Inverarity is not a Scottish village

The YA space opera continues, and reads more and more like fanfiction.

From the number one New York Times best-selling author of the Reckoners series, the Mistborn trilogy, and the Stormlight Archive comes the third book in an epic series about a girl who will travel beyond the stars to save the world she loves from destruction.

Spensa’s life as a Defiant Defense Force pilot has been far from ordinary. She proved herself one of the best starfighters in the human enclave of Detritus, and she saved her people from extermination at the hands of the Krell - the enigmatic alien species that has been holding them captive for decades. What’s more, she traveled light-years from home as an undercover spy to infiltrate the Superiority, where she learned of the galaxy beyond her small, desolate planet home.

Now, the Superiority - the governing galactic alliance bent on dominating all human life - has started a galaxy-wide war. And Spensa’s seen the weapons they plan to use to end it: the Delvers. Ancient, mysterious alien forces that can wipe out entire planetary systems in an instant. Spensa knows that no matter how many pilots the DDF has, there is no defeating this predator.

Except that Spensa is Cytonic. She faced down a Delver and saw something eerily familiar about it. And maybe, if she’s able to figure out what she is, she could be more than just another pilot in this unfolding war. She could save the galaxy.

The only way she can discover what she really is, though, is to leave behind all she knows and enter the Nowhere. A place from which few ever return.

To have courage means facing fear. And this mission is terrifying.

( Book three, of course it's not just a trilogy. )

Also by Brandon Sanderson: My reviews of Elantris, The Mistborn trilogy (Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages), The Alloy of Law, Steelheart, The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Warbreaker, Skyward, Starsight.

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My complete list of book reviews.

In the sequel to Skyward, a teenager infiltrates a Galactic confederation.

All her life, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Of proving she's a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned about her father were crushing. The rumors of his cowardice are true - he deserted his flight during battle against the Krell. Worse, though, he turned against his team and attacked them.

Spensa is sure there's more to the story. And she's sure that whatever happened to her father in his starship could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars - and it was terrifying. Everything Spensa has been taught about her world is a lie.

But Spensa also discovered a few other things about herself - and she'll travel to the end of the galaxy to save humankind if she needs to.

( a very Young Adult space opera. )

Also by Brandon Sanderson: My reviews of Elantris, The Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law, Steelheart, The Way of Kings, Warbreaker, and Skyward.

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My complete list of book reviews.

Two sisters go off to a city ruled by gods and start a rebellion.

Warbreaker is the story of two sisters who happen to be princesses, the God King one of them has to marry, the lesser god who doesn't like his job, and the immortal who's still trying to undo the mistakes he made hundreds of years ago. Their world is one in which those who die in glory return as gods to live confined to a pantheon in Hallandren's capital city and where a power known as BioChromatic magic is based on an essence known as breath that can be collected only one unit at a time from individual people. By using breath and drawing upon the color in everyday objects, all manner of miracles and mischief can be accomplished. It will take considerable quantities of each to resolve all the challenges facing Vivenna and Siri, princesses of Idris; Susebron, the God King; Lightsong, reluctant god of bravery; and mysterious Vasher, the Warbreaker.

( Magic by colors, doughty adventurers, virgin princesses and oddly chaste lust goddesses in another RPG-suitable fantasy world. )

Also by Brandon Sanderson: My reviews of Elantris, The Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law, Steelheart, and The Way of Kings.

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My complete list of book reviews.

A steampunk sequel to the Mistborn trilogy.

Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds. Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history—or religion.

Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice. One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn, who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will.

After 20 years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.

( Brandon Sanderson is the most overrated author I keep reading. )

Verdict: Brandon Sanderson's books range from disappointingly mediocre to almost really good. The Alloy of Law is definitely in the mediocre category. I didn't like it as much as Mistborn, it had none of that book's epicness, nor were the characters as interesting. Sanderson's books appeal to those who like complicated worldbuilding as an end in itself, and endlessly detailed and precisely delineated magic systems and many battles exhibiting said rules. He still hasn't moved beyond characters who consist of summary description and backstory and a list of quirks and powers, and plots suitable for the RPGs he likes so much. He has done better than this; I'm not really interested in reading the rest of this series.

Also by Brandon Sanderson: My reviews of The Mistborn trilogy, Elantris, and The Way of Kings.

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My complete list of book reviews.

One-line summary: A first draft of The Way of Kings, before Brandon Sanderson learned how to write better.



Tor, 2005, 496 pages

Elantris: gigantic, beautiful, literally radiant, filled with benevolent beings who used their powerful magical abilities to benefit all the people of Arelon. Yet each of these godlike beings had been an ordinary person until touched by the mysterious transforming power of the Shaod. Then, ten years ago, without warning, the magic failed. Elantrians became wizened, feeble, leper-like creatures, and Elantris itself dark, filthy, and crumbling. The Shaod became a curse.

Arelon's new capital city, Kae, crouches in the shadow of Elantris, which its people do their best to ignore. Princess Sarene of Teod has come to Kae for a marriage of state with Crown Prince Raoden, hoping - based on their correspondence - also to find love. She finds instead that Raoden has died, and she is considered his widow. Both Teod and Arelon are under threat as the last remaining holdouts against the imperial ambitions of the ruthless religious fanatics of Fjordell. Sarene decides to make the best of a sad situation and use her position to oppose the machinations of Hrathen, a Fjordell high priest who has come to convert Arelon and claim it for his emperor and his god.

But neither Sarene nor Hrathen suspects the truth about Prince Raoden's disappearance. Taken by the same strange malady that struck the fallen gods of Elantris, Raoden was secretly imprisoned within the dark city. His struggle to create a society for the wretches trapped there begins a series of events that will bring hope to Arelon, and perhaps even reveal the secret of Elantris itself.

( In which I bag on the debut novel of an author who's becoming something of a guilty pleasure. )

Verdict: An epic fantasy novel intended to break the Campbellian model, it only partially succeeds. This was Brandon Sanderson's debut novel and it really shows. It's not a bad read, but if you've read his later works, there really isn't much reason to go back and read his earlier efforts, and if you haven't, I'd recommend not starting with this one, because his later books are much better.

One-line summary: A new epic fantasy series with some great worldbuilding, good characters, and I'll forgive the filler because at least there were no frakking elves.



So, Brandon Sanderson. The Next Big Thing in epic fantasy. He's finishing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and simultaneously kicking off his very own new ten (that's ten (10)) book series.

And dang, he has some fans. 5-star reviews outnumber all others put together, by a significant margin:

Reviews:

Goodreads: Average: 4.61. Mode: 5 stars.
Amazon: Average: 4.6. Mode: 5 stars.

This is a big-ass book, folks. An old-school doorstopper.

If you find the following summary is tl;dr, then don't bother reading the review, or the book.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

Speak again the ancient oaths,

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.

( A big-ass book deserves a big-ass review )

Verdict: Sigh. I guess I might as well start reading A Song of Ice and Fire while I wait for The Stormlight Archive, Book Two. This is an epic fantasy series you can share with your future children, because they'll be old enough to read it by the time Sanderson finishes this sucker.

This will be a long review. The first part is spoiler-free; everything after the second lj-cut will be full of spoilers, as I'll discuss everything about the trilogy, including the ending. I'm really interested in comments from anyone else who has read it.

So, I had never heard of Brandon Sanderson before, but the first book in the trilogy caught my eye on the bookstore shelves for some reason:



At first glance, it looked like a fairly typical fantasy novel with a bad-ass assassin-looking chick on the cover. So I left it on the shelf; yes, I do judge books by their covers, and while this one was kind of intriguing, anything that makes me think the author is probably novelizing the AD&D games he played as a kid gets a "pass" from me.

Then I happened to see the author's name again online: apparently he'd been tapped to finish Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Which didn't really mean much to me; I've never read any of the WoT books. (Yes, I've heard they're epic and awesome and all that, and someday I probably will read the first book, at least, but it takes a lot to make me want to get invested a series that now comprises over twelve books. I just recently read my first Diskworld novel.)

But it made me a little more curious, since I knew this was a Big Deal in the fantasy world. So I went back to the bookstore and read the first couple of pages, and they were interesting enough that I bought the ebook, and then ended up finishing the trilogy.

( Spoiler-free review )

tl;dr version: I liked it, with reservations. 4/5 stars for the series, but I'd rate the individual books as 5, 4, and 3 stars, in order. Unfortunately, I liked each book in the series less than the last. It's not that they got worse, really, but that Sanderson is the sort of writer who draws on a small number of writing devices, and they get a little tiresome eventually, especially when used to bring an epic series with world-shaking events to a close.

Also, there was some really crazy Mormon shit at the end, yo.

( Detailed critique, with major spoilers )

So, has anyone else read these books? What do you think?