Category: 5 Star

Book Review: Elantris by Sanderson (5 stars)

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson

5 out of 5 stars

Read in June 2008

Very few authors can convince me to care about their characters. I started reading this book with a chip on my shoulder, having recently learned that Brandon Sanderson has been awarded the task of writing the Wheel of Time’s final book A Memory of Light. My goal while reading this novel was to compare Brandon’s talent and ascertain his ability to carry on the torch that is the Wheel of Time.

Brandon’s talent for characterization, especially the female lead, and plot twists and progressions eased my mind. Elantris stands alone as a well-written fantasy and worthy of your time spent in Arelon.

Book Review: The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss (5 stars)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

5 out of 5 stars

Read in September 2008

The story is told by the protagonist years after the events occurred. He’s actually dictating his life story to a wondering Chronicler so there is no real sense of danger when something terrible happens to him – you already know that he survives to tell the tale. It’s almost an autobiography of the main character (Kvothe) from pre-adolescent boy through “college” (as an adolescent). Definitely a coming-of-age tale of a renowned hero and adventurer.

Kvothe starts his story from his early days as a curious contented son of traveling entertainers. But all does not remain rosy, as he becomes an orphan by a tragic and horrific event. Kvothe survives, living on the streets, and eventually attends University to study to be an arcanist. Ill fortune often finds him and his curiosity and pride get him into trouble frequently.

Kvothe is the protagonist and the one relating his story. Denna is the love of his life, who he met on trip to University and keeps meeting sporadically throughout the rest of the tale. Ambrose is one of the annoying antagonists, the rich brat and bully at University who thinks he can put Kvothe in his place through any means at his disposal, including assassination attempts. The Chandrian are elusive terrifying beings who killed his family and the entire entertainer troupe and also wiped out everyone attending a wedding near the town of Trebon. Various Masters at the university both help and hinder Kvothe’s progress through his terms and he has a handful of friends who are fellow students, patrons or musicians.

Because the story is a story within a story, being told from the first person point-of-view, I only really connected with the main character when he was a helpless orphan fending for himself on the streets. Once he liberated himself from those dire circumstances, I could follow his progress through secondary education mostly by shaking my head at his thickheadedness – not over a lack of intelligence on his part but more the lack of experience socially. Typical coming of age stuff.

I would recommend this book to all fantasy readers. Be prepared to wait for the rest of the story, though, as the rest of the trilogy is not published yet.

I updated my rating to match my feelings for this book. It was the best book I read last year (2008) by far.

Book Review: The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts (5 stars)

The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts

5 out of 5 stars

First Reading (June, 2009):

Great prose, good characters, intriguing plot twists.

In fact, I spent the first part of this book in total confusion. I love maps and Janny’s website has a great interactive map of Athera. Before I’d read forty pages, I had minutely scrutinized the online map in total frustration. I could not find the places Janny was referencing!

Eventually, my questions were answered (I should have had more patience).

I absolutely loved the first half of this book, riding along in the headlong rush to the first climax. I struggled a bit with the aftermath and could only watch in disgust and horror at the damage done to the characters I’d come to know and love. It made for great drama, sometimes almost melodrama, but boring it was not.

It’s one of the longest books I’ve read in quite some time – nearly seven hundred pages as a mass market paperback. After finishing it, I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better as two separate novels. I really should have taken a break after the first climax to let my mind and emotions come to grip with the consequences to the characters.

I don’t know how I missed this book when it was first released in the early nineties. I’ve been reading fantasy for over twenty-five years and this was too good to miss. I’ll have to chalk it up to having toddlers and no time to devote to reading.

I highly recommend this novel to fantastic fiction fans everywhere.

Second Reading (July/August, 2010):

Since I gave away my older Roc MMP edition to spread the ‘good news’ of Janny’s Wars of Light and Shadow series, I took the opportunity in mid-May to purchase the re-released MMP edition while at DemiCom, where I had the privilege of meeting and visiting with Janny Wurts. I felt compelled to complete my collection of the series so that I could re-read Curse of the Mistwraith repeatedly to refresh my memory of the unfolding layers and complexities that comprise Athera.

I highly recommend this book and this series for the devoted lovers and perspicacious readers of complex multifaceted myriad-layered epic fantasy brimming with inimitable characterizations and sublime universe craftsmanship.

March 2013 Update:  HarperCollins is still running a sale I referenced in a previous blog posting on the first three ebook editions for the Wars of Light and Shadow series.  For just under a buck, you can start on your journey to find the Paravians in The Curse of the Mistwraith. 

Book Review: Tigana by Kay (5 stars)

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

5 out of 5 stars

Read in August 2008

A parent’s grief at the death of their child can be a terrible thing. When that parent is the world’s most powerful wizard, and his beloved son dies in battle in one of the last provinces to be conquered, the grief becomes an all encompassing spell. And so starts the drama that is Tigana and the struggles for independence and remembrance against Brandin (the Tyrant and sorcerer).

My first thoughts when I started reading this story were of events in our own history where tyrants have tried and very nearly succeeded in obliterating a race of people. Tigana takes this one step further. Brandin, in his grief and yearning for revenge, pursues the path of genocide but also casts a spell which makes it impossible for anyone to remember the name of the province where his son died. Only those born in that province before his spell was cast can say the name – Tigana. Brandin plans to extend his life sorcerously so that he will outlive anyone who had been born in Tigana, thereby sealing his revenge forever and assuaging his grief.

The tale revolves around several key remnants of Tigana, namely Allessan, the youngest and only surviving prince of Valentin, Prince of Tigana; Baerd, son of Valentin’s sculptor and Alessan’s right hand man; Dianora, Baerd’s sister and lover, who was taken in tribute under a false identity (the tribute captain believed she was from a different province). Dianora becomes a saishan (like a mistress or concubine in Brandin’s harem) and eventually wins Brandin’s love. There are many other characters, all of whom are entangled and ensnarled by the circumstances which are boiling and erupting across the peninsula of the Palm.

I will restrain myself from spoiling the ending. I will say that even though this is a fantasy, and there is magic and magical creatures, all of this is merely a background to the drama of the lives hurtling along the paths of their destinies.

Book Review: Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson (5 stars)

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

5 out of 5 stars

Read in July 2008

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson, a novel of epic fantasy relating the struggle for freedom of an oppressed class of people, known as the skaa. A few key players attempt a daring plan to overthrow a seemingly invincible regime, with a supposedly immortal god-like Lord Ruler.

Mistborn’s is fast paced and enthralling. The point of view stays mostly with the two main protagonists, Kelsier and Vin. Kelsier is seeking revenge upon the immortal Lord Ruler, who he blames for the death of his wife. Vin, a street wise and abused young girl, is rescued and recruited by Kelsier to join his elite crew of thieves. We watch her come out of her shell, slowly learning the value of trust and friendship. We also learn of Allomancy, one of the Mistborn world’s forms of magic, through her eyes when Kelsier discovers that she is one of the rare breed of Allomancers.

As Vin’s character develops, she garners more of the focus of the story. We see less from Keslier’s viewpoint. Even though Vin’s had a hard go of it, she can still react with shock to Keslier’s actions and unwavering hatred for the nobles, the skaa who work for them (willingly or not) and the Lord Ruler. The hidden story within the story has the familiar rags-to-riches tale, but with a twist I’ve only seen a couple of times before.

I was completely enthralled by Vin throughout this book, but more so towards the climax. I rarely become so attached to characters that I weep with empathy, and sympathy, for their predicaments. Brandon Sanderson masterfully tugged on my heartstrings with his vivid characterizations. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great action/adventure story, especially one with spunk and heart.

Book Review: Legend by Gemmell (5 stars)

Legend by David Gemmell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I could hardly put this book down. How did I miss reading this book when it was first published in 1984? How has David Gemmell managed to stay off my reading radar for nearly thirty years? And worse, upon finishing Legend, I learned David died six years ago. I nearly wept as I did for Virae and Druss and Rek and Serbitar. Not even sixty years old when he left us for the Forever Halls.

The themes are still thrumming through my being – Life and Death; War and Peace; Honor, Duty, Courage, Fear, Betrayal, Despair, Hope and Love. The depth of characterization surprised me despite Gemmell’s concise prose. Rarely have I been drawn to characters so adeptly and abruptly.

For a fantasy novel, Legend had less of the traditional fantasy elements (magic, strange creatures, etc.) and more close-up violence (comparable to Conan or other sword and sorcery standards) than I’ve read recently. Still, it contained some of the best fighting scene’s I’ve ever read. And it held me morbidly enthralled, watching the doomed desperate, surely futile, struggles of the defenders against the inexorable endless tide of invaders. I did not connect the dots until after I finished Legend and read up on David Gemmell’s life. Now, in hindsight, it seems all too obvious.

“Legend is the Alamo spirit – or what should have been that spirit.” — David Gemmell on the influence of The Alamo in an interview with Stan Nichols in 1989.

My first foray into heroic fantasy left me gasping for more. Today is always a good day to die … or live.

Read (and joing) the discussion of this novel held during November 2012 at the Fantasy Book Club group at GoodReads.com.

Book Review: Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay (5 stars)

Under Heaven
by Guy Gavriel Kay

5 out of 5 stars

Read in December 2010

Shen Tai mourns his father for over two years by burying the bones of the dead in a vast battlefield on the western edge of the Kitan empire. A backbreaking labor of grace daily and the company of the restless shades of soldiers nightly. He gains the respect of friend and foe and the attention of women in high places with influence, intrigue and power. The unfathomable gift of two hundred and fifty horses from a rival empire courtesy of a Kitan princes sent as tribute sets Shen’s life adrift on the high tide of potentially lethal imperial politics. He receives unlooked for and unlikely assistance from several women as he travels from the far western reaches to the very center of the Kitan empire in Xinan: a well trained assassin, Wei Song, sent by a former courtesan of the northwestern district previously known as Spring Rain and a former dancer now the favored courtesan of the emperor himself.

Even though we only ever see one of the famous Sardian horses for much of the novel, Shen repeatedly attempts to exchange them for knowledge of his sister and her rescue from the Bogu barbarians of the north, since his own older brother, now adviser to the prime minister, allowed her to be elevated to an imperial princes and sent as a tribute bride to the Bogu leader. But not even the most powerful players on this corrupted game board can assist Shen with his quest.

Kay delivers sweeping epic vistas of the open grass steppe and the heart-stopping gut-wrenching frenzy of court intrigue and rebellion. No other prose flows so seamlessly as Kays, completely engulfing me in the world he unfolds before me.

My only quibble with this novel, and which almost made me drop my rather to four or four and a half stars, was with the ending. Shifting to third person and a more remote historical sagacious point of view distanced me from the characters just as the story culminated and resolved. I still enjoyed the novel immensely, though, and highly recommend it.

Book Review: All Clear by Willis (5 Stars)

All Clear by Connie Willis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wonderful, exceptional, loved every page. I find myself unable to describe what truly astonishes me about this novel without giving away huge spoilers. I laughed, I cried, my heart filled to bursting and erupted with hope and inspiration.

All Clear picks up where Blackout abruptly ended, back in the Blitz, London during the Blackout, the air raids, the shelters, life marches on for the stoic British citizens.  Our stranded time-traveling historians face the facts, for the most part, and buckle down to survive.  Rationing recipes, holding down jobs, wondering if the next air raid will destroy your employer’s building or your home, constant commute disruptions caused by bombed out streets, communication disruptions (telephone lines down and mail slowed to a crawl), doing the odd heroic rescue on the side, and don’t forget the rehearsals for the latest diversionary play performed in the underground tube stations by the hodgepodge of amateur actors directed by none other than Sir Godfrey.

Connie Willis revealed the essence of Britain during the Second World War through these glimpses into the everyday lives of it’s citizens.

Now that I have reached the end, and seen all the pieces fall into place, I must re-read both novels to truly appreciate the masterful ingenious tale crafted by Connie Willis.