Firefight by Brandon Sanderson

Firefight by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really like this series. The action is intense, the danger real, and the setting is both familiar and foreign at the same time. The weakness, for me, is in the characters. Especially David. He seems like an immature, hot-headed weakling a lot of the time, and yet somehow he lives through scenes where everyone else is being wiped out. It is like an action movie where the hero runs across open ground while an entire army of bad guys is shooting machine guns at him and somehow he never goes down. His planning isn't as good as the Reckoners, yet he still kills Epics. Don't get me wrong, I loved the book and I don't think of David as a flaw, rather that he has flaws...

Overall this is another solid read. If you took my advice and read Steelheart, I don't have to tell you to read this one, because you probably already have.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One of the benefits of a book club is that you are introduced to a wide range of books that you might not ordinarily encounter. You often implicitly agree to read a book selected by someone else, a situation that many of us have not encountered outside of our formal education. I encountered this book in such a situation. Finishing this books was a challenge. On the positive side, I can honestly say that it got inside my head and made me think--about history, about medicine, about cultures, and about life. For that it gets the second star. Other than that, there are so many downsides. I will just briefly list a few:

- There is a plot within a plot and I don't feel they meshed well. Tell the story of Japan, or of the Dutch. Trying to tell a Japanese story inside of a Dutch story stranded characters for the middle third of the book.
- Love in the 1700's came with different cultural baggage to be sure, but love is love and people are people. Jacob fell for Orito too quickly for me and it turned to obsession without any provocation. I'm calling a foul.
- The side agenda to share intimate details of the medical practices of the period did not really add to the plot or characters. It was distracting and gruesome, much the way excessive violence is used in bad movies to make up for poor writing.
- The mysticism of Enomoto was never explained. His dealings with "life forces" left the book on the brink of the fantasy genre, and I think I would have liked it more if the author would have pushed it over the edge. Mitchell was already trying to add too many editorials (medicine, slavery, caste societies, etc.) that he might as well thrown in this for fun... or left the whole thing out.
-Finally, the crappy ending. Jacob doesn't get either of his love interests. He does get a son, but is separated from him and then the son dies before they can have a late-in-life reunion. On his deathbed he is still pining for Orito. Boo!

So, to sum up, this book could have been half the length with fewer editorials, more direct ties to the various plot elements, and an ending that made me glad I read it. But it didn't do any of those things. So I recommend you pass on this one unless you are the type of person who likes to watch long, drawn out drama movies where everyone dies in the end and you are left crying, wondering why life sucks. In other words, unless you are the complete opposite of me (not saying that is a bad thing, just trying to aid in your literary decisions....)

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I re-read this book, and wanted to add more thoughts to my original review.

I'm still plugging away at the Wheel of Time series, and it is taking me a while. Finishing up book 7 was a hard one for me, and it is a little hard to explain why. It was like when I assign a task to one of my kids, and I check in on them, and they seem to be working away at it and at the same time making no progress. This book seemed to be moving along--there were lots of pages with words, and characters were going here and there and doing things--but the plot just didn't progress as much. The big let down for me was the ending. There were two climactic events; the finding of the Bowl of the Winds and the defeat of Sammael. The former came first, and lived up to the promise implied by the build-up before hand, while the latter was anti-climactic and unbelievable at the same time. Rand is going to leap off his sick-bed to go after a villain that has been the focus for almost 3 books now? Really? And there isn't a face-off, an exchange of witty insults, or a mighty struggle between powerful foes? Disappointing.

Another disappointing facet to this story that continues to be a growing theme is the "powerful woman who everyone leaps to obey for no reason." Basically, Jordan is trying to create powerful women as central characters in his story. Great idea. Unfortunately, rather than actually have them be powerful, he has them be bullies. Rather than beat people who need to be beaten, or show actual leadership qualities, they just stand around bossing people around and they stare at people really hard. Lame. And unrealistic. If a Cadsuane or Sorilea were up against a real villain, the villain would laugh at their frosty stares and then murder them. If they gave an insolent youth "the rough side of their tongue" that insolent youth would laugh at them and then continue in their behavior. Why do I know this? Because that is what happens in the real world. Mean people, immature people, and bullies in general don't just change behavior because someone they don't know stares at them. Yet this is such a common occurrence in this series that you'd think Tarmon Gai'don is just going to be a staring contest. Pathetic. What would be a remedy, in my opinion? Actual power. A political edge. Dirt on the person being bullied. Some kind of actual leverage.

So 3 stars for this one. I'm still enjoying the overall journey here, but as with all journeys, some parts are less appealing than others, and that describes this book perfectly.