Bhekani Khumalo
This book is written in such an amazing way. It really brings that sense of being a child and seeing the world through those eyes. The feeling of being in this massive world but only being able to understand it from your limited perspective. I still wonder whether all those things actually happened or they were just the boy's was of dealing with everything that happened to him.
It feels like a fairy tale but with very adult themes. It really goes a long way to display the casual cruelty of the adult world and the purity of childhood. All told through these fantastic and mystical events. I have no better way of saying it. But I loved it.
I really enjoyed this book and I learnt a lot about it. I must say though that this is the first parenting book that I've read to completion so I'm not very informed on the subject. But yeah I learnt so much and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's got kids or thinking about having kids. I can't relate with some of the sections where kids remind you of your own childhood or where you relate in a certain way with them because of your own childhood. I should come back to this review when I have kids I guess.
Overall I enjoyed this book and I enjoyed the series as a whole. The characters are amazing, Andros Guile is amazing, he shines the most for me here. I'm not entirely sure though how I feel about how things were ended. I feel characters grew really well, I don't know, I'm torn, I really enjoyed it but there's also something that wasn't so great that I haven't yet figured out. The magic system was incredible and really well thought out, I enjoyed it.
SPOILERS
- The ending is too happy, I hate that. It feels like everything just worked out for everyone and I didn't like that.
- I hate that Kip died and came back to life. Id have liked it better if he either stayed Alice or stayed dead
- Liv's story just went nowhere
- The white king just died, he wasn't a great big boss
- Android just became a good guy from nowhere, that wasn't great
- The immortals didn't really need to be there in my opinion, they didn't do or archive anything really. Their presence didn't change much.
I absolutely loved this book. I really think Brent Weeks outdid himself on this one. I was really drawn in and I could feel all the emotions. The one scene that I particularly remember is when Kip had lost his place in the blackguard and Cruxer saves him.
“I've wanted to be a Blackguard since I could walk. I value this brotherhood too highly to let in a man who destroys unity rather than builds it, a man who takes money to destroy one of his own. If the cost to remove him from the Blackguard is that I, too, am expelled, so be it. [...] Aram's the second-best fighter in our class. He took money to finish low. He took money to keep Breaker out.”
Damn that hit hard.
I loved it!
I enjoyed this one. It took me a relatively short time to get what's going on and get with the story. I must say I still don't fully understand how the magic works, but maybe that's the intention of the author. I've gotten used to Brandon Sanderson's writing where you walk out understanding every little detail of how the magic works.
The world-building is cool, although I don't have a sense of the full scale of the world. I just know about the two main settings, hopefully, we'll be introduced to other places in subsequent books in the series. This book really is the beginning of the series with all the loose ends it leaves.
I really enjoyed being in Kip's mind and seeing the world from his perspective. his battles with his body and weight, him thinking he's stupid. The trauma from his childhood and having a mother who's an addict, him adjusting to his new life and his need to impress and to feel seen.
When I read about the book before reading it everyone was mentioning the author's. descriptions of women. i thought maybe they're being too sensitive but no, they're not, he really goes into intricate detail when he describes women's features. I get that Kip is a teenager and his hormones are raging but nah, it's a little much.
I'll be jumping straight into book 2.
Finally finished this guy. I must admit it wasn't easy keeping up with everything that was going on. I was definitely more present in the last half than the first. It generally takes me a few chapters to get who's who and what's going on when reading these long fantasy books but here I got beyond halfway and I still got confused with the characters a bit. It might be because I was taking long breaks in between, and getting bored by all the inns. I don't like that we never really got many answers but I guess it's incentive to continue the series.
This was an interesting book not so much for its story exactly but for the questions, it put in my mind. Had me wondering about identity and what exactly makes me me and all that. I think it explores that pretty well. Other than that I don't think the story was very engaging and maybe it was intentional but I felt like there was very little going on. Maybe I would have loved to explore the world a little more to like it but I doubt it. I just finished the cosmere books that are currently published so it was just nice to read a Brandon Sanderson book again, that's probably the main reason why I picked it up
I struggled to connect with where the book was going at the start so as a result I put it away for a while. Then when I picked it up today I immediately caught on and read it through. I was captivated the whole way. As always Malcolm Gladwell's analysis is always captivating and really thought provoking, whether you agree with it or not. It not only changed the way I view my interactions and perspectives about strangers but also made me reflect on my own personal biases. I'll definitely carry these ideas with me and think about them more. At the end, I really enjoyed this book
Very simple ideas, very clear in how to apply them, very practical and completely brilliant. It feels like a book he sat down and wrote in one afternoon or one weekend in that it's easy to read, it doesn't wander or go around in circles, it makes it's point quick and concisely and moves on to the next. But at the same time, it still feels like a super-condensed package of real experiences. I love it!
It was really fascinating getting a different perspective to everything that was happening and getting answers a lot of the stuff that was puzzling the in events of the original books. I really enjoyed reading this and I hope Brandon manages to write secret history 2 and we learn more about the Cosmere.
For some reason, I had low expectations going into this one and in the first quarter or so of the book I really struggled to maintain focus. However, when it picked up it really picked up and I was hooked, so much that yesterday I slept at 5 am because of it. Like everyone else, I really like Lightsong, every moment spent with him is really interesting and funny. I don't think the other characters are very fleshed out though, maybe the two princesses. I also don't like that I had so many questions at the end, don't know if there is a sequel
It was cool, nice knowing that the universe continues and to hear some familiar names and identify familiar things from their history. It was also great to learn about how the magic system had developed and evolved over the years and see that in a big of a modern setting. But I felt like it didn't have the thrill of the first series, I wasn't as invested in the characters. But I did stay till the end so that counts for something.
This was the very first Brandon Sanderson book I read and I absolutely loved it, I couldn't stop. I read the reviews and some people were saying it's not really that great but I really enjoyed it, so much that I became a Brandon Sanderson fanboy. This was my first fantasy book by the way and it was such a nice and easy introduction, it's pretty accessible even to people who aren't big fans of the fantasy genre.