Tag Archive: Elantris


Elantris

20151222_000616[1]Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.

These are the opening words to one of the best novels ever written: Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. I first read it in 2011, barely more than a year into my career as an editor. It immediately became one of my favorites, if not my most favorite novel ever.

It had been sitting on my shelf for years, though, waiting to be read. The problem was that the paperback copy doesn’t tell you what the story is about, and so I never knew if I was in the mood for it. My reading list is so long, and I stopped counting at a hundred, that I kept deciding to try something else. This is after reading both Mistborn and The Way of Kings. I’d heard good things, but not knowing what to expect kept making me pick something else.

Well, now it’s the only novel I’ve ever considered worth getting in a collector’s quality leatherbound edition. And not to give you a clickbait kind of hook, but what Brandon Sanderson put on the personalization inside made me tear up.

Considering how I feel about this book, I should have done a review on it years ago. I even said on this blog that it deserves its own review. For some reason, I kept putting it off. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t know if I could do it justice. I’m glad I didn’t, though. If I had, then I couldn’t have given my readers this story.  Continue reading

high-pain-toleranceThere’s a common misconception about people with high pain tolerances. They tend to be big, beefy, and burly, usually men, and if female they’re all badasses. They shrug off bullets and sword-thrusts like they’re minor distractions; they grunt from the pain and rarely, if ever, scream.

Now, I frequently impress people around me with my high pain tolerance. Most of that is in awe; some few, such as my doctors and a close friend who helps me exercise, approach it with worry, because pain is an important thing. I have such a high pain tolerance that I often automatically ignore signals that I should really stop what I’m doing and rest. I threw out my back (a little over a year ago) and my knee (a couple months ago) precisely because I could just work through the pain . . . until I suddenly couldn’t.

How do I do that? Well, it’s not because I’m tougher than other people. I’m not beefy or burly, and I’m only big if I’m standing up and haven’t turned sideways. It’s never about your mass; it’s all about what you’re used to. Establishing that difference is the key to writing action heroes and other characters that deal with pain through the course of your story.  Continue reading

Fooling the Audience

Normally I ignore April Fools’ Day, but it occurred to me that it would be thematically appropriate to talk about a valuable writing skill: hiding things from your audience.

“Wait, what? Hiding things? That doesn’t sound like a good idea! The whole point of writing is to tell them things!”

Exactly! But you don’t just tell them the end first, do you? You build up to it, with clues that set up the twists, but then hide those clues so that it’s still a surprise to all but the most eagle-eyed.

I feel I should issue a warning, though. Learning these concepts can lead some people to feel that all stories are ruined forever. If you’re just here for the reviews, don’t read any further. Personally, I find it enjoyable to spot the tricks, especially with a skilled author; it doesn’t ruin it any more than knowing how to spot individual brush strokes will ruin a masterful painting. Still, I’ve seen people become disappointed, and so I give you fair notice.  Continue reading

A Radiant Read

Tonight, multiple-time New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson (who has won and been nominated for far too many awards than I care to list so I’ll just provide a link) will be signing books in my area as part of his book tour for Words of Radiance. If you’ve read his books, he needs no introduction. If not, you should really fix that. His Mistborn series is what he’s truly known for, though Elantris is near and dear to me personally due to the way he writes about chronic pain (and the book deserves a dedicated review). He’s also famous for finishing the acclaimed Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan died. Now he’s come out with the second book of The Stormlight Archive, and it is incredible.

Pictured: a famous author, and a guy in a Schlock Mercenary shirt who now runs a blog called Novel Ninja. This was taken several years ago, on the book tour for The Way of Kings.

Pictured: a famous author, and a guy in a Schlock Mercenary shirt who now runs a blog called Novel Ninja. This was taken several years ago, on the book tour for The Way of Kings.

I am not, however, going to be at the signing. I’ll be running a writing workshop at Christendom College instead. While I’m disappointed that there’s a conflict, and that Sanderson is coming through today rather than some other day, I’m fine with my priorities. I’m doing my part to get more great authors out there, and I consider that more important than getting yet another scrawled book or tantalizing hints about future publications. Still, it made me remember that I haven’t reviewed this book yet, so I thought I’d introduce you all to an epic series.

Continue reading

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