Beyond the excitement of the Danganronpa story structure (lots of talented people show up to solve puzzles and probably get unalived) and the quirky writing style that trusts the reader to follow its wobbles, the plot is not “hero leaves small town and goes on grand adventure.” I mean, it is, but the town was a planet and the grand adventure is a rousing game of Among Us.
Read MoreKalyna’s a fun character to be sure, but the primary way she interacts with you, the reader, is more like a meta-level observer describing a roleplaying game system. I lost track of how many times something pretty basic about the world was repeated to me again, to make sure I didn’t miss it– “Four armies in this one kingdom, itself one of four kingdoms in a larger country, all desperate to tear each other apart.” I didn’t read the book in serial format or spread out over weeks of game nights. I just read it straight through. I can be trusted to remember the basic structure of the world, friend.
Read MoreI’ll cut to the chase—I didn’t like this book very much. I think the author is incredibly talented and like a lot of his more recent novels, but this one kept missing for me. It is cited with reverence by a certain class of aging computer-savvy hacker-adjacents, but for a “beloved classic of the genre,” it sure is heavy with casual slurs and a real woof moment with its 15-year-old-girl-has-sex-with-adult-man plot point. I’m not sure how the extreme satire doesn’t dent the image of Snow Crash’s Metaverse as prescient holy text in a world before google parent-company Alphabet based their whole pitch deck on Hiro’s gargoyle-lite always-online surveillance gear, but here we are.
Read MoreBeyond the expanded scope from adventuring party to nation-state wrangling, the plot has to slow for another major reason: Travelling. Rand can warp around, collapsing time and distance in such a way that “the journey” as a trope barely exists anymore. And “the journey” is the beating heart of the Fantasy genre: we all live in the travelogue that “There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Tale” built. Now that he and a few others can move around the world near-instantly, plot-restrictions-via-distance are a thing of the past.
Read MoreWhat I wrote about Perrin in The Shadow Rising holds true for Nynaeve in this volume; she is a microcosm to understand another of Rand’s problems. This time, it isn’t about delegating responsibility and accepting your limits, but about understanding—maybe even embracing—who you are; even if you don’t want to. Rand has to come to terms with Lews Therin: his past, his present, and his refusal to put women in danger, even to the point where Moiraine has to sacrifice herself to save him.
Read MoreI’m sure you’ve rolled your eyes at someone saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” before, but clichéd or not it feels built for this book. It pains me to leave a review without block quotes, but I shall forsake them for this review, as all the parts should be read in situ.
Read MoreI called Perrin the star of The Shadow Rising, but I think it might be Moiraine. Here she is, the Allanon, the Belgarath, the Gandalf, and all of her hobbits are hyper-powered wizards in their own right, not to mention stubborn and distrustful of her after a lifetime of culturally ingrained biases against everything she is and stands for. Is it simply because I’m old that I find Perrin interesting, or think Rand may be a doofus for pushing back so hard against experienced advisors? Will Moiraine continue her trajectory into being the secret best character in the whole series?
Read MoreIt is weird feeling of anxiety, balancing reading through a book quickly because it pleases you, but slowing down because there is not an easy way to pick up the next in the series. For good or ill, the third book in the Wheel of Time is where the series finds its feet. All the characters are who I remember them being: Mat’s not a jerk anymore; Perrin is a little boring; Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve start rolling their eyes with exasperation at “men” on the reg:
Read MoreIt’s risky to extrapolate my enjoyment of Lanfear, considering that I do not know where the books ultimately go but lots of other people definitely do: maybe Lanfear will miss the Medea or Elphaba treatment and be saddled by the standard “foul temptress gets an ironic comeuppance” character arc. Or perhaps she will be the bland metonym for never being so evil that you are unable to be redeemed? Forsaken, until you aren’t:
Read More[E]ugenics and selective human breeding aren’t...great...topics for any fantasy novel. The concept of “high” blood giving someone magic powers is a classic classist trope that should stop; I’m really impressed with how the new Star Wars movies yanked itself away from another “magic bloodline dynasty” story. Mistborn does not. Secret heritage will never go away, apparently, because the world loves that moment when someone busts in and starts yelling, “You’re a wizard, ‘arry!” You know, like being born an aristocrat.
Read MoreWhen there were only forty or so pages left of Darker Shade and little prospect of a satisfying resolution, I braced myself for the “Book One Cliffhanger Ending,” where the immediate threat has ended yet a larger horror rises in the distance. But it comes together in an altogether pleasing, albeit alacritous, way. Things—life, culture, people—won’t return to their pre-adventure status, nor will they maintain the heightened stress of all-consuming plot-based action. If there was never another book, things would be okay.
Read MoreThe Wheel of Time, the High Fantasy series equivalent of Moby Dick at least in terms of wordcount, has popped up enough times for me lately for me to give it a serious look: “One thing we can do. We can try. What seems like chance is often the Pattern. Three threads have come together here, each giving a warning: the Eye. It cannot be chance; it is the Pattern.” And so I’ll start this journey, for the second time. I’ve read up until at least book six—possibly eight, because I at least recognized that cover—of the fourteen novels. The first book, The Eye of the World, still does as good a job setting everyone up, building out a world, and having as silly a climactic battle as it did when I was sixteen.
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