Towers of Midnight: Book Review

Have you ever sat down and eaten an entire pint of Haagen-daz?  Not really on purpose, but you just keep finding excused to keep eating, and pretty soon the entire pint is just... gone.

I did that with Towers of Midnight.  I kept meaning to go to bed.  Just a few more pages and I'll put it down.  It's getting late... better stop.  But I didn't stop.

I read this book until 2:30 in the morning, then got up and read for another hour to finish it.  It was mental.  I had to drive 8 hours the next day, and I was exhausted because I literally could not put this book down - that's something hasn't happened to me with a Wheel of Time book for a looong time.  So - that's a good thing.

But what was it, exactly, that kept me so engaged?

Some if it is definitely the feeling that a marathon is almost over.  I read the first Wheel of Time book when I was in junior high - 20 years ago or so.  After a run like this, it's hard not to try and sprint across the finish line.

Towers of Midnight was also a pretty compelling read, even though it had all the problems of the middle book in a trilogy.  There was a definite "Empire Strikes Back" vibe to it - lots of cool things happening, but you know that you won't get the real payoff until the next installment.  Still and all, this book accelerates the final race towards the conclusion of the series - wrapping up plot lines, bringing things together as much as possible.

In a fast-paced book like this, where the action comes quickly and time is at a premium, Sanderson's talents are really valuable.  He's better at straight action scenes, things like swordfights and mage battles, than Jordan was, which makes for some great scenes, like Perrin's battles with Slayer, and Egwene's fight against the Black Ajah in Tel'aran'rhiod.

There are some things that Sanderson doesn't do as well Jordan, though.  And Sanderson's voice is becoming a louder part of the book.  He's working off of Jordan's notes and partially-written manuscript, so it's inevitable that he has to fill in more gaps as time goes on.  In those gaps, we see more and more of Sanderson, which isn't always a bad thing, but the feeling of reading a book by a different author is getting stronger.

You really start to see the differences in this book when we read war scenes.  The big battles in the book are good, but I felt like they lacked something that Jordan brought to them.  Which isn't that surprising, as Jordan was a Vietnam veteran with combat experience.

The other real crack that shows here is Sanderson's take on Matt Cauthon.  Matt is a character that I always got the feeling Jordan really liked and identified with.  He was a more light-hearted, slightly comic character - a counterpoint to the damaged Rand and self-involved Perrin.  Unfortunately, Sanderson doesn't really do Matt justice.

Sanderson's Matt has all the essentials of the character.  He ogles women, swears a bit too much, and trusts his luck, but - like the war scenes, something's missing.  It doesn't feel like Sanderson really loves the character, so Matt's comes across a bit flat.  His Rand is much, much better, though - and his Perrin is pretty much the same as Jordan's.

Ultimately, the book is a great success.  It finishes off a lot of loose threads and sets the stage nicely for the last book in the series.  There is a bit more Sanderson here than in The Gathering Storm, but that doesn't detract from the book, so much as it changes it a little.  It's still a ripping story that moves at a great pace, has all your favorite characters and really sets up the coming finale.  If you like the Wheel of Time, you'll probably have a few quibbles with this book - but it's a great read.  Of course, if you've been reading these freaking books for the last 20 years, you don't have any choice but to read the damn thing.

Way of Kings: A Review

Way of Kings is the first book in the new Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson.  The name may ring a bell for fantasy fans.  That's because Sanderson was tagged by Robert Jordan's widow to be the writer that finished Jordan's... sprawling (let's just go with that) masterpiece, The Wheel of Time.

So, no pressure there, Brandon!  Just about 10 million people waiting to see if you can pull off wrapping up the approximately 50000000 dangling threads that Jordan left hanging there for ya.  Hell, the Fates couldn't spin that freaking story into a comprehensive narrative.  But I'll tell you this - I've read the first book of his wrap-up, and I enjoyed it more than ANY of the series, except the first 3, which were still reasonably-paced and before Jordan added a bunch of characters I don't give a shit about.  I'll give you a hint - I want to read about Matt.  And Perrin if you have to.

But anyways, I've wandered off-topic.  Sanderson has major chops as a fantasy author, and I've read pretty much all his other books, except for Warbreaker, which I just could not get into.  Generally, Sanderson does quite a few things well.  The biggest being, he doesn't stick to vanilla medieval fantasy settings.  Pretty much all his books are set in odd, magical or alien environments, with unique and neat magical powers that are both interesting and consistent.  He also writes fairly character-driven stories - there is very little of the "bring the maguffin to mount anti-maguffin" in his work.

So what you can expect from a Sanderson novel is - neat, imaginative world that is very different from a standard fantasy one, and interesting characters that have to deal with this world.

Which is what you get from Way of Kings.  Except... Sanderson seems to have caught a slight case of "Holy shit my publisher will let me write a really long book" from working on The Wheel of Time.  Way of Kings is long.  Like, 1000 pages long.  And it's supposed to be the first of... TEN.  So strap yourselves in, folks.  If you don't get really into this world and story within the first couple hundred pages, put that motherfucker down and leave - you don't want to get invested in something like this in a half-assed way.  This is a series for readers.

But really, if you're a fantasy fan, you'll probably find a lot to like here.  The series title refers to the "magical" energy source of the world, Stormlight.  This energy is brought to the world by massive storms, called Highstorms, that periodically sweep across the world, wreaking destruction but also bringing energy, which can be captured in gemstones.

It's clear that Sanderson has given a lot of thought to what a world affected by Highstorms would look like.  The storms have stripped much of the world of topsoil, and most wild animals are insect or crustacean-like, able to take cover and survive the Highstorms.  Grain is grown inside hard-shelled "rockbuds", and huge, lobster-like "chull" are beasts of burden.  So, cool enough setting that just exploring it is fairly interesting.

Sanderson also manages to create enough interesting characters to keep you engaged.  The self-loathing Assassin in White, the honorable and disenchanted Khaladin Stormblessed, the rigid warrior Dalinar Kholin and a number of others drive the plot forward as the fight to survive and to understand the magic and the world they live in.

Sanderson is also quite good at making the actual nature of the world and it's history mysterious to the reader and the characters, and it's a fun and engaging ride to learn truths (and lies) with them.  The book keeps up a fairly good momentum, rarely dropping into what my buddy Loren calls "the swamp" where you are forced to keep reading even though you're rather just stop, because you want to see if it gets interesting again.  So, no swamp, good characters, neat world.

The only real complaint I have about this book is that it's got a lot of the whole Ancient evil from the past returns to destroy the world thing going on.  Although that's been done to death, generally, Sanderson's well-thought-out world and past a mystery thing help keep it fresh enough not to seem too repetitive.  We are as much in the dark as most of the characters as to the nature of the threat, the "Desolation", so finding out bits and pieces from each character's narrative ties everything together and keeps you reading.

If you don't mind getting into a long haul, you should check this book out.  It's a good one.  And Sanderson, unlike Jordan, when he was alive, actually gets books finished and out - the only author in fantasy that keeps up an output like Sanderson is Steven Erikson - probably the subject of my next review!