portable magic

i read books.  i can barely stop reading books.  now you can see what i think of them.

Infinity Blade: The Awakening by Brandon Sanderson

Infinity Blade Awakening - Brandon Sanderson

Siris has a duty.  To go and kill the God King.  His entire life has been heading toward that duty.  The story starts after Siris does just that.  Except no one ever expected he'd win.  All of the other Deathless were going to want the blade that Siris walked away with.  They'd want vengeance on the people who killed one of their own.  So, rather than returning to his town a triumphant hero, Siris was, none too politely, told to leave.

 

The book is based upon a video game.  I might just have to play the video game to find out what comes next.  Or what comes before.  Or both.  That was my biggest problem with the story, it was too short.  I always want more...

Bones are Forever by Kathy Reichs

Bones are Forever -

I like the tv show Bones, but I think I mostly like it for the characters.  I love Bones and Booth, and Hodgins and Angela, and when Zack was in the show he was my absolute favorite character.  I need to remember when I read Bones books that there are two similarities.  1) the main character is name Temperance Brennan.  2) She's a forensic anthropologist.

 

Dr. Brennan in the books is very different than Brennan in the tv show, and none of the other people in the tv show seem to be in the books.  

 

Anyway, if I'm going to remember all of that, the book isn't half bad.  Brennan was called to investigate an infant that had been abandoned and died.  They found 2 more dead infants in the same apartment, and a fourth in the mother's previous apartment.  This led to them going all over Canada trying to find the woman who would kill her infants.  There were times the book was a little information heavy, it got 3.5 stars instead of 4, because I felt like I was reading a Wikipedia article when Brennan was telling us how people found diamond mines.

 

But the story was riveting.  Just not necessarily the Bones fix I wanted after running out of TV shows. 

Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz

Blue Bloods  - Melissa  de la Cruz

I like vampire books.  I like books that look at things like vampires or fairies or zombies or anything else in a different way.  Blue Bloods is a vampire book that does that.  The vampires are fallen angels.  They can't die by mortal hands, but at various points in their lives they decide to go on to the next thing anyway, knowing they'll be "reborn" later.  When they reach roughly high school age and start becoming vampire again, they have memories of their past lives, and stuff.  It's really cool.

 

And aside from the premise of the story, I really couldn't deal with the book.  I get that despite the fact that I like YA books, and I like urban fantasy, I'm still not a teenage girl, so I'm not really their target demographic.  But...the most descriptive bits in the book were telling us what clothes people were wearing.  And they weren't even descriptive bits for the clothes, it wasn't like she wrote "she was wearing an asymettrical, floor length, satin red couture dress by Chanel, with draping over the left shoulder and pinned to the waist with a dimaond encrusted pin, and a slit from the toes going above her knee, but practically hidden in the way the dress fell except when she walked..."  No.  Instead the writing was "she was wearing a red Chanel dress."  The former I'd be able to imagine in my head, the latter means absolutely nothing to me.  I don't know enough about big name designers to see anything in a description that's just the name...  It was actually very off putting.

 

I'd read the rest of the books in the series if I found them at the library or if I got them for free.  But I definitely won't buy another one.

Spinneret by Timothy Zahn

Spinneret - Timothy Zahn

Imagine, if you will, that we, the human race, reach out into the solar system to colonize.  It'll happen, eventually.  Now imagine that when we do that, every single world we can find that is habitable by humans has instead become home to aliens.  Not just one alien race, but many.  They tell us that every single place we could live is occupied.  Not all by them, mind you, some of the places are occupied by other alien species that aren't yet advanced enough for space colonization, so no one knows about them yet.  But hey, it's ok, they can lease us this one little out of the way planet, because there's no metal on it, and metal is the basic interstellar currency.  You can't do anything without metal.  So, without any other options in mind, we give it a go.

 

We've got to put metal into the soil, in order to grow plants.  We've got to put metal into the water to support fish.  Metal is needed for a true human ecosystem.  Plus, all of those tools that we need for day to day use, so many of them are metal.  Hammers, drills, plows, a billion and one other things.  Unfortunately, the metal we're seeding the soil with isn't staying.  Nor is the runoff we're expecting to go from the soil to the water happening with the speed we're expecting much less enough speed to explain the lack of metal in the soil that we specifically added.  Now imagine one day that every single metal thing touching the ground, including all of the metal in the soil, and in the water, and the hammers, the drills, the plows, etc, just get sucked into the ground.  Now we're screwed.

 

Except that shortly after that, a fine strand of metal shoots into orbit.  And we just stumbled onto an alien technology that makes us no longer just the new kids on the block, but having something in demand.  Bet all those alien races wished they'd bothered to settle on the metal-less world.  It's a good thing they're all pretty much watching each other and making sure that none of the others try to invade our little world.  Unfortunately, our people back home on earth have entirely other plans.

 

I loved the story.  I seem to like reading about powerful alien races and what happens when humans have dealings with them.  I liked the bubble around the planet Freedom in Anne McCafferey's books.  I loved Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and the time bubble there, and what it allowed the aliens to do for us, and what it allowed us to do on Mars all in one person's "lifetime".  Doesn't surprise me at all that I loved reading about us learning about, and making use of, the Spinner tech.  

 

I hadn't realized how old the book was until I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Written in the mid-80's some stuff that bumped in my brain when reading became immediately obvious.  There was one point when humans were trying to confuse alien translators by throwing a lot of slang into the mix, but they said "personal phones".  I would have thought "cells" would have been much more slang.  And more than once they mentioned cassettes and cassette players, towards the end of the book.  It's amazing how much technology and what it is, and how we use it, and what's commonplace, has changed in less than two decades.  And how much hasn't, that other than those couple tiny little things, all the other stuff was as far in the future as Zahn's imagination put the book still.

The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

The Emperor's Soul - Brandon Sanderson

I promise, it's my last Sanderson.  Until  tomorrow.  =)

 

This is my favorite of the three I read today, also the longest.  

 

Shai is an artist.  The people around her don't believe she is, after all, she's a Forger.  One of the lowest of the low.  Only fit to be killed, except, they need her.  Somehow the Emperor's soul got lost, and only a master Forger could remake it.  So they decided to make Shai do it.

 

Shai dives in to the job, because it means she won't die.  Yet.  

 

In order to Forge the emperor back to himself, she needs to know everything about him, because a soul won't believe anything that isn't really and truly possible.  She can Forge the broken window in her room to be a beautiful stained glass window, only because it once was.  She can Forge her room to be a little larger by convincing the room the last time it was divided, the division was more in her favor.  They are not big changes, when you really think about things, because they are plausible.  But how well do you need to know a person to come up with plausibility for them?

 

In reading his most private thoughts, in speaking with those who knew him best, in learning about him from the servants, she comes to really know the man.  Just as she comes to know anyone who spends any decent amount of time around her.  So Shai sets out to Forge the emperor's soul, and make it into what he really is, in the same way she Forges her room to be what it really is.

 

Because, Shai is an artist.

 

I loved Shai, and how she truly saw a person.  I wish I could see other's that clearly.  Often it's too easy to lie to onesself, much less others.  And I loved the old man who spent countless days with Shai as she tested the bits that would make up a man's soul, while testing the soul of the main actually in front of her in an entirely different way.  I think I liked him more than her, actually, because in the end, he saw her,

Legion by Brandon Sanderson

Legion - Brandon Sanderson

Told you I was on a Sanderson kick.  =)

 

This short story amused me.  Stephen Leeds, the main character, is what some would consider...not all together sane.  But Stephen?  He's sure he's sane.  He functions.  He functions better than you and me combined, depsite having more personalities than well, a centipede has legs.  They're hallucinations, and each one is extremely skilled in at least one thing, some more than one thing.  Ivy is a shrink.  JC is a fighter.  Tobias is a phillospher.  On and on the list goes.  Stephen knows the hallucinations are just that.  Most of his hallucinations know it too.  Except JC.  JC, despite being told time and again, just can't believe he's not real.  Because each of the hallucinations has widely varied personalities.

 

Anyhow, each of these aspects of Stephen's help him to solve problems.  In this story, he's got to find a missing camera that can take pictures of the past.  

 

And it was fun to solve the problem with Stephen and his aspects.  It was fun to see Stephen use them to figure out things that it really didn't seem he could on his own.  It was fun to see when he thought of something on his own, and the hallucinations were surprised.  It was even fun to see that they were worried when that happened, that he wouldn't need them anymore.  

 

Cus you know, every, even hallucinations, desire to live.  

 

I want to read more of Stephen's story.  His past sounds interesting, but his future sounds even more interesting.

Firstborn by Brandon Sanderson

Firstborn - Brandon Sanderson

So, if you can't tell by looking at these first three posts, I'm on a little bit of a Sanderson kick right now.  I read Firstborn on my way to work this morning.  It's a great little short story.  It's about a young man, Dennison, who has been trying his whole life to live up to his older brother's example.  His brother, Varion, is a brilliant tactician, a strategist unparalleled in their worlds, a leader without trying to be, etc.  Dennison, when asked to describe his brother, says "Perfect."  Varion practically single-handedly, was winning a war that spanned a universe.  From his first days out of millitary school, he took charge, and he accomplished more than anyone dreamed.

 

How could Dennison ever live up to the expectations that everyone heaped on him?  It seems the only thing Dennison can do is fail, time and again, and never ever be anything like his brother Varion.  And yet, it seems that's all anyone and everyone wants him to be, from his father to his emperor.

 

I have to admit to feeling a little sorry for Dennison.  I went to the same small private school my siblings went to, for preschool through 8th grade.  When starting high school, I chose the all girl's school, knowing that my older brother would be an absolute unknown to my teachers, which is all I wanted after 10 years of being confused with all 3 of my siblings, in every class.

 

My older brother could write, like no one I'd ever known.  And he could draw.. He still writes, constantly scribbling in notebooks and on the computer, etc, although I haven't seen him drawing recently.  My sister was a social butterfly.  She was friends with absolutely everyone from the very beginning.  Even my youngest sister who I spent the least amount of time in school with, was everyone's darling.  My teachers, my classmates, my classmates parents', everyone got to watch her grow up, as my mom brought her to school every day when watching kids over recess.  Sometimes she'd end up in my classroom, where everyone would just adore her.

 

And there I was, bookish, smart (but not exceedingly so), younger (and as such, a little more immature) than all of my classmates (but so much more mature in so many ways).  I didn't fit.  My teachers either expected me to be as smart as my brother, or slack off as much as he did.  I'll admit, that last one might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy for them that followed me into high school.  They expected me to be friends with the entire class the way my sister was.  They expected me to not be jealous of how much they all loved my youngest sister.  But I didn't fit in with my classmates, at all.  I couldn't seem to fit into anyone's expectations of me.  So I kinda knew how Dennison felt, never living up to his brother's potential.

 

I both liked, and was saddened, by the ending.  I wished for something different, because I wish for the same difference with my brother and sisters.  A better resolution than Dennison got with Varion.  I appreciated the ending though, it showed an unexpected strength from the man who rarely won, and a weakness from the one who never failed.