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Comments
So, probably not as dark as Crime and Punishment. Which I guess hasn't been super-dark so far, so much as intensely unfortunate.
It's dark in the broad sense, but it's kind of too awesome to be entirely dark.
I'm currently reading a book, the title of which I won't give you, since it's local. It's still better than that time when Alex called a book obscure, because it was translated into like every European language but English. This one, as far as I know, has not been translated into foreign.
WARNING! RANT AHEAD!
I wonder if those of you who aren't native English speakers, feel the same. That there's a lot of wonderful material nobody else knows of, because of lack of interest from outside publishers. The Witcher stories got English translation solely by being made into a video game. Why, I wonder? Is it that barbaric writings are unworthy of notice of neo-Latin-speaking polite society?
It is sad, and I definitely feel the same like you from time to time. But I wouldn't ascribe it to conscious discrimination as much as to the fact that the Anglosaxon language sphere holds a cultural hegemony over the world.
Part of the problem is that books, for the most part, aren't all that marketable these days. It's pretty sad, really.
Hm, when I think of it - you know what, I feel the experience of playing the victim here is gonna give me some insight the next time we get a social justice thread.
So, Milos, I remember once upon a time I wanted you to share some knowledge of Balkan-derived fiction. What's to be found at the local bookshop?
Gravity manipulation? In a fantasy book? I like.
It even has specific rules that it follows.
You can find the information in the Ars Arcanum at the back, but basically, there are three types of Lashings used. Basic Lashings change the direction of gravity for an object, Full Lashings bind objects together, and Reverse Lashings give an object a gravitational pull. There are even uses that come from this- binding yourself with a Basic Lashing can make you way less- lashing half your weight upward makes your weight effectively zero, for example.
That's how most of the magic in the setting works, and it's what allows the setting to work. Soulcasting is given a set of specific uses- for example, turning stone to grain, which is how armies can survive on the Shattered Plains, and turning cloth into basic stone rooms, which is what allows everyone to survive the highstorms.
> picking up The Way of Kings
> still needing exercise after
The Way of Kings is not a dark book.
Oh, it has all the trappings of a dark book. Kaladin is afflicted with severe depression, for example, and consistently fails in everything he wants to do, to the point that he considers suicide early in the book. People have to do terrible things in order to flourish (Shallan), people are manipulated, deceived and betrayed, it's never quite clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, the people who should have been the good guys betrayed humanity for reasons unclear, and the book opens with the Heralds abandoning humanity to their fate because they can't bear going back to the torture.
But... Well, half the point of the book is about the characters trying to be decent people in spite of the fact that the world sucks. Kaladin and Dalinar are the prime examples of this. Despite people betraying Dalinar, laughing at him, and disrespecting him and his ideals, he still tries to follow his ideals and be a good person. Despite Kaladin constantly failing at everything he tries... he still tries.
Which leads to one of the best lines I've read in a series yet. It's due in part to the build up, in part to the thematic aspects of the phrase, and in part to the actual phrase itself and what it implies. (You shouldn't read this until you've finished the book, though.)
"I will protect those who cannon protect themselves."
The Second Ideal of the Knights Radiant.
I don't know. What I like about the series is that... well, the world frankly fucking sucks, and in the hands of any other author, the series would take a quick turn to the grim. I mean, one of the main characters is a slave who is forced to charge through hails of arrow, and is a severely depressed person who consistently fails at whatever he tries. One person is an honourable man who constantly gets betrayed, deseived, manipulated, disrespected. One person is an assassin who is forced to betray everything that makes him a decent man. One person is a woman who is forced to do a terrible thing to save her family, and must betray someone she comes to respect to do it.
But they remain decent people, even though it would be so, so easy to make them give in and become terrible people. They remain idealistic in spite of adversity, and that makes me respect the book much, much more than if it tried to be a grim series.
That, and the fucking plot twists at the end of the book.
I could go on for ages. Is there anything more specific you are interested in?
>You can find the information in the Ars Arcanum at the back, but basically, there are three types of Lashings used. Basic Lashings change the direction of gravity for an object, Full Lashings bind objects together, and Reverse Lashings give an object a gravitational pull. There are even uses that come from this- binding yourself with a Basic Lashing can make you way less- lashing half your weight upward makes your weight effectively zero, for example.
Yeah, it was explained pretty well in-story.
One thing I loved about the setting is that diamonds are the least valuable of the types of gems incorporated into the currency. I don't think I've ever seen a speculative fiction writer get that right.
Well, it's actually got an in-universe explanation beyond 'well, these gems are rarer, so they are more valuable'.
Diamonds are worth the least of all the gems because all they can be used to make is quartz, glass, and crystal, for example, while emeralds are worth the most because they can be used to make food.
Yes, but beyond that, in a world without diamond cartels, diamonds actually would be less valuable than emeralds, so I thought it was pretty neat.
Yeah, but that's not exactly something that's relevant to the setting, as precious materials are not prized for their scarcity, but rather for their usefulness. I mean, so far as I have seen in the book, people don't even know gold exists, let alone consider it to be a very precious metal.
I know. It just made me smile.
I just think that's it's more interesting in terms of how it explores the concept of value. Things don't have value just because they're rare in the book, and that is due in no small part to the existence of the functional magic in the series.
That is, scarcity does determine the value of an object, but so does how useful it is, and the only reason scarcity matters at all is because there is only a limited amount of these objects and they break after some use.
It's an interesting look at an economy, and I like to look at it from that point of view.
That is pretty neat. I can't really comment on that so much yet because I'm only 130 pages in and that's the only example I've seen.
Yalb is awesome.
okay fine I'll read this book
eventually
I just realized that I ran out of space a long time ago, but I was too stubborn to see it.
It's a pretty great example of Sanderson's writing style, using functional rules for a setting to support the world building.
Yalb is Shallan's second-best supporting character, only behind Jasnah.
Excellent.
It's obvious at this point that Jasnah is going to be a really good character, but she hasn't really done so yet, if that makes sense.
Jasnah is a great character, but she doesn't exhibit some of her more... awesome/awful characteristics until about halfway through the book. But just wait until she shows why Sanderson gave her a Soulcaster.
Also, Jasnah is one of the best atheists I have seen in a book. She disbelieves in the existence of a God, but she does not push her beliefs on others, and she respects their beliefs. She just respects people who question their beliefs and do not blindly accept things; that goes for both religious people and atheists, though.
In part 2.
I'm liking the geography-as-metaphor thing the Shattered Plains have going when compared to the whole "unite them" thing.
It's a metaphor, but I'm pretty sure it's also a literal thing, to do with them being Shattered. The Shattered Plains were part of Alethela- the nation that Alethkar used to be, back in the time of the Heralds and the Radiants. One of the Silver Kingdoms. The Shattered Plains are part of the Unclaimed Hills, which was abandoned by Alethkar sometime in between then and now.
It's interesting to note that the Shattered Plains, described as looking as if the Plains were shattered by something falling onto them from a great height, are in the East of the world- when we know Honour, the Almighty, dwells in the West of the lands.
Very interesting.
I love the illustrations in this book. They give it this wonderful scrapbooky feel. Not enough novels have them.
The illustrations are one of the best parts. So are the little sub-paragraphs at the beginning of each proper chapter. They provide little tidbits that support the story, by providing some of the research people are actually doing in the story, little sections of notes on old myths and folklore, and someone's musings and such. It really gives the book a little extra touch- and it's those little touches that elevate it from being a good book to a great book, to me.
I'm right with you there.
Incidentally, when you finish the book, I recommend going back and rereading those little sub-paragraphs. Everything makes a terrible kind of sense once you have the context for them.
Also, little touches I like; some of the pictures are just random scribblings by people, e.g. soldiers drawing the maps of the Shattered Plains/bridgemen areas, while others are some of Shallan's drawings, e.g. the shalebark drawing, and some are actual in-universe drawings, from old books Jasnah and Shallan are reading through. It's another little touch on top of the actual little touch; they're not just scrapbook drawings, they're scrapbook drawings that support the story by coming from a variety of sources.
Well, not all of them. The bunch which seem to just be some guy musing to himself... nobody's quite sure whose musings those are. Well, I know who the person is talking to, but not who the talking person is.
Really, I'm surprised at how self-contained the novel is, considering it's a really open-ended novel. Everything wraps back around, and save for the things that are future plot threads, with some thought, you can wrap your head around why everything happens, even if you don't have all the details.
But... well, I can't discuss it very much until you've finished the book, because too much of the discussion requires some things that aren't revealed until the last 50 pages, including one twist that happens over the course of the last two pages (although you probably could see it coming, and a lot of people did, but the confirmation just drives it home).