Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

844 Pages Hardcover (Fantasy Fiction)

I was convinced to continue the rest of The Wheel of Time series and after finishing Towers of Midnight I am now only one book from being done. You probably know that the original author Jordan died. Brandon Sanderson was given the hefty burden of finishing a much loved series. Personally, I think he has done an amazing job and has revived what seemed to be dying series.

There have been a ton of characters, storylines, and crossing over that it is impossible to cover them all. Towers of Midnight does focus a lot on the Two Rivers folk. Enormous hordes of Trollocs have started to flow out of the blight. Rand has accepted that he will die and realizes that he can be a human. Perrin deals with the problems of being a lord. He also struggles to balance the real world and what is happening in the wolf dream. Mat leads a band of mercenaries and gets pulled into a deal with an Aes Sedai. He finds out that Moraine may not be dead and that he has a chance to free her from her fate.

This only barley touches the surface of what is going on. A good deal is spent on a borderland army holding off the attacking Trollocs. Every so often we get to see the beginnings of Lan’s army. Egewene now sits as head of the Aes Sedai and has to deal with a series of killings happening within the tower. While there are inklings of things going wrong within the Black Tower.

Before Sanderson had taken over the series I had given up on it. The first 6 books were great and I wanted to find out more. With each book after that it seemed to get more drawn out and less interesting. As a reader I had become connected with the Two Rivers folk a lot of the story had strayed away from them. It had gotten bloated and uninteresting. All these promises of fantastic things were being doled out in small doses. Unfortunately, for Jordan all the exciting and cool things we readers we hoping for are now being told by a different author.

I really got into this book and read through the book in record time. Some days I was reading 100 or more pages I was so interested in what happened next.

3 Intellectual/Emotional: The characters that we care about are what this whole book focuses on. It was a joy to finally get back to them.

4 Style/Readability: I felt like Sanderson finally just started to write like himself. Instead of just writing like Jordan I now get to enjoy it in his style. In past books there were times I felt Jordan’s writing was immature and I didn’t feel that in this book.

4 Long Term Impact: This must be judged as a whole series. The Wheel of Time is a part of fantasy fiction and will continue for a long time. I am glad that Sanderson is making this shape up nicely. Now he needs to go back and condense books 7-10 into one.

11 out of 13. If at some point you read this series and got up through the 9th book I think it is worthwhile to come back and read from there. If you haven’t started this series, I still cannot recommend you start.

Keep Turning Pages

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

221 pages Trade Paperback (Realistic Fiction)

Christopher is Autistic. Christopher finds the neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a pitch fork in Mrs. Shears backyard. Christopher picks Wellington up and holds him because he likes dogs. Dogs are nice and easy to understand. Not like people. Not like Mrs. Shears who is standing on the back porch yelling, “What the fuck did you do to my dog?!”

Haddon has produced a wonderful book. It is all written from the perspective of being in Christopher’s head. We get to understand his every thought and see everything that he can see.

Christopher decides he is going to be a detective like Sherlock Holmes. He is going to solve the mystery of Wellington’s death. The book follows his adventures of following rules to the letter and figuring out who the killer is. While doing this he gets to know himself, his neighbors and his family in ways that he nor the reader expects.

I found the presentation to fun and exciting. It was extremely easy to read since it is all very straight forward and written out. I really couldn’t put it down and finished it in 2 days.

4 Intellectual/Emotional: The unique perspective of being in the kids head coupled with a feeling of closeness makes this easy to give a 4.

4 Style/ Readability: Again this book was easy to digest and easy to get into. I think most any reader would get involved. I would say the level of reading is probably around middle school, but it was engaging enough for an adult.

3 Long Term Impact: It has already been a large success and I think it holds nice place to keep its popularity for while. I think this is a great book for someone to read if you are dealing with Autistic folk. It gave me a perspective into seeing how they think.

11 out of 13 and well deserved. This book is well worth your time. Any reader should be able to pick it up and finish it in short time.

Keep Turning Pages

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

320 pages Trade Paperback (Non-Fiction)
Blink is a very interesting book that focuses on the power of our subconscious. Specifically, it focuses on the ability of our brain to do fantastic calculations in the blink of an eye. He refers to this split second decision making as “thin-slicing”.

The book starts out with an example that was very intriguing to me. The Getty museum is looking to buy a famous Greek warrior sculpture known as a kouros. They take it and study it and test it and check its paperwork and eventually buy the work for millions of dollars. They have an opening show to display this newly displayed work. It is supposedly been in a private collection for a hundred years. They invite renown Greek sculpture experts. At the unveiling the experts, within seconds of seeing it, conclude the work is a fake. Further investigation into the history of the ownership seem to show it is a fake. How is it that scientists can study a work for months and not see what experts can see in a few seconds? That is what the book proposes to find out.

Gladwell continues to bring up many examples of our subconscious at work. We look at marriage counselors being able to predict marriage outcomes from one session, gamblers bodies knowing how a game is working before their conscious mind does, a closer look at speed dating and how the Pepsi challenge was really set up in Pepsi’s favor. These and many other examples give the reader a closer look at how our mind can help us, but it can also trick us.

The book is broken up into chapters that focus on our subconscious and conscious mind. It also looks at the different ways in which we use that and how it works against us. Our society prides itself on the amount of information we have at our fingertips, yet sometimes we function better with less. It was easy to get into and I found it very compelling. I was constantly looking for a chance to pick it up and read a bit more.

5 Intellectual/Emotional: This book is a perfect example of a fully intellectual book, but since it tackles a subject important to all, it has an emotional element as well.

3 Style/Readability: For the most part this book is very easy to get involved in. Everyone would find something of interest. That said, most would find something they don’t care about as well.

3 Long Term Impact: Blink’s ability to inspire others and draw their attention to how our brain works is very real. Plus, the information here is always going to be worthwhile.

11 out of 13 and well deserved. I think most anyone would enjoy this book. Give it a read.

Keep Turning Pages

The Dark Tourist by Dom Joly

279 pages Trade Paperback (Non-Fiction Humor)
I stayed in hotel on the island of Santorini, in Greece, this summer and this book was sitting on a shelf. After reading a few pages I was drawn in. I had no idea who Dom Joly was and knew only what was on the book. Joly is a comedian and is apparently quite famous in England. He has had a few hit TV shows. At some point Dom sees a photo of women skiing in burkas in Iran. He decides it would be funny to go visit a bunch of places most people would never visit and treat it all like it is a big vacation.

Joly travels to Iran, Cambodia, North Korea, Assassination sites in America, Chernobyl and finally returns to Lebanon to revisit the home of childhood. The book focuses mainly on his misadventures and the trouble he has getting through airport security. Then we experience the constant questioning as to why he would want to be visiting the places he is visiting. We laugh at the strange looks he gets when he claims to be going to Iran to ski. We sweat it out during the interrogation he goes through in the USA when he tells them he really was going to Iran to ski. The reader is amused by the bizarre rules that must be followed as he goes on a guided tour in North Korea. We feel uncomfortable with his group as they are all tested in the radiation machine coming out of Chernobyl.

Dom’s style of writing is straight forward and humorous. It feels as if we get to know him as we continue on his trip. He is likable and his desire for adventure in forbidden places becomes a bit infectious. Honestly, I don’t see myself making plans to visit any of these places anytime soon, but seeing these sites from his eyes gives the reader a chance to see that around the world we are all very similar. We all are just trying to make it in this crazy world.

4 Intellectual/Emotional: I found out a lot about the places Dom visits and it really allowed me to see the people as people rather than strangers or enemies on the other side of the world.

3 Style/Readability: The book is light reading and with its lean towards humor I burned through it in just a few days.

2 Long Term Impact: I imagine this will get lost in the mountain of travel books, but I found it worthwhile for more reasons than it just being a “travel book”.

9 out of 13. If you are looking for a quick, humorous, read that will give you a little insight in the “darker” side of travel this book is perfect. Some may find it a waste of time.

Either way…

Keep Turning Pages

A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin

1040 pages Hardcover (Fantasy Fiction)
This is the 5th book in Martin’s A song of Ice and Fire series. Ever since I was introduced to A Game of Thrones I have been a huge Martin fan. The latest installment continues the story. However, it continues where we were left at the end of the 3rd book, A Storm of Swords. The fourth book, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons follow the same time line. At the beginning I was a little confused as some characters seem out of place. Martin uses this to tell some of the story that we didn’t know yet, but already know what happens.

A Dance with Dragons point of views focuses on Jon Snow, Tyrion, Daenerys, Bran Stack, and Devon Seaworth. Once we get towards the end of the book you see the timeline of the 4th and 5th book start to blend together and we see chapters from a few characters most readers were excited to read about. Most interesting is one character is not mentioned at all and that left me wondering what happened with that person.

Tyrion has traveled across the sea and now on the run because of the murder of his father. He starts the book with Magister Illyrio. He soon is shipped off with others and his adventures take him across the world. Jon Snow is now Commander of the Night’s Watch. He struggles with forming alliances with Stannis as well as the wildlings. The threat of the others is imminent and he is looking for anyway to protect the Seven Kingdoms. Daenerys has taken Meereen, but with eneimies on all sides within and without the city she struggles to control what she rules. Her dragons have grown almost large enough to ride and eat enough food to show it. Bran continues past the wall in search of the three eyed crow. Devon Seaworth, at the order of Stannis, sets out to find support for his king.

It is easy to compare this to A Feast for Crows. Both books follow the same timeline and both have a similar feel. It seems as Martin is setting us up. All the background and movements and relationships and alliances are all being developed. Honestly, this has the reader feeling as if it is all a bit slow paced. Happily, as the book goes on and the timelines remerge the things we are looking forward to start to build up and we can see major things are right over the horizon. Characters that we haven’t heard about in 2000 pages start to reappear. And then the book ends.
I truly enjoy Martin’s writing. His ability to get inside so many different people’s heads and allow you to “think” with them is what makes this series appealing. By itself this book is disappointing in that it is telling the “story in between the story”, but it is well written and I feel we’ll be rewarded once we have the whole series in hand…whenever that will be.

4 Intellectual/Emotional: Seeing the continued story of my favorite characters was great and Martin is fantastic at getting the reader to become involved with his characters.

3 Style/Readability: Martin’s style is still great and we continue with each chapter representing one point of view. However, the first part of the book is slow moving.

3 Long Term: This part of the story needs to be told, but in the future, when I have no doubt this series will be acclaimed as one of the greatest fantasy series, this will be a book people burn through to get to the next one.

10 out of 13 and well deserved. This series has been fantastic and is now getting to the point that expectations are going to be hard to live up to, but I hope that in the end we will all be wonderfully treated.

As always,
Keep Turning Pages