Book review: The Rithmatist

Remember that one time I tried to review Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear? Yeah, me neither. Honestly, I'm probably trying to block the memory because I didn't do such a good job of it. But you live and you learn. What's more, a book I picked up from Minotaur (the best place in the world) last week has awakened such thoughts and feelings inside of me that I feel the need to try to organise them and share them with the internet.

The book I picked up is called The Rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson. As you, being a smart, beautiful individual, have probably figured out, the cover is displayed on the right (EDTA: I'm definitely not a smart and beautiful individual since I can't even figure out left from right). As you smart, beautiful individual have probably also figured out, it's a steampunk novel. For those of you out of the loop: if it's got a cover framed by a whole bunch of shiny (and I will publicly vouch for its shininess), golden gears depicting a kid running in a trench coat with what looks like a cathedral in the background, yeah, it's probably steampunk. Another telling sign of steampunk novels is an orange-brown colour scheme -- but really, mostly it's the gears.

I will grant the fact that the book isn't really steampunk in that the technology of the world isn't driven by steam but rather by mechanical energy. However, the world is instantly recognisable for any fan of the blanket steampunk genre.

Apart from being steampunk, the novel is also categorised as young adult literature, as far as I can work out. That's what it says on the author's website, anyway.

The Rithmatist is set in an alternate universe that is somewhat recognisable from a modern point of view in terms of geography, religion and historical figures. Apart from its reliance on mechanical power, a major factor setting the world of The Rithmatist apart from the modern world is the existence of a form of magic called -- you guessed it -- rithmatics. Rithmatics are based on principles of geometry and mathematics, where a rithmatist's ability to draw basic shapes and creatures called "chalklings" on the ground determines their power in this magic -- which is essentially the power to make one's drawings come to life. What I approve of in this magic is that it is clearly constrained with "known rithmatic lines" -- in essence, rithmatic drawings are a little like our good old run-of-the-mill magic spells: you might do them a little differently to the next magician, but they will always produce the same effect. That's a good way of keeping the form magic from getting vague or simply convenient. Of course, the main character will set on a task to bend the magic's rules, as is inevitable, but we will get to that.

I'll note that rithmatics is spelled with a capital R in the novel. I resent that. I don't spell magic with a capital M, physics with a capital P or mathematics with a capital M. I'm not going to spell your fictional discipline with a capital letter, either. I suspect it has something to do with the discipline being tied to the religion of the book somehow -- but since this is never elaborated on, I honestly don't really care.

So sue me

Different to most fantasy novels, the main character, Joel, isn't a progidy in rithmatics. Except that he is. This is to say that he hasn't been chosen by "the Master" (who is clearly a religious figure but whose identity and function never become fully clear, frustratingly enough) to have rithmatic abilities. However, despite this unfortunate fact that he doesn't have the magic, he is an absolute savant in the field. He attends Armedius, which is a school for both rithmatics and for the extremely rich. However, since he is the relatable hero of this story, he is neither of these things and has instead had the opportunity to attend because of a favour the principal owed to his late father. As a short and sweet description, Joel is perfect. The only reason he is not kicking your ass right now is that he is held back by his circumstances -- his passion and aptitude for rithmatic drawings is overridden by the fact that he wasn't chosen by the Master. He is "overlooked" by many because he does not have the wealth to be important or to reach for what he may want in life. I say overlooked in quotation marks because over the course of the book, Joel is in numerous conversations with professors and even the principal of Armedius where he is treated as an equal, or perhaps even more than one. This is despite the fact that he is a teenager, has only studied rithmatics second-hand, and is an unbearable little prick.

Though perhaps he's only an unbearable little prick because he doesn't have any real flaws. He is a hero from day 1 -- it's as if the whole book is just going through the motions of getting him there.

And what a drag getting him there is! The writing style is simplistic, with a matter-of-fact fashion of going through situations. Now, although I have never been a huge fan of this writing style, there are absolute masters of this style, such as Feist, who can use it simply to heighten the tension of their story. In contrast, The Rithmatist is absolutely flat with no atmosphere at all. Granted, the style does begin paying off in a bunch of more high-action scenes toward the end of the book, although I don't think the payoff is equal to the effort of slogging through  200 pages of Joel going "but what if" and "but something seems off and NOBODY WILL LISTEN TO MEEEEE until it's too late and then I'll have to save the day!"

Then, of course, there's Melody. She is the hero's sidekick and the most excruciating female stereotype I have encountered in any book that I have read in a long time. She is described as overly dramatic, prone to moodswings, completely ruled by emotion and devoid of any reason. At first, Joel finds her unspeakably irritating, but warms up to her sooner or later -- the turning point occurs when Joel notes that when Melody isn't being crazy, she can "really look quite pretty." Despite the entire book being centred around a mystery that Melody and Joel are solving together, I think she only has one original thought in the entirety of the novel -- and that is only because she had undergone an experience that Joel had not. Further, Melody is a rithmatist, but don't get excited yet, because she's absolutely terrible at it. Terrible, that is, except for the part where she can draw unicorns and with her woman's intuition, without having to do the careful calculations and geometric drawings that all other rithmatists do (you know, the ones Joel is great at), and literally talks them into doing things for her. As a science major, I find this polarisation of abilities between Joel and Melody into Reason and Emotion extremely belittling and disturbing, and even more so because by the end of the book, Joel is essentially using Melody as a tool to do the rithmatics that he himself does not have the aptitude to perform. Sure, it comes across as cooperation, because "hey Melody is good at one thing stop looking at me like that." She is never the one calling the shots, even though she is the one with the magic power. She exists solely for his benefit.

In summary, I am disappointed. The concept of the novel is fascinating, and some of the world seems to be very interesting -- but even this is poorly developed and shrouded in feeble mystery to keep the reader engaged. The atmosphere of the novel is nonexistent. The characters are flat and offensively polarised into gender stereotypes on subjects that are relevant to the modern world (logic, mathematics) and where women -- young girls -- desperately need positive role models.

In short, the whole book lacked dimension -- which is kind of ironic, if you stop to think about it. Good job at creating a two-dimensional story about people creating two-dimensional beings, Sanderson.

Update: Epic Reading Quest

ETA: There are yet again links in this post that my theme swallows up for whatever reason. Anything italicised contains a link.

As some of you may remember, last year I embarked upon the Epic Reading Quest in order to cut down on my backlog of books. It's been a little over a year since I set upon this quest, so it's a good time as any to give a little update on how I'm going. To those of you who have visited my blog frequently over the past year, you would've possibly seen the "currently reading" books in my Goodreads page, shown in the gadget type thing on the right, changing over this past year.

You may also have seen a million "want to read" books popping up, but we don't talk about those.

Since the beginning of this quest in late August 2011 (though I didn't make the blog post on it until a month later), I've read 17 different books, of which almost all of these, excepting two, were in series of some sort. The unfortunate thing about this is that only four of these books were books that I have never read before!

Imagine that -- I somehow managed to turn a quest to cut down on my "not yet read" list to a "ooh I haven't read this book in a while and I remember how much I loved it"-fest. Oops?

Besides this, five of these books were even books that weren't on the list at all, but somehow managed to wrangle their way in, partially courtesy to my significant other and partially courtesy to my own short attention span.

13 of these books were in English, and four in Finnish.

Additionally, there are two books on this list that I began reading but couldn't finish (they're not listed in the totals, because that's hardly the point). One of these is Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay. I liked The Hunger Games, and I survived Catching Fire, though this survival was with considerable difficulty. By the time I got to Mockingjay, I just couldn't inflict that upon myself anymore -- not when there are better and more interesting books on my list. I won't lie -- it did grate on me a little to give up on a series when I got so, so close to the end; but that's my perfectionism speaking, and my love of lists, instead of any real desire to read that book. The other book that I began but couldn't get through was Robin Hobb's Fool's Errand, the first book in The Tawny Man trilogy. I've read this trilogy before, so not getting through this one wasn't a particularly huge tragedy when it comes to the Epic Reading Quest. I was a bit surprised not to get through it, though, because years ago, I loved these books. This time, I just felt annoyed and deflated by Fitz's constant angst, and in the end, decided to put the book down.

Tastes change, huh?

I'm currently reading Tolkien's The Hobbit in preparation for the upcoming film. After that, I'm yet again deviating from my list of upcoming books on my Epic Reading Quest to read Raymond E. Feist's Silverthorn. I blame my significant other for this -- we made a deal that involved him reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy if I read The Riftwar trilogy. It was a fruitful deal, and I'm hooked.

Perhaps after this, I will actually go back to my actual Epic Reading Quest list. I think that I'm going to have to clean it up a bit, perhaps taking some old favourites out and adding a few more new arrivals in, ones that were left out from the initial list. After I clean it up, I might post the list on here in its entirety, and maybe that will finally encourage me not to deviate from it overmuch.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with my progress. True, I haven't managed to read that many new books in this year. However, I've managed to establish to myself that I can read almost 20 books a year, even with university and work and all of those other things that take up my time nowadays. I've gotten used to reading again, and I think that's more important than anything else at this point. Besides, it's not like I've been buying more books, which is part of the pact that I made with myself until I finish this quest. I'm happy.

Still Alive

This post is best enjoyed while listening to Portal's theme song, Still Alive. I would provide you a youtube link, but I'm lazy. It's a terrible, chronic condition.

My dearest, darlingest, most wonderful readers, I apologise profusely for my prolonged absence. At first, there were exams, and then, my brain was so fried from exams that I felt that it was better if I stayed offline until it had returned to its original state. Let me tell you, cramming, perfectionism and the desire for reasonably good grades makes a very special kind of crazy soup (as observed to the right).

Though then again, I had three of my four wisdom teeth taken our yesterday, and I'm probably not much better off right now with my chimpmunky cheeks and being amped up on painkillers and antibiotics as I am. However, my current predicament did make me bored enough to finally groan and drag my behind over to this blog, so I guess that's something positive about all of it, eh?

This post is probably going to be just a short update and what I've been up to, and then an announcement of posts yet to come. Because I'm immensely organised, I'm going to do so in list form!

Exams
I should start with this one, even though I probably have the least to say about this. Exams suck, as everyone knows. Cramming sucks. Going to the exam and coming by a question you've either never seen before or do not know how to solve sucks. Being nervous about your results and not getting them for the next three weeks (due on the 5th, meep!) sucks. Having a 20-page chemistry exam full of questions that require a lot of thinking over a period of 3 hours also sucks. My neck was really sore after that one. Besides, whose brilliant idea was it to make the hardest exam the last one? A few friends of mine were very aware of how burnt out my brain was after that last one. It took me about a week and a half to fully recover, which is to say stop giggling randomly and saying really weird things at odd times. As a result of my burning out, some of my November plans have gone slightly awry.

NaNoWriMo
I came to discover that writing a novel you have only begun planning two weeks before the beginning of the writing period on the basis of "hey, wouldn't it be cool if...?" doesn't work when it comes to the time & brain constraints of exams, especially if you're supposed to write over a thousand words per day. On the tenth of November, the day after my third exam, I looked at the pile of Chemistry work I still had a head of me and said "you know what, I can't do this." That would have been fine, if I hadn't been simultaneously too braindead, tired & lazy to actually continue writing after the 16th, but, alas, I didn't. Only two days ago did my muse tentatively step back into my brain, take a look around and nod approvingly, allowing me to continue with the story. As it were, I only reached 25,000-ish words after achieving about 7,000 words on the 29th of November. As such, I consider this a victory enough, since I would have had about half of November to write anyway -- besides, I got excited about my story again, and isn't that what's most important?

No? Damn it.


The Epic Reading Quest
If you follow my GoodReads profile or pay attention to the sidebar on this blog, you will notice that I have been stuck on The Egyptian since late October. This is because of a few reasons: The Egyptian, no matter what GoodReads says about it, is over a thousand pages long. It is historical fiction, and reading it feels almost like you are reading a history book -- each page is so crammed full of information and details that even though this is the second time I'm reading it, I still can't remember everything that has happened. I'm slowly getting toward the end, however, and then I can move on to Robin Hobb and her Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies.

It's funny how the point of this Reading Quest was to read the books I haven't yet read, and with the exception The Wise Man's Fear, I have yet to pick up one of those books. Oops?


And, well, apart from all of those things, I have been up to a lot of this:

I apologise for the poor image quality. I have a new camera, and I'm not entirely sure how to use it just yet. That, and using Paint as an image modifying tool probably doesn't produce the best possible results. I also apologise for its ugly look. I'm getting a bit sore right now, and I really cannot be bothered going back to it to crop it and whatever. You get the picture (har har har), right?

Coming Up
Some posts ago, I mentioned something about amazingly awesome holiday plans that I didn't want to talk about if they fell through. Well, I am happy to announce that they didn't! ... But that's all I'm going to be offering on that now. If you want to hear about my awesomely nerdy holiday plans, stay tuned for a post on that soon.

Another post you should look forward to is my experience with Skyrim. I've been collecting some screenshots, of funny and plain awesome moments I've had in the game. I'm going to continue collecting those, and when I feel like I have enough material for a blogpost, up it comes.

Alright, that's me done blathering about my November and my obscure plans. How has everyone else been for the month-ish that I've been away?

Review: The (incomplete) Kingkiller Chronicle

If you've visited this site every now and then, you would've probably realised that my GoodReads profile gadget thing is sitting right about ----> there, but further down (depending, of course, where this post is when you get to it). If you've been paying even more attention than just to go "oh, I see" and then glazed over thinking about penguins (wait, everyone doesn't do that?), then you would have noticed that by now, there have been two different book covers in that section there, representing the two books I've read since I started this blog. For those of you who aren't freakish stalkers (not that I don't love all my freakish stalkers), those two books were by Patrick Rothfuss, and were called The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, respectively. This morning, I finished reading The Wise Man's Fear, and I think I promised to write something about these two books once I had finished, so here goes nothing.

Actually, before I start, I should probably warn you that I have no idea whatsoever how to do book reviews, or even book overviews, for that matter. While I stall and try to think about how to go about all of this, feel free to go update twitter to talk about the crazy blogger girl who doesn't plan her posts and just spews random nonsense.

Back? Alright, let's get this show on the road.

Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle (of which The Name of the Wind is the first, and The Wise Man's Fear is the second part), as I understand it, is intended to be a trilogy, each novel of which represents a single day, during which Kvothe (pronounced 'quothe', as the author reminds you every chance he gets) the protagonist of the novel, tells his own story. The function of the story within a story is twofold -- as the writing style is extremely intense, full of twists and turns and surprises, victories and downfalls, it gives the reader a chance to breathe every now and then, reminding us of the fact that since Kvothe is still alive, nothing that bad could really have happened. But at the same time, as Kvothe reminds us during almost each of these breaks in the story, the situation he has landed in by the end of his story is far from ideal, and that we really shouldn't except the best -- so there's a definite sense of foreboding going on all the time. It's very captivating, even if the sentiment of the interludes can get a little repetitively depressing at times, especially in the second book.

The comparison between the two books is actually quite different to the comparison of any other two books in the same series. I usually like the first book more, because it is always, always far more polished, and contains the introduction to the story and the world, which is always my favourite bit in every series I read. The first book is spent introducing Kvothe and his background, whereas the second book concentrates more on his adventures and experiences in the world. The fact that he travels so much allowed the second book to preserve that sort of introductory feeling of the first book, which I was pleasantly surprised by. In many ways, the story in the second book may be richer in its surroundings, because there need not be such emphasis on the character himself, since he has been thoroughly introduced in the first book. I was especially impressed by the dual simplicity and intricacy of the cultures Rothfuss introduces in the second book. Saying that they were both simple and intricate sounds a little paradoxical, I know, but what I mean is that the cultural quirks at least appeared deep and well thought-out, but were still very easy to follow.

What I am not impressed with is Kvothe's age. By the end of the second book, he is around 17, if I remember correctly -- but throughout the entire series, there has been no indication of him being this young, except for the author's intermittent statements that Kvothe does not know his way around women. I partially understand Rothfuss' need to have a young character as the protagonist (to do with his motivations; avid fantasy readers can guess this), but... It's just annoyingly unrealistic. For those of you whose brains have gone off, screaming "MARY SUE MARY SUE MARY SUE", I should issue this warning: Kvothe is pretty much the epitome of a Mary Sue character. However, I can also say this: I hate Mary Sues, but Kvothe's exceptional skill in absolutely everything didn't bother me. I'm not exactly sure why: I guess he has enough human awkwardness (though I do admit that that diminished to almost nothing at the end of the second book; this is one of the things I didn't like about it) to justify his exceptional skill at most things.

Overall, Rothfuss is both an amazing writer in a technical sense -- he has this fondness for subtle suggestion, which always rings true for me -- and a great storyteller. The praise on The Name of the Wind suggests that I shelve mine next to Lord of the Rings, and while I don't think that it's exactly comparable to LOTR -- it's very hard to be -- it definitely wasn't much of a step down to go from Tolkien to Rothfuss. If you love fantasy, this trilogy is a must-read; if you don't, you could still enjoy it, if you just gave it a chance. Rothfuss makes his world extremely accessible, and the story is oftentimes unpredictable, full of secrets and foreshadowing and exciting characters.

I can't wait for the third book in this series, I really can't.

Phew. There. How did I go? Did I inspire you to pick up the book? Did anything that I said make sense? Give me some feedback!

The Epic Reading Quest

I am on a mission. In order to explain this mission, I have to give you a little background, which consists of two basic facts:
1) For the past two years, I've made the best effort I possibly could have made to be the biggest nerd in the world and make my (first secondary, now tertiary) education my life.
2) I love collecting books. Before Australia went and destroyed my dreams of ever working at a bookstore by somehow managing to drive two of the major booksellers and hence about 75% of the country's bookstores into closing, I could never resist walking into one and just browsing the shelves. I could seldom resist buying a book, either, if it looked interesting. And other than that, there's a certain giddy feeling I get when looking at my bookshelves, stocked with all these lovely stories, or just holding and leafing through a book, that I don't think that I can explain to someone who has never had it before.

Now, when you combine fact number 2 and fact number 1, you end up with a backlog of books that you have no time, brainspace (a finite resource, to be sure) or real desire to read. Having recently realised that there are other things in this world that may be more or equally important to good grades, I decided that it was finally time to do something about this backlog. And to do that, I have begun what I call my Epic Reading Quest.

The Epic Reading Quest is my combined effort of generally getting back into reading and of attempting to read all the books in my bookshelf that I never got around into completing, or the ones that I have bought in that two-year span in which I wasn't reading at all. The Quest consists of a list of (currently; the final list hasn't been decided on yet, and I keep on changing the order of books and adding them as I fancy) over 50 books, some of which are old friends and favourites, and some of which are less liked or completely new.

As of now, the completed items on my list include Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I read the rest of the books as well, but only this one made it on the list, since I had the idea when I was already partially through this book) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, excluding The Fellowship of the Ring, for I had finished that one before I began my list. They are all old friends, but I thought that those would be the best to start with, since I know I like them -- maybe they would motivate me to continue. So far, it seems to have worked just as I had planned. Currently, I'm about half-way through The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, and am waiting for a shipment from bookdepository.co.uk -- which is an absolutely magical site, by the way; an extremely large selection, very decent prices and free shipping to almost every corner of the world -- for its sequel, The Wise Man's Fear. Though I won't write any particularly specific book review right now, I've got to say that going from Tolkien to Rothfuss definitely wasn't much of a step down in quality. He is very, very good.

Since my list isn't complete quite yet (and it might never be), I'm not going to post it in its entirety. However, if you wish to follow my progress through this Epic Reading Quest, keep coming back to this site and watch for its tag; otherwise, find me on goodreads.com (the nick, as always, is Silbena), and I'll probably get around to posting the extensive list of what I'm going to read when I'm really, really bored or procrastinating studying for exams in a few weeks.