So, I feel like I’m becoming a bit of a Sanderson expert. I’ve read all of his published work except for his thesis and that new media tie-in piece he did, and I am acquainted with him from conventions, and I correspond with his assistant Peter from time to time. So, I sometimes feel a little biased when I review one of Brandon’s books. Well, biased isn’t the right word. See, I love Sanderson’s writing, and Alloy of Law has been no exception, but I’m not going to give anything he writes a five-star pass. In fact, I might be more tending to be harsher in my criticism, or at least more specific, as I am conscious of my propensity to want to give him a five-star pass, thus I raise the bar. Is it fair, no. Is it me and still an honest review, yeah. Anyway, spoiler-free! So, on with the show!
Alloy of Law is a sort-of sequel to the Mistborn trilogy, only it takes place 300 years later and with entirely new characters and a new take on the magic system. Now, our main character, Wax, is not a mistborn himself as Vin was, but instead is a “Twinborn”, a man who can use 1 of the 16 metals for Allomancy and 1 of the 16 metals for Furuchemy. In his case, he can push metal with his Allomancy and store weight with his Furuchemy. I won’t go into that more, because the book actually does it ad nauseum. More on that in a bit. Anyway, Wax is a law keeper from the world’s version of the Wild West that has returned to civilization to take his place as a house lord, but is quickly drawn into the investigation of a mysterious set of crimes.

So, as always, the good stuff first. The writing is strong and enjoyable, much as I’ve come to expect from Sanderson. The story, much like the prior Mistborn novels, is very character driven, with strong personalities and plenty of banter that hides info dumps and “slow parts”. This book is also meant as an entry point to the Mistborn world, and I even tested that by having a friend of mine read it that had not read Mistborn and then discussed the book with him. In this highly unscientific method, Sanderson succeeded. He doesn’t give any spoilers for the prior books while still leaving plenty of hints and clues for those of us that have read them. If you don’t get the hints and clues, you still enjoy the book. If you do, you get a chuckle or a “oh…” type moment.

On to what I didn’t like so much. One: I can tell this was (I think) a bit rushed in the production due to Wheel of Time. This kind of doesn’t make sense, seeing as Sanderson completed this nearly a half year before it hit the bookshelves, at least that is when the advanced copies were starting to appear, but from what I have followed of Brandon, Alloy was really just a spin-off exercise on writing he was doing to stretch his mind that ended up becoming book length. Because of that, it has some weaknesses.

The first is that I think Brandon goes a little overboard on re-explaining the magic. Yes, I have three much longer books under my belt explaining this magic system to me, and this book is supposed to cater to new readers as much as returning, but when there are asides in the last fight repeating, and I do mean fully repeating, how the two halves of Wax’s magic work and interact, it seems a little overboard. Also, the last fight’s choreography was a bit trite, even if the major points were pretty awesome. The stuff that connected them was, well, not hard or boring to read, but after a while I started saying “I get it, Wax can shoot the wings off a fly at 100 yards.”

My final complaint is that the ending was… well, lacking. Several times in the novel, they go on and on about the “reason behind the crimes.” They set up a master-mind king-pin type character that Wax has to face off against. Okay, that is well and good. Wax never faces off against him. Again, not all bad. The ending is very much saying “There will be a sequel”. But what makes all this annoying to me is that, in all of the marketing and blogging about this book, it was marketed as a “Stand Alone”. That means the main drive of the plot, if not every single thread, is wrapped up in a tight bow by the end. That this book is probably half the length of a normal Sanderson novel really makes me feel like I got half a book, not the whole one, especially with all of the major plot threads.

So, spoiler-free short? This is a great book, but Sanderson leaves us hanging a little bit with it. I know recent marketing schemes have called it “A Mistborn Adventures Book”, so hopefully there will be sequels.

Well, I’ll start with the good things. The movie actually had pretty decent acting, from the two brothers who were betrayed and react differently, to the prince who was framed, to the Priestess-Princess that has her own motives and designs and isn’t just there to be a love interest.

There is also, honestly, a pretty strong plot. Granted, I pretty well every twist as it was foreshadowed, from who the real villain was to what the Prince would have to do to save the day. I even called the heart-wrenching extremes he was pushed to. I also do not feel that the time-travel thing at the end cheapened the story at all. So yeah, plot was perhaps a hair generic, but it delivered one at least being structured and whole.

The first thing that hurt the movie, I think, was the thinly veiled modern commentary, from the invasion of a country looking for weapons that aren’t there to an amoral businessman who is just dodging taxes and takes up a fairly large part of the screen time for his character’s actual worth.

Some of the dialogue betrayed the modern call-forwards much like watching an old episode of Hercules or Xena, and much of the dialogue was extremely contemporary. Which, honestly, was very jarring since the characters were not tongue-in-cheek contemporary themselves. Imagine King Leonidas complaining about work unions or a Fair Tax. Yeah.

But, I think the number one thing that hurts this movie is how pretty it is. Now, I love pretty things. I’m attracted to them like a moth to flame, which is probably why I watched The Golden Compass, Avatar, Clash of the Titans, and Prince of Persia. Yet, all of these have a similar failing, and that is far too strong of a desire to show of what they can do on the big screen with special effects and computer graphics, and not enough of a feeling for telling a story. Several times in this movie, I felt like I was watching someone playing a videogame, either for in-game play or watching cinematics for the game. And that, my friends, is what I feel hurt this movie the most because it was the most jarring.

But, what to do? I mean, this movie is, much like any SpecFic movie, about the world as much as it is about the characters.  We need to feel the epic nature and grand vistas, but is it really worth the amount of screen time that is given to sweeping panoramics of cities or deserts or ruins? After all, aren’t we supposed to be marveling at the beauty of what they can do on the big screen?

Well, here’s an idea for you. If you want to see those kinds of video-game style graphics, play a video game. The movie screen shouldn’t be about showing off the budget they had for special effects. It should be about producing the highest of quality story in two to three hours that a TV show just couldn’t handle on the scope. You want amazing special effects, make them invisible. The audience should not be aware that they are there. I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have giant sandstorms, towering cities, or over-large scorpions, but don’t dedicate 10 minutes to a fight that features these things.

I want story. I want to see how the characters of this world are reacting to it, not how the world simply is. Show, don’t tell, they say, and that doesn’t mean let me see it on the screen. That isn’t showing. Figure it out, Hollywood. Please. And leave the vapid eyecandy where it belongs, as the backgrounds for fancy video-games (which I will gladly play).

So, I’ve been doing research for a book I want to write shortly, and I always find it a little funny, doing research for a narrative fiction, especially a fantasy.  I mean, OK, I know I’ve complained before about the guy who used “rapier” to describe every type of sword under the sun, but ya know what, dude was still published and I still bought his book.  Granted, I won’t buy any more of his books, but that is neither here nor there.  Anyway, so what I’ve been researching (in an almost literal sense), is Sun Tzu. I say in a literal sense cause this is hardly the first time I’ve read Sun Tzu.  I’ve owned a copy for some years now, and I find myself looking up passages here or there fairly often.  But tonight, I was actually sitting at my favorite bar, drinking some wine, and reading the the book and notating my own thoughts.  The point is that the book I want to write is going to have a bit of a “learning the Sun Tzu the hard way” feel to it, so I want to go through the thought process of the Sun Tzu and see if I can pull a plot out of it. That’s right, I am trying to pull a plot out of an instruction manual (for all intents and purposes).  Funny thing is, I think I can do it.  Granted, it will be a loose translation, not like each chapter is going to be a different stanza of the original, but I think I can, with some re-arranging and creative interpretation, take the Sun Tzu and develop a plot around it.  The chapter I am looking forward to the most?  Employing Fire.  Fire always makes everything better, right?  right.

Now, I’ll say, I typically believe Karma to be a real thing.  Not that I think there is a mystical force out there, keeping a check to see the universe weighs the same as a duck, but I do full well believe that the way you act dictates what opportunities come your way.  Buy someone a beer, good chance they will buy you one back.  Let someone shelter under your umbrella, and they’ll offer you a coffee.  Etc, and so forth.  But what about all the random, nasty stuff?

Well, I think that is really just unbalanced.  Example.  Let’s say you made a mistake in associating with someone for a time.  They cause you all sorts of pain as you associate with them, and even after you break the association and do everything you can to not let them affect your life, this person still manages to cause drama and heartache.  Not that I’m talking from personal, recent experience.  Nope, not me.  Nuh-uh.

See, it always seems that we get far more crap for bad than we get gold for good.  And, oh crap, I’m going to start talking about writing.  Yeah, it needs to be like that in stories too.  I have read far too many stories (or fragments of stories cause I couldn’t make myself finish), where the author tried to change the balance of Karma.  That is to say, tried to make the universe less of a cold, unfeeling, uncaring, prick.  Either by giving less crap for bad or more gold for good.  And yeah, that is one fantasy that belongs in your head while you shower or sluff off at work and not on a page.  And I’ll just end it there, cause right now Karma has thrown me a boulder to deal with, and boy does my back hurt holding it.  I guess I’ll just go watch some more Lost or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I’ll focus on Avatar, which is funny ‘cause I haven’t seen it.  I almost want to just to look for all the messages within, but it can be boiled down to a quick summary.  Hero’s world wants to invade Native’s world.  Hero becomes a native as a spy, ends up turning completely native, fights off uncompassionate home world.  This story has been done so much that it’s even a Disney movie.  Now, what was the creator of this particular story trying to say?  I’ve heard no less than three explanations.

1) It is a direct re-creation of the Last of the Mohicans/Dances with Wolves story, where the aliens are native Americans and the humans are the “The White Man.”
2) It is an anti-technology piece about the price of expansionist industrialism and the loss simpler, more holistic morality.  Of course nature wins of the industrialists because is more pure.
3) It is a war between Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and Fantasy wins because it is more appealing and hopeful where Sci-Fi is typically grim and pessimistic.

So, what did James Cameron want?  Honestly, I think he just wanted an awesome looking movie.  So how did all these other levels and messages get in?  Because he didn’t even think about them.  It is kind of like my earlier comments on racist stereotypes.  To make an Asian use a katana just because they are Asian is imbedding meanings you never meant to put there.  And just because you didn’t “mean it” doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

Now, I’m going to go right and say that this irks me on two levels.  The first is that people can’t just accept that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, the second is that apparently I can’t either.  Why do authors (until recently because of super-awareness of the issue) typically write heroes of the same race, religion (or level of conviction), and gender as themselves?  Are we trying to say that white agnostic men (in my case) are the superior hero and neener-neener to anyone else?  No, not really.  We are just following the pre-coded paths in our thought process where we don’t even think about “what would the effect be if the protagonist was a woman, or a minority, or a different religion, etc.”  Again, this is changing, even in myself.  I have written a minority hero (at least in his world), and I have written religious heroes and heroines.  But I always have to think about it.  The default settings are what they are, just like in a video game, and if I’m lazy, I will use them.  And that, unfortunately, can be an endorsement of them.

A friend of mine commented that race is a myth, an imaginary thing made up for various reasons.  He may be right, but racism is hardly a myth, even if what it focuses on is, and it extends into everything.  I’m not going to say writing a “minority” piece is going to make something instantly good fiction, or something that is riddled with “lazy stereotypes” is instantly bad, but I do think in general at least a little thought needs to be put into realizing exactly what trope you are using, and if you really want (or care) if that message is carried through along with anything else.  A neglect to can make your entire story completely off base.  As a closing example, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which created a public outcry over the quality of meat and food in processing plants, was supposed to make people angry over the treatment of immigrants.  It caused the FDA to be made, but immigrants were still treated like mud.  Funny, ne?

Ok, so I lied.  This is a steampunky fantasy I wrote a while ago and just fnished cleaning up.  It’s a bit of a character piece about a character from a novel I’m trying to get picked up right now, kind of like A Life to Give was.  Bit of a difference from my normal writing, this one is really meant to be a kind of happy, laughing skit over one man’s desperate desire to get a drink.

As to what happened to the Urban Fantasy, honestly, I’m super happy with how it turned out, so I’m going to tweak it a bit more and send it around to a few editors to see if they like it too.  So, wish me luck, eh?  But yeah, that, along with the fact that I’ve been sick with a nasty head and throat cold these last few days, is why this is a day late.  I shall endeavor to not repeat this blunder.

This is a story that’s been kicking around my head for a while, and while I’ll honestly say I don’t think its the best I’ve ever done, I’m still happy with it.  The meat of what I was getting is still definitely there, and honestly I think it probably has some of the deeper developed characters I’ve done for short stories.  It was also a bit of a character study of that naturally talented person that is overlooked in favor of the underdog who shines.  Oh, it’s also a bit of a longer story.  Just had a lot more that I wanted to do with the plot, but still only 7300 words, so not bad.

Oh, not to mention it’s also a change of tempo for RichardFife.com in that its a fantasy story, not a science fiction.  So yeah, I guess there’s that too.  The next one will probably be an urban fantasy, but no promises yet (just like I’m not going to promise that it will be delivered on the 16th, but I’ll durn well try.