Warbreaker

So I have to thank Angel for recommending this book to me. It was really a lot of fun! As the first book I read on my Kindle, Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson was extremely entertaining and not long at all. One of the reasons I chose to read this book first was because it was a stand-alone book, while all the other recommendations I had were series for 3+ books. I didn’t want to start a series when I wasn’t sure if I would have the determination to complete. Chad says I have commitment issues and it’s not the 1st time he’s said that about me. Maybe it’s true, but I dislike starting something and not completing it, be it a game, book, or life in general. What better way to not have to deal with that than to avoid it? ;p

As a test drive for reading, I think I overdid it. I’m already short on the amount of personal leisure time, so when reading came into play, I found it contending with my watching TV/exercise time. And when I tried to do both, I ended up going to bed around 5am.

Brandon Anderson is actually giving away this book for free on his website: WARBREAKER Rights and Downloads available in PRC and PDF formats. Unfortunately the final edition is only available in PDF which doesn’t have the nice Kindle formatting. I tried converting it to the Kindle format, but it just didn’t turn out right. I ended up paying the $3 to get the Kindle edition and was not disappointed.

After reading this book, I highly look forward to his Mistborn series, but for the time being, I need to catch up on sleep. Someone also recommended another book of his: The Way of Kings. I was shocked to find out that was going to be part of a 10-book series.

I haven’t really talked much about the book yet, but I’ll try my best to not spoil much. The premise is about the tension between 2 kingdoms: Idris and Halladren. Idris promised Halladren their King’s daughter when she came of age. She would become the Queen of Halladren, wife to the GodKing, and bear his child who’d become the next GodKing. The events that unfold from that point reveal an amazing story.

Another neat thing about the Kindle is that I can clip passages from the book (Kindle calls it highlights) and it’ll automatically upload it to their server for me to retrieve later. Here are some of my favorite passages:

<SPOILERS>

she knew that Parlin fancied her. During their youth, he’d often brought her gifts from the forest. Usually, those had taken the form of some animal he’d killed. To Parlin’s mind, nothing showed affection like a hunk of something dead and bleeding on the table.

“So you’re just going to kidnap me?” “Gods, no,” Denth said. “Bad business, that. How do you make money at it? Every time you kidnap someone worth the ransom, you upset people a whole lot more powerful than you are.” “Don’t make important people angry,” Tonk Fah said, yawning. “Unless you’re getting paid by people who are even more powerful.” Denth nodded. “And that isn’t even considering the feeding and care of captives, the exchanging of ransom notes, and the arranging of drop-offs. It’s a headache, I tell you. Terrible way to make money.”

“Can I break his fingers?” She frowned. “No!” “Not even the unimportant ones?” Tonk Fah asked. “I mean, people have five after all. The little ones don’t even do that much.”

Once again, Lightsong’s servants found themselves separated from their god. They clustered uncertainly on the grass—like a group of children abandoned by their parents.

The door slammed open. Vivenna jumped, putting a hand to her chest. Vasher walked in. “Start reaching for that sword when you’re startled,” he said. “There’s little reason to grab your shirt, unless you’re planning to rip it off.”

“If we get into a fight, and you get in the way, then it will be more difficult. If we get into a fight and half of them attack you instead of me, it will make things easier.”

In just a few seconds, he had constructed three little men from the straw and some thread, […] One of the straw men began to jump up and down. The other two rushed over to it and then they began to bounce as well.

The tiny straw man imagery was just too cute! Seeing little straw men jumping up and down in my head really made my day.

</SPOILERS>

While reading, the character Lightsong really stood out to me. It wasn’t because he was awesome and great (not that he wasn’t), but my image of him reminded me of something familiar. It was like I’ve seen his character before, both in physical appearance and the way he acted. Even after finishing the book, I was unable to pinpoint where I’ve seen Lightsong before.

However, in a dream, it finally occurred to me that Lightsong reminded me of Shoryu from 12 Kingdoms (十二国記 Juuni Kokki). If you don’t remember (and I didn’t remember his name was Shoryu), Shoryu was the emperor of En. He may have put up a carefree front, but people who truly knew him knew he was a very reliable emperor.

If you asked if all my imagined characters were anime characters or had anime attributes, I would have to say no. The GodKing in this series looked very much like typical Zeus in my head.

Another funny thing is that neither my version of Siri or Vivenna look like the girl in the cover art, even though I saw the cover art before I actually started reading. Haha.