The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Read my review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at the Indian Fusion.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Read my review of the movie Safety Not Guaranteed at the Indian Fusion.

Prelude to Foundation

Read my review of Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov at the Indian Fusion.

Dredd

Unlike most people, I like the 1995 Judge Dredd. I like Sylvester Stallone. I think he and Sandra Bullock had chemistry in Demolition Man. I found him funny in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. Some people might find the movie's plot stupid, I first encountered it in a MAD magazine letters to the editor page, and unfaithful to the comics, but there's something about Stallone shouting "I am the law!" that I find entertaining.

I didn't like the 2012 Dredd, which is a shame, because I like Karl Urban's Judge Dredd. If the material is supposed to be a parody, the actors had to perform as if the characters they were portraying were taking everything they did seriously, and Urban did that. The audience gets the joke, the actors get the joke, but the characters don't, that's why the joke works.

Or maybe I trapped myself, wanted the movie to make fun of itself too much, and that's why I was disappointed. In Dredd, everything is too easy. Dredd and his rookie partner were never really in danger, and the reason for that is the weakness of the film's antagonist, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey). So she bit of some guy's dick off, big deal. Helen did that in The World According to Garp, and she isn't scary. Ma-Ma destroyed an entire level of her territory, and she didn't even kill Dredd's rookie. So when the big fight in the end finally went down, not only was there no doubt as to who would win, there was no doubt either if I was going to feel any excitement. (Speaking of the rookie, she should have been shot by the dirty female Judge who had no reason to give her time to fire her weapon.)

The best scene in the movie was when the dirty judges came and the medtech who refused to help Dredd earlier in the movie was suddenly volunteering to help the law against Ma-Ma's forces. They shot him. Sometimes, even evil men can dispense justice.

Foundation

Read my review of Foundation by Isaac Asimov at the Indian Fusion.

Chester Himes: A Life

Read my review of Chester Himes: A Life by James Sallis at The Indian Fusion.

The Hero of Ages

The Hero of Ages is the final book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. In the preface to The Alloy of Law, he says that two more Mistborn trilogies will come, one set in the modern era, and another in the future. I will definitely read these books if they ever come into being. The Hero of Ages is the worst book in the trilogy, but I still loved it. For this review, I'm going to list the things Sanderson got right and the things he got wrong.

Fight Scenes, the Things He Got Wrong: I just have to say this, the fight scenes are tedious. They just last for too long. Specially the shit with the koloss. Because Sanderson has to explain Allomancy in combat, the combat slows down. It's not exciting, and those capital Ps (Pushed, Pulled) are annoying.

Fight Scenes, the Things He Got Right: Spook's arc, though rendered useless by Sazed's ascension in the end, was the best in the novel. It made connections with the previous two installments, Spook progressed as a character, and he got to do heroic things. You know what's boring to read? Gods fighting. You know what's not boring? Heroes saving the day. When Spook fought the Citizen's goons at the plaza, he was in danger. When Spook was trapped in the burning house, he was in danger. When Spook saved that kid, he became worthy of being called "Survivor of the Flames." Elend, transformed into a Mistborn, was a whiny emperor who betrayed his ideals and failed to protect the people he professed to love.

Deaths, the Things He Got Wrong: Vin shouldn't have died. She was God! She should have just spent an eternity struggling with Ruin. Elend's death, on the other hand, was welcome. I loved that he got beheaded fighting an Inquisitor. Add his death to his final decision not to attack the city he was besieging with his koloss army because it wouldn't be the right thing to do and it almost saved his character for me. But then Sazed, after ascending, said that he was "all right" with Vin. Death and sacrifice are useless if there's an afterlife.

Cities, the Things He Got Right: Sanderson, in his elegy to Robert Jordan, said that while he admired the older fantasy novelist, nevertheless he began reacting to the tropes that Jordan established. So while Jordan sent his characters all over the map, Sanderson made his stay put in one city. That's why Luthadel was great, it was the microcosm of their ash-covered world. Unfortunately, Sanderson stayed out of Luthadel here in the Hero of Ages, jumping between besieging Fadrex City and saving Urteau from itself. This makes no sense. Luthadel was a character in the story, leaving it out of 99% of the novel would be like replacing Vin with some other hero.

Characters, the Things He Got Right: As I said above, Spook was great, his low self-esteem, his visions of Kelsier, his love of Beldre, his redemption in the end when he realized he wasn't talking to Kelsier's ghost at all. Yomen was great too, a Lord Ruler lover who was actually a good leader. Sazed turned disbelief turned God, though ruined in the end, plot-wise, was very interesting. But the best character in The Hero of Ages, in fact of the whole trilogy, is the Lord Ruler Rashek. He was thousands of years old, he was a horrible tyrant who executed the skaa on a regular basis, he murdered Kelsier, but he prevented Alendi from releasing Ruin, and he prepared storage caches for the people for Ruin's eventual return. A redemption-arc for a character need not be told in a linear fashion. Oh, and Human, the koloss, was cute. He didn't have to die a monster.

Plot, the Things He Got Wrong: Sazed became God! He made everything all right! The siege of Fadrex City (about 60% of the novel) was entirely for nothing! The best parts of the novel, TenSoon and his struggle with the Second Generation kandra and Spook's arc, should have been the core of the Hero of Ages. Instead we got neutered Vin and whiny superman Elend. Fuck you, Emperor!

The Well of Ascension

I'm still trying to decide if I want to go back to the list format (Top 10 Best Fight Scenes in The Matrix, etc). For this review I'm going with the best/worst format (i.e. The Best Fight Scene in The Well of Ascension, the Worst Speech in The Well of Ascension, etc).

1. Best Fight Scene: Now that Kell is dead, Vin gets most of the fight scenes in this here second book of the Mistborn Trilogy. Unfortunately, only one of them is good (Vin smashes the skull of a thug with her head), and it's not the best. The problem with Sanderson's fight scenes is that they're magic based, and it's really tedious to read about Pulls and Pushes for pages (which is why, in The Way of Kings, it's Dalinar and Kaladin's fights and not Szeth's which are interesting). I like my magic mysterious and grand.

I really liked it when quiet, timid, manhood-less Sazed became the Hulk and defeated the ten-foot tall koloss, but the best fight goes to Elend. I still hate Elend (I'll explain why in one of the Worsts below), but there's one moment in The Well of Ascension when I started cheering for him. He was desperate, his city was being attacked by three armies, the Assembly he created deposed him as King, so he goes to the camp of his former friend to talk him out of invading. His diplomacy gets him nowhere, but he observes the monster koloss carrying pouches, and taking pouches from the koloss they kill. So this scholar with little battle training takes on the smallest kollos he can find, killing him. The kollos have a tradition of giving an excuse to their fellow whenever they kill of one their comrades. "He ate my horse," Elend says. That was enough for the other monsters, they let him take the pouch.

2. Best Character Moment: Again, Vin loses out. She's a seventeen year old girl confused about love. He wants to be with Elend, but they're so different. She's a fighter, he's a scholar and politician. Then there's this other boy, who, despite being crazy, seems to be perfect for her. Zane is a Mistborn like her, a fighter, and powerful. She doesn't know that he's been manipulating her all novel long. And so she chooses him over Elend. But at the last moment, she realizes something. Elend trusts her. So she abandons her plan to leave Zane. (Zane tries to kill her, she kills Zane.)

TenSoon is Zane's shapeshifter. He kills OreSuer, Vin's shapeshifter, and impersonates him. This is part of Zane's plan to manipulate Vin. When Vin chooses Elend (after first choosing Zane), Zane tries to kill her and almost succeeds. But because Vin treated TenSoon like a person (instead of like a tool), he turns on Zane. But this isn't the best Character Moment in the novel. Sazed wins this round. Part of the oppressed people of Terris, he is a eunuch. Fellow Keeper Tindwyl confesses her love for him, and even though he thinks he's not worthy of her (he's a "half man" he says), he knows he loves her back. And then she dies when the enemy finally invade their city. Unfortunately, Sazed survives. And then he finds out that he's been manipulated by some mystic power, him and Tindwyl. And he, the man who's memorized three hundred religions, loses faith.

3. Worst Plot Twist: I'm not even going to consider other options, it's Elend's resurrection and transformation into a Mistborn. If Elend had died, I would have turned from semi-liking him to loving him. Like some sort of Kell the Second. Instead I'm reading the first chapter of The Hero of Ages and he's fighting kollos like Vin. I'm so annoyed I'm almost tempted to just read the Wikipedia summary of the third book.

The best twist belongs to Sazed. In the fist part of The Well of Ascension he finds a testimony written in steel. Anything not written in steel can't be trusted. He makes a rubbing of it, then goes to the city to join Vin and their other friends. In the last part of the novel, after Tindwyl dies, Sazed goes back to where he made the rubbing. The rubbing doesn't match the steel version anymore. Literally, anything not written in steel can't be trusted. Some mystic force changed the rubbing, can change any writing on paper, making it look like there's a power at the Well of Ascension that has to be given up. It turns out to be some sort of force that's been imprisoned.

4. Best Death: The worst death has to be Clubs's. They were running away and he got cut from behind. Dockson's death was good. He was talking to himself, looking at maps, still trying to organize resistance against the kollos and then the kollos came into the room he was in. The best death should have been Elend's.

But since Elend didn't die, the best death goes to Zane. All book long God has been telling him to kill every one he meets. He thinks he's insane. He thinks only Vin can save him, because she's the only person God doesn't tell him to kill. And after she kills him, God tells him why: he was never insane. God, that mystic forces, has been using him all along.

The worst part of the Well of Ascension? There are no more skaa heroes. Kell is dead, so is Dockson and Clubs. Marsh is a traitor. Breeze, it turns out, is a full nobleman, not a half-breed skaa bastard. Vin used to be skaa, but she married a nobleman (a worse betrayal than Marsh's attempt to kill Sazed). And they elevated Elend, a nobleman, to Mistborn status. That sucks. Noblemen should die.

Mistborn: The Final Empire

I loved Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, which is why I'm going to spend the rest of this review talking about the things I hated about it. That's how you know you love something, when you have to specify what you don't like about it. (And that's how you know you hate something, when you have to specify what you like about it.)

1. The title. I kept thinking this was the last book in the trilogy, since it has the word "Final" in its title. And I find it annoying that it's all Mistborn: The Final Empire, Mistborn: The Well of Ascension. A Dance with Dragons isn't A Song of Ice and Fire: A Dance of Dragons, The Dragon Reborn isn't The Wheel of Time: The Dragon Reborn. (Although, of course, The Prisoner of Azkaban is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)

2. Elend and Vin's love story. First, Sanderson really made it hard to like nobles. In the first pages of the novel Kelsier kills a lord, who's a rapist, and you know he's the hero because he kills the rapist. Second, unlike Dalinar from The Way of Kings (which, by the way, is The Way of Kings and not The Stormlight Archive: The Way of Kings), readers only get to spend time in Elend's head (i.e. chapters with his POV) about three fourths into the book, there's not enough time to get to like him. Third, Spook, Vin's first suitor, is just lovable with his "wassing" and "notting," and he's a skaa like Vin and they should have ended up together (yes, I'm saying opressed people should love their own). Fourth, it's just so typical to have a tough magical woman and a bookish gentleman fall in love. Fifth, nobles should die.

3. Vin is just too power full. She's a Mistborn, I'll accept that. That's her gift, that's what separates her from the skaa and the Mistings. But not only is she more powerful than ordinary human beings, she's also more powerful than ordinary Mistborns. If she were Jesus Christ, she'd get ressurrected in two days, not three.

4. The fight scenes. In the first pages of the novel, as I wrote above, Kelsier kills a lord/rapist. It's powerful because it's done off stage. I wouldn't mind if the Sanderson spent pages on the final battle, because I want details in my climaxes. But he has at least three too long fight scenes (Kelsier's attack on the Venture, Kelsier's practice with Vin, and the third one's actually the first fight scene in the second book, The Well of Ascension).

Like I said, I loved reading The Final Empire. I consider myself a Sanderson fan. I like how he handled completing The Wheel of Time (The Gathering Storm is better than Towers of Midnight), and unlike some reviewers I really like that The Way of Kings was long. I'm about two chapters into The Well of Ascension, and I'm glad to be spending time in Elend's head. Yes, he's a noble. And yes, he deserves to die. But I feel like Vin's relationship with him is being set up to be this epic love story. I might as well be given an opportunity to grow to like him.