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Archive for High fantasy

The Wheel of Time (TV)

Jan04

Show: The Wheel of Time (season 1)

Genre: High Fantasy

Platform: Amazon Original

Watched: Season 1 – January 2022

Summary: Captures much of the flavor, but flawed

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Everyone here know that I’m a huge fantasy fan. And of course I’ve read the entire Wheel of Time book series. It’s been awhile though, as I started reading somewhere in the mid 90s and then book by book as they came out. It’s an interesting series as I LOVED it for a while, then it hit a slow point, then rebounded, then got really glacial toward the end. Problematically after a while the number of (often unimportant) characters ballooned to almost ludicrous levels. I have some discussion on the blog here of one of the later novels but this review is about the 2021 television adaption.

Said live action adaption is a bit of a mixed bag.

The Good

The casting is generally excellent and the acting very good. Moiraine, Lan, Egwene, Loial, Liandrin, and Mat in particular stand out. The core group is pretty good, although aged up to young adult (in the novel they are perhaps 16). This is a decent choice but leaves one with a slightly different feel. However, the essential traits of most of the characters do shine through.

The Aes Sedai are well handled. The White Tower and its feuding inhabitants are one of my favorite parts of the novels and I feel that the show began to capture this fairly well. It’s not exactly the same, and they certainly aren’t revealed it in the same order — as the books don’t introduce a lot of this until later — but I have no problem with this being moved forward. We also get a solid sense of the Warder Bond and some sense as to the nature of the One Power. Still, we could have had more.

The essential feel of the world is decently, if not perfectly brought to life. This includes its magic, complexity, relatively high population (compared to say Middle Earth), etc.

The look of the world, particularly the landscapes, buildings, and cities is generally excellent and feels big, different, and generally beautiful. Costumes are more of a mixed bag, but generally pretty good.

 

The Bad

The worst thing about the entire show was the studio’s choice to skimp on the number of episodes. The show-runners said they wanted 10. They got 8. This is a long book, 782 pages to be exact, and they clearly needed the extra two. They barely got through the bare minimum amount of plot needed and badly slashed character development. The core five (Rand, Egwene, Mat, Perrin, and Nynaeve) got particularly shafted. The boys most of all. The actors all did a solid job with their characters but they just didn’t have enough scenes.

Some odd changes clash with the core lore of the world. A big one here is the idea espoused for most of the season that any of the core 5 could be the Dragon Reborn. It just couldn’t be a girl. Makes no sense with the central notion that a major aspect of the Dragon is his exposure to the male half of the source and its madness inducing corruption. This isn’t some minor nuance. And there was no good reason for this change. Egwene and Nynaeve are plenty powerful, interesting, and complex without this silly wrinkle.

The first episode, particularly the first half (pre trolloc) is weak. It just doesn’t do a good job introducing the characters. The insertion (and rapid removal) of Perrin’s “wife” is particularly odd.

Barney Harris’ Mat decided to leave the production for personal reasons 6 out of 8 episodes in. This leads to the abrupt departure of his character and to Perrin taking over his role in Episode 7/8 in a way that is inconsistent with the longterm story. It probably helped screw up the last episode. Clearly covid also played a role here as the last episodes showcase most of the characters weirdly placed into their own scenes and lamely grafted together by the editors.

The final episode, particularly its second half, is flawed and confusing. The major deviations from the books are weird and pointless: Nynaeve’s “resurrection”, Loial’s maybe death, Moiraine maybe stilling, Rand’s totally lame “big fight,” the Perrin/Mat swap out. Only a devoted reader would have even the slightest clue about the who/what/why of Ishamael toward the end. And it’s not even Ishamael in the books. At best, they might assume he is the Dark One himself.

The ability of the show to teach a naive (non book reading) viewer about the very complex world is quite poor. There is a lot going on here, and while the show does elude to many aspects, it is rarely explicit enough. I’m sure that naive viewers will be utterly baffled by many aspects. Part of this was time crunch, but they just needed more scenes with Moiraine (or others) showing the core crew how things worked.

 

The Weird

I do have to stop for a second and comment as usual on the “woke” multiracial aspect of the casting. It’s very explicit. Most of the actors are non-white. Unusually, even for woke productions, there are a good number of central Asians and Indians. Pretty much a total scramble of our world’s ethnicities. In of itself, I have no problem with this, the inclusion is great, and because WOT is a fantasy there is clearly nothing “inaccurate” about it per se. However, I did find it distracting for a reason that might be peculiar to me and my sense of world building. Families and villages seem to be heterogeneous. That just feels odd to me unless genetics are different in this world. Parents often seem to be different ethnicities than their children. I just couldn’t help but notice this. I think it would have been better to cluster the casting a bit more by town/city or whatever. For example, the Two Rivers is described (both in the show and the books) as having a narrow and ancient gene pool — and you certainly wouldn’t know it from the casting. The Aes Sedai on the other hand, being recruiting from women all over the continent, could be realistically mixed without issue. For what it’s worth, there was also a bit of an Indian slant to some of the production design (architecture in Tar Valon, tinker food, etc) which is unusual. This was interesting (in a good way).

Rand, despite being the protagonist and the sole POV character of the first novel, is given very little screen time, development, or focus until the last episode.

A lot of the “flashbacks” or asides like those of Siuan Sanche, Lews Therin, or Logain feel cheesy and are probably confusing to new viewers.

The visual fx for the One Power are weird. It’s all the same smokey strands. It’s different, but I’m not sure it works.

The incredibly important sense of dread and foreboding that should have been evoked by the Fades, Trollocs, and Forsaken is essentially squandered. Forsaken are barely even mentioned. This problem is mostly a matter of poor direction, vfx, and editing. Partially it’s crappy writing. This was handled MUCH better in the books and should have been even better in televisions vision medium. Lord of the Rings does a great job with the same. The Ring Wraiths are incredibly chilling, radiating evil. Sadly, the same can not be said in WOT. A few terrifying glimpses of the fades before the Trolloc attack (like in the books) would have gone a long way, as would have proper visual and auditory fx.

This 20 year old clip from The Fellowship of the Ring shows a masterful command of horror, and a lot of it is due to subtle details (like the bugs), the camera work, and the soundtrack. The directors and editors of WOT clearly have no knack for horror. Peter Jackson on the other-hand, for all his flaws, comes out of a horror background. WOT isn’t a horror story, but supernatural horror is an important element of “dark lord” fantasy and it’s completely botched in this adaption.


Loial’s Ogier look is just plain lame and weird — and nothing like the books. Hammed Animashaun’s portrayal of the character, however, is spot on.

General alterations and condensing of the timeline even for this fairly linear first novel didn’t bother me much. Yeah they knocked out several major locations like Caemlyn, Whitebridge etc but this was probably necessary given the 782 page -> 8 episode compression.

Overall, I enjoyed the show, particularly after the first episode, and I look forward to the second season, but it could just have been so much better.

Check out more TV reviews

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By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: Amazon Studios, Epic Fantasy, High fantasy, Robert Jordan, season 1, Television, The Wheel of Time

Revenge is Best Served Cold

Aug20

uk-orig-best-served-coldTitle: Best Served Cold

Author: Joe Abercrombie

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 640 pages

Read: July 21-31, 2014

Summary: fun revenge fantasy

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Best Served Cold is a stand alone fantasy set in the same world as his more ambitious First Law trilogy. None of the main characters or plot from that larger work appear in this novel, but a whole host of minor characters do, often in much expanded roles and the overall style and tone are very similar.

First a note about that. This is very adult fantasy with its share of graphic sex and a whole lot of gritty violence. In fact, one of the great pleasures of Abercrombie is his strength at describing combat. He loves both sieges (all four of his books I’ve read feature them), duels, and melees. He has a particular knack for blow by blow combat — literarily. He doesn’t spare you the crunch of bone, the spray of blood, but makes it seem very accurate and visceral. His protagonists take a beating — again literally — and come out worse for the wear (if sometimes swift recovering). Each battle has its clever turns and reversals. The only thing you can expect is a bit of the unexpected.

This is also fantasy without a ton of life saving, healing, resurrecting magic. What magic there is is mostly used for disguise, or more often as more amped up lethal methods of slayage. All this makes the stakes fairly high.

Abercrombie is also a very good prose smith. He has a particular style, full of stylistic word repeats, witty turns, and a sort of darkly comic tone. Don’t get me wrong, these are pretty serious books, but the tone is a bit ironic. His characters are extremely interesting, highly flawed, sometimes self aware, and often quite amusing. Best Served Cold‘s prose is just ever so less slick than  the First Law, and somehow its tone just a tiny bit less sarcastic. Then again, maybe it’s just the absence of Glokta, a character from the longer books who really is exquisitely crafted (and darkly funny).

Like the bigger work, there are multiple POV characters. The story is told in rapidly shifting tight first person. Some of the characters are more likeable than others, but all are pretty fun to read. The opening chapters are very effective in particular with Monza, a female mercenary captain, who in the first few pages is betrayed and horribly maimed. Abercrombie loves a good crippling and swiftly builds sympathy for her this way — but then he throws it mostly to the side by avoiding her POV for quite some time. The story still focuses on her, but its told by others. This felt like a significant lost opportunity.

There are also a lot of reoccurring themes and even “types” of characters. Shivers, along with Monza the most important character, shares a great deal in common with Logen Ninefingers. Say one thing of Joe Abercrombie, say he’s consistent.

Overall, a fabulous fantasy action book with very human characters, but just a hair less great than the First Law trilogy. Also, while the novel is quite stand alone, it does explain/reveal elements of the world already explained/revealed in the earlier books, and certain major plot motivations could seem extremely mysterious to those reading it first.

For more book reviews, click here.

Best_Served_Cold_by_Joe_Abercrombie_Interior_Number_Two

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By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Best Served Cold, Book, Book Review, First Law, High fantasy, Joe Abercrombie

Words of Radiance

Aug06

17332218Title: Words of Radiance [1, 2]

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Genre: High Fantasy

Size: 1088 pages!

Read: 6/30-7/8 2014

Summary: Great followup

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After a 3+ year hiatus, I return to Brandon Sanderon’s epic fantasy world. And if any new fantasy can be considered epic, it’s certainly this one. Planned at 10 books the first two are each over 1,000 pages! But don’t let that scare you off. For fantasy lovers this is some serious entertainment.

As I mentioned in my review of the first volume, that book possessed some (minor) structural problems partially addressed in this excellent followup. Two point of view characters (Kaladin and Shallan) dominate the narrative, and while last time the ratio was about 70/30 it’s now closer to 50/50. This improvement feels more balanced. Both stories are gripping and don’t let up — during those parts I didn’t want to put the book down even for a minute. There is a small percentage of the story told from the POV of other major players. While not quite as good, these at least remained in the same theatre of action. Unfortunately a few “interludes” with one-off stories from people all over the world remain. These stand outside the main narrative flow and are a tad annoying. As an editor I probably would have cut/shortened most — but they aren’t too long.

I loved these books, but be aware this is no Game of Thrones with a fairly realistic world. It’s alien. Full of strange creatures, terms, politics, magics and a dizzying and complex mythology that is as mysterious to the characters as to us. Therein lies one of Sanderson’s many strengths as he doles out the answers to the mysteries at a satisfying rate without giving away the whole kit and caboodle. The writing itself is clear, confident, and polished. Not literary exactly, but quite first rate. And for a book with such a byzantine plot and titanic length, highly engaging and fast paced. There is a good amount of action and it’s very well described. The powers of the Shardbearers and Surgebinders are pretty epic and you can really imagine them whirling through the air in complex battles. During the most exciting parts (usually near the end of the various “books” that break up the long story) the various narratives converge and alternate back and forth more rapidly in a tense and well engineered way.

All and all, I’m not sure these books are for everyone as they are imaginative to an extreme, but if you like made up worlds this is one of the best. It’s highly complex, well designed, elegantly plotted, well told, and just a darn fine fantasy read. Few writers have the imaginative scope required to create such an exotic beast. The Stormlight Archive harkens back to Eddings, Jordan during their glory days — but somehow much more modern.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, Brandon Sanderson, Fantasy, High fantasy, Stormlight Archive, Way of Kings, Words of Radiance

Yar Maties – Pirate Fantasy!

Jul17

887877Title: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Author: Scott Lynch

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 786 pages

Read: June 5-22, 2014

Summary: Possibly best of the series

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The first book in this series, The Lies of Locke Lamora, was one of the better novels I read last year. Red Seas picks up right after and avoids Sophomore Slump by switching up the scenario and the location fairly substantially. Our heroes have left their Venice-like hometown of Camorr and venture off to a new city (Tal Verrar) and a new (and even more elaborate) scam with even bigger stakes.

The first third of the novel is Oceans Eleven in the Renaissance, and it’s real good fun. The world is enormously detailed and Scott Lynch is very sharp with the dialog. He has come into his own in this second book, as it’s wittier than ever. There is a very slight overwriting to the style, but you get used to it quickly and the huge novel flies along. The dynamic between Locke and his partner/friend Jean is fabulous and they are very well drawn characters.

This is aided enormously by a series of flashbacks. In the first novel, which also crossed two timelines, it was a little confusing which was which. This time around, Lynch has clearly labeled the flashback chapters. Because the novel begins essentially in the middle of the current heist, these are used to fill in the setup and the complex relationship between the two men. Walking a delicate line, Lynch has to maintain his suspense by NOT telling us how exactly the heist is actually going to work. We are tolled out bits and pieces until the very end.

Then about a third of the way in we take a hard tack to starboard and enter a high seas pirate tale. The entire middle act is shipboard and has less to do (directly) with the heist of the . At first I was like woah, but hell, I like pirates and this was good fun. Somewhere in Lynch’s brain there exists a different novel, about half the length, without the whole pirate part. You can tell this was self indulgent, that he really researched period nautical life and wanted to really use it. From a structural sense, the pirate thing isn’t even necessary, but because this world and its characters are so rich, and it was so fun, I think it’s a net win.

Hell the whole act of reading a fantasy novel is escapist, who cares if it’s too long as it’s a great read — which Red Seas absolutely and definitely is. A pure pleasure and a work of delightful fantasy. Plus, so strong are it’s characters, that it actually has a good bit to say on the nature of friendship.

Oh, and if you really like pirate fantasy two other favorites of mine over the years are On Stranger Tides and Wyvern.

For more book reviews, click here.

Red-Seas-Big

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By: agavin
Comments (4)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, High fantasy, Lies of Locke Lamora, Locke Lamora, pirates, Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch, Venice

Blood Song

Aug28

blood-song-us-coverTitle: Blood Song

Author: Anthony Ryan

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 591 pages

Read: July 23-August 24, 2013

Summary: Excellent, but flawed

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Structurally, this book borrows heavily from The Name of The Wind. It opens with a box story about a famous military man and then slowly dolls out the (first) chapters of his long career, beginning with his schooling. Blood Song is well written, with solid practical prose that doesn’t get in the way. There is none of the elegant and overwrought voice of the aforementioned Rothfus, or the descriptive nuance of Martin, but it’s well written.

Even though the scope is big, this is a more focused story than A Song of Ice and Fire or A Wheel of Time. We follow our single hero fairly tightly (even if his life meanders). Except for the occasional return to the frame story there are no other points of view. Al Sorna, our protagonist, rises within a kind of military-religious brotherhood perhaps most akin to the Knights Templar. The world building is very solid and the author clearly knows something about the late medieval period. There are several religions and nations and they clash in a fairly realistic way.

The overall effect is one I’m still processing. I liked the book. A lot. It’s one of the better epic fantasies I’ve read lately (and that is my favorite genre). The first third is great, during the youth and training of our hero. Some of the characters are excellent. My biggest problem is from about the 50-94% point. Here Al Sorna is commander of a big military expedition and the narrative became a little harder to follow. It’s not that I couldn’t tell what was going on from scene to scene, but they didn’t fit together seamlessly. Unlike the earlier sequences, they also didn’t seem to have the weight that I think the author was intending. There is similar stuff in The Name of The Wind (not so military), but it resonates much more emotionally in that novel.

I’ll explain what I mean. Al Sorna has this “unrequited love of his life” (just like Kvothe and Denna in TNOTW), but their interactions, while fine, lack the heavy sense of tragedy of Rothfus’ superior novel. It’s not bad, but it just comes off a little weak.

The  end of the book is good. There are two big “fights.” But the sequencing felt a bit disconnected. And that’s basically the thing with this novel. It needs editing. The parts are good, but the sum doesn’t reach greatness.

For more book reviews, click here.

As an after-note, I’m a little mystified as to how this book has such incredible ratings on Amazon. At this writing: 1003 total, 863 5-star, 108 4-star, 22 3-star, 7 2-star, and 3 1-star. This is very very slanted toward 4-5 star. Now, it’s got enough good stuff going for it to be a 4 star novel, and epic fantasy unfortunately is full of some serious duds. But an average of 4.8? This is higher than A Game of Thrones which is the best series start in the last 20 years. I can’t help but wonder what weird factor is going on here.

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By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Anthony Ryan, Blood Song, Book Review, Epic Fantasy, High fantasy, Knights Templar, Name of the Wind

The Wretched of Muirwood

Mar25

wretchedTitle: The Wretched of Muirwood

Author: Jeff Wheeler

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 300 pages

Read: March 3-15, 2013

Summary: Great prose, characters, and setup

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The first half of this novel was pure and unadulterated fantasy pleasure. The prose is very good. Descriptive but quick and lively. It’s pretty straight up third-person past, but it has a tinge of the poetic about it.

The story tightly follows Lia, an orphaned kitchen drudge living in an alternate Medieval Abbey. She’s a very lively personality and a lot of fun. There’s an interesting magical/religious system which is about halfway between “hard” and “soft” magic. I’m not going to get into the plot, per se, but this first half is basically of the “something new and strange comes into someone’s life” variety. This part is excellent.

About halfway through the book, this intrusion forces Lia to leave the Abbey and go on a quest. This occupies the second half of the novel and in the end the secret of her parentage is more or less revealed. There was nothing seriously wrong with this second half and I read it easily enough, but it somehow lacked the visceral grab that the setup did. Putting on my structural hat, I’d have to guess that the problem was one of drama and complication. There are complications, but they just sort of pop up and are resolved one way or another without a tremendous amount of agency from the protagonist. I’m excepting the final confrontation, which while abbreviated, did have said agency. This is all in contrast to the first half of the book where Lia is extremely proactive, even if it got her in trouble.

But there could be other factors. In the first half, she’s pretty sharp tongued, but this takes a back burner outside the Abbey.

I admit to sometimes having this “second act” myself, as it’s hard to both adhere to the plot target and simultaneously make the protagonist proactive rather than reactive. Still, it robbed Wretched of some drama. I felt less engaged.

There is also the possibility that it’s all me, as I seem to be having this problem in recent years where I enjoy the first act and not the second or third. Maybe I’m jaded. But this complaint aside, Wretched is still one of the better fantasies I’ve read in some time. It’s more personal (and shorter) than the traditional epic novel, but that seems to be a trend in this new e-book centric age.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Fantasy, Fiction, High fantasy, Jeff Wheeler, The Wretched of Muirwood

The Godling Chronicles: The Sword of Truth

Feb25

The_Godling_Chronicles cover3Title: The Godling Chronicles: Book One (The Sword of Truth)

Author: Brian D. Anderson

Genre: YA Epic Fantasy

Length: 344 pages

Read: February 2-15, 2013

Summary: Fun teen epic fantasy

 

Recently, I’ve noticed a lot of epic fantasy novels in the Kindle top sellers, and taking a look at the epic fantasy category list many are Indie publications. This being my favorite genre, I figured I’d give some a try.

The Godling Chronicles: The Sword of Truth (don’t confuse with Terry Goodkind’s series of that name) adheres to many of the classic tropes: a sort of Indie The Book of Three meets The Eye of the World. Plotwise, we have a kind of Dark Lord, and we have a young guy from the country with a destiny. He has a mentor, he goes on a journey. There are girls (but no sex – boo!). The (relatively) unique element is that he’s really a god — albeit a reduced in-human-form god who doesn’t know it.

I liked this book, and if I were 13-14 again, I’d have loved it. The plot is straightforward but fine and it’s actually a bit refreshing harkening back to those classic “Shanara type” fantasies of the 80s. With the exception of the brief prologue, the narrative sticks tightly to a single protagonist and that keeps the pace up. As an added bonus, the story was co-written by the author’s 9-10 year-old son, which is very cool.

It’s not a long novel, 344 pages, and represents an opening salvo, more of a “first part” than a traditional “giant chunk” like a Wheel of Time book. This is fine, as it’s inexpensive and you can just download part 2 when you get there. I actually like that changes in publishing are allowing for more flexibility of form.

But I do have a few problems with the mechanics. The sentence work itself is fine. Workman like, but never awkward. However, the novel is simultaneously both over and underwritten. Let’s start with the under part. The book is written in 3rd person omni with no strong narrative voice and a focus on a few of the characters. Fine. But, the author mainly uses two tricks from his narrative toolbox to advance the plot: dialog and inner dialog. There is some action, but it’s fairly thinly painted. There is almost no narrative description, or description at all for that matter. This keeps the story lean and moving, but leaves us with a very thin sense of place and world. We pass through several cities and various countryside, but I was left with no particular sense of any of them. Most of the words are devoted to conversation and almost all plot points are revealed (and re-revealed) this way.

Which comes to the overwriting part, which isn’t so much at the sentence or fragment level (this, as I said, was decent) but occurred as (often) characters felt the urge to repeat news and revelations to new parties. Of course this happens in real life, but as a reader, once we know something we don’t usually need to hear it again. This is a first novel, and probably not HEAVILY edited, so I expect this kind of thing has improved by book 2, but in general fictional dialog (in books, movies, TV, etc) is like a facsimile of real dialog. It gets the point across in an ideally witty way (probably with more arguing than in real life) and stripped of a lot of the glue that real conversations contain. Those mechanics like “hello” “how are you?” and “Meet me at the fountain.” “You mean the one past the statue around the corner from the butcher shop?” “No the other one, um, um, past the Inn with the greenish turtle sign and the tree that got hit by lightning the other year.” I.e. Stuff we don’t really care about.

The whitespace style in this book is very horizontal (i.e. few line feeds) and I think actually having more can make this sort of thing clearer to author and reader alike. Each line must strive to say something new — ideally even several new things. These things can be plot points, details about the world, revelations of character, or general nuance. If a line can’t defend its right to exist, several ways, well as Faulkner said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

But that being said, if you’re a young fantasy fan, The Sword of Truth is still a fun little romp. It’s straightforward, and unapologetic about the genre. That’s fine with me. I’ve got nothing against some good Dark Lord action.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, High fantasy, Literature, reviews, Reviews and Criticism, Sword of Truth

The Way of Shadows

May03

Title: The Way of Shadows

Author: Brent Weeks

Genre: Fantasy

Length: 688 pages

Read: March 23-24, 2012

Summary: Great epic fantasy!

_

Despite the cheesy “hooded dude” cover, this was a great bit of epic fantasy. It was recommended by a twitter follower and turned out to be one of the better “classic medieval fantasy” books I’ve read in recent years. Certainly the best since I found The Name of the Wind in 2008.

Weeks borrows heavily and to good effect from 80s fantasy tropes. This is city fantasy, almost entirely set in a corrupt capital. Our protagonist is a young boy who apprentices with a deadly “wetboy” (assassin who uses magical powers). The prose is clean and workmanlike, sometimes even modern and flip. Weeks doesn’t bother to make anything sound too medieval, in fact, it’s so modern as to sometimes sound anachronistic. Still, despite the length, the novel is not overwritten and the writing doesn’t get in the way of the excellent storytelling and world building.

For fantasy  fans, this book is an appealing ride. We have good characters, sordid and ambiguous underworld figures. We have a well conceived world with detailed and engaging political intrigue. We have a decent, albeit minimalist, magical system. And we have a lot — I mean a real lot — of very well written action scenes. Weeks is a great writer of physical action and he uses it to good effect. This book contains fight after fight. Plus lots of sneaking around. And it’s not overdone. Each individual skirmish is compact enough, well integrated into the intricate plot, and brilliantly executed.

Again, despite the length, this makes for a breakneck pace and near total immersion into the seedy underworld. The book is pretty dark too, with some serious abuse in the early chapters. It’s not A Song of Ice and Fire dark, but there is some good insight into the nature of meanness. Bravo. The adventures continue into two sequels.

For more book reviews, click here.

Or read about my own historical fantasy novel here.

Related posts:

  1. The Wise Man’s Fear
  2. The Name of the Wind
  3. Inside Game of Thrones
  4. Book Review: The Way of Kings
  5. Book Review: The Gathering Storm
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Book Review, Brent Weeks, Fantasy, Fiction, High fantasy, Name of the Wind, Song of Ice and Fire, The Way of Shadows

A Dance With Dragons

Jul24

Title: A Dance With Dragons

Author: George R. R. Martin

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Length: 959 pages, circa 400,000 words

Read: July 12-23, 2011

Summary: Awesome, but not without issues.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

My charge through book 5 of Martin’s epic fantasy series was a bit drawn out by my need to concentrate on the second draft of my new novel Untimed, but I finally finished. Before I launch in, it should be noted that this review is full of spoilers.

Dance is huge, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages. This itself is actually a welcome and comforting fact because these books are something to savor. Overall, I would rate this volume as better than A Feast of Crows and slightly worse than the first three. Still, it’s a fantastic book. Prose-wise, Martin is still a master at both people, places, plotting and reversals. It’s just that this book suffers from a few pacing and structural issues.

Most of these stem from his controversial decision to pull out half the characters from the bloated manuscript of Feast and push them into Dance by themselves. So the first two thirds of the new book is everyone who didn’t get a turn in Feast. Now, for the most part, this saved the best for last. Dany, Jon, and Tyrion make up the bulk of the book, particularly this first two thirds, and they are some of my favorite characters. But overall this leaves both Feast and Dance feeling a little more threadbare than the first three books. Personally I think he would have been much better off winding out the story chronologically, trimming out some useless threads (Aeron Damphair, Victarion, and probably the Dornes), and rearranging the plot so as to have some kind of sub-climax at the end of each book.

As it is, Dance reads excellently for the first 2/3, feeling fairly focused on its three mains. But it’s weird to rewind in time and revisit certain happenings from Feast from the other side (for example Sam leaving the Wall). When we get to the cut off point, however, some of the characters from Feast start to weave back in. This mostly has the effect of slowing the narrative and making it more diffuse. At least until the set of cliffhangers and deaths that come in the final chapters.

I also think that Martin is letting his pacing slip a bit. It’s not that each chapter isn’t entertaining and well written — they are — but many threads there have multiple chapters where the happenings could’ve been collapsed without loss. If we hadn’t known a few of those details were there, we would never have missed them. Worse than the pacing issues, however, is a weirdly increasing fondness for skipping some of the big moments. Now Martin has always done that (the Red Wedding, the “death” of Bran & Rickon, etc) but it’s worse than ever. He has a real tendency to build slowly toward a big event, then skip the event itself, showing what happened to the characters obliquely through other eyes at a much later point.

I’m going to go through some of my opinions and analysis thread by thread.

Prologue

I don’t really understand why fantasy authors are obsessed with these. It was kind of interesting, but didn’t advance anything.

Jon

His thread is fine (until the end), but it does feel a bit static. While he’s certainly grown into command, he mostly sits back at the wall and fields interference between factions (Stannis, his queen, the Red Priestess, the Wildlings) etc. Then at the end, he mysteriously decides to rush off to Winterfell. This is a move that makes no sense as he has refused to enter into family entanglements about six times before, and while he is goaded, there is really less at stake for him. Then out of nowhere comes a reaction to this decision that leaves us in a bad cliffhanger. Boo.

Tyrion

The Imp is funny as always and now I can hear Peter Dinklage cracking each and every droll line. Still his thread is also a little dragged out, although it does involve some great sightseeing and is certainly entertaining all along. In the first part of the book it feels like he (and everyone else) is heading toward Dany, but then he gets within inches and turns back. Using him to introduce us to Griff and “Young Griff” is however an excellent device and works much better than an extra POV would have. It is mostly through Tyrion and Dany that we get a sense of the complex and old slave societies of the mainland. Unlike Westeros which feels like late Medieval England, these realms feel more like the ancient east (perhaps an updated Babylon vibe).

Dany

Her chapters are mostly political. She does feel a bit passive. I don’t really understand why she doesn’t try to get a handle on her dragons earlier, this is obviously a key move which could trump all of her political problems. Instead she dicks around (literally and figuratively) with various factions. This is all fairly entertaining, but feels like treading water. Then “a big event occurs” (at least this one is on screen) and she rides off on Drogon. That’s all great, but her narrative disappears until the last chapter. When it returns nothing is resolved at all, but a new out of the blue cliffhanger is introduced. I do really like the world of Meereen and the slave cities, although it feels like we are lingering here a bit long.

Barristan

The hero serves to replace Dany as the POV in Meereen. He’s actually a great POV character with all his lingering thoughts about events during and before Robert’s Rebellion. I really enjoyed his chapters. But they didn’t come to any resolution.

Theon

The hier to the seastone chair returns to us, a few bits worse for the wear. I hated Theon in books 2 & 3, but I enjoyed his chapters immensely here. His transformation into Reek and back again is very deftly handled, with a very proper (and sordid) period quality. It isn’t for no reason that Tarantino used the phrase “medieval on his ass” and that is exactly what the Bastard of Bolton has done to Theon. His pseudo redemption is good. Still, we have classic Martin avoidance of the action with the actual escape from Winterfell. In the cut between Theon jumping from the wall into the snows and his delivery to his sister is a big blank. Not that we needed the travel, but whatever battle happened at Winterfell needed some detailing.

Asha

I could have lived without her POV. It mostly serves to fill in some parts of Stannis’s story when he leaves the wall. The technique is sketchy and I ended up having no idea what really happened during his brutal snowy march and the seige of Winterfell. This I thought was the weakest part of the book structurally, as I’m basically confused.

Quentin and the Dornes

Cut! Dull for the most part, except for some info about the cultures they traveled through. I couldn’t have cared less for these characters. The attempt to steal a dragon was interesting, but was also vaguely described. I’m thinking that Martin, for all his brilliance as a character and world builder, isn’t actually the best at action scenes.

The Dorne chapter back in Dorne: It was okay, but we didn’t really need it.

Jaime

This sucked. I like Jaime’s POVs, but this single chapter had a bunch of crap, followed by one of those annoying Martin reveals that just serve to highlight the gap in information. Brienne returns and they ride off. You don’t find out how she escaped her predicament, what she knows, anything. It just kinda sucked. The effect of her cliffhanger was entirely spoiled.

Cersei

These were pretty good, and I enjoyed seeing her get hers. Martin certainly knows how to throw in the creepy little details so your mind fills in the rest.

Victarion

Cut! I could have lived without these, and they basically just told you he was heading off to Dany with a horn and a Red Priest. Although he’s better than his brother — I’d take any chapter over Aeron Damphair.

Arya

These were great. I have no idea where they’re going, but that’s fine. Arya has always been one of my favorites. Give us more. To be honest it felt like these were the chapters that should have gone in Feast and this the conclusion that book should have had for Arya’s thread. Probably that was Martin’s original plan.

Bran

His chapters were good, but so little, and it all felt dropped as his last chapter is about midway in the book.

Davos

I’ve never been a fan. I think we could have just had these told by raven.

Epilogue

This was actually very good, really being a Kevan in King’s Landing chapter in disguise. I loved the return of Varys at the end — particularly his dialog.

Some observations: There is more magic of sorts in this volume. Martin has a real thing for nubile slave girls — but then again, what self respecting fantasist doesn’t? The scope of this book, with it’s gigantic foreign cities reminiscent of the ancient world is going to make for some hard adapting should the TV series get this far. As I noted in my series reviews the show already has problems with handling large scale people scenes. These slave cities and the like will make that even harder. Likewise with the slave sex and slave violence. I’m all over it (in fiction) but some of it will undoubtedly have to be cut/changed. Sigh. I like that Martin at least highlights some of the sad reality of actually being a nubile slave girl.

Overall, Martin’s books are among my all-time favorite novels. I enjoyed the book immensely, and eagerly await the the next volume (and I’m sure I’ll be waiting for a long time), but I can’t help but think it could have been SO much better if Martin had taken all the material in both Feast and Dragons and reedited them together into two chronological and slightly leaned down volumes.

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Related posts:

  1. Inside Game of Thrones
  2. Game of Thrones – Episode 5
  3. Game of Thrones – The Houses
  4. Game of Thrones – Episode 2
  5. Game of Thrones – Episode 3
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: A Dance with Dragons, A Feast for Crows, A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords, Fantasy, Fiction, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, High fantasy, Major houses in A Song of Ice and Fire, Novel, Novel Review, novels, Peter Dinklage, Television program

The Wise Man’s Fear

Mar14

Title: The Wise Man’s Fear

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Genre: High Fantasy

Length: 380,000 words, 1000 pages

Read: March 4-12, 2011

Summary: A worthy sequel.

_

The Wise Man’s Fear is one of 2011’s two most anticipated Fantasy novels, the other being George R. Martin‘s A Dance with Dragons (due in July). WMF, however, can be all yours right now. It’s the sequel to The Name of the Wind (which I REVIEW HERE). This is High Fantasy of a rather less epic sort. Not that it’s any less fun to read, even weighing in as it does at 1008 hardcover pages. Although, who thinks about pages these days, as I read the Kindle version on my iPad (wouldn’t want to mess up that nice hardcover first edition I had signed by Mr. Rothfuss last week!).

Despite the length, it’s well worth it. This book is seamless with the first in the series, despite the four years gap between their publication. I read The Name of the Wind a second time last week, and WMF picks up and continues with exactly the same style and pace. There is still the box story in the present, but this accounts for no more than 5% of the pages. The action mostly takes place in the past with our hero, Kvothe, continuing on for a bit at University and then venturing out into the wider world. While we sense that some bigger events are in the works, this is still a very personal tale. And it defies all normal story telling expectations in that it just meanders along. My editor’s eye says that whole chunks and side plots could be snipped out without effecting anything. And to a certain extent this is true. But would the novel be better for it? Perhaps it could have lost 50-100 pages in line editing, but I’m not sure I’d take out any of the incidents. As the novel itself says, it’s not the winning of the game, but the playing of it that matters.

That is very much what The Wise Man’s Fear is about. It’s a story about stories. It’s rich and lyrical, a luxurious tapestry of world and story, without the distraction of the intricate mechanism of plot. The little glimpses into different sub-cultures show a deft eye for details and invention. This feels like a real place, not so much explained, but revealed through the narrator’s eyes.

As Rothfuss said in an interview, Kvothe is  older now, and he gets himself into more trouble. There’s more sex and violence this time out, although the main romance is still endlessly unrequited 🙂 Kvothe it seems, is a hero of many talents, and that includes those in the bedroom. Rothfuss doesn’t focus on these details gratuitously, it’s not a book filled with battle (or bedroom scenes).

I’m curious to see how Rothfuss wraps this up in the third book (and I suspect the trilogy might expand). Things still feel early. We find out barely anything new about the main villains. In fact they don’t even show in this volume. Just like the first book the end is completely limp and anti-climatic. Kvothe just wraps his story up for the day and we wait (hopefully for slightly less than four years).

But I’ll be waiting. Probably for so long that I’ll have to read book one and two again. I won’t mind.

Related posts:

  1. The Name of the Wind
  2. Short Story: The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
  3. Book Review: Lost It
  4. Book Review: The Windup Girl
  5. Book Review: XVI (read sexteen)
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Arts, Book, Book Review, books, Fantasy, Fiction, George R. Martin, High fantasy, Literature, Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss, Wise Man's Fear

The Name of the Wind

Mar04

Title: The Name of the Wind

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Genre: High Fantasy

Length: 255,000 words, 720 pages

Read: May 2008 & Feb 28-Mar 2, 2011

Summary: Best new fantasy of recent years.

_

In 2008, I read this 722 page novel in Xian China during a single sleepless night, and I reread it just now for the second time in preparation for the sequel (released this week): The Wise Man’s Fear. NOTW is a beautiful book. Of all the Fantasy I’ve read in the last 15 or so years, this is perhaps second best after The Song of Ice and Fire. But that’s not to say that they have much in common, other than both being good Fantasy. George R. Martin‘s books are full of characters, POVs, violence, politics, and a darkly realistic sensibility. NOTW is much more focused and relies on more traditional Fantasy tropes. How focused can a 700 page novel be? Not very, but it is good, and it concentrates on a small number of characters and a single (albiet meandering) storyline.

Kvothe is the protagonist. He’s a young man of many many talents, of no means whatsoever, who winds his way from the actor’s troupe to the mean streets to the magical University and to (implied) great and terrible things.

If I have any beef with the book, it’s that the meta premise of the tired hero telling his story is too drawn out. This volume opens in the “present day,” where very little happens except to set us up for the life story of the hero, which is brilliant. Much like Lord of the Rings or Hyperion, the reader must slog for a bit to get to the gold. In this case about 50 pages in. But the slogging isn’t exactly painful because Rothfuss’s prose is lyrical and masterful. Seriously, it’s a wonder given the tangents, bloated conversations (the dialog is great but not efficient), and the like that this book is so easy to read — but it is. Damn easy, even the second time.

The world and the hero juggle uniqueness and heavy — but delicious — borrowing from classic Fantasy of the best sort. I sniffed out a bit of Ursula K. Le Guin (think Wizard of Earthsea), Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time), and who knows how many others. The world is extremely well developed, and feels big, but it doesn’t doesn’t have the camp and cheese of Wheel of Time (although it does pay homage). I love origin stories and I very much enjoyed Kvothe’s journey. He’s a great character: humble, proud, skilled, lucky, unlucky all at once, but in a fairly believable way. Perhaps the most important relationship in the book (and there are actually relatively few) is the romance, and it has a tragic quality that feels very refreshing, and slightly reminiscent of the best of Orson Scott Card (think his old stuff like Song Master) or Dan Simmons.

The magic is very unique and interesting, and we focus on it quite a bit, as this is a story that spends a lot of time in the Arcane Academy. This ain’t no Hogwarts either, it feels altogether more mysterious and dangerous. There are several different magic systems interwoven in what is a world overall fairly light on magic. But this is also a world that feels a bit more technological than most Fantasy, with larger cities, a little more like antiquity than the Middle Ages. The “magical bad guys” have a nice character and bit of mystery to them. I don’t like all my mystery explained. There is a lot of music and theatre in here too, and that just helps heighten the lyricism.

But what exactly makes this book so good?

Proving my geek-cred, swapping some Crash Bandicoots for signatures with Patrick Rothfuss

Fundamentally I think Rothfus is just a great writer, and a very good world builder. I don’t think he’s a great plotter. The story drifts along, relies a bit on coincidence and circumstance, and the end fizzles then pops back out of the interior story and waits for the sequel. But that doesn’t really matter, because the prose, world, and characters keep you enjoying every page.

CLICK HERE for my review of the sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear.

Related posts:

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  2. Book Review: The Gathering Storm
  3. Book Review: Uglies
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  5. Book Review: The Lightning Thief
By: agavin
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Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Arts, Book, Book Review, books, Dan Simmons, Fantasy, Fiction, George R. Martin, High fantasy, Kingkiller Chronicle, Literature, Lord of the Rings, Name of the Wind, Orson Scott Card, Patrick Rothfuss, reviews, Robert Jordan, Ursula K. Le Guin, Wheel of Time, Wise Man's Fear, Wizard of Earthsea

Book Review: The Gathering Storm

Oct24
The Gathering Storm

Cover via Amazon

Title: The Gathering Storm

Author: Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Genre: High Fantasy

Read: Late Sept 2010

_

Summary: Recommended only to the very determined WOT fan. If you haven’t read any of them, read Eye of the World, since it is very good.

After reading the rather enjoyable The Way of Kings I figured I’d finally return to the latest in the world’s longest running Fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, also known to us long time fans as The Wheel of Tedium. Sure the first five or so volumes were amazing, but now at twelve, plus a prequel, and with each clocking in at around 400,000 words it’s getting a bit… long. First of all, since it had been five years since I read volume eleven (which was decent, and cost me a good chunk of life by motivating me to install World of Warcraft) I had to do a little studying. Even with a partially photographic memory I found that while reading the summaries of books 9-10 online to “bone up” that I couldn’t remember even remember reading 10. Well, maybe a little. Anyway, the cast of characters has grown so vast that no one could be expected to follow it without extensive study if any appreciable time has passed between reading (and eleven was released five years ago). But I began. I forced myself through about 200 pages (no movement in the plot) and found I could only care about the tower thread. This major plot thread, the most important one of this volume, involves Egwene in the White Tower.  I’ve always liked the White Tower, as long as I turn off my sexism detector because the way in which Jordan has always written women — bitchy and he goes to great length to show and tell this point — grows very tedious. For pages 200-500 I read the Egwene chapters (enjoying them immensely, and skimmed most of the other chapters. Eventually, even this became too much and I had to resort to the WOT wiki to read chapter summaries for all the chapters except for Egwene’s and Rand’s, and even Rand’s were pretty painful. To tell the truth, ever since Rand became the Dragon Reborn and big head honcho he hasn’t been that interesting. Being a ridiculously-all-powerful-dude-in-command-of-vast-resources-and-armies leads to scenes that smack of the new Star Wars council or those with Orpheus in the Matrix 2 or 3. If you loved those… read on. Anyway, the Egwene section is a novel in itself, surely over 100,000 words, and is quite good, wrapping up with a big battle at the end. Because I’m a completist, I’ll force myself to skim through volumes thirteen and fourteen to finish the epic, but I doubt I’ll enjoy it. With all my skimming I was able to “read” the whole thing in one day. It was certainly no worse than any of the recent volumes and I was unable to tell where Jordan left off and Sanderson began, it felt authentically Wheel of Tedious.

Related posts:

  1. Book Review: The Way of Kings
  2. About Book Reviews
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: books, Brandon Sanderson, Egwene al'Vere, Fantasy, Fiction, Gathering Storm, High fantasy, reviews, Robert Jordan, The Gathering Storm, Wheel of Time

Book Review: The Way of Kings

Oct24
Cover of

Cover via Amazon

Title: The Way of Kings [1, 2]

Author: Brandon Sanderson

Genre: High Fantasy

Read: Late Sept 2010

Summary: Recommended for High Fantasy fans

_

After finishing the 6th major draft of my own book I decided to tackle this 400,000 word hunk of “light” reading. Sanderson is the relatively young fantasy author who is finishing the late Robert Jordan‘s Wheel of Time series, and this is the first volume of a new massive epic fantasy of his own. Surprisingly, despite its tome-like weight, it was a fast read. Maybe three days, and gripping enough all the way through. Sure, I would have chopped about 30,000 words worth of interlude chapters involving completely irrelevant characters, and the beginning has the requisite boring high fantasy prelude, but the bulk of the book hauls right along. Probably about 2/3 of it is centered on the life of a slave in a vast military camp. This has a detailed personal feel that is highly engaging. Although there is a reasonably satisfying sub-conclusion, this is clearly a setup for a very long story and highly introductory. There is an interesting magic system and overall world mythos. The magic does borrow really obviously from his own Mistborn series — where I had found it extremely novel — but it’s still good. Overall, the book works, at least for the avid fantasy reader.

My review of the sequel, Words of Radiance, is here.

Related posts:

  1. About Book Reviews
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: books, Brandon Sanderson, Fantasy, Fiction, High fantasy, reviews, The Way of Kings, Way of Kings
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