Showing posts with label Brent Weeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brent Weeks. Show all posts

Sunday, August 8, 2010

The Leaning Pile of Books

This was a very good week for new books as I'm very interested in all the books that showed up and one is a definite must read since I already read the first book and loved it.



The Black Prism by Brent Weeks

The Black Prism
is the first book in the Lightbringer series and will be released in hardcover on August 25. The first three chapters can be read online and there is also going to be a book tour that covers some of the western US as well as Texas and Florida.

I liked the first book in the Night Angel trilogy by Weeks (although not quite enough to read the next two immediately as I haven't even gotten them to add to the giant to-read pile yet). This one sounds very compelling - the description has me pretty intrigued since just the first paragraph makes me ask so many questions that I would like to know the answers to:

Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals.

But when Guile discovers he has a son, born in a far kingdom after the war that put him in power, he must decide how much he's willing to pay to protect a secret that could tear his world apart.





Lord of the White Hell: Book Two by Ginn Hale

Lord of the White Hell: Book One will be released later this month on August 15, and this second half of the story will be published one month later on September 15. I read book one a couple of weeks ago and loved it (enough that I want to buy the final version since I have the ARC) so I really cannot wait to read the rest of it. The review for part one is in progress now so I can put it up right around the release date.

Kiram fought his family and Cadeleonian bigots to remain in the Sagrada Academy to prove himself as a mechanist and to dispel the deadly shadow curse that threatens to destroy his upperclassman, Javier Tornesal. But when his efforts provoke retaliation, Kiram's family and home are endangered. Both Kiram and Javier risk everything in a desperate gambit to combat the curse. But they never imagined their battle with come so soon, or that it would be lead by the one person they trust most of all.






Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

This is a rarity for a review copy - it is is not a book that just came out or is coming out soon. It was originally published in 1952 and this particular edition is 5 years old. It sounds like a delightful fairy tale and sometime when I'm closer to caught up on reviews I'll have to read it (it shouldn't take that long to read - it's fairly short). Oh yes, and the endorsement on the book by Ursula K. Le Guin doesn't hurt, either.

A young woman is transformed by a magical journey from the dark ages to modern times, from brooding medieval forests to bustling Constantinople. Halla is turned out of her father’s castle by her new stepmother. Her nurse transforms herself into a bear to look after Halla. This is just the first of the wondrous and natural changes in Naomi Mitchison’s magical 1952 novel. Travel Light will appeal to fans of the Harry Potter series and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, as well as to readers of Ursula K. Leguin and T.H. White.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

SFF News Tidbits/Update

Orbit announced today that Little, Brown UK announced the audio version of Transition by Iain M. Banks will be available as a free podcast beginning on September 3, its publication date. Banks is best known for his series of science fiction novels set in the Culture universe, but he writes some science fiction novels not set in the Culture and this is one of them (he also writes mainsteam fictions as Iain Banks). I've read two of the Culture novels, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons, and absolutely loved them both. They were simultaneously intelligent and entertaining, and The Player of Games was one of my very favorite books I read last year. I really want to read some more of the Culture novels, and Against a Dark Background sounds intriguing, too.

This week over at Babel Clash, the new Borders Sci-Fi book blog, fantasy authors Joe Abercrombie (author of the First Law trilogy and Best Served Cold) and Brent Weeks (author of the Night Angel trilogy) have been virtual brawling. I almost missed this because my RSS feed for this blog had stopped working, but fortunately, I heard about it in time to catch it - it has been a most entertaining debate.

Speaking of Best Served Cold, that's what I'm reading right now. It's already out in some countries, and it will be out in the US on July 29 (although I've heard Amazon is already shipping it). Best Served Cold is a stand alone book set in the same world as the First Law trilogy. So far, it's pretty good - although, like First Law, it's not something I'd recommend to people who like characters with tendencies toward goodness and heroics and all that jazz.

I'm halfway through a review of Archangel by Sharon Shinn and hope to have that up in the next couple of days. It's almost the weekend; I always have more brain power for writing reviews then.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Review of The Way of Shadows





The Way of Shadows
by Brent Weeks
688pp (Paperback)
My Rating: 7/10
Amazon Rating: 4/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.58/5


Note: This review may contain spoilers. I always try to give a little bit of detail on the plot without mentioning anything I wouldn't want to know before reading the book myself and didn't think there were any major spoilers in this review... But I noticed that the author mentioned on his site this review contained spoilers. So I'm adding a warning because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone!

The Way of Shadows
is the debut novel of Brent Weeks and the first book in "The Night Angel Trilogy." Although this book was released only last month, the rest of the books in the trilogy will be available by the end of the year. Shadow's Edge, the second book, is scheduled to be out on October 28 but is already on the shelves in some bookstores (at least it was at my local Borders the beginning of this week). The final novel in the series, Beyond the Shadows, has a release date of November 25.

Azoth and his two friends, a boy named Jarl and a mute only known as "Doll Girl," live in the slums among other children. He dreams of becoming the apprentice of Durzo Blint, the legendary wetboy (an assassin with magical abilities), and being able to keep Doll Girl and Jarl from harm. Azoth encounters Durzo on a few occasions and begs him to teach him his craft. After several refusals, Durzo agrees to train Azoth under one condition - he must kill Rat, a violent older boy who terrorizes the other children. As a sympathetic boy who tends to look out for his friends, Azoth is unable to complete this task until Rat hurts Doll Girl. With Rat dead, Durzo accepts Azoth as his apprentice but tells him he must leave his old life behind, including his friendships with Jarl and Doll Girl. Durzo fakes the death of Azoth and gives him the new identity of Kylar Stern, a young nobleman of a minor family.

Throughout the years, Kylar learns about fighting and poisons from Durzo but cannot use his magical Talent no matter how hard he tries. Although he becomes a very capable assassin under Durzo's tutelage, he can never truly be a wetboy without the Talent. In addition to attempting to develop his magical abilities, Kylar struggles with leaving the past behind. He has always cared about Doll Girl and feels responsible for the scars Rat left her, so he arranged for her to live with a nice family and sends her part of his allowance. Occasionally, he watches her from afar but Durzo has forbidden any interaction with her on the grounds that a proper wetboy should not love. He knows from personal experience that those you care about can be used against you by enemies.



The Way of Shadows
is a rather long book at almost 700 pages but it seems shorter since it lacks long descriptions, has a lot of dialogue, and has great pacing that keeps the pages turning. It was not a book that was terribly original with a fairly standard fantasy setting containing kings, dukes, swordfighting, assassins (yes, they may be called wetboys but they're really just a higher level assassin aided by magic), war and conflict, mages, and prophets. Yet there are two more books and the premise of the Night Angel revealed toward the end has potential for an interesting backstory and mythological basis.

The book contains a lot of focus on characters, and although they are likable and not completely one dimensional, I felt that they could have had more depth. Kylar is a basically good-hearted assassin who is reluctant to kill innocents. Underneath the tough exterior, Durzo has a heart as well and has just grown better accustomed to hiding it over the years. It is not that the characters are shallow; they just have the personality traits you often read about when trying to make someone with an immoral job into someone a reader can have sympathy for. I did care about what happened to Kylar and Durzo but I was never devastated when tragedy befell either of them to the extent I should have been.

On the subject of tragedy, it does happen and the story can be somewhat dark although it never seemed shockingly so to me. For instance, it was not nearly as brutal as Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series.

One minor quibble I had with the book was calling the assassins "wetboys." They're supposed to be so much better than an assassin but with a name like that, they do not sound tough at all. It sounds like they should be the guys that fetch water for all the important people instead of killers inspiring fear in the hearts of their enemies.

The Way of Shadows is a fast-paced, entertaining read that is difficult to put down. It is not particularly unique, but it is a very fun book.

7/10

Read Chapter One

Other reviews: