Adult Fantasy: The Way of Kings By Brandon Sanderson

About the Book: Roshar is a world dominated by weather. Powerful, enchanted Highstorms sweep across the land with such fierceness and regularity that the plants have evolved to retract into the ground to avoid them. The energy of the storms provide powerful magic to Roshar's citizens and captured Stormlight can be used for everything from adding value to money to making legendarily powerful weapons and armor.

Kaladin is a brilliant soldier betrayed by his commander and sold into slavery for knowing too much. Shallan is a minor noble and talented artist who can capture a scene with a glance and duplicate it hours later, who's family no longer has enough money to survive, has a daring plan to steal a powerful magical item to try to save her family. Following the assassination of the king, and six years of war with the people who sent the assassin, Kaladin and Shallan must each risk everything just to stay alive.

My Thoughts: This book is massive, over 400k words and over 1000 pages. It is the first book of a ten book series, but it is amazingly written and the story is masterfully crafted. The characters are vibrant and leap off the page even if the background is more sparse than one typically finds in fantasy. The setting reminds me of the seafloor just without the water.

Part Lighting Thief, part Ben-Hur there is a lot of action and adventure. While not quite the page turner that Goodkind's Sword of Truth was for me, this book is definitely one of my favorites and I will be eagerly awaiting each new addition to this series. I have not spotted any major flaws other than perhaps its length, and a desire to see a few of the background characters flushed out a bit more particularly, Wit and Szeth. (of course assuming that the rest of the books will be just as large, Mr. Sanderson will have plenty of time to flush out these characters). I have had the ARC of the book for about a year and just never made the time to get to it, but now that I have I am drooling over the next one. I give it an 9 out of 10. Oh, and the audiobook is awesome too!

Swag!

I got Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss today! Even though I only gave Name of the Wind a 5 I am hopeful that his second book will be as good as I hoped his first book would have been.

A Tribute to Dave Duerson

My blog has been a real downer lately. I don't post as often as I should and most of my posts lately have been about recent deaths.

I believe that the greatest stories are the ones around us. The stories that we live everyday. What triumph lives in the mind of man that cannot be found in real life, perhaps even in the lives of our friends or neighbors in real life? What horrific dreams of evil born in literature could not already be found the darkest souls of the depraved?

My tribute today will not be complete, it will be a fractured tale that comes from childhood memories that long ago obscured, like looking at the past through a frosted window.

Dave Duerson was a professional football player, but when I first met him that was only slightly important to me. Sure, I was excited to get to meet a professional football player, but I was young and I had yet to fall in love with football. My grandparents took me to a party that some wealthy friends had every year. At these parties I met many professional athletes, but since I was so young and the party rather formal, I was bored. I know at some point I ended up at an arcade playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was not very good, but as I played I received some help.

That help came from professional football player Dave Duerson. He came over with a bucket of quarters and played the game with me until we beat one of the bosses. We eventually ran out of quarters and he went back to the party, but for a little while he took time to bring joy to a bored little boy. I don't remember if I ever met him again. I know that the next year when the time for the party came around I had to stay home sick with the flu and Mr. Duerson asked about me and sent me a get well card along with an autographed photo.

Mr. Duerson had a fan for life and I began to pay more attention to pro football. I remember being sad that he retired, and he settled into obscurity off my radar.

He had not really settled into obscurity, he started a successful business and in his free time was busy working with former NFL players who were having trouble with brain injuries sustained while playing football.

That was until he began to show the same symptoms that the other former NFL player struggled with. He began to have trouble speaking and writing. His business floundered and his marriage fell apart. He was arrested for domestic abuse, but his exwife maintains that the incident was due to her husbands brain injury and that he was not responsible for what happened.

Two weeks ago Dave Duerson took his own life. He was 50 years old. A suicide ending the life of a former NFL player is not unusual, but the method that Mr. Duerson chose to end his was. Despite his problems with brain injury, Mr. Duerson shot himself in the chest. This way of committing suicide is particularly unusual because of the chance of suffering before death is so much greater and where the psychology of suicide by firearm normally leads. The following quote probably says it best: “Think of the old cliché about the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. They shoot the terrible master.”

So why did Dave Duerson take the harder death and spare the terrible master? Because he wanted to donate his brain to science so that they can continue to work towards finding out more about the injuries that made him take his life. His suicide note and his last text messages to his family both said to make sure that his brain was donated.

This is a tragic story of a desperate broken man. This man showed me a kindness as a child and I have never forgotten it. I grieve for his family and friends. I remember a life well lived until brain injury began to remove what made him who he was. I hope that his donation will save the lives of others.

Back when I made my post about Brian Jacques I realized that he was the second person that I had recently posted about and since superstition says that deaths come in threes I was wondering who I would next be writing about. I am hoping that this means that other people that I was worried about dying will be able to hold on. (I am looking at you George R. R. Martin). I am sorry things have been so somber. Look for my review of Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings soon, and I will be back to writing about writing soon.

A Tribute to Brian Jacques

For the second time in 3 months, I write with a heavy heart. A couple weeks ago one of the authors who had a huge impact on me passed away.

When I was in fourth grade I was given a copy of Redwall by my parents. Within minutes I was lost in the rich world of brave mice, noble badgers, and diabolical vermin. It was in the series that I learned the value of librarians.

I have always been a fast reader and so I quickly made my way through the Redwall stories in my school library. My school librarian then began offering suggestions of other series that I could read, but also letting me know whenever a new Redwall book was coming out. But the school resources were limited and so I went to the public library. The librarians at the public library took up my cause and helped me fill in the gaps of the Redwall stories by getting books through interlibrary loan. Soon I had read every Redwall book published.

Through the help of librarians, and because of the vibrant stories that Brian Jacques wrote; I developed a deeper love of reading.

Eventually, I grew out of my love for the adventures in Redwall (although this was after literally wearing out several copies), but I never lost my respect for the author who influences my writing to this day.

I was sad to hear of his passing, and I was sad by how few people I saw lamenting his passing. But, I wanted to pay tribute in my way, and I hope that someday my writing will impact someone the way that the writing of Brian Jacques has impacted me.

Guest Post on GreenBeanTeenQueen

I just did a guest review of The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima for GreenBeanTeenQueen. Feel free to check it out by clicking here

Adult Fantasy: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

About the Book: What happens to legendary heroes when they grow tired of saving everyone, no matter what the cost to themselves. How do you motivate a hero. How does someone go from being an ordinary, albeit talented child to being the greatest hero in a generation. Kvothe already has most of those answers, but the answer he needs the most is the one that he cannot seem to find within himself. Maybe a chronicler who is asking about the past, a plague of demon attacks, and a worried magical friend will help him discover the passion he needs to reclaim who he used to be.

My Thoughts: Relayed mostly through a series of flashbacks, this story is fun fast paced and exciting. Rothfuss has a wonderful writing style and the voice clearly changes when he is writing in the past versus writing in the present. Kvothe is a vivid interesting character, who you cannot help but want to know more about. I had this book highly recommended to me and after reading a bit about it I was excited to read it. I was really enjoying it so much so that I actually turned off playoff football. (granted the game was out of hand and so I did not feel bad about turning it off, but still I turned off football!) My enjoyment of the book was not to last however, as the ending was perhaps the most disappointing end that I have read recently (well, excluding Mockingjay). It was like Mr. Rothfuss lost his voice with 70 pages left to go in the story. One moment he was writing a riveting story with a past and a present voice, then suddenly it switched into a slow boring monotone. Furthermore, the ending was soft and the climax seemed sudden and disjointed. It seemed like this book was cut from a larger book and definitely could not stand on its own but had to because the full book would be too long. Kvothe is a strong enough character that I want to keep reading the series to find out more about his past, but so much of the book is dedicated to Kvothe's past that I am not sure that unless the series goes for 6 books or so that there will be enough pages to tell the rest of the story of the present and the future. The other major flaw of the book is that we are told that Kvothe is a legendary warrior and hero and we are told that there are legendary stories about him. However, since the reader has yet to hear these stories and since references to the stories are frequently made in the story, I felt frustrated that I could not use these stories as reference points the way that many of the characters could. The flaws are not enough to stop me from reading on, unless Mr. Rothfuss cannot find his voice again. I give this book 5 out of 10, which is disappointing because if the story had continued as strongly to the end and it was in the beginning and the middle it would have been an 8 or a 9.

NaNoWriMo and SEX?

I suppose this is one of those big YA questions. Should sex be in YA, how much, and how much should be "on screen."

I think that writing about sex is part of writing for young adults. So I have no problem dealing with sex in my writing. But I have come to a part of the story that I am not sure how to get to the sex that I know is coming.

My main character is currently traveling with a beautiful but distant/mean girl that he studied with at school. He thinks she is beautiful but has not worked out whether he likes her or not.

The girl feels that the main character is interesting due to his potential, but really sees him as inferior to her because she is street smart and he is book smart. She thinks he is cute, but cannot get over how naive he is. So there is room for this to grow into something, but in her mind he is more casual friend material. However, if he started up some trouble it would be a different story.

Now comes the interesting part. While traveling they have met a handsome farm boy who is charming and witty, but also has shown an ability to protect himself when danger is around. The girl is completely smitten with him, and has been reduced to giggles on more than once occasion.

So here is the question. The girl would totally have sex with farm boy, like right now, if the opportunity arose. But, if this happens, main character will be turned off of her for good. However, if I throw the brakes on the sex for now and let the relationship develop more it could turn into an interesting series of love points to explore in the story.

So that is my dilemma, any advice?