Fantasy

As most of my friend's know, I am seriously into reading fantasy novels. Among my favorites are "Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind, "The Wheel of Time Series" by Robert Jordan, and most recently the "Mistborn Trilogy" by Brandon Sanderson. Why mention this? Simply put, I want to share some random thoughts about the a fore mentioned books. If you're not a fan of these books you might want to skip to the next post to avoid being bored.

"Wizard's First Rule" is actually the first book in a long series called "The Sword of Truth". Unfortunately, the series as a whole gets relatively repetitive with the author's themes being so closely related between books. He gets on his soap box and never dismounts leaving us to have to skip several pages (sometimes chapters) in numerous places in each book simply to avoid having to read the same thing over and over again. However, if your looking for a good book that stands on its own, "Wizard's First Rule" does exactly that. The rest of the series is good, but not worth wading through the muddy swamp of opinion the author lays out for you.

I mention this because they have recently turned the first book in to a TV series called "Legend of the Seeker". I always have reservations when it comes to putting the written word of fantasy into a movie/TV form. Sometimes it can be done mostly right ("Lord of the Rings") and sometimes can be done not so well ("The Golden Compass"). So far they have only aired 7 episodes. Of course since I don't watch TV anymore because of the commercials I watched them at www.hulu.com (I think all 7 episodes are still up). My first impression is that they made a terrible mistake in casting the character of Zedd. For one thing he is way too tall. For another, he doesn't speak with the same inflection in his voice as he does in the books. And his accent doesn't make any sense. On the other hand, Kahlan is a perfect match! She is poised and confident and lonely as in the books. I only wish her hair were a little longer. I'm a little distressed that they did away with the cultural reference of the length of your hair being a symbol of your the level of your station in the Midlands. It was one of the many details that made the world so unique. As far as Richard is concerned, I'm on the fence. At times I am convinced but then the actor makes some bad choices and shows you how truly green he is as an actor proving he is a little too inexperienced to handle such an important role. Who knows, if the series is allowed to hang on for a little longer he might grow into the role. Although, I'm not hooked on the show, I am curious to see if they get a large enough fan base to keep it going. http://www.legendoftheseeker.com/

"The Wheel of Time" series has been and probably always will be my favorite series of books. They are the books that I discovered the joy of reading and the joy of exploring a new world. I hope no one EVER puts these books onto any kind of screen. It belongs in the imagination of the reader. Since Robert Jordan passed away in September of 2007, the completion of the series has been passed on to the little known writer Brandon Sanderson. Seeing how he was chosen to complete my favorite series ever, I decided to try out his books. "Elantris" and the "Mistborn" series are the most well know of his bare handful of published books. I won't talk about them individually but I thought it might be prudent to mention a few things about his last released novel the final volume of the Mistborn series "Hero of Ages." There are two things I'd like to say. The first is that when I finished the book, initially I was a little upset by the ending. That is, until I realized it couldn't really end in any other way. It was the right ending for the story. The other thing I wanted to mention was how impressed I was by the linear thought patterns of the characters. Each character figures out what they need to figure without it needing to be a stretch or a too obvious. One epiphany led to the next in a very logical manner. This is not easy to do folks! I certainly have read my fair share of books that did not have believable thought processes in its characters. (The most obvious of which was Grand Admiral Thrawn in the only Star Wars Trilogy worth reading by Timothy Zahn.) I can't wait until the last Wheel of Time book is published next year. I have a feeling I will be taking two days off of work to read it. :)