Monday, November 13, 2017

Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection

Arcanum Unbound is a collection of short stories in Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe. It is presented as a double abstraction, with an in-universe historian providing the background of the planet and the situation, as well as the author providing commentary on the story. Being fantasy, some of the stories are novella length on their own. There are some that focus on characters familiar to readers of other books he has written, while other stories are minor or new characters that have not had any significant appearances. Some served to add background to characters and events in his other novels. Others, were more random ditties. It felt like a fun dumping ground for interesting thoughts and stories that did not fit into the primary novel sequence.

The different titles (from Sanderson's website
“The Hope of Elantris” (Elantris)
“The Eleventh Metal” (Mistborn)
“The Emperor’s Soul” (Elantris)
“Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania, Episodes 28 through 30” (Mistborn)
“White Sand” (excerpt; Taldain)
“Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” (Threnody)
“Sixth of Dusk” (First of the Sun)
“Mistborn: Secret History” (Mistborn)

Michael Vey 7: The Final Spark

In the final Michael Vey book, the resistance comes close to total defeat. Hatch continues to be portrayed as evil incarnate. He was close to defeat, but manages to enlist the Phillipino navy to capture most of the electric children. He also has a tick up his sleeve - a final "glow" that can take other glow's power. She is able to grab the power of the mind reading and use that to find out who the resistance members are and where their locations are located.
Michael himself seems to be dead, but makes appearances in various dreams. It is almost as if he has been resurrected as a god. He has been learning how to harness his powers, and eventually comes back to lead the good guys to a supernatural victory.
The book suffered from the same storytelling problems of the other books in the series. It spends time building up suspense and difficult situations, but then resolves them too quickly. It felt like I wasted time going through the build up, because it was obvious the solution would be easy.