Rhythm of War — Brandon Sanderson — Lukewarm

 

Disappointed might be the best way to describe my feelings about this book. I love Brandon Sanderson's writing and have praised him as a master of meaningful fiction comparable to Tolkein, but this book, while good, and certainly worth the read, falls short of what it promised to be.

Let me start with the good. Sanderson did a characteristically good job with world-building. The internal logic is tight; cause and effect are connectable and the broken/created rules are extraordinarily explicit in a way that allows your mind to sleuth the fictional world of Roshare as if it were real. The characters are well written as personalities, and it makes switching between them a refreshing change of pace. Similarly, the plot arch is paced reasonably well, it's easy to get sucked into. Finally, Sanderson's signature "magic science" is thoroughly developed in this book, if you like imagining a new set of the laws of physics, this will work well for you.

My complaints: The opposition in the book was weak; Odium was a clueless and insubstantial villain, made worse by the fact that the other potential main villains were actually kind of good guys... Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy a story that tells both sides, but the lack of archetypal opposition is really draining. It doesn't resonate. He tries to compensate for this by introducing a few new villains (i.e. the pursuer) but they are pretty insubstantial compared to the like of Amaram and Sadeas. Furthermore, the intended moral framework conflict between surgeon and soldier didn't really develop like it could have. The conclusions were half baked and the exposition undercovered.

In summary, this really was a decent book, better than anything Rawling has written and better than even some of Card's books; it just didn't live up to its potential.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The righteous mind — Jonathan Haidt — Recommend with salt

Image
  The book in a nutshell is captured by the subheading "why good people are divided by politics and religion". The book can be roughly divided into thirds. The first half of the book is about the origins of morality. Where did it come from? Haidt touches on some philosophical works and debates and ultimately concludes that morality provides evolutionary advantages, and it supersedes reason. He uses an elephant and a rider analogy, morality, roughly equated to emotion, is the elephant. He also uses a president and press secretary metaphor, which I found helpful, reason's primary function is to rationalize the conclusions of the subconscious. I'm not sure this story fully explains morality. I think it could explain some of it, and it provides some satisfying guidance but tas far as I can tell it does not obviate the need for extra-human deliberate construction of morality. Second, he outlines what morality is and isn't. He rejects utilitarianism and deontology as to
Read more

The Sum of All Fears-- Tom Clancy

Image
The Sum of all fears  It’s classic Clancy. This one is particularly interesting in terms of the breadth of the problem and players. It’s very human and the technical details are as compelling as always. It also highlights the potential danger of MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy in a very penetrating way.  Check out my general Clancy post for a broader take on this series. Verdict Recommend
Read more

Foundation -- Isaac Asimov -- Lukewarm

Image
I read this because people I admire talked about it (Elon musk, Orson Scott Card, Ben Shapiro). It's classic science fiction in an ancient context. It was published in the 50s, 15 years before the earliest start trek, 25 years before star wars, and 35 years before Enders game, all of which are ancient history. In many ways, it belongs to the era of   Edgar Rice Burroughs'  Prince of Mars or even H.G. Well's War of the Worlds more than it does modern science fiction. That being said, there are some truly brilliant ideas explored in the text. First, the book doesn't follow a protagonist, which means no character development and no human story. Instead, Asimov overtly follows humanities' story, jumping from viewpoint to viewpoint and century to century in galactic civilization. In some ways, it reads more like a collection of short stories in Sanderson's Cosmere or perhaps even something from the MCU, but the novel still manages to drive a narrative crafted aro
Read more