, syntactic neologism, and its juxtaposition to its context all but guarantees that the scene at Dumai Well’s give the reader chills.

Of course, Jordan was not without his flaws. His attention to detail could go too far, and he would seemingly get lost describing scenery. He accrued so many PoV characters that later books often contained scenes from the previous book, but just from different perspectives. Crossroads of Twilight may as well be titled Reaction Scenes to the Cool Shit from Winter’s Heart. As such, books 9-11 started to lag a bit, and readers began to speculate that we’d never see an end to the series.

At this point, it had reached 3,309,426 words. To put that in perspective, if you wrote a thousand words a day, it would take you a bit over 9 years to write that amount. The season WAS about 15 years old at this time, to be fair, but when you take into account editing, publishing, and not working consistently every day for your whole life, it’s a pretty impressive amount.

And we will never know how long it could have run. On September 16th, 2007, Robert Jordan died, and the series, after a brief period of limbo, was scheduled to be completed by Brandon Sanderson, who had written this about Jordan.

I remember clearly my initial thoughts: that nobody could replace Robert Jordan, and yet that anybody could write the series more quickly than him.

After reading the first WoT book penned by Brandon Sanderson, I was willing to take it back. Sanderson soon proved a master at driving the plot forward, instilling excitement into every scene, and forcing the characters to grow. On top of that, he fully embraced Robert Jordan’s epic style, such as when (SPOILER ALERT) Rand removes a WHOLE TOWN OF PEOPLE from the very fabric of existence to kill a powerful enemy of his and she escapes. or when al’Lan Mandragoran duels Demandred the most powerful blademaster and channeler (magic-user) from the Age of Legends, despite not himself being a channeler, using the same technique Rand used (taught by Lan) to beat Ishmael in the Battle at Falme or when Egwene dies in a way so sad I can’t even summarize it, lest I start crying. Let’s not even talk about Mat giving up his eye to save an old friend or Androl learning to think with portals.

Many, myself included, began to speculate that the Sanderson books were BETTER than at least the last few Jordan books. I completed the series this year, 6-months shy of my 24th birthday. I had always thought that while the series remained incomplete, a part of my mind would remain forever locked in WoT. I may have been right. Worse still, I worried that I would remain haunted with the knowledge that Sanderson had not, despite his best efforts, managed to do the series justice in wrapping it up. And in that, I was wrong. In fact, its completion was so spectacular, however, that I fear the whole of my mind has been indelibly altered.

The AMA (Q&A) will take place on Reddit (not sure on the time yet).

Check out Brandon’s AMA from last year.

Other AMAs happening this week in /r/Fantasy are Robin Hobb (Tuesday) and Jay Lake (Thursday).

For some Wheel of Time fans, the above sentence is a baffling one. Last ever Wheel of Time book? What?!

And yet it is.

The first novel, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990. I didn’t pick up the series until my best friend, David, introduced me to it around 1997, a year before the publication of the 8th novel, A Path of Daggers. Which is about right, as I was in my first junior year of high school (I changed schools, and had to redo my junior year – much to my pleasure, as my new school was excellent).

David introduced me to the series, as his parents (and he being my brother from another mother, who I called Mum, and whose husband I called ‘Dad’) also read it. Well, Dad at least, did. We were – and remain – fiction junkies. It’s our drug of choice. And so the addiction started. And by the time I restarted my junior year, and met a fellow student named Jason, the addiction was in full swing. Jason and I started a challenge: we would race to see who could finish the series up to the most current book first.

The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn each took a week. The Shadow Rising (my favourite in the series) took just over a week and a half. The Fires of Heaven? About a week and a half as well.

With The Lord of Chaos, the descent into expanded reading times began. A month.

A Crown of Swords: a month.

The Path of Daggers? About two weeks.

During my early university years, the next three books managed to finally see the light of day: Winter’s Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams.

And then Robert Jordan passed away, of an unbelievably rare blood disease. And several months later, Brandon Sanderson was hired to fill in the gaps, and do justice to the guy who was, during my formative years, the Most Inspirational Writer Around, and Fully Deserving of Sentences With Capital Letters Everywhere.

And so Sanderson did the impossible. He wrapped it all up. And like Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, and like Serenity, there was of course a sense of things being rushed, of there being just *too many* dangling plot-threads, far too many to capable of being wrapped up neatly, organically.

A few felt rushed, a few felt incidental, but many felt just right. A beacon flared, indicating to all readers: the road to the end was now being paved, and we should all get onboard. Harriet Jordan, Tom Doherty, and all of Team Jordan stood behind him in support, and let him do what an intelligent writer should do: find a nice balance between two styles of writing, and tell the story to the best of the writer’s ability. Should Sanderson ever come across this blog post (which I suspect is highly unlikely), I’d want him to know that Harriet made the right decision, in asking him to finish the series. He did a masterful job.

Granted: The Gathering Storm had its bumps – notably the tone of Mat Cauthon. But the rest of the novel churned along at a nice, brisk pace, echoing, quite pleasantly, the pace of the first half of the series. I’m not surprised. The first book would of course likely have issues with Sanderson finding an equilibrium between his and Jordan’s tone and style. But then came The Towers of Midnight, which prolonged in an almost gleefully masochistic way, an incident that readers of the series knew was coming. And it was superb. From an editorial standpoint, I completely understand why the book’s chapters were structured as they were. It’s simple: keep the pages turning. Leave readers wanting more. Keep them interested.

And now finally: A Memory of Light.

To my satisfaction, it didn’t proceed as I imagined it would. To my delight, the ending wasn’t what I would have written. And to my delight, I found myself crying.

People die in horrible ways. Others get their comeuppance. Prophecies don’t work out according to plan. Bad decisions are made. Smart decisions are made. And when the scales are poised to tip, incredibly ballsy decisions are made.

And in the end, it all ends. And though perhaps the ending was shorter than I might have liked, it suffices. Yes, plot threads are left unresolved, but primarily only those which were not tied to any particular prophecy or omen. Life moves on. The characters would live on beyond The Last Battle. But The Wheel of Time wasn’t about the fourth age, but the close of the third.

And A Memory of Light was the closing book in the series.

What a funny sentence.

Sensational Quote Sunday is my way of paying homage to those books that remind me every day why I love reading.

I owe a reader’s debt to The Wheel of Time and Robert Jordan. By which I mean that I don’t think I’d love fantasy nearly as well as I currently do without the influence of Jordan’s world.

I’d like to introduce this series with one paragraph, as the books themselves do:

This opening gives me shivers, because it is the gateway to a rich, layered, insanely intricate story that has taken fourteen books, two authors, and twenty years to tell. Even though the story drags a little around the middle, the Wheel of Time will always be a series I admire and thoroughly enjoy. And Brandon Sanderson brings it home so, so well that I’m sure Robert Jordan would have been proud.

Have you read any of the Wheel of Time? Or Brandon Sanderson’s own work? (Please do, if you haven’t. You will not regret it!)

(Picture credit goes to daesdaemar on Tumblr.)

On top of that I feel like I lose the story after a while. It’s like I’m chugging along on the interstate heading toward my destination in the distance but somewhere along the way my directions and the road no longer match up. I don’t know how to fix this. I’ve tried taking writing courses and they just make me question myself even more.

I guess the question become what do I want to write? What do I think would be worth putting the time and effort on?

This is where it gets hard. I’m a geek, a pretty big one, but most of my life I’ve had to hide it. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve been able to embrace my interests fully and I’m still kind of working on shutting that critical voice in my head up. I like adventure, science fiction, fantasy, and I’ve been known to write fan fiction. My biggest inspirations are John Scalzi, Roger Zelazny, Brian Sanderson, Kim Harrison, Matthew Reilly, and Jasper Fforde. I love listening to Patrick Rothfus talk but I have yet to actually read his books. I don’t care for R.A. Salvatore and the only Drizzit book I liked was The Lone Drow.

So… what do I want to write?

The answer is yes. The afore mentioned work of fiction was inspired by Ready Player One and was kind of like Wreck it Ralph except the players hopped games and were searching for some undiscovered treasure between the games. Like I said, it wasn’t exactly groundbreaking but it was fun to write. I should point out now that this was about a six months before Wreck it Ralph came out in theaters and to be completely honest that movie is amazing.

Ok, so that was science fiction/speculative fiction, what about fantasy? Why not write some of that? Great idea, self, what should I write about? I would love to do High Octane Fantasy, a term I think I coined but the internet is vast so it could be out there already. What is HOF, you ask? Take fantasy and turn it into action. I came up with this idea while reading Matthew Reilly and the Dragonlance books at the same time. We’re talking mind blowing action with elves and mages instead of elite special forces teams.

The problem? I have no real idea to go with that. Cool, action fantasy but what story? Brandon Sanderson says that ideas should be cheap. I guess right now I’m too poor to pay attention.

Here is a solution and something I’m going to post on this blog: writing exercises. This blog will keep me honest in my posting and progress. My inner critic wants something to do, great, I’m going to start with ‘fixing’ stories I love.

Now here is a question you, dear reader, have asked at some point while reading this: why should I care? Who is this character I’m supposed to invest in?

I, my most glorious peruser, am a thirty-something husband and father who has loved storytelling and writing since I was six years old. I’m not entirely successful in endeavors outside of writing but have been incredibly lucky to find a wonder woman to call my wife. She believes in me and makes me want to be the best version of me I can be.

Next Post: Writing Exercise #1

It was, by far, the hardest book I’ve ever written.  I so enjoyed writing In the Shadow of Legends that I expected this book to be as free-flowing and easy – In the Shadow of Legends took me a full month less to write, and it was just about the same amount of words.  And when I go back and read it, I like it.  This book was like pulling teeth all the way through, and I haven’t quite figured out why, yet.  I really, really hope I do figure it out, and I hope it’s not because the book is awful.  The thought of spending November 2012-March 2013 writing a 250k word book and then throwing it out is painful.

And, honestly, that might be why it was so hard to write, since that’s exactly what I did last year.  In the Shadow of Legends was rejected by the agent that I really want to land (Brandon Sanderson’s agent).  That normally wouldn’t be the end of a book for me, but the rejection was caveated with a “but I want to see more from you,” and thereafter he seemed genuinely interested in representing me.  That means  I have to trade the chances of In the Shadow of Legends ever seeing a bookshelf for a chance to have a king-maker as my agent.   Seems like an easy choice, but it wasn’t.  My grandfather died shortly after I completed the book that was, in a very strange way, inspired by him.  It’s tough to let something like that go for the sake of something that you’re not even sure really exists.

Wow, that got a little deeper than I wanted it to.  Reset.  Chin up.  Make a pun about socks.  Anyway, I was excited to finish the first book in the Deicide Saga so I could move on to something new.  Because it was such an epic fantasy book – serious, gritty a little depressing – I really felt like I wanted to freewheel something and write something very light and easy.  So, the title of my next book?

“Death Bear and the Snuggle of Doom.”

I started writing it immediately after the other book after brainstorming with a friend for a few days, who helped give me the idea, and I’m somehow already 25,000 words into it.  I won’t give you any hints except that it’s going to be ridiculous and about half the length of my other books.  It’ll be part of a very loosely structured wizard world that I’ve come up with over the last few years (like a Discworld, in a way) and it’s full of I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit.  For those of you not familiar with the technical term, it’s when you’re not quite freewriting (writing without an outline) but you’re not really paranoid about the actual content. You’re just writing.  So far, my two professional sales to Daily Science Fiction have been full of that – each one was written in about 20 minutes and not edited.  I’m hoping I can achieve that level of greatness (?) with this book by doing something similar.  If it works, then maybe I’ll adopt this posture for future novels. 

So, a smooth and natural transition from heavy, deep, slightly depressing epic fantasy to Terry Pratchett.  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me at all… 

• That’s right, the Khaleesi has a theme song. Thank you so much, io9, for finding this for us! My life is definitely better for having heard it. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.

• File this one under cautiously optimistic: the Syfy channel is making mini-series of both Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End and Larry Niven’s Ringworld.

• The 2012 Locus Magazine Poll and Survey is now open! Cast your vote for your favorite sci-fi and fantasy published in 2012 on the Locus website.

• Want to learn Wheel of Time trivia and have access to special content from The Rithmatist? Sign up for our mobile alerts, or text “EPIC” to 555111!

• Because Friday isn’t complete without a Lego statue of a kraken attacking a Super Star Destroyer.

• The final episode of John Scalzi’s The Human Division published this week! Have you read “Earth Below, Sky Above” yet? What did you think of the end of the season? Also, The Human Division has been renewed for a second season!

 
And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• Fantasy Collection Sweepstakes (Ends 4/30)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 4/16)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Human Division by John Scalzi (Ends 4/17)
• Goodreads First Reads: Mending the Moon by Susan Palwick (Ends 4/17)
• Goodreads Giveaway: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson (Ends 4/24)
• eBook Sale: Three A.M. eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 4/24)
• Goodreads First Reads: The Planet Thieves by Dan Krokos (Ends 4/24)
• Goodreads Giveaway: Necessary Evil by Ian Tregillis (Ends 4/30)
• eBook Sale: Flying in Place eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)
• eBook Sale: Bitter Seeds eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)
• eBook Sale: The Way of Kings eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)
• eBook Sale: Wide Open eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)
• eBook Sale: Kings of Vice eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)

I mean to post something on the 10^th, as I’ve done these past couple of months, but it so happened I was dead tired on Wednesday. It was a long, long day.

What in general has kept me busy is, of course, school. Candidate’s essay needs to be handed in on the 23^rd, while keeping in mind that there is a pub crawl on the 18^th; a stylistics essay on one of D.H. Lawrence’s short stories needs to be handed in on Monday; and then there’s the course on post-modern historical novel…

The candidate’s essay is going well, I think. I’m only missing the conclusion, and some of the analysis needs to be elaborated on, but I think I can manage everything by the end of next week. Let me tell you, it will be a big relief!

My copy of Vanity Fair – can you tell I do a lot of marking?

As books go, there is little to tell. I spent some time rereading Red Seas Under Red Skies once again, and have just started Sanderson’s Warbreaker. I’ve only read the prologue, but it sounds fairly promising. I’m not big on Sanderson’s style, and lately fantasy has been a bit difficult to access for some reason, but it feels very good. It’s slowly sucking me in, just like the Mistborn trilogy did.

I’m currently trying to decide what to put on my summer reading list. As I’m practically out of school from the beginning of May, I’m probably including said month in the summer. I’ve ordered some books from BookDepository, and am really excited to get them! (King of Thorns, Lynn! I finally gave up on finding the edition I want and just ordered what was available!)

This has been a brief reminder that I’m still alive and still updating. I will think of something fun for May to make up for the long silences!

I hope your spring weather is better than mine – Finland is getting the usual second winter after a week of beautiful spring. There’s been snow and cold weather. Today’s a bit better, as it’s not cold but merely cloudy!

Anyway: happy spring!

I finished the Mistborn Trilogy the other day. Though I knew where the ending was headed, it still had a strong effect. I mourned the death of characters I’d spent nearly a month getting to know. I mourned the end a series that taught me so much.

The first time I read the series I’d only just started writing myself. So I read with different eyes. I only saw characters and plots as they related to the enjoyment of the story. But this time, I truly saw the magic and prowess Sanderson possesses.

With new eyes and an expanded mind I read Mistborn. And I saw a world expertly crafted. Believable and concrete. Dying. I met characters, each of them with their own complexities. Even characters who ultimately would die, or prove to not really affect the end of the story, were round and dynamic. And characters that seemed to be introduced as after thoughts unfolded over the course of three books to be heroes and favorites.

The plot, so much less a mystery to me this time around, was still incredibly captivating. I waited, anxious, for scenes I remembered, and ones that my untrained mind had forgotten. My mind now was working overtime to both enjoy the story for what it is, and to simultaneously tear it apart. I had to learn how to craft a world and convey information without seeming to “info dump” which Sanderson does beautifully.

And so the series ended.

With minimal pause, to absorb the ending and allow my mind to think, I moved on to a side novel set in the same world, The Alloy of Law. This novel is much different than the other Mistborn novels. Where the Trilogy was dense and almost hard to read, Alloy flows with a straightforward simplicity. Characters come to life immediately, and conversations are much more informal. Overall, a much more welcoming novel. The reader doesn’t have to work as hard to understand the world, or the magic, though both are more complex after 300 years.

It’s also only about 350 pages. Half the size of any of the Mistborn books.

And so I finished it in less than a day. I appreciate this novel because it’s much more like what I want to write. Reading the Mistborn books, or any of Sanderson’s larger works, is daunting. I can’t imagine writing such complex and long stories. But Alloy of Law is ideal. It sets a standard.

Now I’m reading Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. It’s a staggering 1,252 pages. Apparently the manuscript was over 400,000 words. It’s insane, mind-boggling, and completely terrifying.

I can’t wait!

Much love,

BZ

Books: Legion by Brandon Sanderson
                 The Last Pharaoh by Bradley Hope
                 Fatal Voyage: The Sinking of the Costa Concordia by John Hooper
                 The Plagiarist by Hugh Howley

Blu Ray: The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey (extras)
                     Skyfall (extras)

TV/HULU:  Scandal Season Two
                            Community Season Four
                            The Daily Show with John Stewart
                            The Colbert Report
                            Parks & Recreation Season Five
                            The Killing Season Two
                            
Music:  The song “Carry On” by fun. has my permission to leave my head as expediently as possible.

Video Game: Borderlands 2 (Level 12 Gunzerker
                                Assassin’s Creed III (this game is really dragging)
                                Gears of War: Judgment
                            * XBOX Live, gamertag: sleeplessdave; feel free to friend me!

Comics:   The Avengers Vol. 5 by Brian Michael Bendis
                      Absolute All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison

About A Memory of Light:

When Robert Jordan died in 2007, all feared that these concluding scenes would never be written. But working from notes and partials left by Jordan, established fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson stepped in to complete the masterwork. WithThe Gathering Storm (Book 12) and Towers of Midnight (Book 13) behind him, both of which were # 1 New York Times hardcover bestsellers, Sanderson now re-creates the vision that Robert Jordan left behind.

Edited by Jordan’s widow, who edited all of Jordan’s books, A Memory of Light will delight, enthrall, and deeply satisfy all of Jordan’s legions of readers.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass.
What was, what will be, and what is,
may yet fall under the Shadow.
Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

See upcoming releases.

Actually, I want to talk about a specific one! Mistborn!

I swear to god it’s not generic fantasy!

When people pitch the book to new readers everyone typically says the same thing: “Imagine Ocean’s Eleven with magic!” Then people invariably ask which version of Ocean’s Eleven the speaker is referring to and the whole thing degrades considerably.

Mistborn is a story written by Brandon Sanderson; yes that Brandon Sanderson, the one who saved Wheel of Time. The story takes place in a hypothetical fantasy world where… well the wrong person won the final battle. As a result an evil empire has dominated the entire planet for all of known history kidnapping and murdering anyone with a magical talent known as Allomancy and maintaining a population of destitute people.

Allomancy is one of three types of magic in the franchise. It allows a person (called a misting) to consume a single type of metal and thus gain a new or unique powers for a time. People who can use all metals are called mistborn. Hence the title.

The story is about a team of criminals who basically band together to overthrow this evil empire via a very elaborate con job. That’s right, they want to con the great evil lord into defeat. Work that one out.

There are a couple of reasons why this book and by proxy the entire trilogy (and subsequent novels) stands out for me.

The thing is… I don’t really ever see this kind of thought ever put into magic anymore. And it’s nice. Allomancy has a series of clearly defined rules and limitations as to how it is used and works. Despite the fact that, yes; magic by its very nature cannot be finitely understood, having a concrete basis for readers to follow puts a system in place and it shows confidence in the writer to not use it as a crutch. It isn’t a simple means to explain how something works or achieve resolution; it’s a tool to be used by both heroes and villains that simply exists like any other plot element.

I think this is one of the major problems with low magic fantasy settings. Because there isn’t a strong magical presence it’s a foreign thing that isn’t catalogued or understood. It’s often referred to as “soft” magic in that magic itself is simply a means to justify strange things. It is as versatile as the author needs simply because he does not adequately define it. While that’s good for setting the mood and making magic mysterious, it is now commonplace and I find myself longing for a book series that dares to have hard and fast rules when it comes to their magic system. Mistborn and its subsequent books fill that need.

But the most distinct part, for me at least, with this story is the idea of a caper story set in a fantasy world. In fact I want to see more high fantasy caper stories! I don’t think Sanderson has done enough with the concept for him to really hold any exclusivity on it. There’s something about a group of protagonists with diverse personalities attempting theft that adds a relatable touch to the fantasy genre. By dispensing with high-minded ideals the set pieces can become remarkably fantastic. A bar of gold is one thing, stealing the legendary sword of time from the chambers of infinite evil has more resonance. Ever since low magic fantasy has come tin

Albeit a bit sillier as well.

And so too does this work exist.

I start this post off like this, because this topic is a pure matter of opinion. Its my take on my favourite epic fantasy, having been an avid reader and follower of the Wheel of Time since I was an impressionable sixteen years of age. Before 1996, reading anything that was not linear was beyond me. I lacked the attention span, I lacked the diction and I lacked the memory to keep complex stories together.

At sixteen, A Crown of Swords would only be published some months into the year. I did, however, have six other books to delve into. Books that came very highly recommended by my RPG game master. I was intrigued. My literary passion was blossoming, and so I got stuck in. I still remember where and when I read each book. My most memorable read, was the The Dragon Reborn while away on holiday, and missing most of the holiday with my friends in favour of reading.

April 6th 2013, I finally finished the last book. The fourteenth book, A Memory of Light, the conclusion. A conclusion that I had been anticipating feverishly since it was announced that Robert Jordan‘s legacy would not cease to exist as if Balefire was something real.

I must admit, I am disappointed now that I am finished.

Before you flame me. Before you denounce me. Before you damn my life-force to anguish and torment. Let me explain.

I am disappointed, because it’s over. For more than half my life I have been looking forward to the next installment. Loving some characters, hating others. Joking with my brother at some of the nations, while still reveling in the fine details that the each of the fantasy nations had. The precision with which each character had been sculpted and the depth and breadth each storyline possessed.

The conclusion is end-to-end action. It never lets up. It’s the culmination I had hoped for, but secretly dreaded. I now understand why I delayed for as long as I did before heading out and buying the book. I didn’t want this to end, I was not looking forward to it.

I must congratulate Brandon Sanderson for a job well-done. It couldn’t have been easy, completing a work of this magnitude over the three of books it took. Without changing the tone, without disrupting the flow. The Sanderson Wheel of Time written books stand up to the first books, without loosing Jordan. Personally, I would have been petrified at the prospect for writing in Jordan‘s posthumous shadow.

I really hope that they don’t make a series or movie. But if they do, I hope they don’t change the story or the characters, and they should most definitely not let some animator like Pixar or Disney buy the rights. I don’t think I could bear the thought of an animated, doe-eyed Aes Sedai with a talking parrot skip around the screen to ditsy music ensembles, accompanied by a smitten and clumsy Asha’man.

• What’s better than Doctor Who? Puppet Doctor Who, of course! And, if you like episode one, check out Episode Two, featuring 10 and 11!

• If you’re not in New York (and willing to wait for hours in line), you probably didn’t get to see the Game of Thrones exhibit. Luckily, Tor.com has a write up – with awesome pictures.

• Carrie Vaughn has revealed the cover for the next Kitty Norville book, Kitty in the Underworld. This one features a were-lioness!

• We’ve launched a Wheel of Time® mobile campaign. Text “EPIC” to 555111 to receive facts, trivia, and more.

• Like hanging out with us online? See where else you can find us!

The Tor/Forge newsletter went out this week! Check out these fascinating articles from our authors:

• How I Learned to Stop Grumbling and Love Vampires by Carrie Vaughn
• Mercury, Leeches, and Cutting Holes in People’s Heads by David Walton
• 2013 – The Year of the Virus by Joshua Alan Parry

And, just to make Friday that much sweeter, here’s a list of sweepstakes and sales we have going on!

• Fantasy Collection Sweepstakes (Ends 4/30)
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• eBook Sale: Flying in Place eBook is on sale for $2.99 (Ends 5/1)
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Summary

Elayne approaches Bashere on the east bank of the Alguenya, contemplating the movement of the river, the sense of life that still exists there, and the currents that could pull a woman under the surface.

“How bad is it?” Elayne finally asked.

“Bad,” Bashere said. “I should have realized, burn me. I should have seen.”

“You can’t plan for everything, Bashere.”

“Pardon,” he said, “but that is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Elayne’s army had moved east through the Braem Wood, crossing the Erinin and the Alguenya, and was moving north on the road to Cairhien. But the Shadow had anticipated their move, and scouts reported that an army was marching towards the city.

Perhaps another Waygate was used, perhaps the Myddraal had split their forces and pushed their Trollocs. Either way, Cairhien had been stripped of defenders, was full of refugees, and she didn’t have enough channelers to hold gateways and move her whole army.

Elayne tells Bashere that she has placed her trust in him, that Rand himself placed his trust in him, Bashere says it’s possible, they could march north and slam into the other force immediately, then turn to confront those pursuing them.

“We have to attack and crush that northern army while it is weak; only then could we possibly hold against the southern one. If we fail, the two will smash us between them.”

“It’s a risk we must take,” Elayne said. “Make your plans, Bashere. We’ll make them work.”

~

Egwene stepped into the World of Dreams. The city of Tear was weathered, as were most places in the Dream these days, but the Stone still stood. She sends herself to its heart, to meet with the Wise Ones.

They tell her that Rand must not delay attacking Shayol Ghul much longer, and, more importantly, that no one should use balefire. Melaine creates an image of cracks in the ground, cracks that lead to nothing. Scouts report that such cracks appear where the Dreadlords have been using balefire. The Pattern is being weakened…

Before they depart, Amys tells her they will not be meeting anymore. The armies will all be moving soon. The women embrace, and Egwene wakes in the White Tower.

Rand is there to meet with her, with a gift for her, a hair ribbon. She initially takes offense.

“What? No!” Rand sighed. “Light, Egwene. I want to make amends. You’re like a sister to me; I never had siblings. Or, at least, the one I have doesn’t know me. I only have you. Please, I’m not trying to rile you.”

Egwene’s anger fades, and she takes the ribbon and embraces Rand.

Gawyn asks about his sibling, and Rand reveals that Galad is his half-brother, also assuring Gawyn, though surely he knows, that he is not related to Elayne.

Rand asks to see the seals, and Egwene reluctantly brings them out of her belt pouch. Rand picks one up, and is aghast to realize that it is a fake, all the seals are, that they were switched most likely before they were given to Egwene for safekeeping.

“He has them, Egwene. He’s stolen them back, somehow. The Dark One holds the keys to his own prison.”

~

Mat, reluctantly, allows himself to be fitted for new clothes in the Seanchan fashion, clothes befitting his station.

The newcomer inspected him. Finally someone who would look at him! If only her face did not have the expression of one studying horses at the market.

“Black for his new station,” the woman said, clapping her hands once. “Green for his heritage. A deep forest, in moderation. Someone bring me a variety of eyepatches, and someone else burn that hat.”

“You aren’t burning my hat,” Mat said. “Try, and we’ll bloody well see if you can fly from four stories up. Do you understand me?”

The da’covale begin unclothing Mat as he admires a box of jewels held open for him, snapping out of his shock at the wealth displayed before him to stop them from removing his smallclothes.

He refuses any form of dress aside from military. “We’re at the bloody Last Battle, woman,” Mat said. “If we survive this, you can make me a bloody feast day cap.”

Mat chooses the least ornamental eye patch, and then stands as he’s fitted with his new clothes, long, stiff robes with wide sleeves. He thinks it’s a joke until he sees another commander walk past the door in similar dress.

He grabs his hat and puts it on his head as he goes to leave.

“Honored One,” Nata said. “Please forgive my forwardness, but it is my place to advise on fashion, if you please. That hat looks… particularly out of place with that uniform.”

“Who cares?” Mat said, marching out of the room. He almost had to go through the door sideways! “If I’m going to look ridiculous, I might as well do it with style.”

Discussion

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

Or, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Ok, that’s enough of my cheesy sayings… for now.

Just when it seems things can’t get any worse for our heroes… it does! Imagine that. They have to succeed, after all, they just have to! Right? But how are they going to when things go from difficult to dire?

I think Elayne and Bashere will salvage a victory, both are brilliant and resourceful. And you never know, aid might come at just the right moment. Like in all the great epics.

After all, the Black Tower has been retaken, and we’ve yet to see Androl and Company lately…

~

And now the Pattern is in danger of being weakened!

Question: Why does the Dark One fight so hard for the world, if he’s just going to destroy it?

Various characters have voiced similar concerns throughout, and all they can say is that they’ll never truly know why the Shadow does anything.

Greed? Some perverse enjoyment out of destruction?

Some people just want to watch the world burn, I guess.

The exchange between Rand and Egwene is cute. Hard to believe sometimes she was his first love interest. And now they see each other more as siblings. They bicker like siblings, too.

And Light! But Egwene is prickly. Rand is trying to be cute! And she all but bites his head off.

And, on top of everything else – Elayne facing two armies, the Pattern weakening – now Rand discovers that the seals Egwene holds are fakes!

The odds just keep getting worse.

~

Finally, a Mat scene, and some comic relief in these dire times!

His attachment to that hat! I don’t think this is the first time someone has suggested burning his hat, nor is it the first time he’s threatened someone over his hat.

And telling Nata, “If we survive this, you can make me a bloody feast day cap.”

Like Mat would really replace his hat with a feast day cap, anyway.

And his insistence on wearing it, with his new clothes, against Nata’s advice, is just so… Mat.

And telling her, “If I’m going to look ridiculous, I might as well do it with style.” – well, that belongs in a list of the greatest Mat quotes.

Speaking of the best Mat quotes, I found a post that I really enjoyed here, check it out. Not only does it have Awesome Mat Quotes, but any fellow Mat-loving females will understand why I connect with this post so much.

Chapter 20 – Into Thakan’dar

Summary

Egwene drops a ball of fire on the top of a hill in the center of the Trolloc army. She opens a gateway to the hill, and jumps through with Gawyn and a handful of Aes Sedai, Warders, and soldiers.

The heavy cavalry charged into the valley, opening the way for the foot soldiers. The Trollocs, unbalanced at first, quickly respond with coordinated attacks. Egwene realizes that they must be linked to the Fades again, and the Fades must be hiding. They fall back through the gateway.

Egwene considers how Bryne expected the Shadowspawn to retreat, but they weren’t; they were taking heavy casualties.

“Something’s wrong,” Egwene said, the hairs on her arm standing on end. Her army was in danger. “Gather the Aes Sedai and have the army pull back.”

Romanda hesitates, but Gawyn runs to the command tent to give the orders.

Then, a gateway nearly as wide as the camp itself opened, revealing a strange army. An enormous army.

The glow of saidar surrounded hundreds of women, all of them riding, wearing strange dresses made entirely of stiff black silk.

“Release the Power,” Egwene said, letting go of saidar. “Don’t let them sense you!” She dashed tot he side, Lelaine following, the glow winking out from around her.

Romanda ignored Egwene, letting out a curse. She began weaving a gateway to escape.

A dozen different waves of fire suddenly thrashed the area where Romanda had been standing. The woman didn’t have a chance to scream.

Egwene and Lelaine reach the command tent as Gawyn emerges. She pulls him to the ground, and Lelaine tells them she thinks they are Sharans.

Egwene says that they have to fall back, and Gawyn remarks that he told Bryne to disengage the troops. Egwene realizes that means a gateway will be opened to pass the orders to the battlefield.

At the first sign of channeling in the tent, the Sharan women react immediately.

Gawyn pulls Egwene under the edge of a cart, and covers them with his cloak.

Egwene felt sick. How many were dying, dead? Gawyn caught her arm as he felt her stir, then shook his head, mouthing a few words. Wait until night.

They’re dying! she mouthed.

You can’t help. It was true.

She let Gawyn hold her.

~

Aviendha surveys Shayol Ghul with some of the other Wise Ones and the advance scouts.

She looks down upon the valley: the poisoned water that will kill any who touch it, the forges worked by creatures not dead, yet not alive, the humans huddling in cages, whose blood will be used to temper the weapons.

One could not describe this place. One had to experience it.

Rhuarc and Ituralde consider a course of action. They decide that Rhuarc and the Aiel will attack the Fades and forgeworkers, and Ituralde and his men will hold the pass, so Rand can enter Shayol Ghul safely.

The group returns to Rand.

[Aviendha] stepped up to him, and he moved so that he stood just beside her, his shoulder touching hers. He did not drape an arm around her, and she did not take his hand. He did not own her, and she did not own him. The act of his movement so that they faced the same direction meant far more to her than any other gesture could.

She realizes, sensing his resolve that, he means to defeat Sightblinder, not seal him away again. He tells her she is right.

Aviendha responds that it would be a greater victory if he were to capture his opponent, but Rand does not agree. “I doubt he would submit to that.”

They return to camp, and Rand returns to his tent. Now, Aviendha senses an anxiety in him, and asks what is troubling him. He reveals that the enemy has the seals. Aviendha is shocked.

But Rand has another concern. The Forsaken.

The dagger worked in Shayol Ghul, and it will make it hard for the Dark One to strike at Rand directly, but the Forsaken will be able to see him. And Rand wants Aviendha to lead the channelers, to protect him while he is most vulnerable.

Rand announces his intentions to those gathered close to him.

“Rand,” Nynaeve said. “You are taking Callandor when you attack him? Its weakness… so long as you are channeling into that… thing, anyone can seize control of you. They can use you, and can draw the  One Power through Callandor into you until it burns you out – leaving you powerless, and leaving them with the strength to level mountains, destroy cities.”

“I will take it,” Rand said.

“But it’s a trap!” Nynaeve said.

“Yes,” Rand said, sounding tired. “A trap I must stride into and allow to spring shut upon me.” He laughed, suddenly, throwing his head back. “As always! Why should I be surprised? Spread the word, Nynaeve. Tell Ituralde, Rhuarc, King Darlin. Tomorrow, we invade Shayol Ghul and claim it as our own! If we must put our head into the lion’s mouth, let us make certain that he chokes upon our flesh!”

Discussion

And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse!

Now, Sharans, that sounds familiar… didn’t Graendal mention them at some point, long ago? I think they prized the ability to channel, and would choose their mates to pass the trait along.

No wonder they have so many powerful channelers.

How can Egwene’s army possibly deal with this new threat?

Also, this section really got to me:

Egwene felt sick. How many were dying, dead? Gawyn caught her arm as he felt her stir, then shook his head, mouthing a few words. Wait until night.

They’re dying! she mouthed.

You can’t help. It was true.

Have you ever seen something happen, or even just known something was happening, and it’s so wrong that it just enrages you, but you’re helpless to do anything about it?

I think we’ve all felt that way to an extent, obviously not to the extent that Egwene is dealing with, with her whole army possibly being slaughtered while she huddles under a cart, ashamed of not helping, yet knowing that should she try to help, she would essentially be throwing her life away.

~

Shayol Ghul… what a lovely place, isn’t it? Who would want to take a nice long vacation there… swim in the poisoned water, help temper the new blades with their blood…

Ugh.

I’ve always liked Aviendha. I just… understand her. For the most part, anyway.

There are things in life that simply can’t be described, they must be experienced. All the details in the world can’t take the place of actually experiencing something for yourself. And you never really know yourself until you’re put into such experiences. Be it war, love, hate…

Also, the way Rand stands beside her, and the way she views the gesture… it’s nice. They’re there are equals. Not just lovers. There’s a slight difference in Aiel relationships, from other relationships. The Aiel are truly independent. Their relationships in no way define who they are.

I love how Rand knows he is walking right into a trap, but that it’s really his only option. It’s crazy, it’s noble. And yet, sane. Rand does know what he’s doing this time.

As I’ve said before, he’s truly the person he needs to be to triumph.

Though in this genre we write about the fantastic, the stories work best when there is solid grounding in our world. Magic works best for me when it aligns with scientific principles. Worldbuilding works best when it draws from sources in our world. Characters work best when they’re grounded in solid human emotion and experience.

Being a writer, then, is as much about observation as it is imagination.