Elantris, Brandon Sanderson's debut novel
Sep. 29th, 2005 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbWell, I meant to post this last night, but I fell in with a crowd of hockey players, ran my legs to bits and came home to crawl into bed. So, no LJ, and today I can barely walk. :-). My own damn fault, but it's worth it to be back playing again.
This is my continuing attempt to explain to myself what I think about the trio of most recents books I've read. See my previous post on this subject at http://www.livejournal.com/users/hawkwing_lb/12386.html, if you're interested.
Elantris. OK. It's a place, as well as a title, and ten years previous to the book's beginning it was beautiful and a city of magic-wielding god-like beings, and anyone could become one. Then things changed, and the transformation into an Elantrian became a curse. Elantrians are now wretched, ugly, powerless and subject to ever-increasing pain. The which is an interesting premise to start from, I think, although the infodump right on the first page struck me as a somewhat graceless way to introduce it.
Elantris is told from the point of view of three characters: Sarene, Raoden, and Hrathen. Sarene has come from Teod to marry Raoden, the Crown Prince of Arelon (the country in which Elantris lies), only to find that he's died before she arrived.
Only he hasn't. He's become an Elantrian.
Hrathen is a priest and an envoy of the local theocratic Empire. With Raoden's presumed death, Arelon is unstable and Hrathen has been sent to prepare the way for a takeover.
The characterisation of Sarene and Raoden is handled well, - both are sympathetic and interesting people - but I found myself skipping on Hrathen's parts, and most of the secondary characters also came across as thin. Hrathen, and the whole religious takeover plot, seems to me to be an unnecessary complication. Sarene and Raoden have enough problems as it is.
But that's just my point of view, you know. Elantris is faster paced than Mélusine, with more emphasis on the action, and less on characterisation and world-building. Stylistically, it reminded me of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, though the latter had more resonance for me.
There's a good deal of intrigue in this book, and though the intrigue and the back-story is less detailed and less realised than in Mélusine, it remained sufficiently believable to hold my attention. But the back-story is revealed sparsely, and left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied, as did certain other plot-points on the way to the ending, which was wrapped up rather too neatly for my preferences (but, y'know, otherwise wasn't bad at all).
My major gripe, aside from wanting less Hrathen and more Sarene/Raoden, was that Raoden's problems with the magic system of the Elantrians (apparently defunct at the start of the book) :::slight spoiler warning, if anyone cares::: are resolved too simply when plot-convenient, and the magic system is - not quite sufficiently grounded and explained for me to be able to accept what happens without feeling Oy, it can't be that simple, can it? You rotten author, you never gave me a clue, and if that's not cheating then it ought to be! (Yes, that's how I felt.) I like twists when I have a hint that a twist is coming, and I can say Yes! That makes sense! Why didn't I see it coming?. And if that twist double- and/or triple-crosses itself, then I like it even better.
Elantris doesn't quite succeed in being that twisty. But I forgive it :-), since Sarene and Raoden are the kind of characters that succeed in making me care about what happens anyway.
On balance, Mélusine is the more thoughtful - and thought-provoking - book of the pair. But I'm always prepared to look kindly on a good action book, and Elantris is above the average when it comes to that. I look forward to seeing the sequels of both.
PS: Just in case anyone thinks I didn't like either of them, I did. Very much. I would recommend both without hesitation. But when I think about a book, I tend to focus on what I didn't like - except in very, very rare cases.
I would recommend Holly Lisle's Talyn, also. And I planned to write about it tonight, but it'll have to wait, since I have other stuff to do. :-)
Edited: accept, not except. Damn fool.
This is my continuing attempt to explain to myself what I think about the trio of most recents books I've read. See my previous post on this subject at http://www.livejournal.com/users/hawkwing_lb/12386.html, if you're interested.
Elantris. OK. It's a place, as well as a title, and ten years previous to the book's beginning it was beautiful and a city of magic-wielding god-like beings, and anyone could become one. Then things changed, and the transformation into an Elantrian became a curse. Elantrians are now wretched, ugly, powerless and subject to ever-increasing pain. The which is an interesting premise to start from, I think, although the infodump right on the first page struck me as a somewhat graceless way to introduce it.
Elantris is told from the point of view of three characters: Sarene, Raoden, and Hrathen. Sarene has come from Teod to marry Raoden, the Crown Prince of Arelon (the country in which Elantris lies), only to find that he's died before she arrived.
Only he hasn't. He's become an Elantrian.
Hrathen is a priest and an envoy of the local theocratic Empire. With Raoden's presumed death, Arelon is unstable and Hrathen has been sent to prepare the way for a takeover.
The characterisation of Sarene and Raoden is handled well, - both are sympathetic and interesting people - but I found myself skipping on Hrathen's parts, and most of the secondary characters also came across as thin. Hrathen, and the whole religious takeover plot, seems to me to be an unnecessary complication. Sarene and Raoden have enough problems as it is.
But that's just my point of view, you know. Elantris is faster paced than Mélusine, with more emphasis on the action, and less on characterisation and world-building. Stylistically, it reminded me of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule, though the latter had more resonance for me.
There's a good deal of intrigue in this book, and though the intrigue and the back-story is less detailed and less realised than in Mélusine, it remained sufficiently believable to hold my attention. But the back-story is revealed sparsely, and left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied, as did certain other plot-points on the way to the ending, which was wrapped up rather too neatly for my preferences (but, y'know, otherwise wasn't bad at all).
My major gripe, aside from wanting less Hrathen and more Sarene/Raoden, was that Raoden's problems with the magic system of the Elantrians (apparently defunct at the start of the book) :::slight spoiler warning, if anyone cares::: are resolved too simply when plot-convenient, and the magic system is - not quite sufficiently grounded and explained for me to be able to accept what happens without feeling Oy, it can't be that simple, can it? You rotten author, you never gave me a clue, and if that's not cheating then it ought to be! (Yes, that's how I felt.) I like twists when I have a hint that a twist is coming, and I can say Yes! That makes sense! Why didn't I see it coming?. And if that twist double- and/or triple-crosses itself, then I like it even better.
Elantris doesn't quite succeed in being that twisty. But I forgive it :-), since Sarene and Raoden are the kind of characters that succeed in making me care about what happens anyway.
On balance, Mélusine is the more thoughtful - and thought-provoking - book of the pair. But I'm always prepared to look kindly on a good action book, and Elantris is above the average when it comes to that. I look forward to seeing the sequels of both.
PS: Just in case anyone thinks I didn't like either of them, I did. Very much. I would recommend both without hesitation. But when I think about a book, I tend to focus on what I didn't like - except in very, very rare cases.
I would recommend Holly Lisle's Talyn, also. And I planned to write about it tonight, but it'll have to wait, since I have other stuff to do. :-)
Edited: accept, not except. Damn fool.
