After reading Sanderson’s Alcatraz Smedry books, I discovered that he’s also an author of fantasy novels for grown-ups. (He’s also the guy selected by Robert Jordan’s estate to finish up the Wheel of Time series, but I’ll forgive him for that. He’ll be working from Jordan’s own outline, and apparently he expects the “last book in the series” to fill three volumes. Apparently, Jordan’s disease is contagious.) Anyway, I went out and got some, and I’ve read three of them. I enjoyed them all, but of the three this one, Mistborn, is the best of the bunch. In fact, it’s truly outstanding, the best new fantasy novel I’ve read in ages. I’m not going to tell you much in particular about it; if you like the fantasy genre, you’re going to want a copy.

Instead, I’m going to reflect a bit on Sanderson as a writer, and on the things that seem to make him tick—the themes common among the five books of his that I’ve read (two Alcatraz books and three others).

First, he’s really, really good at coming up with new and interesting magical systems. Each of the books contains a different one, with its own basis, mechanics, and logic, a logic that Sanderson has clearly worked out in detail. And the magical system isn’t just tacked on; it affects the economics and culture of its world, just has high technology affects our own. L.E. Modesitt, Jr., did something similar with his Recluce books, which he’s been milking for all they are worth for years; but by comparison, Sanderson is astoundingly profligate with his ideas.

Second, he’s fascinated with the idea of God-men—men worshipped as Gods, men with God-like power—and with religion in general. (Three grown-up books; three sets of God-men. Interesting.)

Third, there’s a goodness about his books. I don’t mean to say that he’s a Pollyanna; far from it. But he understands the importance of virtue and the nature of moral strength, which is a rare thing in fantasy these days. I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering that goodness, and the manner in which religion is presented, and wondering whether he might be a Christian, and coming to no definite conclusion. There are a variety of religions in his books, some of them similar to Christianity in some ways, and different in others, and though some seem better than others, the author isn’t obviously rooting for any particular one. And—I’m going to be hopelessly vague, here, as I can’t quite say just what it is that I’m responding to—although the goodness tastes Christian, the flavor is jut a little…. Off? Odd? Unorthodox? (I don’t mean to be insulting.)

And then I finished Mistborn, and looked at the About the Author blurb on the last page. It turns out that he teaches Creative Writing at Brigham Young University. A glance at his Wikipedia page confirmed that he’s a member of the Mormon Church, and suddenly everything snapped into place.

Virtue? Natch. Men becoming gods? Natch. Slightly odd taste? Natch. I won’t argue here whether Mormonism is Christian or not, but there are significant theological differences between Mormonism and Nicene Christian in general (and Roman Catholicism in particular).

That slightly odd taste works both ways, of course. We’ve got four kids, and so Jane’s a member in good standing of our local “Mother of Many Kids” club (an unofficial organization, to be sure, but no less real for all that); and many, perhaps most of the other members of the club are Mormons. And Jane’s often noticed that little moment of hesitation, that short burst of surprise and wariness, when another mother she’s talking to by the school gate realizes that Jane’s not in fact a fellow member of the LDS Church.

I don’t want to leave you with the impression that Sanderson’s books are thinly disguised Mormon tracts; they certainly don’t seem to be. And they are very good. I’m quite pleased to note that Mistborn is the first book in a trilogy, and—wonder of wonders—all three volumes are already in print! (In fact, the second and third are on shelf, within easy reach.)

Highly recommended.

From Andreas I discover that David Eddings has passed away. He wrote a fantasy series called the Belgariad that I was very fond of once upon a time, as well as a sequel series called The Mallorean that I was almost as fond of. After that he began a series that I didn’t like at all, and I stopped following his career.

Still, the Belgariad was good fun, and I still have the paperbacks I bought lo those many years ago. Perhaps I’ll read it again one of these days.

Aha!

The other day I downloaded an e-book, and e-mailed it to my Kindle. Today I got an e-mail explaining that I’d been charged 30 cents for this service.

When I first got my Kindle, I was told that sending documents to the Kindle cost 10 cents each. When the Kindle 2 was released, they changed the policy to 15 cents/megabyte. However, this is the first time I’ve actually been charged.

I’m not complaining, mind you; but since I’ve told everyone that I’d never been charged for e-mails to the Kindle I thought I should also tell everyone that the policy has finally changed.

By comparison, sending a single book through the US Mail costs over two dollars, says my wife the PaperbackSwapper.

Scott asks where I’m finding books, and how I’m getting them onto the Kindle.

Naturally, I buy the occasional book from Amazon. That’s really convenient; the books arrive wirelessly, they are backed up on Amazon’s site, and I can re-download them any time I like.

I also download books from ManyBooks.net and FeedBooks.com. These I usually download to my laptop and copy to the Kindle using a USB cable.

Finally, as I indicated in my previous post I’ve been reading books from the Baen Free Library, and these I arrange to have e-mailed to my Kindle. That’s right; e-mailed. Amazon provides a service whereby you can mail documents to your Kindle’s e-mail address (it has one) and it will convert them and send them wirelessly to the Kindle. In theory this costs something like 15 cents a megabyte, but to date I’ve never been charged. The folks at the Baen Free Library have latched on to this; instead of downloading the book in Kindle format, you can simply have them e-mail it. You need to do a little set-up work: Amazon will only accept e-mailed documents from the e-mail addresses you specifically enable. It’s easily done, and Baen provides a link that tells you how to do it.

Anything else, Scott?

One of the neat things about having a Kindle is that I can download books from the Baen Free Library. I mean, granted, I can download books from there without having a Kindle; but I don’t like reading books on my laptop screen. So prior to heading off on a business trip a few weeks ago, I went there and downloaded a couple of books by authors I’d never heard of. Unsurprisingly, the results were mixed.

I’ll start with the second: Neptune Crossing, by Jeffrey A. Carver. This was rather a disappointment. A spacer on Triton, employed by a firm that’s extracting alien alloys from the icy moon, is nearly out of his mind with “silence fugue” as the result of an accident that ruined his neural data link. While in this state he makes contact with an alien being called a quarx. The quarx has been in stasis in an alien machine for a very long time. The quarx takes up residence within the spacer’s mind, the better to fulfill its mission, which is to save Earth from destruction.

That’s the premise; whether it works out in the end, I dunno, as I gave up on the book about halfway through. By the nature of things we spend most of the book in the hero’s mind, which isn’t all that interesting a place to be. To be fair to the author, this is probably his first book; but I’ve no plans to look for anything else by him.

The first, on the other hand, was a lot of fun. Doc Sidhe, by Aaron Allston, concerns a events in an unusual version of Faerie. It seems that Faerie has been almost completely sundered from our world for some centuries, and has developed along parallel lines. Technology has continued to advance, though in ways naturally different than on Earth. The “Doc Sidhe” of the title is a wealthy philanthropist, one of the few full-blooded Sidhe remaining in Faerie, and the head of the Sidhe Foundation, a sort of high-tech philanthropic and law enforcement group.

The hero of the book is not Doc Sidhe, however, but an Olympic kickboxer from New York who gets transported to Faerie accidentally, and is taken under Doc’s wing. The result is a somewhat gritty romp that I had a lot of fun with. It’s also the first in a series; I’ve been looking for the sequel, but haven’t yet located a copy. (I’ll probably have to look to Amazon.)

I gather the series is in part a tribute to the “Doc Savage” series; but as I’ve never read any of those, I can’t say whether it works or not.

This is a guest book review by none other than my wife, Jane.

I just finished the book Who Do You Think You Are?, by Alyse Myers. It was sent to us by her publisher and I promised that I would read it.

The book starts out:

I didn’t like my mother. and I certainly didn’t love her. I know she didn’t like me either. I can’t say whether she loved me, as I don’t remember her ever telling me so.

This is a first-hand telling of a mother/daughter relationship that is painful to read. Misunderstandings and missed opportunities abound. As both a daughter and a mother of girls, this is a telling of a story I don’t want to live even vicariously through a book. It is a story of pain and hurt on all sides. For all that, it is a very compelling story that was very well written. I did not realize that it was Alyse Myers’ first book until after I had read the entire book and was looking at the back cover. It did leave me feeling very melancholy. I would read or at least consider reading another book by this author, I just would want some joy in her next story. If the first few lines of the book intrigue you, then you should enjoy the book, otherwise skip it.