Review for "Sword of Fire and Sea"

So today, like most Sundays, I was reading away my afternoon. I finished the book I had been reading, and since twitter rocks, I decided to let the author know that I liked it. Much to my surprise, she tweeted back thanking me, retweeted my original comment, and after a little back and forth she asked me to write a review on Amazon. Of course I agreed to, not only did I really like the book, but getting to interact with authors is something I find quite exciting. I just posted it on amazon, but I figured I'd put it here as well, enjoy!

Sword of Fire and Sea, by Erin Hoffman:

If you had to use one word to describe traditional fantasy novels it would probably be... long. Sword of Fire and Sea is definitely not. Now most fans of the genre would probably be deterred by this, I mean how much story can you really pack into 277 pages, right? Well it turns out that you can pack in more than enough, enough to make the book FEEL like one of those books that can double as a step ladder (this is a good thing).

As for a quick plot summary: Captain Vidarian Rulorat is the last surviving member of a family afflicted with the Blood plague, a genetic disease that torments families who cross elemental boundaries. Vidarian's great-grandfather married a fire priestess and had to pay for it. He condemned his family to bear the Blood plague, and was also forced to enter into an alliance with the the fire priestesses: the Breakwater Agreement. Now the time has come for Vidarian to fulfill his family's obligation. He is tasked with escorting a fire priestess, Ariadel Windhammer, to a water temple for safe keeping. Just to make things interesting, she's being pursued by a group of ruthless telepaths who are bent on silencing her after she witnessed their forbidden rites.

That's a good start. Now, the reasons you should read this book.

First, like I mentioned above, it's a page turner! The book never gets bogged down in the lengthy descriptions that so many authors seem to favor, and despite the short page length there's ample character development and plot advancement. Speaking of which, the plot is solid. Engaging and unpredictable, every time you guess something correctly you'll probably get blindsided twice. As for character development, I was pleasantly surprised. This is one area where the page length could have been a hindrance, but Erin Hoffman really got every last drop of character development out of the book. If a character is mentioned, there's a purpose, and that's a refreshing change of pace from constantly wondering who's important and who's not.

Second, the magic system is fantastic. Multi-faceted and well thought out, it combines elemental magic, telepathy, magic artifacts, Goddesses, well you get the point. The magic system is almost a character by itself. Like in Brandon Sanderson's books, the magic isn't there just for show, it solves problems and seriously affects the world. Best of all, there's a lot of it. Some authors view magic as a crutch, but used well (like in this book) it really enhances things.

Third, it's a smart book. The scenes involving ships or gryphon flight stand out, rather than gloss over minor details about ship life or flight mechanics she includes them and it makes everything seem much more plausible. When Vidarian talks about sailing, he sounds like a sea captain, not just a bland protagonist, you really feel like he knows what he's doing. On top of these nice little details, the prose is extremely clean and flows well. There aren't any bulky sentences, everything is sleek and easy to read. A great example would be this sentence, short but sweet (no pun intended): "Her voice was like crystallized honey - strong and hard but sweet and bright at once, as if just on the verge of bursting into song."

Fourth, and lastly, there are gryphons! The back of the book mentions them in passing, but they are featured prominently in the book and really provided a neat wrinkle to the story. As important as the magic system, or any character, the gryphons are awesome.

So, if you dig books you just can't seem to put down, smart books with a lot of magic, books that really cut out the unnecessary filler that seems to saturate lots of fantasy literature these days, this is a must read.

Awesome Possum Quote of the Day

So I'm currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger thanks to the advice of one of my very good friends, Nicole, and I came across a quote that had me giggling hysterically last night. It's by the main character, Henry, while he's at a bar:

"As a promising junior partner in DeTamble & DeTamble, Alcoholics at Large, I have not yet found the outer limit in my ability to consume liquor."

Hmm, it may not seem like much to you, but I suppose you had to be there. We get a lot of alcoholic jokes at the law school, perhaps that's why I liked it so much. Maybe it was just late, I suppose we'll never know.

-thunderhoofs

I'm a 2L now?

Finals. Are. Done. This pleases me immensely for a variety of reasons.

Law school was supposed to be this intense experience, where you LEARN the law and become some sort of legal superhero, automatically knowing the answer to any law related question ever asked. Or something like that anyway. In reality it's much more like high school.

We have lockers, we have been split up into sections that we share classes with, we don't get to pick classes for the first year, there are cliques, the school makes us go to all sorts of presentations that don't matter.

More and more I'm deciding that it's just another exercise in hoop-jumping, and this has been confirmed by lawyers around town. One partner that came into the school for a talk said that their firm (one of the biglaw firms in downtown Minneapolis) expects to invest $500,000 in every new attorney before they start making money for the firm. In essence he told us that even after you've spent well over $100,000 and 3 years of your life learning "the law", you're useless for real work and the firm will teach you what you need to know. Gee thanks. Now I want to try extra hard at school!

It's not all bad of course, now that I'm more relaxed about school I have more fun, and sometimes they bring in dogs to keep us from going postal, those days are always fun. For opening day in baseball they brought in a bunch of hot dog stands and ice cream sandwiches, and there was a bouncy castle for us one day.

Mostly though, I'm just glad that it's over for a while. Maybe this summer will recharge me and when I go back in the fall to classes that actually matter to me, that I picked, I'll trumpet to the world how awesome it is. Maybe.

Still, I'm done for a while, and that means that it's time to celebrate, superhooray!

Things that suck about sitting in a chair all day.

On the long list of things that suck about sitting in a chair all day there's one item that I hadn't really thought about until last night: I'm so horribly, unbelievably, fantastically out of shape that even simple activities end with me feeling like I was hit by a truck.

Let me explain. When I was in highschool I wasn't all that active, but I did play a sport almost every season and did things with friends outside more than I do now. Fast forward 6 years, school and work and various adult activities have rendered me virtually useless physically. I'm not fat or anything, and I don't huff and puff when I walk to school, but anything that requires fast twitch muscle fiber or even a minor bit of strength/endurance leaves me in a pile on the floor.

An example (and the reason that I'm writing this post):

Last night I played baseball for the first time in probably seven years, more specifically I played a game of catch with my friend Sam for a couple hours. It was nothing crazy, just throwing the ball back and forth maybe 70ft apart, no diving catches or even running catches. I tried to throw the ball fairly hard right away, mistake. Such a mistake. Good lord, my entire arm was tingling and felt like I had ripped my tendons out with a fork. That was a little eye opening, it's amazing how much I took being in decent shape for granted when I was more active. So we warmed up slower, stretched like you're supposed to, took a while to work up to throwing the ball far, did everything to minimize the odds of getting hurt. Yet, I wake up this morning and virtually every muscle above my waist is on fire. ABSURD! I've always abstained from working out in the college/postgrad world because I don't NEED to be in shape for anything that I do, and it's easy to pretend that just because you're not fat that means you're in shape.

I'm not sure if this has a point, mostly I just felt like I needed to write this revelation down somewhere: I've never really thought I was honestly out of shape until last night, and I don't like it one bit. Nope nope nope. I'm late to the party it seems, most of my friends work out and I sort of see why now, the chairlife will slowly kill you.

-thunderhoofs

Kraken

I'm currently done reading a book by China Mieville called Kraken.

I liked it, it's hard to write a book these days that feels really original, which explains all the buzz surrounding this book. That being said, Kraken isn't going to be very satisfying if you're looking for explanations. Gods, Knacks (magic), cults, everything gets thrown at you, often in bunches.

It's a fairly fast paced, and the result is that any character development happens on the run. There are more than a handful of phrases and references that went over my head. The big reason for this is that the book is set in London and he doesn't compromise. Some authors from overseas still write with an American tone but I'd never for a second think this book was anything but British, the dialog is full of "Innit"s and the character names just FEEL British (two of the baddest baddies are named Goss and Subby for god's sake).

One frustrating thing (that I have a love/hate relationship with) is that the main character has (in a not super surprising turn of events) just been thrust into a world of the supernatural that he wasn't aware of. But unlike most books, where the protagonist takes it in stride and masters his new-found gifts with ease, Billy seems mostly frightened and confused. It makes for a really incoherent story at some points, but it's nice to see a touch of realism, I think most people would react in a similar way.

I'm not really up for a more detailed review than this, in my opinion the book is decent but nothing extra-special. If you like British authors, or frantic action and a no-rules sort of fantasy book, then this is probably right up your alley. If your favorite books have styles closer to Robert Jordan or David Eddings then you might be a little frustrated by Kraken.


-thunderhoofs

Pew pew pew.

First post in forever and ever, I had actually forgotten that I had one of these. Maybe I'll dust it off and rant about various things that catch my eye.

All of the other posts on here are pretty random and from mostly undergraduate things I was involved in.

Cheers,
-mitch

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