Bookshelf

🎨 Impressions

One of the rare fiction books on my reading list. I put it there because over the years I’ve heard many people I either know personally or professionals I’ve been following online mentioning it as a fun series. This is book one of a trilogy, but there’s a second trilogy as well, set in the same universe but during a different fictional era. As I understand it, there are more plans to expand on the series. While the book remained on my list for a long time without me taking an action, I finally bought and started reading it after listening to a long interview that author Brandon Sanderson gave on the Tim Ferriss podcast. The guy came off as a highly interesting person to me. Very well-read and with a work-ethic beyond what I think I’ve ever heard off. He causally mentioned writing half a dozen different versions of this first book and throwing them away one by one before he thought it was finally worthy of being called a workable draft. Sanderson is a bit of an eccentric nerd, as well – something I find intriguing in people. That’s why I finally wanted to see for myself what sort of book he wrote here.

I’m a newbie to the fiction and fantasy genre, having only read a couple of the classics, such as Lord of the Rings, a bit of Game of Thrones, and recently the Harry Potter series because my kids got into them. Normally, the genre doesn’t entice me, because I rarely feel like there’s anything I can really take away from it. I prefer to read in order to learn. I understand that dating back to at least the ancient Greeks, fictional stories served the purpose of training empathy in people, a trait that’s beneficial to group survival. That’s apparently the psychological foundation underneath the excitement we’re feeling when reading or being told a story, fictional or not. While I do think this is quite important, I feel like I’m practicing it enough in my daily life already, being a father of four. This leads me to get bored when I hear a story where a fictional person does a fictional thing in a fictional setting and feeling a fictional feeling. Enough of the real thing is taking place all day every day in my life already.

So I decided to give it a try for the main reason that I learned how interesting a person this author is.

When starting the book, I wasn’t sure I would finish it. But since you’re reading this text you know I eventually did. Yes, it’s a good book and I had fun. It’s not like I’m super exited about the book and I don’t feel like following through on the rest of the series now, but I also don’t feel like I wasted my time. It was enjoyable, a solid 3.5/5 stars I’d say. It took a while until I was invested and wanted to know what happened next, but that moment happened.

Which gets me to my main point about the book. It’s a well-crafted one, in the sense that whenever you feel yourself slightly drifting off or losing interest in the characters or story development, something new is introduced or something interesting happens that requires the protagonists to adapt to it. You can call this well-crafted, but I actually think this is as much an upside as it is a downside of the book: It feels like it’s highly calculated, like an equation the author is cleverly solving rather than a piece of art that an author wrote down in a more intuitive way. The feeling is what’s missing for me. That went up to the point where I felt like I now got the hang of how Sanderson’s formula works and every twenty minutes I was sure what would happen next until it then actually did. It’s a simplistic book, in a way. I’m not saying this to sound smart, I think most readers would feel this way about the book. Maybe that’s what people enjoy about it: The feeling of getting what they hope they will get, a sort of fan-service as it’s called.

I do like how the characters are slowly developed over time, from the mystical multi-layered impression you’re getting in the opening chapters to the fully rounded and identifiable ones later on. The things that happen during the course of the story have a real impact on the behavior of them, but not just in a plain mechanical way, but in the way it changes their personalities. This is what’s missing from many other fiction works, at least according to my observations. That being said, there are some Hollywood-type developments present just as well. The classic hero’s journey takes place, there’s a romantic angle to it, there’s the redemption arc of a tormented and difficult side character, and it all still leaves some questions open and some more stories to be told in the coming books.

If you’re looking for something easy to enjoy in the evenings before falling asleep, this is a solid choice. Another point would be the easy language: In many fantasy stories, an ancient vocabulary is used in order to convey the feel of what we think of the Middle Ages being like, such as when two people aren’t described as “dating“ but as “courting“ each other, to give a very simple example. Many of these old words don’t have their place in our current world and especially since I’m not a native speaker, this usually leads me to look up quite a few of the words in other books. Not here. Sanderson uses simple words, mostly. I looked up maybe just a handful in the whole book. This also had an effect on me that made it not as straight forward to date the storyline well. It was a bit ambiguous at times if this is supposed to be a futuristic or ancient setting. Definitely not an accident.

It would make a good movie, I think. Many creative choices could be made by the writers of the storyboard and the directors according to their interpretations of this shell of a story. It leaves lots of room for it.

📔 Highlights

Part One: The Survivor of Hathsin

That made her valuable—and Reen had always said that the surest way to stay alive in the underworld was to make yourself indispensable.

Either way, thieving crews like Camon’s were the rats who fed on the city’s corruption. And, like rats, they were impossible to entirely exterminate—

Never trust a man who tells you good news, Reen had always said. It’s the oldest, but easiest, way to con someone.

It’s an interesting question. By influencing her emotions, did you take away her ability to choose? If, for instance, she were to kill or steal while under your control, would the crime be hers or yours?”

“The rebellion condemns people like us because of our greed, but for all their high morals—which, by the way, I respect—they never get anything done.

“Every action we take has consequences, Vin,” Kelsier said. “I’ve found that in both Allomancy and life, the person who can best judge the consequences of their actions will be the most successful.

Part Three: Children Of A Bleeding Sun

Once, her problems had been things like starvation and beatings—now they were things like extended carriage rides and companions who arrived late for appointments. What did a transformation like that do to a person?

To fight a battle like Kelsier and Dockson were, it was probably more effective—and better for the psyche—to assume that all of their enemies were evil.

Part Four: Dancers In A Sea Of Mist

Kind of like thieving crews, she thought. The nobility really aren’t that different from the people I grew up around.

“Maybe,” Vin said. “But even still … things will change.” “That is the nature of all life, Mistress,” Sazed said. “The world must change.”

“How can you be so optimistic?” Vin asked. “You and Kelsier both.” “I don’t know, Mistress,” Sazed said. “Perhaps our lives have been easier than yours. Or, perhaps we are simply more foolish.”