Wesley Chu Announces Sale on The Lives of Tao

Remember when I said following authors on social media was a good way to find deals on their books? Well it paid off today. Wesley Chu posted to Facebook today that The Lives of Tao is on sale for only $2.99 for the Kindle on Amazon. This is a book I've praised in the past and still do. It's also on Reddit's list of underrated fantasy books, which I thought was tragic. So if you've never read the book take this opportunity to go get a great story from an up and coming author. Leave me a comment if you buy it and what you think of it.

Anthem's Fall, The Debut Novel by S.L. Dunn

Cover from Goodreads

Anthem's Fall is the debut novel from S.L. Dunn, and it's a pretty good debut. This isn't a straight sci-fi book. It's not set in the future and it's not about a technologically superior, space faring race. In fact, when I started reading it I forgot it was sci-fi at all. 

The story starts in New York City with a young woman named Kristen Jordan, an incredibly brilliant geneticist and a student at Columbia. She's working on a new technology that allows us to create synthetic cells that are exact copies of biological templates. The science is a little over my head, but you don't really have to follow it and Dunn doesn't spend whole chapters hashing out the science behind it like some authors do. 

The book then takes us to the planet Anthem, home to the Primus race. While they do have superior technology, that isn't really the thing this race focuses on. The Primus, you see, are vastly superior to us in strength. Dunn has created a race of people that don't need technological weapons, because none can hurt them. The only thing that can is their own prodigious strength, given to them by the Sejero genes they inherited 2000 years previously. This has led to the creation of a culture where might makes right. The strongest of their number advance the highest. Interestingly, the highest order of the Primus, the Royal blood lines, look just like humans. Humans with the strength to level cities. 

I thought the story was good. I was interested and engaged the whole time. Dunn wrote good action scenes, and the fights between the Primus are visceral and super human. It's a little hard to visualize clashes between people that are stronger than tanks, but the fights are described very well to help with that visualization. I also think Dunn hit the nail on the head when he described the way the population would react to what was happening. The total bedlam he described seems to me to be an accurate guess. 

There are a couple things I didn't like about the book. I wish Dunn would have explained Sejero genetics more fully. I wanted to know where it came from, what it meant, and what happened during the war with the Zergos in the distant past. I also wanted to know more about the link between the Primus and humanity and how Pral Nerol knew about Earth. I'm hoping those questions will be explained more fully in the later books. In term's of the writing, I had trouble believing the dialog between the two Primus soldiers on Earth. I just don't think that two people from a society so different from ours would speak in such a normal manner with each other.

Anthem's Fall is a genre bending book. There's aliens, but the fact that they fly around in space ships is minimized. No one uses technology too far ahead of what we have now, and the Vatruvian Cell technology the book focuses on seems plausible right now. The genre of the book isn't as important as the values the story is espousing. At it's core Anthem's Fall is a book about the morality of the strong dominating the weak because they can. It's a conflict between a society where the strongest dominate because no one and no technology could stop them and a protector who feels the strong have a duty to protect those at a disadvantage. It was a great debut novel, and I can't wait for the next one. Anthem's Fall is set to publish in July, so look for it soon.

What is a reader to do?

I've been thinking about books a lot lately. I've always loved reading as much as I could, but since I started this blog books have been on my mind more than normal. I'm connected with a few authors and my favorite publishers on social media and I get emails from a few about new releases. And I just don't know where to go next.

For those of you who don't know me, which is all of you since this is the internet and I'm not a celebrity blogger yet, I'm 28. I'm also an accountant so you'll have to bear with me here on the annoying math bits of this post. So I have 2,148 books right now. I know because I have a spread sheet that keeps track of them all, including books I have, related books that I still need, and (rarely) the disposition of books I've disliked, such as sold to half price books or donated to my local library. I also have a spreadsheet tracking books that I've read so I know where I am in series and don't read a book over unless I want to. This sheet contains metrics such as the number of books I've read so far this year, the total page count, the average time to read a book, and the number I've read since starting the spreadsheet. Did I mention the accountant thing? We're not all this square, I promise. Anyway, I read about 55 books per year right now, a number I can only assume will go down after I have kids. Simple math tells me that I will be done with my collection in just over 39 years.  I will be in my late 60's. Not that old in this day and age, but getting there.

The problem is that doesn't include any new books added to my collection. That number also doesn't count the nice number of ARCs I'm getting to read for this site, including the one I'm currently reading (check out the cool feature on the right of the screen). So do you see my dilemma? How do I pick which books to read and which to let go before I die? I'm constantly bombarded with new stuff I want to read. Orbit's advertising an Orbital Drop on facbook? Great, just what I needed. What's that? Dayton Ward posts to Facebook about a book that looks pretty awesome? Thanks Dayton, like catching up on Vanguard and reading Star Trek: Seekers wasn't enough from you. And of course my own room betrays me. I thought I had mapped out a strategy on what to read next, but sitting here writing this I see the whole Terry Brooks Shannara series looking at me forlornly because I've never read one yet. (You wouldn't believe how accusing a book can look)

So my question to you folks is, what's a reader to do? How do I decide what to read before I leave this mortal coil and my relatives build the Tavern at the End of the Universe Memorial Science Fiction and Fantasy Library, or drop a whole moving van of books off at Good Will? Since I'm a glutton for punishment, why don't you drop me a comment with something I should read soon? If I have it, or it looks good enough to add to the collection, I'll feature it on here too.

Review of Words of Radiance

If Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson was a marathon read, I definitely have a runner's high. I think. Anyone who knows me would know I'd be more likely to have a runner's heart attack than a runner's high. And those people should stop ruining my metaphors. Anyway, I loved this book. That's not a surprise, since I've liked everything Sanderson has written, but I am going to try to be a little critical here instead of being another fanboy.

Words of Radiance is the second book of a planned 10 in The Stormlight Archive series. It feels like this was the second book in a trilogy though, with a nice set up at the end for a final book to wrap up. I think Sanderson is planning to have smaller story arcs within the 10 book set. I have a couple of complaints with the story, and I will try to be light on my spoilers, but you've been warned. I feel like the last few pages of the book threw a ton of new bits of story at you all at once. I know an epilogue sets up the next story, but we meet three new Radiants right at the end with no explanation of what their orders mean, one of which is the most frustrating, as Sanderson didn't really even allude to the fact that they were becoming a Radiant. I know Sanderson's style is to drop a lot of hints about the world and then explain fully in later books, but that just left me frustrated instead of excited. I also think it's weird how Kaladin and Shallan spent months with their respective spren while learning to be Radiants, but the new batch seem to have spren that already know who they are and don't have any of the memory problems that Pattern and Syl did.

Those frustrating bits aside, I think this was a great book. Way of Kings is set during a war, yet its not all about battles. There are a lot of political machinations happening, yet it doesn't get bogged down in slow political scenes. There are several main characters being followed, but you can easily keep their stories straight in your mind and the interaction between them works well. Sanderson has taken elements from several genres (epics, political tales, and war stories) and blended them all seamlessly into a story with good pacing and a killer plot. I rarely found myself bogged down in a slow chapter, though some of the interludes seemed unimportant for now, and I also didn't feel like he was rushing through a scene just to get to the next one.

You learn a lot more about the world of Roshar and how the powers of the Radiants work in this book.  I liked seeing the different styles that his characters have while learning to use a power that they can access instinctively. Sanderson does a great job in giving his characters real life and personality that is unique to them. Their personalities carry through faithfully in all of their interactions, but they aren't flat one dimentional people either.

I can't wait to read the next book in the series, although history tells me I'll be waiting quite a while. I'm anticipating a great deal of conflict between the orders of Radiants and their individual members. I also can't wait to learn more about how the worlds of Roshar and Shadesmar really work.