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In the spirit of being someone who loves books and who has the good fortune to be largely surrounded by people who also love books, I feel obliged to let you all know that I've found a good one.
Four, in fact, but I read the other three over a year ago. They're still good, though!
Maybe I should just say that I loved the first three, and the fourth has confirmed that the first three weren't a fluke, because they're all by the same writer, a guy named Brent Weeks. He writes gritty* high fantasy with a slightly lower death count than George R.R. Martin, with protagonists who are (with one exception) not people who were born and raised in relative wealth and nobility, even if they do have Destinies with a capital D.
The three books I read last year were the Night Angel trilogy, which actually caught my eye for two reasons: one, I really liked the cover design (I know, I know, but they were simply designed and had a NINJA looking all dangerous on them), and two, how often does a bookstore actually have all three books of a trilogy on the shelf and available, rather than just books two and three? If I had to count how often I'd read books two and three first, and then gone back to find out what happened in the beginning... well, I'd stop at five, because I wised up. But the number of series I haven't started yet because I couldn't get my hands on book one at the time when I wasn't already in the middle of some other literary experience? Countless. I suspect my new e-reader will lessen that, but on the other hand, I wouldn't have found this series when I did if I hadn't been browsing in a bookshop. Upon further research, it looks like all three paperback volumes of this trilogy were published at the same time, which means that the publisher obviously had a lot of faith in this particular story; while I don't know a whole lot about that end of the publishing business, it seems to me that that's probably a pretty risky venture. I'm glad they did, though, because it turns out that the NINJA on the cover was a gutter rat who looked out for a bunch of younger kids, and wound up being taken in and apprenticed by the best wetboy ("assassin" is a word for less-skilled people, apparently) there is. Then Destiny intervened, as it tends to in fantasty books, and what followed was a series of books that I had to read really fast once I finished the first one, because I lent it to the guy two cubicles over who wanted me to read faster so that he could find out What Happened Next as well.
The (unrelated) book I've just finished is The Black Prism, and I bought it a while back, wondering when I was going to have the time to read it but knowing I wanted to do so. (Also, I had a coupon!) It then sat on my "to read" shelf next to a bunch of Charles Stross books, The Pillars of the Earth, and the latest Jack Whyte novel for weeks while I went on a "reread my favourite Star Wars novels and fanfics" binge for some reason. I'm not sure why. Sometimes you just need an X-wing pilot pretending to be an Ewok and putting on a puppet show while vaping bad guys (and yes, that actually happens in one of the Aaron Allston books). But then I had that unexpected trip to Newfoundland, and got stuck, as per usual, on the freaking boat for sixteen hours. Two more and I'd have broken my record. But I digress.
The Black Prism's world is a world with colour-based magic, where "drafters" can... exude, I guess is the right word, magic made of hard light. Anyway, when they can see a certain colour, they can make their bodies fill up with a substance of that colour called "luxin", which they can then manipulate with their hands (outside of their bodies at this point) to have certain shapes, which they can manipulate up to a certain distance away from their bodies. Depending on the purity of its hue - I picked up colour theory, go me - some will last longer than others, so some drafters can make temporary structures, some can only make ones that last for a few instants, and some, mostly women, can make permanent structures. Different colours of luxin have different properties, and tend to go with different personality traits, with the twist that the more of a colour you draft, the more exaggerated those traits will be in you for a while, so drafting green, for instance, will result in the drafter being very impulsive for a bit. According to the author's website, I'd draft yellow! :D
I didn't mean to go on about the magic system quite so much, but I think it's very cool, and while a colour-based division of a Magical Order of Magical People is not a new idea, I like the hard-light twist, and Mr. Weeks has done some very interesting things with it in terms of what the limitations are, and what one can do by mixing various colours of luxin. I also like the twist that a drafter can only draft so much before they go Batshit Crazy, and the ways in which drafters who have done so wind up behaving (that may well be a spoiler, but as it's from the first five pages, I don't think it ruins the plot).
The story features: An Unlikely Hero, a Conflicted Dude, an Action Girl (or two), and a Prisoner kept in an extraordinarily devious prison. There are a few characters along the way that I found myself wanting to cheer for, only to find myself wanting them to fail miserably, and at least one where it was the other way around. The Night Angel books were like that, too, in that they feature characters who aren't The Good Guys and aren't The Bad Guys, they're just The Guys In This Book.
Weeks's books aren't perfect - they do have the usual trope found in a lot of fantasy novels written by men of women characters who are stuck without a way down off of their pedestals, and loved by men who agonize because They Just Aren't Good Enough For Her Purity And Bravery And Awesomeness. With that said, though, every time I've picked one up, I have absolutely burned through it, and come away from it feeling like I've just been told a damned good story, and that's because I have.
I can't find a publication date for his next book, but as the most recent one came out in August, that's fair enough. It's got to be written and edited and typeset and whatnot first. *grin* I look forward to reading it when it is published.
*I hate using the word "gritty" to describe something, because it's so overused and faddish. But if there's a shorter way to describe "fantasy fiction which describes its non-fantastic elements in non-fantastic ways and has cities with gutters full of piss and faeces because it's set in a medieval analogue without things like modern plumbing except maybe for the very very rich", I can't think of it. "Realistic except for the, you know, magic", maybe.
Four, in fact, but I read the other three over a year ago. They're still good, though!
Maybe I should just say that I loved the first three, and the fourth has confirmed that the first three weren't a fluke, because they're all by the same writer, a guy named Brent Weeks. He writes gritty* high fantasy with a slightly lower death count than George R.R. Martin, with protagonists who are (with one exception) not people who were born and raised in relative wealth and nobility, even if they do have Destinies with a capital D.
The three books I read last year were the Night Angel trilogy, which actually caught my eye for two reasons: one, I really liked the cover design (I know, I know, but they were simply designed and had a NINJA looking all dangerous on them), and two, how often does a bookstore actually have all three books of a trilogy on the shelf and available, rather than just books two and three? If I had to count how often I'd read books two and three first, and then gone back to find out what happened in the beginning... well, I'd stop at five, because I wised up. But the number of series I haven't started yet because I couldn't get my hands on book one at the time when I wasn't already in the middle of some other literary experience? Countless. I suspect my new e-reader will lessen that, but on the other hand, I wouldn't have found this series when I did if I hadn't been browsing in a bookshop. Upon further research, it looks like all three paperback volumes of this trilogy were published at the same time, which means that the publisher obviously had a lot of faith in this particular story; while I don't know a whole lot about that end of the publishing business, it seems to me that that's probably a pretty risky venture. I'm glad they did, though, because it turns out that the NINJA on the cover was a gutter rat who looked out for a bunch of younger kids, and wound up being taken in and apprenticed by the best wetboy ("assassin" is a word for less-skilled people, apparently) there is. Then Destiny intervened, as it tends to in fantasty books, and what followed was a series of books that I had to read really fast once I finished the first one, because I lent it to the guy two cubicles over who wanted me to read faster so that he could find out What Happened Next as well.
The (unrelated) book I've just finished is The Black Prism, and I bought it a while back, wondering when I was going to have the time to read it but knowing I wanted to do so. (Also, I had a coupon!) It then sat on my "to read" shelf next to a bunch of Charles Stross books, The Pillars of the Earth, and the latest Jack Whyte novel for weeks while I went on a "reread my favourite Star Wars novels and fanfics" binge for some reason. I'm not sure why. Sometimes you just need an X-wing pilot pretending to be an Ewok and putting on a puppet show while vaping bad guys (and yes, that actually happens in one of the Aaron Allston books). But then I had that unexpected trip to Newfoundland, and got stuck, as per usual, on the freaking boat for sixteen hours. Two more and I'd have broken my record. But I digress.
The Black Prism's world is a world with colour-based magic, where "drafters" can... exude, I guess is the right word, magic made of hard light. Anyway, when they can see a certain colour, they can make their bodies fill up with a substance of that colour called "luxin", which they can then manipulate with their hands (outside of their bodies at this point) to have certain shapes, which they can manipulate up to a certain distance away from their bodies. Depending on the purity of its hue - I picked up colour theory, go me - some will last longer than others, so some drafters can make temporary structures, some can only make ones that last for a few instants, and some, mostly women, can make permanent structures. Different colours of luxin have different properties, and tend to go with different personality traits, with the twist that the more of a colour you draft, the more exaggerated those traits will be in you for a while, so drafting green, for instance, will result in the drafter being very impulsive for a bit. According to the author's website, I'd draft yellow! :D
I didn't mean to go on about the magic system quite so much, but I think it's very cool, and while a colour-based division of a Magical Order of Magical People is not a new idea, I like the hard-light twist, and Mr. Weeks has done some very interesting things with it in terms of what the limitations are, and what one can do by mixing various colours of luxin. I also like the twist that a drafter can only draft so much before they go Batshit Crazy, and the ways in which drafters who have done so wind up behaving (that may well be a spoiler, but as it's from the first five pages, I don't think it ruins the plot).
The story features: An Unlikely Hero, a Conflicted Dude, an Action Girl (or two), and a Prisoner kept in an extraordinarily devious prison. There are a few characters along the way that I found myself wanting to cheer for, only to find myself wanting them to fail miserably, and at least one where it was the other way around. The Night Angel books were like that, too, in that they feature characters who aren't The Good Guys and aren't The Bad Guys, they're just The Guys In This Book.
Weeks's books aren't perfect - they do have the usual trope found in a lot of fantasy novels written by men of women characters who are stuck without a way down off of their pedestals, and loved by men who agonize because They Just Aren't Good Enough For Her Purity And Bravery And Awesomeness. With that said, though, every time I've picked one up, I have absolutely burned through it, and come away from it feeling like I've just been told a damned good story, and that's because I have.
I can't find a publication date for his next book, but as the most recent one came out in August, that's fair enough. It's got to be written and edited and typeset and whatnot first. *grin* I look forward to reading it when it is published.
*I hate using the word "gritty" to describe something, because it's so overused and faddish. But if there's a shorter way to describe "fantasy fiction which describes its non-fantastic elements in non-fantastic ways and has cities with gutters full of piss and faeces because it's set in a medieval analogue without things like modern plumbing except maybe for the very very rich", I can't think of it. "Realistic except for the, you know, magic", maybe.
