The Black Prism (Lightbringer) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Excellent book. While I had issues with the Night Angel series (assassins were essentially supermen in that world), the plot, plot twists, and some of the characterization was good enough to add him to my list of authors to read.
The Black Prism, well, is even better. Fantastic world building, good magic system, and amazingly good plot. Best high fantasy novel I've read this year, hands down. Some parts of the plot figuratively floored me, and he definitely doesn't move the characters OR the plot in the direction that you anticipate after the first 150 pages. In this regard, it's similar to the Night Angel series: the reader builds up an expectation of how everything is going to pan out, and then he shakes it all around, and beats you over your head with your own expectation. It's frustrating not being able to talk about it here, but I hate people that blow spoilers for me.
I think it accomplishes a light-based magic system better than the one used in Brandon Sanderson's Warbringer - though that novel had an appeal all of its own as well.
Highly, highly recommended.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Black Prism (Lightbringer)

Get 39% OFF

Click here for more information about The Black Prism (Lightbringer)

Read More...

The New Yorker Stories Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Beattie's stories (then and now) articulate certain confusions and disappointments that often haunt the reader not as fiction but as things that have happened in real life. Now when I look at a short story writer, I am most concerned with what I, as a writer can learn, and pieces by Hemingway, Faulkner, even my favorite, Raymond Carver, often seem heavy handed, too style conscious, more concerned with the telling than with the subject. Not so Ann Beattie's work. It makes me want to look around, not for clever twists, but to overhear conversations, catch fading facial expressions, sense relationships that might prove less than what they seem.
"It's a steep driveway, and rocky. David backs down cautiously--the way someone pulls a zipper after it's been caught. We wave, they disappear. That was easy." A novel or piece of book length nonfiction is a world complete in itself. A short story is more like a spotlight that shines on a crowd of people. We see what is there but also know there are things to the right and the left of the spotlight that we can't see directly. These are the events with the characters of the short story that happened before it began or that will happen after it the words on the page are over.
As writers we have to plant clues for the reader and we depend upon that reader to create what isn't expressed. It's this partnering with an audience in the creative process that is invaluable for other types of writing. They depend upon it, but nowhere (except perhaps with poetry) is it more essential than with the short story. The secret of good writing is to get your reader actively involved doing the work for you. Great short stories show us how to do that. With Ann Beattie, words are important, but the story takes place beneath the words, in the imagination of the person who reads it.
- John Lehman, Rosebud Book Reviews.com


Click Here to see more reviews about: The New Yorker Stories

Get 34% OFF

Click here for more information about The New Yorker Stories

Read More...