Randomized Output

Over the last couple months, I’ve been on a reading frenzy, going through several newish fantasy series. I’ve been avoiding writing anything about them because it’s easier to just say ‘read this’, but I decided I should at least make a short post. I’ve read all of these via Stanza on the iphone. It’s an awesome e-reader that I highly recommend (it’s free).

Update: looks like I’ll just be doing one per post. Haha.

First one I highly recommend is the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. It’s epic, it’s got great characterization, and it’s got some very well thought out magic systems. As I was going through it, everything felt well planned as if driving towards an ultimate goal. I’ve been reading his annotations online at his website and it’s very clear that he’s spent a lot of time working through things to give the maximum impact to the reader.

He’s taken some familiar fantasy tropes and given them some twists. He has created a world where the archetypal fantasy hero has failed (think if frodo had kept the ring) and turned into an evil emperor. There’s some of the other usual fantasy fare like prophecies and magic, but nothing plays out like you would expect at first sight. It just feels logical once you’re done reading.

That logic even touches the several magic systems in play in the book. The main one we’re introduced to is “allomancy”, in which, certain individuals have the ability to “burn” small amounts of ingested metal to give themselves physical abilities. Different metals give different powers like a video game mana system. The actual powers aren’t outlandish, but I was pleased with how he mostly follows the laws of physics and comes up with very creative uses to achieve the feeling of superpowers. The other two systems of magic tie in together quite well as slightly different ways to achieve the same level of powers.

I can’t say enough good things about the series. It kept up a quick pace, never bogging down, but felt complete at the end. The characters changed / progressed. It’s a fairly serious story, but there’s enough jokes to keep things from getting too out of hand. In short, it’s awesome. Read it!

Ok, this was more of a review than I was originally planning. Maybe I’ll get to writing about the other series later.