I just finished reading Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. I was mainly interested in the central mystery – why did the magic fail? I found it difficult to develop interest in Serene and Hrathen during the exposition phase because they were not exploring this mystery. However, I did eventually get rolling so that all three viewpoints were enjoyable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spoiler – the answer to the mystery is, essentially, that the entire magic system hinges on drawing an accurate-though-abstract birds-eye-view map of the country as the basis for each spell, and spells previously cast were reliant on the contours of the land remaining unchanged. This is a believable flaw, as people don’t have infinite foresight, but I am not entirely sold on the concept of drawing a little map to cast spells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rise and fall and rise and fall of Hrathen was a tad too much, but Sanderson maintained a steady thread of his guilt and troubled belief that made his final sacrifice believable and satisfying. The priest he sent away coming back to assassinate him was a bit convenient, although it provided an oddly timed laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, this book was exactly what it appeared – a generic fantasy novel. It was adequately engaging, but ultimately forgettable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just finished reading Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. I was mainly interested in the central mystery – why did the magic fail? I found it difficult to develop interest in Serene and Hrathen during the exposition phase because they were not exploring this mystery. However, I did eventually get rolling so that all three viewpoints […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantgeiger.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}