Book Review: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (four stars)

Book Review: The Hero of Ages (Mistborn #3) by Brandon Sanderson (four stars)

“The truth doesn’t make it any easier.” “We’ve certainly made a mess! Destroying the world. That’s no mean feat, if you think about it. I wonder if we should be impressed with ourselves.”

2024 review: Better story; better storytelling, especially compared to contemporaries. In three installments, albeit one of them supersized, Sanderson creates a complex world, characters, history, and current crisis. Then resolves it all. Satisfying, despite … [spoilers omitted]. Read the author’s Preface after finishing the book.

“Yomen is a believer.” “That may be a weakness; it may be a strength. Believers are often willing to attempt the seemingly impossible, then count on providence to see them through. That sort of behavior can be a weakness if the belief is misplaced.”

Some reviewers fault Sanderson for proselytizing. They must have read a different edition. If Salt Lake City had censors like Rome, this book might be banned by his church as it explores how events progress to history to a cult to a religion. Several characters have crises of faith which ring true.

“Do I recognize that title?” “It was the book that I was reading that night on the Venture balcony. The time we first met.” “Why, [redacted]! That’s almost romantic—in a twisted ‘I’m going to make my wife want to kill me’ sort of way.” “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

Opening quotes, though essential to where he wants to end, slow the pace without adding to story. Like hyperlinks. (ADD is contagious, spread by hyperlinks.) While his various metal-based powers are at the core of this reality, continually explaining them also detracts. A geekfest for some.

“What took you so long?” “I got delayed by an Inquisitor and a dark god.”

[2009 review: Perhaps I should give him a four for just ending his series–and a good ending it was–but I was not as satisfied with <em>The Hero of Ages</em> as with <em>Mistborn</em>.

Sanderson created a new universe from whole cloth, which much more history and theology than most fantasies. He worked hard and it shows. Hope he keeps it up; he has great potential.]

Book Review: Vengeance by Anthony Riches (four stars)

Book Review: Vengeance (Empire #12) by Anthony Riches (four stars)

‘I am death! Cursed with the double-edged gift of a gods-given ability to kill and an unending succession of men who seem determined to die.’

Riches delivers the goods. As promised, his twelve-volume series on the Roman Empire during the reign of Commodus closes with a bang: a murder kicks off the Year of the Five Emperors. And our hero holds his signature two blades at the throat of Rome.

‘I have a promise to keep. You two should—’ ‘[Redacted] “should”, you idiot. I’ve been pulling your chestnuts out of the fire for more than a decade, so if you think I’m going to let you wander off into the city to die with some bastard’s knife in your back, you can forget it. I’m coming with you.’

Possibly the most history-laden story of the series, Vengeance draws on a turbulent Saturnalia and its aftermath. Riches trims his core crew to the essentials and turns them loose on the Eternal City nudging history in the right direction to provide Marcus closure. Too bad about him having to die to achieve it. Maybe.

‘You fools! May Jove the Avenger smite you from the heavens!’

Series overview: Hardcore historical fiction told with modern English military idioms and profanity. Second-century Roman empire provides rich background of war, intrigue, and unrest to propel too-good-to-be-true protagonist to adventure. (The whole series loses one star for profanity and violence. You’ve been warned.) Compare to [author:Ellis Peters|4046]’ <i>Chronicles of Cadfael</i> or [author:Bernard Cornwell|31468565]’s [book:Sharpe’s Tiger|328907] series. Though episodic, best read in order.

Book Review: River of Gold by Anthony Riches (four stars)

Book Review: River of Gold (Empire #11) by Anthony Riches (four stars)

‘I always wondered what a man had to do to get himself immortalised in stone! I’d have been happy never to have found out though.’

Subset of the series’ continuing cast go on another suicide (Cleander hopes) mission to save the Empire. Naturally if anything goes wrong, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of the MI team. Gaius Rutilius Scaurus serves as Professor Xavier to Marcus’ Wolverine. Yes, it’s all been done before, but Riches manages a new twist. A fun, if coarse read.

‘Nothing too bad. You just need to rest for a moment.’ ‘Bullshit … I always knew … you’d end up … being the death … of me.’ He smiled into Marcus’s consternation … his eyes starting to lose focus. ‘And I never … regretted my choice … to follow you.’

Though the plot and characters continue to be over-the-top, Riches grounds his tales in real places, real events, and occasionally real people. Superb melding of Aegyptus and Kingdom of Kush into continuing story line. (Link to an excellent illustrated history of Kush at end.) Lots of modern jargon.

‘After all, you are beloved of the gods, are you not? And everyone knows that the gods’ ability to tolerate an injustice is not infinite.’

Series overview: Hardcore historical fiction told with modern English military idioms and profanity. Second-century Roman empire provides rich background of war, intrigue, and unrest to propel too-good-to-be-true protagonist to adventure. Roman grunts spoke Latin, but not that learned in school. (The whole series loses one star for profanity and violence. You’ve been warned.) Compare to [author:Ellis Peters|4046]’ <i>Chronicles of Cadfael</i> or [author:Bernard Cornwell|31468565]’s [book:Sharpe’s Tiger|328907] series. Though episodic, best read in order.

Book Review: The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell (four stars)

Book Review: The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell (four stars)

“You are tall for a reason. When your head is high, you can see farther than anyone else.” 

Well-researched and well-told historical fiction. Russell fictionalizes real people and real events in a neglected corner of America in 1913. Unbridled corporate greed, masses of immigrants, and deep-hole mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula collide in a tale of pathos and pride.

“They’ll blame her because she made them feel ashamed.” 

Russell brings distant people and circumstances to life by combining and simplifying details. Unlike most historical fiction, the main characters are historic people or combinations of real people. As inevitable as a really big train wreck.

“You know Annie.” “It’s like arguing with a dress-store dummy.” “Or a statue of the Virgin.” 

Book Review: Stranger Suns by George Zebrowski (four stars)

Book Review: Stranger Suns by George Zebrowski (four stars)

“I feel like a canoe builder inside an ocean liner.” “If this is an alien ship, then we’re not alone in the galaxy.”

As convoluted as a Dostoyevsky novel. Or hungover collegians solving the problems of the world in their dorm. I mean that in the best possible way. Speculative, if not maudlin, toward the end. Fun, if wordy science fiction.

“It doesn’t seem right to abolish distance so easily.” “Easily? Countless suns provide the energy to pry open space-time in this way.”

Published in 1991, Suns features a mixed bag of then-typical adventurers trying to make sense of huge alien artifacts discovered buried on Earth. And stay alive. Protagonist is terminally pessimistic. Some personalities and relationships reflect the then-imminent disintegration of the Soviet Union.

[Redacted] took a deep breath. “Good air.”

Quibbles: a geosynchronous orbit over the south pole would be … tricky. Our intrepid heroes are not only brilliant but often ahead of the author, revealing names and facts they shouldn’t yet know. Galaxy Quest-ian insights compete with rigorous science.

“If we’re ghosts we’ll never know it, since the originals are long gone, as is our original world.”

Book Review: Pawn by Timothy Zahn. (three stars)

Book Review: Pawn (Sybil’s War #1) by Timothy Zahn. (three stars)

“We’re currently a thousand light-years from Earth. Everything you’ve ever known is far, far behind us. And you’ll never see any of it again.”

Zahn tells his story well and creatively. A bunch of self-centered loners, not to mention a deeply flawed protagonist, must cooperate to stay alive; much less get home. Unfortunately, Pawn introduces the series characters, setting, and plot but not much else. Good enough to try the next installation: Knight: A Chronicle of the Sibyl’s War. Maybe.

“Fighting is the natural state of everything. People, nature—everything.”
“It’s not exactly fighting when it’s in nature.” “It’s stuff killing other stuff. Call it whatever you want. It’s still fighting.”

Quibble: How could any body-snatching spacefarer who repeatedly returns to Earth miss the fact that humans are warlike? Published in 2017 but the technology on this alien spaceship is late twentieth century.

The damage had already been done.  It was up to Nicole to fix it.

Book Review: The Scorpion’s Strike by Anthony Riches (three stars)

Book Review: The Scorpion’s Strike (Empire #10) by Anthony Riches (three stars)

Sometimes you have to forget your own safety in this life and do the one thing that nobody expects.

Historical fiction light. Another Roman superhero exploit. Action-packed, if comic book style adventure. The gods certainly favor Marcus, not to mention his friends. The stories are getting formulaic, but that’s probably part of their appeal to their target audience.

‘[Now] more warrior than I have ever been before or ever will be again, fighting as if I was possessed by some daemon of vengeance, my previous torpor burned away to leave my spirit incandescent with fury.’

Sadly, abandoned earlier practice of using vernacular names for sites rather than obscure Latin. Argentoratum, for example. Riches earlier rendering of place names in the vernacular reinforced Tommy-level storytelling.

‘But not today Sanga, you ugliest of men … Not today. Today we lie like gods themselves, eh?’

The soldier-in-the-ranks cynicism should resonate with Brits reflecting on the empire the sun never set. Shades of Bill Mauldin’s American WW2 soldiers Willie and Joe. (Was there a British equivalent?)

‘Just have the stonecutter write that I died like a man, in the company of my brothers. That would be enough.’

Series overview: Hardcore historical fiction told with modern English military idioms and profanity. Second-century Roman empire provides rich background of war, intrigue, and unrest to propel too-good-to-be-true protagonist to adventure. Roman grunts spoke Latin, but not that learned in school. (The whole series loses one star for profanity and violence. You’ve been warned.) Compare to Ellis Peters’ Chronicles of Cadfael or Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series. Though episodic, best read in order.

Book Review: The Well of Ascension (Mistborn #2) by Brandon Sanderson (four stars)

Book Review: The Well of Ascension (Mistborn #2) by Brandon Sanderson (four stars)

Some called her paranoid. She thought herself prepared.

2024 review: Better the second time. Sanderson is a great storyteller. I raised my 2009 rating to four stars. While this reading increased my appreciation for Well, Sanderson does much better at standalone stories.

“The Lord Ruler was an evil man. You’re a good one. That’s the difference.” “It’s that easy for you, isn’t it?” [She] nodded. “Well, some of us have to make things a little more complicated, so you’ll have to humor us.”

Lots of characters die. It reflects the peril of the times. (Spoiler: the death rate among characters first appearing in Well is close to unity.)

“I kind of lost track of time.” “For two hours?” “There were books involved.” [I can identify.]

Bridge episodes of trilogies are hard to keep from going sideways, as did Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back. Sanderson’s new characters and subplots embellish, rather than add to the basic story. Like the Stormlight monstrosity, which I read only the first novel of. Or The Wheel of Time, which I wasted many hours on even after realizing the Jordan had no idea where he was going. This book moves the story forward.

“I think I would feel more comfortable in this city, if I didn’t know that our Mistborn had the volatile emotions of a teenage girl.” “Lady Vin is more stable than you think.” “I’ve raised some fifteen daughters. No teenage girl is stable. Some are merely better at hiding it than others.”

Sanderson accomplishes a rare feat: provides a satisfying conclusion to this novel while pulling the reader toward the next. No mean achievement.’

“What are we going to do?” “We’re going to do what [redacted] taught us. We’re going to survive.”

2009 Review: Simply not as good as Mistborn. The biggest problem is Sanderson’s introduction of plot complications for their own sake. (Making him that much more appropriate for “finishing” Robert Jordan’s opus, though I predict Sanderson will surpass Jordan.)

On the other hand, Sanderson is able to let cast members die. Yes, we loved old so-and-so, but in the fantasy world Sanderson created many people are going to die. Horribly, needlessly, unheroically. That’s life; that’s good writing.

Book Review: Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (five stars)

Book Review: Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (five stars)

“I was dead. And yet, titanic as was that sense of loss, there existed a keener one …. That our story would perish with us. That no one would ever know.”  

Homer does 300. Monumental literary achievement. Extraordinary historical fiction humanizes the most famous battle in Greek history. Brings immediacy and vitality to the 480 BC Battle of Thermopylae.

“You will be like them when you grow.” “I will not!” “You will be a man. You won’t be able to help yourself.” 

Told from the perspective of the commonest of people yet approaches the sublime. Not just a heroic saga of a famous battle, but of the men, women, old, young, slaves, and enemies who are each as worthy as Leonidas. Includes all the famous quotes but gives the whole business a more human perspective.

“I’m not half the fighter you are. I never will be. You should stand in my place and I in yours. It is the gods’ injustice that makes you a slave and me free.” 

More than a battle over two thousand years ago: men and woman’s struggle to identity and value at any time and place. (This is why you limit your five-star ratings.) Divine interventions align with Homer.

“Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”

Book Review: The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn (four stars)

Book Review: The Icarus Plot (Icarus Saga #1) by Timothy Zahn (four stars)

Irritating someone for no reason was always a bad move, especially when that person had already asked permission to shoot you.

Even though this novel was written first, it’s not as good as Zahn’s Icarus Hunt (Saga #0) which occurs chronologically first. Characters and plot are less compelling. Don’t read this book first.

Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. And usually tries to leave a better aftertaste.

One liners apropos Robert Heinlein’s Lazurus Long in the 1970s and 80s add sarcasm and wit, but are only marginally relevant.

Getting your enemy to overestimate you is good. Getting him to underestimate you is better.