Dreams until Death
Tired. The word seems to be repeating itself quite loudly in my brain; I suppose it is a side effect of pushing your body to these lengths. After Annie did her thing and engaged in a two minute conversation which mostly resolved itself as her yelling at me to go to bed. Immediately. I decided it was a good idea to listen to her before she got more impassioned. So I closed my computer, signed off of AIM and curled up on the chair and took a five minute nap.
I feel kind of bad for misleading her. And awfully tired. The chairs here don't make for good beds, as evidenced by yesterday. I'll have to make a sort of log, keeping track of the effects this is having on me. Moving onwards; that'll be for another post.
To the world of all things Sanderson related. Or rather, every possible thing that I can think of that's related.
To start matters off, books!
Hero of Ages- Well, I kind of reviewed this already, but I didn't really go into much detail since there were other people around who hadn't read the book yet, and of course, I would feel bad about spoiling such an awesome book. Okay, beyond sentimentality.
This book was purely amazing, if I haven't communicated across that idea more than enough times as it is. The one thing that I particularly liked a lot about this book was that it managed to just about slip in a massive tie in of all the tiniest details imaginable from the previous books- from everything to the frustrating, ever elusive Hoid to the kandra's Contract, to Rashek's actions (which turned out to not be so bad) to the very frustrating and very bloody art of Hemalurgy. And the earring, and so, so much. We even got to see Kelsier again, even if he was dead. And we also got the new addition of a lot of new POVs, like Spook's POV, which was admittedly interesting since we've never seen much of him before, and Sazed who was just almost as crucial to a large amount of the events that have occurred in the book. But we did lose Breeze's POV, and all of the Ham/Breeze interactions, which made me a tad sad over. Of the actual plot, I liked it well enough- I managed to guess at and worm out most of what was going to happen through a large part of discussions with similarly obsessed people and surfing the forums, but there wasn't enough of it stuck together that I was able to guess at everything- I would've never predicted that Sazed was going to end up the Hero, for example. Or that BOTH Vin and Elend would end up dying- that wasn't expected at all. The characters also evolved in a likable manner- Elend especially took on a sort of rougher, harder edge to his personality instead of being the foppish bookworm all day. And we got to see some of the happy bundles from Vin/Elend's marriage, namely that of homicidal hat tricks. But yes- good, good book. Enough for me to have read it three times.
Elantris- Okay, I finally picked this up so I could make out all of the elements that people kept referencing (the pool, the Dor, etc.) and cause I didn't really feel like a real fan of Sanderson's. It wasn't bad, but I'm just a bit biased when I say that it wasn't nearly as good as Mistborn- the latter was stronger in characterization, while Elantris not so much. Review time!
ARGH. I accidently overwrote my review, so I have to redo it...Feh.
I'll stand by what Ellen said- that Warbreaker was a sillier version of Elantris, with a redeeming element in Vasher. Sarene for some reason, reminded me way too much of Siri from Warbreaker- their plotlines were almost identical, for that matter. If Sarene was more like R'Shiel, that'd be another story. Raoden...That man was like a vague combination of Elend and Kell- Kell's eternal optimism and Elend's utter idealism (faith in all men? Honestly) which can get a bit tiring after a while. I won't complain too much, since he did have a decently interesting POV. Hrathen was likely my favorite character out of the whole cast, to be honest. The man was more realized, more believable than Raoden and Sarene- that, and it's always fun to read about extremely logical and religious characters faced in the crux of situations like that. His portions were a bit dry sometimes, though. Around the end of the book, however, I got lost in the plot. Something about how Elantris was an Aon, which for some reason affected the Shaod and the Dor coming through the Aons, even if the monks didn't seem to have problems with it? Then some random teleporting everywhere, the not so conclusive ending, and Hrathen's random...Epiphany? Not sure what was up with that.
On more news, now that I'm armed with knowledge about most of Sanderson's books, to tackle the very very very annoying puzzle of Hoid. As far as I can tell, he's a beggar of sorts in both Mistborn and Elantris- in Mistborn, though, he functions as an informant which is roughly similar to his role in both other novels, if you buy Slowswift's take on the matter. He has a roughly similar appearance in all, which leads me to believe that he is one and the same in all of the books- Siri notes in Warbreaker, however that Hoid is far younger than what he wants to be. Also, he made a comment in Warbreaker-
I learned it many, many years ago from a man who didn’t know who he was, your majesty. It was a distant place where two lands meet and gods have died.
Now, isn't interesting. I do wish we had a map of Elantris, but going on the map from Mistborn, the Pits seem to be situated in a place between Central and Western Dominance...And we know that Vin sensed something 'off' about Hoid. Argh.
The Shards are also on my mind. I've got s suspicion that one of them might be in Warbreaker, when Lightsong mentions a voice talking to him after he dies, offering the chance to return. Given what we've seen of the Shards and of the Cognitive realm, it seems that most of the Shards naturally reside there, which would place the pool from Elantris as a good candidate for a Shard. Or maybe even the Dor.
Oh, and in the small tiny lapses when I do get to close my eyes and rest for about an hour or so, my mind managed to concoct up a dream that alarmingly fit in with this post. Starring the usual cast and presenting the interesting matter of trust. Well, trust and care, and whether you could separate the two and a myriad of other philosophical tangents on the subject. Lovely fun. Really.
On the notes of good old dreary life, it appears the drama stops, ever. As seen with the lab, where yesterday's meeting consisted mainly of a large amount of fingerpointing (that I was thankfully spared of). Good to know somethings never change wherever you go. Oh, and to top it off, we have no running water on campus. Lovely. Back to studying chemistry.
EDIT: So much for subtlety...Seems that Annie found out about that.