Cibola Burn - The Expanse (Book 4)

Expanse titles are always a little
unrelated to their content.

June was 'good sci-fi month' apparently, with two of my favourite authors each putting out a new "first of a new trilogy" in their established universes. Next week is Kevin J Anderson's return to the Saga of Seven Suns universe with the eagerly anticipated The Dark between the Stars, Book 1 of the Saga of Shadows. This week, however, is the start of a new Expanse trilogy by James SA Corey.

The first in this new trilogy, Cibola Burn, returns readers to the world of The Expanse, a few years after the events of the last trilogy (ending with Abbadon's Gate). Jim Holden is still puttering around the solar system on his stolen Martian fighter, the Rocinante, and is drawn in (this time deliberately on the part of Earth's government) to what I imagine will undoubtedly become another system-spanning conflict.

First, a little background to this world created by Corey (a pen name for writers Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who is George RR Martin's assistant and brings a certain degree of that gritty brutality to his own work). This is (or was up until events of the last trilogy) "hard" science fiction. There are no wormholes - all transport is by burning fuel and nuclear fission. Artificial gravity is either spin gravity on space stations or thrust gravity of accelerating space ships. Communication is limited by the speed of light and the vast distances between life-supporting objects has put humanity back into a world not unlike Earth before jet engines and emails. If a ship wants to make good time, it has to subject its crew to high-g thrust. If a ship-mounted railgun fires a metal pellet at another ship, that slug will go through anything and anyone until it goes out the other side of the target. It is brutal, it is gritty. It works.

Without going too much into details of the last trilogy, the introduction of a mysterious alien race has somewhat complicated the above logical universe. Humanity (previously made up of Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt "Belters") has found its way through the cracks of the universe to thousands of unsettled worlds and it is on this frontier that Cibola Burn takes place. ("Cibola" is the name of one of the legendary Cities of Gold, like El Dorado. I am hoping that "Burn" here is a pun on the city itself burning to the ground, and on the engine burn of ships.)

In this case, the crew of the Rocinante find themselves "down the gravity well" of Ilus (a planet so-named by its first settlers), mediating a conflict between said settlers (and the terrorists in their midst) and the scientific team sent by an Earth corporation to study the planet. A series of unfortunate events have escalated tensions and bloodshed seems imminent. There are some pretty clear influences of our current social climate here, as 'terrorists' move from unquestionable villains (post September 11) to a more post-modern questioning of who they are and why they do what they do. The setting of this particular book gives it a very "frontier-like" feel, as if Holden were a roaming lawman bringing justice to the Old West. Concepts of chivalry are drawn to the subtext foreground, embodied mostly in Holden and his crew. In past books, Holden's actions in following his particular Code led to system-wide war. Despite this, Corey managed to portray him as the aggrieved party and "good guy" (not just as a protagonist). In this book though, Holden is basically the embodiment of virtue, trying (and not always succeeding) to talk the clashing sides out of a war.

The "Roci", named for Don Quixote's
horse, is a perfect mount for Holden's
constant windmill touting.

One of the things I like most about Corey is that they imagine a universe as it is in the future, feeling no need to justify the social changes inherent in that universe to readers. It is a sort of "take it how it is" approach that pushes those issues (such as polygamy, homosexuality and modern approaches to welfare) to the background and normalises the society they create. In Cibola Burn, this is given greater effect by its deliberate contrast of the Earth and Belter-turned-Ilusian cultures. By focusing strongly on the differences between their ways of life, it normalises even more the society that they both take for granted. In that way, Corey has drawn their readers to a new world without giving it an obvious "sci-fi for societal change" agenda. At the same time, the book does question the increasing power of corporations and the impact that may have on the world. It does this through its presentation of the Earth forces through the lens of (not only scientific exploration but also) corporate greed.

In past books, there have been three main protagonists (if they can be called that): Holden and his crew, Detective Miller, and Bobby Draper. While Holden has always been the focus of The Expanse (and actually I had wondered whether Corey would continue with his story in this new series), the other two have alternately coloured its pages.

Bobby appears in the prologue and epilogue, giving a sense that she will have greater contributions in the final two books as the ramifications of Cibola Burn ripple out to the universe at large.

Miller, on the other hand, has a very good reason for not giving a viewpoint past the first book, Leviathan's Wake. He is replaced in Book 4 by the aptly named "The Investigator" in chapters reminiscent of the fake Hodor chapter or the "missing" chapter from Words of Radiance (see my review here). These chapters get a little indulgent at times on part of the authors, following a stream of consciousness approach that is confusing at first but begins to make sense as the book continues. By the time they make sense, it is too late and everything has gone to hell.

Miller becomes a bit of a self-referential trope in this book.

The pre-climax of the book is a little disappointing, and feels more like the Corey couldn't figure out how to deal with the long setup that the rest of the book spent so long building. If it feels like a reverse deus ex machina moment, that is probably because it is. The fact that the book then presents a rationale for the moment does not diminish how it feels at the time. I realise, of course, that it is intentional and serves to add another layer of environmental brutality to a book already full of human harshness. It also serves to show just how vulnerable humanity can be in the vast emptiness of space, and so reinforce that "frontier" feeling. Still, the result of said event brings up new challenges and seems to cut the book in half in terms of plot consistency. It almost feels like two self-contained television episodes in one, with a short story arc connecting the two. Luckily, this is a very small hitch in an overall wonderful plotline. The end of the book brings the viewpoint characters back to their protagonist destinations, where a reader can finally identify them all as 'good guys' in a way, and (were it not for the epilogue) one might be mistaken in hoping that everything will work out okay.

The Ups: Beautifully written in sparse but clear story, Corey really knows how to get into the heads of their characters. The way that humanity comes together and deals with their own bullshit is inspiring if a little optimistic.

The Downs: My retail copy of the book was not well-polished, with a few typographic errors cropping up. Some of the villains in this piece had simplistic motives and were a little one-dimensional, which is unusual considering the care Corey usually gives to all of their characters (black, white and grey).

The Verdict: 4 nuclear reactors out of 5

Overall, the book is an excellent return to The Expanse. Characters from the first trilogy return in evolved forms and the situation has developed such that I am excited to read the next two books. At times it feels a little rushed, and not just in pacing, but that is easily forgivable.

Words of Radiance - The Stormlight Archives (Book 2)

This book is the long-awaited sequel to Brandon Sanderson's highly-acclaimed The Way of Kings (reviewed earlier this year) and was on my "looking forward to" list for this year as well. Needless to say -- but I will say it anyway -- I loved it. For the sake of those yet to start the series, I will attempt to keep spoilers for Book 1 to a minimum, and for those who have read the first this should give you some idea of what to expect.

There are some books that are so good, so inspiring, that they make you want to be a better author -- and so you write. There are other books that are so bad, so bland, that they make you want to be an author -- to prove you can do better. Then there are some books so incredibly well-written that they intimidate the hell out of you and make you reconsider whether your own writing is even in the same league. For me, that was Words of Radiance.

It's a big book!

Book 2 of The Stormlight Archive (a name which makes more and more sense as you read the first two books) is set a little after the end of The Way of Kings. The concluding chapters of that book revealed many of the secrets which Sanderson had been hinting at throughout the entirety of the rest of the piece. The world of Roshar is no longer an unfamiliar, surreal experience for the reader -- highstorms are expected, spren are commonplace and the societal divisions of light-eyes and dark-eyes are taken for granted. This is all very dangerous for a series which was so successful in part due to its fantastical unfamiliarity. Indeed, one of my favourite moments of the first book was when Shallan thinks she is going mad, surrounded by creatures straight out of a Lovecraft-inspired horror story. That unknown gave me nightmares.

With Words of Radiance, Sanderson has continued that exploration of the unknown, but he does so in a very different manner. Secrets revealed to the reader in the first book just brought us into the world of the perspective characters, allowing us to feel their wonder as Book 2 reveals the unknown to them. The focus of this story is very much on personal growth: Shallan and Kaladin centrally, with Dalinar taking a reprieve from centre-stage, and Adolin stepping up to fill his shoes. The conspiracies and 'evil' people of the first book take on a grayer cast, as do many of the brightest characters. I hesitate to name Shallan the focal character of this book, as Kaladin himself is just as important as the plot plays out. However, Sanderson has filled in Shallan's backstory in the same manner as he did with Kaladin in Book 1, using flashbacks to explain where she came from and why she is as broken as she is. Yet he does not overshadow the other characters by doing so, and he sets up some serious dramatic tension between Kaladin and Shallan -- with Amaram returning as the glue to bind them together. I just hope he doesn't squish these two main characters into the spokes of some kind of love triangle.

Our first proper look at Shardblades,
Shardplates, and Adolin (note the
"Sigh" annotation in Shallan's sketch).

My mindset in reading this book was very different from the first. Perhaps due to my familiarity with the world. One of my biggest complaints about The Way of Kings was that the constant perspective shifts frustrated me, as they never have in any book before. This time, however, three things made the perspective shifts actually work. First, the first book provided a backdrop, so while in Book 1 the short chapters of unknown and unrelated characters felt like they were taking me away from the real 'meat' of the story, in Words of Radiance, I yearned for those little snippets to further flesh out the world. Second, Sanderson drops little bits of information from Book 1's snippets into Book 2. For instance, the scientists measuring flamespren are casually mentioned to -- and discounted by -- Navani, the King's mother. The full import of their discovery is made apparent to the reader and then ignored by the characters. Rather than feeling forced, these little cameos actually made the world feel more expansive, as tiny events interrelated into larger ones (even if in only the tiniest way). This also made me more excited to read the snippets of Book 2, perhaps under some expectation that they will eventually become important in Book 3 and onward. (Indeed, there is one in particular which I feel will have massive significance going forward.) Finally, the vast majority of the book is centred around the Shattered Plains. Various gossip and news reaches the armies there, of rebellion or wars elsewhere, but it is cushioned from the rest of Roshar, forming its own little world. Where a shift in perspective from Shallan to Kaladin in Book 1 felt jarring, as if I were reading two different books, but switching every chapter, in Words of Radiance every chapter featuring either Shallan or Kaladin necessarily pushed forward the greater tale of the Shattered Plains. As a result, the book's shifting perspectives felt natural and organic this time around.

Visually, this book is a feast. Sanderson makes mention in his foreword that he sought to turn the Stormlight Archive into more than a book series. Well he does so. One of the things I loved about The Way of Kings was the frequent use of sketched art to make the world more familiar. This is continued and expanded on in Words of Radiance, including some images of Shardplate and Kaladin (seen in the image up above), Shardblades, Bridge Four's tattoos, and other wonderful world-building artwork. And then I opened the book.

Beautiful, no? What a treat, to find something so incredible in the opening pages. The cover art is, as usual, spectacular, but this picture of Shallan just blew it out of the water. Better yet, seeing such an amazing piece of art put me in the perfect mood of wonder, to best enjoy the book. Flicking to the back sleeve of the book (and how could you not, after such an amazing opener) reveals a fully coloured map of Roshar, which is quite useful in the course of Words of Radiance's search for the mythical city of Urithiru. I hope the paperback manages somehow to do justice to these images, in the same way that the hardcover did for me.

This book was full of magic, science and explanation, secrets and lies, and incredible twists that had me reading chapters over again. Climactic scenes (such as Adolin's high-stakes duel for Shards) had me unable to stop reading. The only thing which lacking, compared to the first book, were the truly terrifying scenes such as what I previously mentioned Shallan experienced with the geometric-headed men. Sadly, this was a loss which could not be helped as the series transitioned from the unfamiliar into the ordinary. An expected loss, but one which I would have liked to see filled.

The Ups: Unique, amazing, unfamiliar and previously untouched world with characters that are fully-fleshed out and a world that keeps changing. Some truly epic moments (which you really want in such a large book) and finally the sense that this is going to be way more than just a trilogy (I think he said 11 books in all!)

The Downs: Sanderson has to work a lot harder to achieve the same sense of wonder and surreal-horror than he did in Book 1. It doesn't quite reach that first introductory peak of emotion.

The Verdict: 4.75 sequelspren out of 5

Overall, the book is a work of majestic art, that both inspires and terrifies the author in me, but excites the reader in me. It is an excellent continuation of the first book, and leaves a lot to go with in the rest of the series. It feels like the actual series is only just beginning.

Such a beautiful work of art.

MAJOR SPOILERS:

The book ends amazingly, returning what was lost early on in a spectacular manner. Wit remains a perfect Epilogous character. I did have a number of questions though. Such as: if Dalinar cannot have Shards, surely he could wear the -plate (which is not as cursed as the -blades). And secondly, what the heck is going to happen to Bridge Four's Shen when the Everstorm rolls around? How about, instead of killing your parshmen, you just keep them indoors? 

Wolves

Such a pretty cover.

Of the two January releases I mentioned in my New Years post, Wolves by Simon Ings was the one with the nicest cover, and the one which I expected to love most of all. (You can see the other review for Red Rising here.)

Wolves promotes itself as author Ings' return to science fiction: a dystopic world of Augmented Reality (AR), advertising, gaming and the end of the world. At its heart though, it is a story about two men. Everything else is merely background to their relationship, which develops in the reader's mind through use of occasional flashbacks to the main character, Conrad's traumatic youth.

The book itself is a little like Southland Tales meets Brave New World in terms of its construction and themes. A sense of dissatisfaction with the world permeates throughout. The ending of the book (and the world) is unsatisfying and confusing, and the characters' withdrawal from the doomed society is on par in depressing style with the suicide of John Savage.

Readers unfamiliar with Southland Tales should imagine a movie which places actors in roles we are not accustomed to seeing them in, adds time travel and characters who speak in riddles and are actually just too strange to be believable. Make that a cult hit along the lines of Donnie Darko and throw in some additional material to let hardcore fans actually understand the movie. Now how about we that and place it into a book setting where the narrator is not only set adrift in this confusing sea of weirdos, but he himself is discontented with (and dissociating from) society at large. What you would have is Wolves.

Baron Von Westphalen (Southland Tales, second from right)
is probably one of the weirder characters in this motley crew.

This could be reality...

The thing is, I am unsure whether it works. In fact, I am unsure about most things to do with this book. I keep thinking over what I have read to work out what point Ings is trying to make. I have discussed the book with others. Yet I cannot make sense of it. The best that I could come up with is that the book attempts to convey the narrator's sense of alienation by alienating its reader, showing the likely result of an Augmented Reality future. However, while it alienates the reader it simultaneously tries to draw us into its virtual world: whether the end of the world fantasy of Michel or the mind-altered reality which it invades. In the end, because reality is so subject to the whims of the AR's creator, I wasn't even sure if the flood 'end of the world' scenario was happening in reality. I hesitate to say the book has failed to make a point, because somebody smarter than me will inevitably find some meaning to it. I am, however, satisfied to say the book went over my head and will likely do so for the majority of casual readers.

In writing, it is gritty. Descriptions are uncertain or repetitive, emulating the manner in which their narrator experienced them. This serves to bring the reader into the mind of the narrator, but it also gets boring very quickly. The characters are the same unhappy, plain humans driven by the desire to fill their empty lives in whatever way they can. For most of them, that is connecting with others through sex, though for Conrad even a string of prostitutes is unfulfilling as they wear AR contact lenses during their encounters so that they can be anywhere but where they actually are. His need for human connection goes unsatisfied.

Speaking of sex, the book has quite a few surprising scenes. I say surprising because they come out of nowhere. Through the course of the book, Conrad has sex with every main character, with the exception of his co-worker and his family. This includes the villain (if he could be described thusly). For some this may add to the grittiness of the writing. For me it just seemed gratuitous.

Google Glass

I want to tell people to go and read this book, because Ings really delves into a potential future of Google Glass AR and its potential impacts on the world (particularly once they go beyond the glasses and to projected images, subvocalisations and other scarier things). Sadly, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book to anybody. It has some excellent themes and at its heart contains enough material to amount to a good short story. However, the padding (the murder mystery, the relationship between Connie and Hanna) seems to fill it uselessly. It feels like two stories trying their hardest to stick together, but kept separated by uncommon themes. Perhaps that is what Ings intended. I really don't know.

The Ups: Incredible cover. Good depiction of what the post-Google Glass world might look like. Some excellent writing amongst the filler.

The Downs: Confusing, empty characters and a murder mystery in the past that just does very little for the book. It feels too long, like a short story stretched too far, or two stories mashed together. 

The Verdict: 1.5 pointless blow-jobs out of 5

I wouldn't recommend it for casual consumption. This book is nothing like it was advertised as. But if you are studying Brave New World or other depressing science fiction literature this is a nice modern rendition of alienation in a dystopic/utopic world. I just felt a little depressed by the end of the book, like it was well-written but I wasted my time and money on it (which made me feel guilty that I hadn't enjoyed it more).

Even this pimp might consider suicide by the end.

Red Rising

In the next two weeks, I will be putting up my thoughts on two of the books on my "looking forward to" list from earlier this year. Next week, I will be looking at Simon Ings' Wolves. This week, however, my focus is on my most recent read.

Red Rising, the first in a same-named series by Pierce Brown, is also the author's maiden voyage into published writing. Its cover touts its protagonist, Darrow, as the new Ender or Katniss. Its sleeve depicts it as a perfect book for Hunger Games fans. But was it all that?

The book is definitely in the genre of The Lord of the Flies (sharing living quarters with The Hunger Games and Battle Royale): a bunch of youths are placed in an artificial world devoid of overt adult interference and must compete either to be the greatest or to merely survive. It shares a little more with Suzanne Collins' work, as both Katniss and Darrow are attempting to incite rebellion against an overly-oppressive central state. In this case, Darrow is a member of the 'Reds': the lowest caste in a futuristic, solar-system-spanning society which is arranged in colours. Reds are at the bottom, 'Golds' are at the top. Ruling over these Golds are members of their own Colour: the 'Peerless Scarred' who take pride in their idea of a meritocracy, where the strongest must lead (indeed, 'Demokracy' is illegal and Brown makes a funny point in an early chapter as to its downfalls).

As I mentioned in the new year, the idea of rebellion on Mars is not a new idea. The film version of Total Recall made a particularly cheesy attempt at this, as did the video game, Red Faction. Socialism and Mars both have 'red' in common after all. In the background of this work, Brown also works in a lot of mythology from Roman history: their gods, architecture, and societal structure, as well as allusions to the Fall of Rome due to festering corruption in its core.

One of many Mars + Socialist = Red Theme stories

Red Rising is two very different books in one. The first (and thankfully shortest) sets up Darrow and his life in the mines of Mars. It shows the injustice of his life and makes him a thoroughly unlikeable character (if not as unlikeable as Asher from Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage). He lives a short life where he is married early to his sweetheart, but nearly kills himself working so as to win prestige so she doesn't have to sell her body for more food for them. Yeah, it starts pretty heavy. (The only part heavier occurs in the second part of the book, with allusions to serial rape. So this isn't exactly a children's novel.)

This first part is not great. The writing goes too fast and so misses important details. Darrow's surgical transformation from Red to Gold is breezed over. Indeed, other parts of the book breeze over details with a liquid precision too, which I would love to have seen expanded but perhaps not at the risk of turning this into an eight-hundred page tome. (Ed: Please read the addendum to this review for an update on this.)

It is when we get to the second half of the book, the actual Hunger Games component, that the real action begins. But not only action. Darrow's characterisation emerges and he actually becomes a protagonist we root for. His philosophy emerges and his drive to win. Somehow his ability to fight, despite rarely having done so before, comes out here. The writing slows down and enjoys the politics of his situation, and the plot unfolds beautifully. The original 'godly' influenced Houses for which the children all fight in quickly descend into the strategies of their particular leaders.

This part is excellent. Not only does it continue the theme of unjustness and a cancer at the heart of society, which I made mention of earlier, but the characters become human: they cry, cheat, hurt, kill. Brown throws in a number of stunning twists (and I do love effective twists) so that, as a reader, you are never fully comfortable with Darrow's position. Deceit or assassination might always be just around the corner, and even when he has power he may not keep it one moment to the next. His revelation in terms of keeping loyalty, toward the middle of the book, is an excellent turn in his own character and the direction the book takes, so that it is not just a standard Hunger Games scenario. Like Katniss, to win he breaks the rules. Even in the finishing pages of the book, I had no idea what was going to happen, or whether he was about to be betrayed.

I can only see one significant plot-hole in this work. The Peerless Scarred, by going through what they go through, must all be scarred, battered, one-eyed individuals. And yet while the book makes mention of scars on the faces of the Scarred, these seem almost ritual, not war-earned. Unless this is cleared up in the next book (hyper-advanced medicine or similar) it seems like most of the Peerless Scarred would come out with all kinds of missing appendages and psychotic traumas. But that seems a minor issue.

I admit, on reading the opening chapters of Red Rising I scoffed at the reviews which compared this to The Hunger Games. And those chapters still need a lot of work to make the character likeable and to set up his motivation in a way that we, the readers, will care for him. But in the page-turning rest of the book, I cannot fault a single word (actually, I think there was one typo).

In complexity and background it is not an adult epic fantasy like Song of Ice and Fire or The Wheel of Time. However, I can see why it is a natural progression from The Hunger Games as this is clearly an older 'young adult' novel, or for those adults who want a light read without too much detail.

This is a really good start on Brown's series, and the book concludes its own story brilliantly whilst still leaving plenty of room for its sequels. (Actually, I had no faith it would conclude at all, but it did so swiftly and unexpectedly, in ways I would never have guessed!)

The Ups: Fast-paced, well-written second half, a strong inner-voiced character and it invoked the desire in me to keep turning pages well into the night. Nail-biting, cheek-chewing treachery that always keeps you on edge.

The Downs: Slow start, skipping over important aspects of how and why, with light treatment of serious adult issues. Motivation for the protagonist is a little threadbare and a head-strong, rage-filled protagonist supposedly born without the luxuries of education, tactics and artificial muscle growths such as others have make him unlikely and at times unbelievable.

The Verdict: 3.5 haemanthus blossoms out of 5

It kept me reading once I got past the opening chapters. Indulge it that little bit and it will reward you. Pierce Brown looks to be one of those 'must watch' authors in the future. I will be eagerly anticipating this one's sequel, Golden Child.

Addendum: For some inexplicable reason, my copy of the book ended up missing three chapters (the three key chapters which depict Darrow going under Mickey's knife to transform into a Gold, and then his training and entry into the Institute, including the set-up of other important characters). I have since found those and read them. While they definitely go into more physical detail about his transformation, they also bring questions to mind about how Darrow can be so mentally skilled despite being a lowly, uneducated Red. Still, they were possibly the worst chapters to miss. I apologise to any readers of my blog who were put off by that. The flesh-sculpting of Mickey the Carver also explains how the Peerless Scarred can end up being whole again post-wargames.

The Way of Kings - The Stormlight Archives (Book 1)

Since the writings of Tolkien, developed over the years into its own semi canon, the genre of fantasy has had its staples. It is so easy to suspend disbelief in a book that follows on from its predecessors. We accept that there are elves: who live for centuries, are light and lithe, powerful magic users, graceful and sharp-featured. Orcs and goblins are brutal, twisted creatures with grey or green skin, jaws like wild boars, and a knack for evil though not villainy.

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson, is astounding because it is none of that. Indeed, its similarities to our world of Earth are as set in reality as a work of science fiction on an alien planet. Even that other epic series of fantasy, The Wheel of Time (also finished by Sanderson after Robert Jordan's untimely death), relied on staples we take for granted: trees, grass, weather.

In a chapter toward the end of the book, Sanderson remarks on this phenomenon as one of his side characters enters the land of Shin, where high mountains protect against the raging Highstorms that devastate the surrounding lands. Here, the character finds grass underfoot which does not draw into itself when touched; trees which do not move, but display their leaves in open defiance of the sky. It is a wonder, which is all the more wonderful since Sanderson has spent the rest of the book allowing his reader to become so involved in his world that we no longer recognise his strange world as surreal.

But Sanderson does not just play with the local flora and fauna (and even dogs are chitinous and insectoid). Novel ideas dominate his pages. My favourite, the 'spren': emotions taking form in physical bodies, appearing and disappearing due to unknown phenomena. Victorious armies create small golden gloryspren, festering wounds attract rottspren, windspren joy in trickery and dying people see deathspren. We even get a look at the perspective of a scientist of this world, who has made it his life to document all kind of spren in existence, from the fabled 'intoxicationspren' to a huge spren which rise up from the waters, guardian-spirit style, to draw something out of witnesses before sinking again beneath the waves. Even this scientist questions whether spren cause their associated emotions, or are caused by them. Do rottspren feed on rotting flesh? Why then can one protect a wound by washing it with water (which the rottspren abhor)? Do deathspren kill, or do they feed off of the last energies of a dying being?

Kaladin the truly Stormblessed

Science, reasoning, logic and philosophy predominate through the pages. The main characters have depths beyond their clichéd surfaces. The slave is actually a surgeon, the warlord is a philosopher, the thief is a scientist. Atheism and religious zealotry war through the pages, each attempting to explain the meaning behind the greater tale. In fantasy, atheism is a little hard to explain when the gods are made flesh. Sanderson not only manages to create a convincing atheist, but also a convincing atheism. Is the Almighty real? Two very different solutions are drawn by the end of the book. I won't spoil any more than that though.

Only one thing is jarring in the reading of this book. Sanderson has followed an epic's path of changing his narrator each chapter. This is understandable. As a reader, it leaves one feeling eager to read on and find out what happened to the character left at a cliffhanger. Instead, the reader has to pass through another chapter with a different narrator, and is left just as hooked on that character's story by the end of that reading. This has been put to great use in novels for decades. The Wheel of Time made excellent use of this, once it had introduced the other characters from its main character's perspective. Over time and books, these characters had a chance for their own voices to grow. The Saga of Seven Suns played with this, allowing its readers to get attached to characters before snuffing them out (similarly with A Song of Ice and Fire). Sanderson's perspective characters, for the most part, never meet. Shallan (who is said to be the main view of the upcoming Book 2: Words of Radiance) is hinted at joining the others at the end of the book, but never does. Perhaps because of the lack of interaction of these characters, ending each chapter as he did, Sanderson left me feeling like I held the fraying end of the character's story each time. I wanted to keep reading but I felt cheated and frustrated each chapter, rather than eager as in the other epics above. I do not know if this was his intention. Given that this inspired just as many emotions in me as the others did however, this is hardly a criticism of the author's structuring style.

It is easy to create a book in which everything goes right, but so much harder to twist the heartstrings when things go wrong. In each book I have loved there is always a memorable point: a point that, in a sense, makes the book worth having read. Those points are always the lowest or the darkest for me. Sometimes (as in The Knife of Never Letting Go) that is the killing of a loved character, or the point where everything seems on the brink of disaster (such as Rand's ascent to Dragonmount in The Gathering Storm). In The Way of Kings, it was far more Lovecraftian in its unexplainable horror. Shallan, a character able to memorize a scene instantly and then draw it, discovers that she is surrounded by tall robed figures with shifting geometric symbols where they should have heads. Only, they only appear in her drawings and no others can see them. She thinks herself gone mad and begins sketching frantically to see if they are real. The defining moment comes when she sketches one reaching out for her and then she reaches out to see if it is real or merely a hallucination. She touches something. And there I got chills. These creatures are everything that Doctor Who tried to do with 'the Silence' (creatures you forget when you no longer see them) and failed to achieve that feeling of horror. That moment made the book worth reading for me.

Skyeels are a favourite
of mine. 

This short review hasn't even touched on a number of things included in the book.

Like how each Act of the story is broken up into blocks, with interludes of perspectives from characters who are never mentioned again. Or how each chapter is fronted with a saying, history, or recording of last words, the latter of which's importance is only realised in one of the concluding chapters. Or even of the beautiful sketched artwork detailing the creatures of this land, which really absorb the reader into it. Not to mention the idea of glowing gemstone money, gemhearts or shardblades. It would take as long as the book to sum up why I enjoyed Sanderson's work so much, so I'll leave off by just saying: do yourself a favour and read it.

The Ups: A truly unique fantasy world, with deep characters and so much thought put into motives, world-crafting, and the results of each character's actions.

The Downs: Frustrating when the action moves away from one perspective character to another. Not done as smoothly or as coherently as I could have hoped. A little long-winded in parts.

The Verdict: 4.5 bookspren out of 5

Overall, the book is beautifully written, giving hints at its greater meaning and then dashing them at the next chapter. Sanderson is creating a masterwork here, and I can hardly wait for the second.

Top 5 Books 2013, and a Few Thoughts on 2014

Welcome to 2014 everyone! I am sure many of you have resolutions planned, or already in action. Some of you may have decided to skip the resolutions this year. 

A Memory of Light - my favourite novel of 2013

Last year, I resolved to read more. While I probably didn't read as many as I had hoped to (including some of the more ambitious of them: The Metamorphoses, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Art of War), whether from resolution or from being finished with tertiary study, I did chew my way through quite a few. 

My top five books for the year (taking only one from each author):

1. A Memory of Light (Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson) - Wow. Was this only last year? One day I may try and review the whole of the Wheel of Time series, but needless to say it is an epic work that sadly outlasted its author. The climactic chapter, 'The Last Battle' (in length longer than some other books) was breathtaking from start to finish, and the final chapter (written by Jordan before his death) was a perfect conclusion with a satisfying tying off of loose threads, but which also raised a number of nagging questions.
2. The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) - There is little that can be said here that has not been said elsewhere. This book took a long time to write, and it shows. It is excellently crafted, a gritty fantasy (becoming so popular of late). Well worth a read, though its focus on one character means it is not as gripping as other fantasy series have been. Some claim it to be an adult Harry Potter because of its protagonist's attendance at an Oxford-style school of magic, but thereabouts the similarities end.
3. Abbadon's Gate (James SA Corey) - Final book in The Expanse series, this book felt so short in story, but its page count remained lengthy. I absolutely love its authors' (for there are two despite the pen-name) take on hard sci fi. The lack of artificial gravity, the deadliness of space and its fast-flying projectiles (go watch Gravity if you still have doubts on this point) and the Firefly-esque attention paid to a small freighter crew all combined to make a realistic sci fi with some pertinent points about humanity and our place in the cosmos. I very much look forward to the fourth in the series, Cibola Burn.
4. Railsea (China Mieville) - This, rather than The City & The City, ended up in my top five for 2013
   
   
   because it is, on the surface, a young adult novel. It is a coming of age story of a boy seeking to leave home, who (in Mieville's style) is swept along on his adventure by forces beyond his control. The book is essentially a sci fi adaptation of Moby Dick, set on a planet with rails covering a 'railsea' inhabited by giant burrowing creatures mutated and deadly. My favourite part of the book is how Mieville plays with his reader, chapter to chapter, talking about genre expectations and playing around with language. (You see this from the beginning, where he replaces all 'and's with & - a symbol just as tangled as the railsea.) The ending is, in Mieville spirit, completely depressing.
5. Poison Study (Maria V Snyder) - At first I thought this book very childishly written. And it is. Its teenage protagonist is everything you might expect from a stereotypical teen character in a bad fantasy novel: whingey, surly, falling in love in a slightly masochistic way. If I hadn't been stuck on a bus with nothing else to do, I probably wouldn't have read it. I'm not entirely sure I'm glad that I did. This book is here for one reason: a rape scene hinted at through the whole of the book, and so emotive in its own hollow-souled way that it has left me feeling tarnished ever since. I can't recommend this book. But I can't bring myself to call it badly written either.

And honourable mentions to:

• Magician (Raymond E Feist)
• The Prince (Machievelli)
• Storm Front (Jim Butcher) (Full review here.)
• The Innocent Mage (Karen Miller)
• The City & The City (China Mieville)
• The Wise Man's Fear (Patrick Rothfuss)

My hopes for this year are for this blog to continue in a more frequent fashion than in previous years. I will be focusing mainly on books, though with the time it takes to read one of those huge speculative fiction novels, I will be mixing it up with films and perhaps the occasional video game review.

Gorgeous cover art done
by Jeffrey Alan Love

In particular for books, I am looking forward to:

• Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - Red shares connotations with Soviet uprisings and with Mars. Which is perhaps why such a story (uprisings on Mars) has been done over and over (the original Total Recall film, Red Faction). I will be looking forward to Brown's treatment of Red.
• Wolves (Simon Ings) - By the name (before I saw the author) I assumed it a sequel to Wool, but it seems I was completely and happily wrong. A cyberpunk style tech-heavy sci fi of alternate reality, I am looking forward to what Ings will do here. Plus, its cover (done by artist Jeffrey Alan Love, who also redid Ings' back catalogue with some amazing art) is to die for.
• The Gospel of Loki (Joanne M Harris) - Selling itself as an 'unofficial history of the world's ultimate trickster' this is surely capitalising on the success of Thor. But who cares? I love a good trickster.
• Words of Radiance (Brandon Sanderson) - Book Two of the Stormlight Archive. I have just finished The Way of Kings and plan on putting up a review soon. Needless to say I loved it.
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman) - Gaiman is a brilliant writer. One need only read American Gods for proof of that. This upcoming novel looks like Gaiman-meets-Lovecraft: a match I need to read.

It's going to be an excellent year!

(p.s. I can't seem to get 'Let It Go' from Frozen out of my head. It gets better every time I hear it. Perhaps it will be as timeless a classic as Disney's second golden age songs.)

Movie: Frozen

It always seems somewhat ironic to watch an American Christmas movie in Australia, and with 30 degree temperatures this year, Disney's latest animated musical, Frozen felt a little misplaced, though it was a great movie.

Frozen is a story primarily about Anna, a princess of Arendelle locked away from her people after she suffers an ice magic curse from her sister. As far as curses go, this one is pretty minor: Anna's hair changes colour and that's about it. But when her sister loses control of her powers, it is up to Anna to save the day.

Now I say this story is primarily about Anna. It has a pretty big cast of protagonists (with some surprising voice talent) which do not really fit cleanly into the archetypal characters which Disney has relied on for decades. Taking centrestage, we find Kristoff (the ice vendor) and Sven (his reindeer), Elsa (the Snow Queen) and Prince Hans (the roguish 'prince'). Supporting these, we have trolls, savvy Dukes (including the always-excellent Alan Tudyk), an animated snowman named Olaf (who gets one of the funnier songs of the movie) and a stereotyped Nordic trader. 

There are a lot of characters sharing stage, and the subplots advance rapidly. As a result, I found the movie a little confusing, the characters bouncing from one event to the other without much of a central plot line. Heroes become villains and villains become goofy side characters. Without a central villain or hero of the piece, it just seems like the whole plot is pushed forward by luck and happenstance. This is unfortunate, because there is a very strong story beneath it all, which the script could have done more for. 

The animation is excellently done, and the animators had a lot of fun with everything they could do with snow and ice, giving the whole thing a magical feel. The main characters have little quirks and it looks like Disney is making little changes each new movie to settle on a unique animated style for its characters. They really play around with the animations during the singing, particularly during song 'For the First Time in Forever'. No complaints here!

I enjoyed the movie a lot, thanks in huge part to two things. 

Elsa's inner struggle is a big
tug on the heart-strings.

Firstly, the singing is excellent. Fans of Veronica Mars would have heard star Kristen Bell singing once before (S01E12), but it still surprised me to see her name in the credits at the end of the movie. She takes a strong lead, only overshadowed by Idina Menzel of Wicked fame who brings her iconic singing voice to the Snow Queen Elsa and makes the movie feel like Wicked done by Disney. I particularly recommend 'Let It Go' and 'For the First Time in Forever' which felt like big Broadway numbers. 'In Summer' was funny, though it probably should have melted away a bit sooner. Finally, 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman' was a cute montage song for the two girls growing up. The songs aren't particularly memorable, and we probably won't be adding them to our Disney playlists alongside 'A Whole New World', 'Under the Sea' or other favourites, but they are good songs.

The second reason I enjoyed Frozen was its plot twists. While I did find the plot a little confusing and atypical to standard Disney fare, it had some of the best twists I have ever seen. Without spoiling the movie for anyone, there were two particular moments of the film that gripped me: when Anna finally returns to Hans for him to save the day, and the resolution of the snow storm at the end of the movie with its act of 'true love'. The first is a far more devious and adult twist than I have ever seen in a Disney movie before. The second turned what I thought would be a cheesy ending into a real tear-jerker and a pleasant twist on Disney's bread-and-butter "prince saves the damsel" plot.

Frozen has been out in America for a while, but for some reason Australia is only just getting it. I would definitely recommend seeing it if you get the chance, though I wouldn't say you need to go out of your way for it. Try not to spoil it too much for yourself, because that first time plot twist is a beautiful one. And while I didn't leave singing its songs, I would definitely consider putting it on TV next Christmas.

The Ups: Beautiful singing, excellent snow/ice animation, and jaw-dropping plot twists.

The Downs: No solid plot line, a good helping of random events, and subplots which seem to get away from the main plot lead to a confusing movie. 

Verdict: 3 melted snowmen out of 5

I am really pleased with the way Disney is going. This is a refreshing twist on Disney's archetypal plot lines, and an overall wonderful movie.