Updates Abound

I recently finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s The Well of Ascension the other day and – after that satisfied yet sad emotion that always follows a book’s completion – this was my first thought: damn. You see, Mistborn: The Final Empire, Mr. Sanderson’s first book in the Mistborn trilogy, was the book that really got me thinking about the idea of failed prophecy (see The Cyndalian Prophecy in The Story Vault) and how that could be turned into a fantastic, non-clichéd story. I suppose I should say that spoilers follow hereafter, in case you’re concerned. You see, The Final Empire was conceived from the notion that the good guy fell to darkness. That’s basically what happened; for the majority of the book, you are led to believe that the Good Guy (Alendi, in case you’re curious) won and then turned seriously evil over the years. Well, turns out that the Good Guy was killed a while ago and the Bad Guy (Rashek) took his place, thereby never allowing the Good Guy to complete his prophesized journey. Personally, I don’t think this is played up enough in the first book, but that’s just me; still a rockin’ story.

So I’ll direct you back to the Story Vault and The Cyndalian Prophecy yet again. I thought, “Hey, I can’t just rip the guy’s idea off directly; they have laws about that. So I’ll use something similar, say… the prophecy itself was wrong! Yeah, that’s super-unique!” Heaven forbid, however, that I actually had a unique idea. Now, Brandon Sanderson is quickly becoming one of the big names in fantasy and it’s easy to see why: the man obviously plans his books out ridiculously well, his world is extremely unique, and the old prerequisite: he’s a fantastic writer, just to name a few reasons. But I had hoped against hope that he would be okay with just using one cool idea – Good Guy loses – and leaving the bread crumbs to the rest of us. Unfortunately for me, that was not the case. For you see, The Well of Ascension’s big hook is that the prophecy was wrong, too! I mean good grief! That’s a bloody brilliant way to continue a story, let me tell you. Hat’s off to you, Mr. Sanderson. Seriously. But regardless, the only real point of difference now is that mine would actually tell the story of the Good Guy and the botched prophecy, while Mr. Sanderson’s follows the aftermath of it all. That’s it. Oh well; I’m not scratching the idea or anything I just think it’s funny. I typically have what I think are marginally interesting thoughts about ten minutes before I find those thoughts elsewhere. But oh well.

Mini-Well of Ascension review: the book was good. It carried the themes over from the first book and expanded them well, which was nice to see. The character development of Vin and Elend, especially, was interesting to watch and was generally handled well. I felt that there were a few too many side characters that had points of view, though – and what I mean by that is that I wasn’t really able to invest in them all that much as I simply saw them as a vessel to show me another side of things instead of characters in their own right. I find Sazed’s fall from faith an interesting thing and I’d complain about it being marginalized if I hadn’t heard that it features prominently in the next book. Straff’s death was awesome; all there is to say about that. I’ve stopped trying to visualize all of the crap that Vin does; Pushing and Pulling here gets rather confusing and would seriously slow things down if I had to muddle through drawing a picture of it in my mind. And let’s not even talk about trying to work through the physics of it all, which I’m prone to do. With that said, I rarely have to worry about that as Mr. Sanderson handles fight scenes rather well; just enough blow-by-blow to show you some nifty stuff and other general impressions to tell you how everything went. It’s a good balance. And last but not least, the introduction of an evil god at the end (yeah, I asked the internet about it; sue me) is pretty cool.

And that would be a miniature review. I’m a windy person, I know, and I apologize. But do not despair, fair reader, for it doesn’t stop there. For you see, right after finishing Well of Ascension ­– and we’re talking maybe sixty seconds later – I had picked up Small Favor, Book 10 of The Dresden Files. I’m not going to launch into anything like I did for the previous book because, well, it didn’t slap me in the face and chuckle at my poor imagination. But more importantly, note which book this is: Book 10. Holy crap. I mean, that’s rather prolific, I think. Sure, they aren’t monstrously huge books but 500-ish pages isn’t something to scoff at, either. Let’s not even mention the fact that he turns one of these things out every year. Or the fact that he’s also writing another series of about the same size page-wise and they’re also released once a year. So the man’s basically writing two books a year, which most authors will tell you is bloody amazing. Anybody ever waited four years for the next book in a series? Anybody still waiting? Yeah, you don’t really have that problem with Jim Butcher. But disregarding all of that, if you aren’t into The Dresden Files by now, a review of the tenth book isn’t going to do it for you. And if you’re a fan, you’ll read this thing regardless of it’s a pile of crap (which it isn’t, by the way). Prolific authors apparently get about three or four books before fans decide to abandon the project. I’m sure there are a lot of psychological theses looking to be written concerning such occurrences but now isn’t the time or the place.

Let me just say that this is a good book (polished it off in two days, which isn’t my personal best with a Dresden Files book, but still). Maybe I’ve just grown used to it, but Harry doesn’t seem to get quite as much crap kicked out of him as usual in the book, though that’s not saying much. It focuses on the Denarians, for those of you in the know, and therefore features Michael (and Sanya, too). Michael being one of my favorite characters – who can forget his kickass-ness when fighting at that party thrown by the Red Court a couple book back – and I was glad to see his return. The Knights of the Cross always make the story more interesting, I think. I’m not sure why, but the Denarians don’t seem to be as powerful as I remember them being, but maybe that’s just because Harry has grown up a bit since their last encounter. Either way, it’s a good read and the ending actually has me concerned about a certain character; so much so that I may have to buy the hardback version of Turn Coat (Book 11) coming out in April just to see if he’s okay. We’ll see.

Anywho… I guess to finish out the book theme, I’m currently bobbling between Furies of Calderon (Book 1 in Jim Butcher’s other series) and Last Watch (Final book in the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko). I don’t know which one I want to read next. Maybe I’ll just say screw it to both and go with The Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft or maybe Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. So many decisions, alas.

So, what else is there to talk about? Hmm. Well let’s see. I’ve been thinking a bit about the Underbush story lately. That and Heavenfall, but we’ll talk about that later. This may not be a shock to anyone, but I’m considering overhauling this thing. It isn’t quite as bad as you’d think, though. For one, I’m going to overhaul the technology level of everything a bit. I know that world-building isn’t where I need to focus as a writer – I really need to focus on character – but there’s a reason for it. I’m going to step a bit from steampunk and go a little closer to clockwork. For people not in the know, there isn’t a big distinction. But the difference is big enough that I feel I need to do it. Basically, it increases the complexity of the technology of the era and I feel that this is necessary to do some things I want to do. For instance, the weapon/object being built by Quincy doesn’t really fit in a world where the technology is powered by steam. Another thing I wanted to include in the beginning and just forgot about was a mechanical man. Actually, a bunch of mechanical men. I had this view of these makeshift robots being used for menial labor all over the place, in the background, here and there; and more importantly, one following Quincy around for a bit. It’s a minor point, but the clockwork era works a little better in my head. I’m also thinking about making the technology a more prominent part of the world as a whole. Right now, the only real differences I have are airships and the world gates. That’s nifty, I guess, but I want something closer to The Mysterious Geographical Adventures of Jasper Morello (if you don’t know what that is, shame on you). Now that I actually have time to think about the story instead of just writing the first words that pop into my head – one of the downsides of the NaNoWriMo creative process – I think that I can make it a little better. Not much, though, as I’m still limited by my own abilities, but I’ll do my best.

Something else I want to do is broaden the story. If I’m going to spread all of this nifty technology around, I want it seen from as many points of view as possible. The story finally diverged into two story lines there near the end, but I don’t think it happened soon enough. The motivation of the pirates is never really touched upon at all, and I’d like to remedy that. It may not be an every-other-chapter sort of thing, but maybe I’ll jump over to the pirates on occasion. Or maybe just give another character besides Levi a chance to express things. I don’t know… I just want to expand things a bit. All early writing exercises state that you should focus as much as possible – pick one or maybe two points of view and stick with them; don’t get too spread out – but I don’t know if I like that or not.

Another point that needs addressing is Levi’s motivation throughout the story. I’m going to blame this on NaNoWriMo’s breakneck speed again. I spent so much time just trying to come up with words I didn’t really care why Levi was breaking his back to get to North. I delved into the topic a few times, briefly, but I never really liked it. I need a reason to risk as much as they do; a feeling of duty to the given job isn’t good enough for me. Overall, the entire storyline is going to get changed. Odd as this sounds, though, not much is actually going to change concerning what I’ve written. For now, most of what’s been written will survive; motivations are simply changing, as well as some filler. I’ve decided that I need to finish something before I decide to chop it up; a sentiment that some of you may be happy for.

I’m running out of steam here, but I’ve also made some changes to the storyline of Heavenfall. Now, this doesn’t really affect any of you or, for that matter, anything actually written down. I haven’t done much of anything as far as writing is concerned, but let’s just say that these changes bring the story closer to realization. I sort of like where this story is going, and as long as I can avoid copying from fantasy classics, I should be okay. Oh, and technically I’ve thought some more about The Book of Simon. It shouldn’t be a surprise, at this point, that I have a focus problem. At any given point, I’d say three stories is a good estimate as to what’s raging in my mind. Of course, something has to give in order to allow my mind this much breathing room and that would be school. I’ve just about completely given up on it, which is sad but… oh well. I didn’t set this place up as a personal blog – though it’s getting there – so I’ll stop.

So on the whole, this post doesn’t really say much but that’s okay. Sometimes I get a lot of thinking done by writing down my thoughts. I’m always pulled to those pretty, leather-bound journals at places like Borders, but I’d feel bad wasting the paper on something as trivial as my thoughts. It’s an odd feelings; I always put them back. Anyway, there’s all of that. Hopefully you enjoy a bit of it. I feel it necessary to post something on here at least once a month.

Cheers.