Jarrad Maiers

Finished my 2nd read through before the movie comes out later this month. I have loved this book for years, and it holds up on the repeat reading. It's certainly geared towards my exact interests and age group, but seeing how my interests of geek culture have started taking over so much of popular culture in the last few years, I think it'll appeal to more people than I may have thought at first. I'm not going to see the movie on opening night. Instead, I'm going to be going to Reno early next month to meet some friends and see it on the big IMAX screen. Looking forward to the vacation.

Turns out that I had read this book a few years ago on vacation, but I recall very little of it. This time I enjoyed it much more. It's not perfect, a lot of “telling” when I prefer “showing”. But knowing that this is the beginning of a large 16 book epic helps put it in perspective for me. This is more of a prologue of what is to come, an introduction to a character that I understand comes and goes throughout the entire series. One of the problems I have with it is that this is supposed to be a book about the origins and training of the main character, but the actual training part of the book was really skimmed over. Especially his combat training which was barely mentioned, but his training as both an assassin and a wizard were focused more on his relationships with his mentors than the actual details of what he is taught. To me, this has the effect that I know only vaguely of the main character's skills, but I actually have a lot more detailed knowledge of his motivations, which is not was I was expecting from the novel, but may be more beneficial to the series as a whole.

I've been reading fantasy books for decades. And never have I read a fantasy book that was used as such an allegory for the psychological trauma inflicted on a population from war and infidelity. A quiet, slow novel where everything is a little more than it seems. It is filled with the same mastery of nuance and innuendo that Ishiguro is known for. Brilliant. Like many fantasy novels there is magic and dragons and ancient armies. But unlike most of them, the epic battles are meditative and within each of the characters in their own small way. The best book I read last year was “The Remains of the Day”. I need to continue on this trend, and read more and more of Ishiguro's work.