April 2019 – Jameyanne Fuller

When Dimple Met Rishi Review

Hello all. Sorry for the slight delay since my last post. The end of the semester hit, and with it came not only finals but yet another awful cold. I’m on the mend now, and one final is finished, so it’s back to business as usual. Mostly. I still have two exams and a project to finish up before this weekend, so if I drop off the face of the Earth again for a bit that’s why.

Cover for When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon Last week, I read When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon. It took me a bit to get my thoughts together on this one, because I am so conflicted.

When Dimple Met Rishi follows Dimple and Rishi the summer before they go off to college. Both are the children of Indian immigrants to America. Dimple is pretty rebellious. She is totally uninterested in her parents’ traditions, styles, and desires. She just got into Stanford, and all she cares about is coding. She is certainly not interested in snagging an ideal Indian husband. Rishi is pretty much the exact opposite. He is pretty traditional, and he follows his parents’ wishes even when they conflict with his own. He takes being the eldest son of the family very seriously. At the start of the novel, Dimpble and Rishi have never met. But their parents are old friends, and they’re hoping to set up an arranged marriage between Dimple and Rishi. Dimple wants to go to this pre-college coding program for the summer, and to her surprise, her parents let her go. When she gets there, she meets Rishi, who is like “hi future wife,” because he knows what’s going on, and Dimple is like “WHAT?!” And that’s the start of the book.

Full disclosure, I picked this book up after watching a negative review on YouTube and thinking, “This book sounds cool. What is this person talking about?”

So I really, really wanted to like this book. I mean it’s about an Indian-American girl who loves coding and is designing her own app. Like how cool is that? Throw in parents trying and failing to arrange her marriage and this was just set up for a lot of fun. And I did like the first half of the book a lot. It was a lot of fun and so much cute. Dimple and Rishi are made partners for this summer program to design their app, because of course they are. So they have to work together, and they become nerdy friends, and they’re designing their app and having fun and facing down bullies at the summer program. And then Dimple starts falling for Rishi—Rishi fell for her a long time ago—but she’s honest about not wanting a serious relationship because she wants to focus on her coding career, and Rishi listens to her. So they go on a really cute not-date. And I’m still okay with this.

But after this point things fell apart for me, much to my chagrin. For one thing, we lost the cool coding stuff and app design part of the summer program. Everything became focused on them trying to win this talent show which, admittedly, would give them additional money to design their app, but Bollywood dancing has nothing to do with coding. And okay this is a small quibble, but around the halfway point of the book we really do lose the coding stuff, and this book could be happening at any pre-college program. Second, for someone who insists over and over and over again that she doesn’t want to be one of those girls who gives up everything she wants for a guy, well she kind of does just that. And okay she’s not totally okay with it, but she does it. And for a guy who is so great at sticking up for himself and for Dimple when it comes to the other kids in the program, Rishi lets Dimple bulldoze over him all the time. Which brings me to my next concern about consent. I don’t want to go into details, but there’s a scene, and if the gender roles were reversed in that scene, everybody would be shouting about consent.

I admit that these are all relatively small quibbles, and for me, the book could have been saved by a strong ending. I don’t want to give spoilers, but the ending was way too neat for me. My vaguest possible description is everybody gets what they want and realizes the other one was right and they all live happily ever after. Honestly, the way things were going in the book, I wanted an ending where everything blew up in their faces at the end of the summer program, they broke up, and they walked away having learned something about themselves. This would have been a good ending and made all my other problems with the book totally acceptable, if not strong plot points. But this is not the ending, and the ending that was… it just solved all the problems too neatly and made everything too okay for me.

One last thing I’ll say is that I saw a few book reviews on YouTube expressing that this book was inaccurate to the experience of growing up in the United States as the child of Indian immigrants. The author grew up in India herself, so this isn’t really an #OwnVoices story. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up the child of Indian immigrants in the United States—that’s not part of my own life experience or any research I’ve done—so I’m not going to chime in on that particular commentary about this book. If it’s true, though, I find it troubling.

All in all, as much as I loved the first half of this book, and as much as I wanted to love the second half of this book, it just didn’t work for me. I will say that my perusal of Goodreads reviews shows that a lot of people absolutely adore this book, and a lot of people hate it. I fall somewhere in the middle. It could have been so great, but for me, it just wasn’t. It wasn’t absolutely terrible, but it did have some serious problems, and overall the biggest reason it didn’t work for me is the ending.

If you haven’t read When Dimple Met Rishi, I hope my review is helpful for you to decide if you want to read it. Do keep in mind that opinions are widely spread on this one, so my opinion is certainly not the end-all-be-all on whether this is a good book (actually my opinion is never the end-all-be-all. That’s what opinion means). But since opinions are so divided on this one, I’m also really curious what others who have read this think. Do you agree with my opinion? Do you think I’m totally crazy? Let’s chat in the comments.

Adventures in the Kitchen: The Delicious, The Disgusting, and the Disasters

Hello everybody. I hope you all had a delightful Easter, Passover, celebration of Rome’s birthday, or just a wonderful spring day, whatever your preference. I celebrate Easter, and beyond my crazy love of jelly beans, Easter always means a big family dinner. We started with a cream of fennel and celery soup, and then had chicken, potatoes, carrots, asparagus, and mushrooms. I recently gave my slow cooker to my parents, having thoroughly failed at figuring out how to cook anything I enjoyed in it, and my mother used it to braise the whole chicken. I made the potatoes with a recipe I got from The Essential New York Times cookbook that may be my new favorite way to make potatoes. And we finished everything off with my mother’s pear walnut olive oil cake.

I’ve always really enjoyed cooking. I came back from a summer abroad in Torino, Italy with a recipe for homemade orecchiette pasta, which I made for my friends with walnut sauce and sautéed mushrooms. Note: if you’re going to hand-roll enough pasta for six people, make all six of them help do it, or have a six hour audiobook or several episodes of Doctor Who on hand to entertain you while you work. But aside from the odd homemade meal in college, I actually haven’t had much of a chance to do a lot of cooking myself. When I was living in Assisi, my host parents did all the cooking, occasionally letting me help and teaching me things, but it was mostly them (not that I’m complaining about the chance to eat homemade Italian food every night). I helped my parents some when I was living at home and working at the Disability Rights Center, and the kitchen in the dorms during my first year of law school left something to be desired (mostly space to cook before 10:00 PM). A huge driver for me to get my own apartment after 1L year was that I wanted to be able to cook and eat more healthy (as in less pasta and microwave meals). So I got an apartment, but 2L was so crazy that I was still mostly living on pasta and frozen meals, with a lot of goldfish and diet Pepsi thrown in. In whatever free time I did have, I would look through the internet and collect recipes and even read cookbooks for fun.

At the start of last summer, I said enough was enough. If I was going to keep collecting random recipes, I needed to start actually cooking them. I set myself a goal to cook one new recipe a week. Some weeks, I make two or even three new recipes. Some weeks I fall back on some old favorites, especially when the semester gets crazy. But more or less I’ve been averaging a new recipe every week this school year. Since I’ve started this goal, I’ve been compiling my favorites in a hardcopy Braille cookbook, because I don’t like to have my computer near me when I’m cooking in case I spray coconut milk all over the kitchen. I’ve had some great successes like the braided pesto bread I made last fall, and some disasters like that week I tried to do things with coconut. Since I started on this journey, many of you have been clamoring to know more about what I’ve been cooking.

So this is Jameyanne’s adventures in the kitchen: the delicious, the disgusting, and the disasters. My college friends used to joke that I should have my own cooking show because when I cook I do so with sound effects. This is probably the closest I’ll ever come to that. You’ll just have to imagine the sound effects.

Before I get into the food, I wanted to give a quick note on how I eat. I don’t eat red meat, and I don’t eat cheese. I also don’t use a lot of butter, milk, eggs, or cream in my cooking. I’m also kind of picky, like I don’t like turkey or salmon or pork. I basically eat vegan with some occasional chicken or fish. But while I do a lot of vegan cooking, I do not understand vegans’ obsession with cashews, and I don’t go in for buying ingredients I don’t recognize like spelt flour or nutritional yeast. Not that I don’t like trying new things. That’s what this is all about, after all. But if a recipe calls for an ingredient that’s unfamiliar to me and I don’t know what else I would do with that ingredient, I’m less likely to try the recipe.

Also, I’m linking to my favorite recipes where I can, but if I can’t, I will do my best to describe them. Keep in mind that I am Italian, and my Italian family’s way of cooking is a pinch of this, a little of that. For example, my mom, my younger brother, and I have been trying to recreate my grandpa’s bread recipe for the past few months, but it’s been really hard because all he wrote down was “flour etc” and then the approximate kneading and rising times. We recently discovered this recipe from King Arthur Flour which is basically what we were trying to accomplish. So if my descriptions aren’t precise enough for you, definitely google the recipe (when I do this sort of thing I always look at multiple versions).

Now that we’ve gotten all that over with, let’s get started.

The delicious

Chicken: Chicken was always really daunting for me, because I was never sure if it was done and it made me nervous. A couple things made this better. First, I got a talking meat thermometer. After a lot of searching and asking and getting nowhere, I just bought a cheap one on Amazon and it has been great. Next, I realized that it’s important to invest in good chicken, otherwise I won’t eat it. My typical approach to chicken is to plop a breast in a small Pyrex dish, sprinkle it with spices (usually montreal or everglade seasoning), and roast it until it’s done, but I have tried some other things. My favorites have included a curry powder and lime juice seasoning, a lemon pepper marinade, and a recipe I got from a friend called African spicy chicken, which involves marinating the chicken in tomato paste, lemon juice, and a ton of spices (I couldn’t find the actual recipe online, but it’s from Cooking for Applause if you want to try to hunt it down. My friend tells me it’s also an excellent way to prepare mushrooms, but I haven’t tried that yet). I also enjoy smothering the chicken in olives and lemon wedges. My chicken cooking skills are still a bit of a work in progress. I am still not very good at cooking chicken on the stove, but since I’ve been having such good success with the oven, I’m not too worried.

Fish: My parents make the best fish. Scallops in Chardonnay butter sauce with caramelized shallots. Halibut over couscous in a fennel, olive, and citrus broth. My mouth’s watering. Is your mouth watering? So learning to cook fish has been a challenge, if only because I have such high standards. I’ve learned to make the chardonnay butter sauce and cooked flounder with that. I’ve also made cod topped with tomatoes, onions, and olives which is really good. I haven’t done too much experimenting with fish, because I typically order my groceries, but I like to pick out my fish myself, and it’s a bit of a trek to the nearest Whole Foods. But one of my requirements for where I’m moving after law school is that I’m close to a market with good fish, so hopefully I’ll get more practice at this.

Almond lemon rosemary tofu: I found this recipe here, gave it a try while I was working at NIST, and have made it a couple more times since. It is really tasty. I’ve tried a few other tofu recipes since then, but I haven’t liked them as much, and I only occasionally eat tofu anyway.

Crispy chick peas: I actually first made this recipe during 2L year and fell in love with it. The chick peas come out so light and crispy, and they’re an excellent snack. But the recipe I was using never yielded chick peas that stayed crispy, and I wanted to be able to store these and not eat them all in one sitting, despite how tasty they are. Then I discovered this version from Sam over at It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken. You dry roast the chick peas first, then toss them with olive oil, salt, and other spices of your choice (I like to do a dash of cayenne). Then you pop them back in the oven and keep an eye on them. They can burn fast so definitely take them out to stir a couple times. When they’re done, turn off the oven, crack the door, and leave the chick peas in there for another five minutes. This really helps them stay crispy, and you can store them in the fridge in an airtight container.

Crisp galore: My dad and I make apple crisp together at Thanksgiving almost every year now. We do sliced apples with a topping of oats, brown sugar, flour, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I think the original recipe comes from Betty Crocker, and it’s great. For the apple filling, we never cnclude the flour, sugar, and cinnamon, and just do the straight apples with lemon juice to prevent oxidation with the topping on top. Sometimes we add walnuts or pecans or other nuts to the top of the crisp. I substituted apples for peaches once, and last summer, I tried a mixture of raspberries and pineapple instead of the apples. Last thanksgiving, we did apples, pears, and some extra cranberry sauce. All were delicious.

Braided pesto bread: At first I thought that there was no way I would actually be able to make this, but it wasn’t all that hard. I would recommend making the pesto ahead of time, if you’re making your own pesto, instead of doing it all the same evening like I did. There’s definitely time to make the pesto while the bread is rising, but it means one more bowl to wash. I make my own vegan pesto (basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, salt, a splash of red wine vinegar, and a blender), but you can certainly use your own recipe or use a jar of store bought pesto. This bread was really delicious, and like I said, not too hard to make. The recipe is here.

Two weeks of soups: I got a really bad cold at the start of fall semester, and then again at the start of spring semester. I quickly ran out of canned soup and wound up making a bunch of soup to keep myself going. First, I made this onion and apple soup that I found on the Food Monster app. This was really easy and simple, and kind of the perfect thing for someone with a really sore throat. I added garlic to the recipe because I’m Italian and believe any recipe without garlic in it is sacrelige. Next, I made my mom’s cream of butternut squash soup, which has no cream in it. Basically you cook potatoes, onion, butternut squash, and herbs in broth, and then puree. My mom uses this same recipe for all kinds of soups, just substituting other vegetables (like asparagus or peas or fennel and celerye) for the butternut squash. It wasn’t hard at all, and it is my ultimate comfort food. When I started to feel better but still didn’t want to eat much besides soup, I made a curry red lentil soup with tomatoes, garlic, and ginger, recipe also courtesy of my mother.

I’ve tried a lot of other recipes that I’ve really liked, but before I turn this post into a novel, I’m going to move on to the disgusting recipes.

The Disgusting:

I did have a few recipes that did not turn out the way I wanted them to. They weren’t all completely disgusting, but they were not great by any means.

I tried to make fennel crackers, which I had in Italy and loved. The recipe I used called for butter, and I was doubtful but the comments said it was good and I’m not really a baker, so I thought “what do I know?” So I went with it. The crackers came out like puffy squares of bread. They tasted all right, but they went kerplunk in your stomach. Also this is the point where I tell you that I can’t cut anything in a straight line and so these were not very pretty either. I have since found other recipes which use olive oil instead of butter, and I think that would work better, but I haven’t tried to recreate the crackers yet.

The other recipe that fell into the disgusting camp was a butternut squash galette with roasted apple and caramelized onion. I think this was probably my fault, because I became frustrated with the directions for making the pie crust and did not follow the directions exactly. The crust that came out of the oven was lumpy and really gross. The filling was great, and I ended up scooping that out and eating that for dinner on its own and throwing out the crust.

I also tried a recipe for butternut squash gnocchi with a sage sauce. This wasn’t quite on the level of disgusting, but it was heavier than I wanted, and after all that work—it pretty much took a whole day—it was only okay. I may give it another try at some point with some tweaks, but I’m not sure.

The Disasters:

Worse than disgusting—yes there’s worse—are the recipes that didn’t even make it to completion. Luckily I don’t have too many of these. But the ones I have all have to do with coconut. And it started with a pancake.

Last spring, I bought a Braille cookbook from the National Association of Blind Students, because I read cookbooks for fun and I like Braille. I got a lot of good recipes from this book (including the curry lime chicken and the lemon pepper marinated chicken I talked about up above). But one of the recipes was for a banana coconut pancake. You mixed a ripe banana, some coconut flakes, and some cinnamon, formed it into a pancake, and left it out on the counter to dry. I followed the directions. I swear I followed the directions. As I was mixing and forming into a pancake, I said to myself, “This seems really goopy. I’m not sure it will work.” Unfortunately I was right. The best that could be said about this pancake is it made a delightfully weird suction cup noise as I scraped it off the plate and into the trash the next morning.

This left me with an awful lot of coconut flakes that I didn’t know what to do with, and since I started buying my own food, I am loathe to throw anything away. So I looked up what to do with coconut flakes. And I found a recipe to make homemade coconut milk. I use coconut milk in curries, so I thought “okay, why not? I’ll use coconut milk, and I probably won’t use these coconut flakes for anything else.” This recipe probably would have worked if I had an actual blender instead of an immersion blender. As it was, the coconut ended up splattering halfway up the walls, and the milk I got was still pulpy and watery and pretty gross. It was a fail of epic proportions. To whoever wrote that recipe, you are totally wrong: it is not easier to make coconut milk at home. If I need coconut milk, I will buy it.

I used the last couple cups of coconut flakes to make coconut bread. At first all seemed to be going well. It rose beautifully, it smelled great, and then I took it out of the oven and it had deflated to a weirdly sweet and weirdly salted very thick flatbread. It wasn’t terrible, but it was weird, and I wouldn’t make it again. It also wrecked my confidence in my ability to make bread until I came across the recipe for braided pesto bread above and had to try it so I did. Yes, I am perfectly capable of making bread. Just not that bread.

So these are my favorite and not-so-favorite things to cook from what I’ve tried so far. I hope I’ve made you hungry, and if not, I hope I’ve made you laugh. Let me know in the comments if you try any of these recipes and what you thought, or if you have any favorite recipes I have to try. I’m always on the look-out for new ideas.

Buon apetito!

Leviathan Wakes Review

Cover of the book Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey Last year, when I was working at NIST, one of my roommates was reading the Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. He recommended it to me as some of the best science fiction he’s ever read, so I got myself onto the waiting list at the library for the first book. Yes I know that there’s an Amazon show, and one day when I’m not in law school I will watch it, but I’ve always been a book first kind of girl. In late 2018, I finally got the first book of the series, Leviathan Wakes, out were the library and read it. I read the second book in January, and I’m waiting on the third. Since I’m continuing this series, I wanted to write full reviews for the first two books. This week, I’ll talk about Leviathan Wakes, and I’ll talk about the second book, Caliban’s War, next week.

Leviathan Wakes is set in the far future, where interplanetary space travel is common, and it follows two main characters. Jim Holden is the XO on a big ship that hauls ice from Saturn’s rings back to the asteroid belt and the inner planets. When the ship receives a distress call, Holden takes a small crew and a small ship and goes to help. They find a derelict ship full of dead bodies. And while Holden and his crew are investigating, someone nukes the whole ice hauler. So Holden and his team, the only survivors of the original ice hauler crew, set out to figure out who destroyed their ship and what it has to do with the derelict they were investigating. Meanwhile, Detective Miller is hired by a rich family to find their missing daughter, who ran away to join the revolutionaries in the asteroid belt. Miller’s investigation leads him to the derelict ship Holden and his crew discovered. And so now they’re investigating together. But as they draw closer to the truth, things become more and more dangerous. They’re moving in on a secret that could destroy the solar system and that someone is willing to kill for. At the same time, we have a war brewing between Earth and Mars, and the asteroid belt is preparing to fight for its independence, and all of this is connected.

I liked this book. In general, I really like anything to do with space, so right off the bat I’m in a good place. I did have some problems with it though. Let’s start with what I liked.

For me, the world building in this book was by far its strongest point. It was very detailed and intricate, and all the pieces that we learned about this futuristic solar system became relevant later. I don’t know if the science is accurate, but it’s portrayed with such authority that I believe it, whether it’s accurate science or not.

The plot was pretty strong too. Once I got into the book, there was no putting it down, and the plot and the setting work so well together.

I was less enthusiastic about the characters in this book. I felt like their motivations either weren’t fully explored or weren’t fully articulated to the reader. At least from my perspective, we pretty quickly pass the point where Holden’s quest for revenge against the people who blew up his ship and Miller’s quest to find the missing girl are the only motivating factors. Too much else is going on. Over and over again, Holden and Miller would make these decisions that just didn’t make any sense to me. Like if there’s some sort of nuclear event on the asteroid and everyone’s being ordered into shelters, but you’re pretty sure that something else is going on, YOU DO NOT GO OPEN A SHELTER TO SEE WHAT’S GOING ON! You get out of there!

Along the same lines, I felt like the characters didn’t develop over the course of the story. They keep making these same types of bad choices for bad reasons, and they just don’t learn from them.

Finally, and this is entirely a personal preference, this book managed to hit all my sci fi squik buttons, from people being thrown out of airlocks to nuclear meltdowns. Things are generally pretty grim. So if you’re looking for a light fluffy space adventure, this is not it.

Overall, as I said,I really liked the plot and the world building of this book, and while the characters got under my skin a little bit, it wasn’t enough to ruin my enjoyment in the book. It struck me as a very foundational book, and it’s the sort of book that I don’t feel like I can form a good opinion about without reading the rest of the series. If the rest of the series is excellent, I will forgive Leviathan Wakes its flaws. If the rest of the series continues to have these same flaws, we’l, then I won’t forgive Leviathan Wakes. I did go on to read the second book in the series, and as I said, I’ll talk about that more next week. But spoiler alert, I liked it a lot more than this one.

In the meantime, have you read Leviathan Wakes? What did you think?

The Street Review

Cover of The Street by Ann Petry Last week, I read The Street by Ann Petry. It was this month’s law school book club selection, and it may have been the most positively rated book of any we’ve read in the last three years. We had such a great discussion this weekend, and I’ve been dying to talk about it with you. Before it was picked for book club, I’d never heard of this book. Now that I’ve read it, I feel like this should be required reading for everyone.

Lutie Johnson, an African American woman, is a single mother during World War II. At the start of the novel, she’s living with her father and his latest girlfriend, because she and her husband are separated after she took a job as a live-in maid to support the family and he had an affair. Lutie is worried about the influence her alcoholic father and his girlfriend are having on her eight-year-old son, so she sets out to find an apartment of her own. She rents a place on the fifth floor of a building in Harlem, on 116th street, between 7th and 8th to be exact. The super is extremely creepy and is obviously attracted to her in a really creepy way, one of her neighbors is running a quasi-brothel, and the white man who owns the building is also attempting to entice Lutie to sleep with him. Actually everyone is trying to entice Lutie to sleep with them, and Lutie is trying to raise her son as best she can and keep her dignity and take the next small step in the American dream.

We follow Lutie as she struggles to find a way to save more money so they can move to a better apartment where she and her son will feel safer, but we also follow the super’s point of view, the super’s girlfriend’s point of view, the downstairs neighbor’s point of view, and more. Lutie is definitely the main character of the book, but it’s told in an omniscient style. We even get some of the point of view of the street they live on. The street is as much a character as everyone else.

This book was so good! Like I said, it should be required reading for everybody.

First of all, the writing is fabulous, the story is solid, and it is a fast, easy read. The setting was described so well too, and it was so easy to get immersed in the world. I found myself trying to tell Lutie out loud “no, don’t do that! Don’t do it! It’s a bad decision!” But the world and the situation are depicted so well that it is entirely believable that she makes those decisions, because there are no other decisions she can make.

Second, I believe this is the first book by a woman of color that sold more than a million copies. You should read it just for that.

Third, this book takes place during World War II, but honestly it could take place today. It was such a timeless book, and while it’s depressing that we haven’t come all that far since the 1940s when it comes to race and poverty and gender, it also makes this book all the more relevant and important to read.

I would not recommend listening to the audiobook for this one, because it has bad sound effects. The other thing I will say about this book is that it is pretty heavy-handed with the theme. You don’t have to work to figure it out. It hammers it home, sometimes a little too much.

But all in all, I loved this book. It was so poignant and heartbreaking. It had this relentless, driving momentum that made everything seem inevitable and awful in its inevitability, even as I personally couldn’t predict what would happen next. All along, there really are no good decisions. There is only one decision.

For you, that one decision is to read this book.

I one hundred percent recommend you read The Street, whoever you are, whatever you normally like to read. Go read it. Go read it now.

And if you’ve already read it, tell me your thoughts. Do you agree with my assessment? Disagree? Have anything to add?

Jameyanne Rereads Harry Potter, 2019 Edition: Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix

Last week, I talked about my thoughts as I reread the first two Harry Potter books. This week, I’m going to share my thoughts on the next three books in the series, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix, which I reread in January and February.

Quick reminder, there will be spoilers in these posts, and if you don’t want to be spoiled for whatever reason, you shouldn’t read this.

I love all the different ways you can group the Harry Potter books. For example, my initial plan for these posts was to talk about the first three books in one post, then books four and five, then books six and seven. This would group the three shorter books, which are commonly thought of as middle grade books together. Things get darker in books four and five, but in some sense they’re sort of transition books as Voldemort gains strength and returns to power but stays hidden in the shadows. And then I would talk about the sixth and seventh book as the climax and wrap-up of the series with the wizarding world’s second war. I changed this plan because my post for the first three books would have been really long. But once I rethought where I split the books, this also seemed a natural split. The first two books introduce us to the wizarding world, the characters, the villain, the plot (including details that will definitely come back in the later books). In the third book, we really dive into the circumstances around Harry’s parents’ murder and the fall of Voldemort, and of course Wormtail escaping at the end paves the way for the fourth book. In the fourth book, Harry is kind of a puppet in Voldemort’s plan, which succeeds. And in the fifth book, Harry is fighting to get people to believe what happened. These three books also follow Harry’s relationship with Sirius, and Prisoner of Azkaban is the first book in which Harry’s victory is not absolute (and it only goes downhill from there). There are certainly other ways you could group the books: 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and then 5 6 and 7; or 1 2 3 4 and then 5 6 7; or 1 2 3 and then 4 5 6 7; or anything else you can think of. You could even group 2 and 6 together, or 1 and 5. There’s so much in these books I’m sure you could find all manner of reasons to group them any way you want. I chose my organization scheme because it fit well with three mid-length posts.

So let’s dive in.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I’ll say from the get-go that this may be one of my favorite books in the series. It goes back and forth between this book and the fourth book. I love this one so much! It’s so tightly plotted (everything is important to the plot here). It deals with the larger plot of the series with all the Voldemort stuff and yet it’s still really fun and innocent (compared to what comes next). And there are just so many feelings everywhere. This book really feels like the time when Harry is starting to grow up more, and I love it. If people were to ask me what’s the sort of book you would want to write, I would say Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Also fair warning, last time I read this I was taking notes to write a paper on multiparty negotiations in this book for my multiparty negotiations course. The thesis boils down to Lupin is awesome. But don’t be surprised if some of that theory pops up in these comments.

Re: my comment last week about a whole bunch of characters missing big chunks of the school year in Chamber of Secrets, I think it’s possible the professors give them summer homework to catch everybody up. I’m almost positive the only other time homework is mentioned over the summer is in Chamber of Secrets, when Hermione tells Ron and Harry she’s been busy with schoolwork, and Ron is horrified because it’s the summer.

As Harry opens his first ever birthday cards and presents from his friends at the start of this book, I do wonder about everybody else’s birthdays. I know we can’t be celebrating birthdays constantly, and Ron’s comes up in the sixth book when he’s poisoned, and Hermione buys Crookshanks as an early birthday present for herself, but it would be nice to see Ron’s and Hermione’s birthdays recognized for fun, or to see how birthdays are handled at Hogwarts.

Aunt Marge is an awful person and she totally deserved to get blown up.

Interesting thing that I knew subliminally but just put into words as I’m reading today: Lupin knows that dementors make you relive your worst memories, so when Harry says that he heard someone screaming on the train, Lupin probably has a good idea of what’s going on. I love Lupin.

Trelawney may be a fraud, but almost everything that is predicted in the first divination class comes true, even the things that Harry and Ron predict about each other. Also, why doesn’t Trelawney repair Neville’s broken teacup with magic?

Hermione is a really good liar. Like when Ron is questioning her about her wacky schedule, she is totally cool about it. I could not do this.

I don’t quite get why Malfoy is able to get away with faking his injury for so long. We all know Madam Pomfrey can mend cuts really easily, so I don’t see how he could get away with it for so long. Like okay the ministry could still have gone after Buckbeak even without Malfoy having his arm in a sling for months, but why do the Hogwarts teachers put up with it?

Something else I have always wondered, when Sirius Black is sighted not far from Hogwars, I really want to know why he let himself be seen. Like why be a human at all? It’s not a big deal but I’m curious.

I really like the reading of the scene where Harry asks McGonagall for permission to go into Hogsmeade that McGonagall would have let him go if not for Sirius Black. She did some spying on the Dursleys back in Sorcerer’s Stone and probably has a decent sense of what Harry’s up against with them.

I just want to pause to note that Harry is just having a really bad year. Maybe that’s why I like this book so much: the tension keeps building and things go from bad to worse for everything that Harry cares about and he has so many feelings I just love it. Also Lupin is the best.

Is it me or is Harry’s schedule really inconsistent in this book? Unless I was wrong in my earlier comment that September 1 is always a Sunday because classes always start on a Monday. Right now, I’m pretty sure at first Harry was going to divination, transfiguration, and care of magical creatures on Mondays, but in November he also has defense against the dark arts on Mondays. I recognize that now I’m just being really nitpicky.

Okay, I feel stupid. It took me two and a half years of law school to realize that when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are helping Hagrid build a defense for Buckbeak, they’re doing legal research. They’re looking up precedent and building arguments around that precedent. I am once again impressed by Hermione’s brains—I doubt it was Harry and Ron’s idea. I definitely did not know how to do this at thirteen. Sometimes I doubt I know how to do it now (just kidding).

I’ve always wished that Harry took arithmancy, because I really want to know what it is and how it works and what it does in the real world. Like we never actually find out in any of the books.

Every time I read this I always tear up when Harry and the team finally win the Quidditch Cup. There’s just something so great about that whole sequence in the books.

I always have a lot of fun with the climax of this book. It is so great in so many ways, but it’s also one of those sequences that has so many moving parts that it’s really fun to imagine how it would all change if one part changed. For example, what if they stayed at Hagrid’s to argue for Buckbeak? What if Dumbledore came with them to the Shrieking Shack? Or what if Harry, Ron, and Hermione made it back to the castle with Scabbers before Sirius caught up with them, but they met Lupin instead? How would it have played out if, instead of Lupin transforming and Pettigrew escaping, the whole group made it back to the castle to talk to Dumbledore? None of these scenarios, on their face, are as climactic as the scene in the Shrieking Shack, that fight with the dementors, and the sequence with the Time Turner, so obviously that all wins, but it’s a lot of fun to imagine how those scenes would go and how, as a writer, I might craft those alternate climaxes for maximum effect.

Why didn’t Lupin see the second Harry and Hermione on the map? Okay, I can see if he’s paying attention to Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they go down to Hagrid’s he might not notice any of the other hundred or so dots moving around, but Harry and Hermione from the future are retracing past Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s steps, so I feel like he would notice them. Of course, two Harry Potters could just break the map’s brain.

I know that there are all sorts of rules about not being seen when you go back in time with the Time Turner, but Hermione knows that she has a Time Turner, so I can imagine that she wouldn’t necessarily freak out and think there was dark magic afoot, which would allow Hermione to team up with her future self to do cool things. Or anyone with a Time Turner really. It kind of makes my head hurt to think about the logistics, but it seems like it would be a cool way to double your manpower.

Ugh the ending of this book gives me so many feelings and I love it. It’s the sort of book I’m sad to close, because I don’t want it to end, which is one of the highest compliments I can give a book.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

This is a close second to Prisoner of Azkaban for my favorite. They’re so close that sometimes this one edges out Prisoner of Azkaban. Sometimes.

The thing that I really like about all the Harry Potter books, but Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire in particular, is how you can use them as examples for so many different aspects of writing a story. For example, I’m a big fan of how Goblet of Fire is put together—how much is going on and how it is orchestrated. Specifically, right now I’m looking at the first chapter. It’s practically a prologue, along the same lines as the first chapters of Sorcerer’s Stone and Deathly Hallows and the first two chapters of Half-Blood Prince. The first chapter of Goblet of Fire is masterful at this. It’s specific enough to tell a story, but it’s vague enough to leave you guessing for the rest of the book. At the same time, the vagueness feels natural. Voldemort and Wormtail’s conversation doesn’t feel like they’re deliberately skating the issue so the reader won’t know what’s coming. It feels like they’re having a normal conversation—or at least as normal a conversation as you can have with Lord Voldemort.

Another thing that I like about Goblet of Fire is that you dive right into the plot with that first chapter and then with Harry’s scar hurting and the Death Eater activity at the quidditch world cup. It takes a long time for them to get back to Hogwarts and for Harry’s name to come out of the goblet—about half the book actually—but it’s not wasted time.

Look, if you’re going to eat grapefruit as a means of dieting, you should just eat the whole grapefruit. Eating a quarter of a grapefruit is an awful lot of work for like twenty calories. That is not a sufficient breakfast, whatever kind of diet you’re trying. Note that I love grapefruit and carrot sticks and everything Uncle Vernon calls rabit food, and as much as I had fun reading The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook last year, I was pretty horrified by the way the characters regularly ate. But I am getting very sidetracked. My point is grapefruit is good; you should eat all of it.

Okay so the scene with the Weaselys and the Dursleys continues to be laugh-out-loud funny. But also a little horrifying, because if Mr. Weasley hadn’t held Harry back to get the Dursleys to say goodbye to him, they might have all been gone before Dudley ate the toffee.

I wonder what Charlie, who works with dragons, thinks about Bill wearing dragon-skin boots.

I’ve always wondered about Ron’s frog. Does it have a name? What happened to it?

Amos Digory mentions the Lovegoods going to the world cup, and I have a really hard time imagining Luna and her father at the world cup. Not that they don’t like Quidditch or anything, but it seems so normal, and they’re… the Lovegoods.

Okay, I lied earlier when I said September first is always a sunday. September 1 is a Monday in Goblet of Fire. But it’s definitely a Sunday in Order of the Phoenix, so the point still stands. And when they get to Hogwarts in Goblet of Fire they start classes on a Monday, even though two days ago it was Sunday. This is obviously not an important thing but it bugs me so much guys.

Did Dumbledore also mention that they don’t use charms, potions, or herbology as a punishment? It seems oddly specific that he would just tell Moody they don’t use transfiguration as a punishment. “Draco Malfoy the incredible bouncing ferret” is such a great scene, and I just like to imagine the conversation between Moody and Dumbledore when Dumbledore tells him specifically that they can’t use transfiguration as a punishment. Maybe Moody has a history of this sort of thing.

The tension leading up to the announcement of the champions is fantastic. I don’t know how many times I’ve read this book, but the scene in the great hall with the goblet spitting out the names gets me every time. It’s so powerful that every time I think maybe this time it will go differently. Of course it doesn’t.

The one thing about this book that I really don’t like is that it’s never really explained why Harry has to compete in the tournament once his name comes out of the goblet. What does a binding magical contract mean? What are the consequences if you break it? Is it like the unbreakable vow and you die? Or do you go to wizarding contracts court and argue that it isn’t a contract because there was no offer, acceptance, and consideration between the goblet and Harry, and anyway it would be unconscionable to force Harry to compete? (Huh, I guess I did learn something in contracts after all.) The point is, everybody keeps saying he has to compete, hee has to compete, they can’t get him out of it even though no one wants him to compete, and this would feel more realistic and more tense if the consequences of him just saying “no way” were clear.

Basically everything from Harry’s name coming out of the goblet up through the first task is so great. I love how the tension is so thick you can taste it. I always get super worked up about what’s going on. And then we get a well-timed break before things get crazy again with preparation for the second task onward. Not that the stuff that happens between the first and second tasks isn’t important, it’s just much less stressful.

I really love the casual way Neville just turns into a canary after the first task. It’s great.

DOBBY!!!

I always wonder how much information sharing is going on between Sirius and Dumbledore at this point in the book. Does Sirius tell Dumbledore that Harry saw Crouch on the map? It would explain how Dumbledore figured out Moody was actually Barty Crouch Jr. (I’ll come back to my forever confusion on that point later on), but I don’t think Sirius told Dumbledore about the map, because when Barty Jr. mentions the map later on, Dumbledore doesn’t know about it. Also, we learn later on (from Snape’s memories that we see in Deathly Hallows), that Dumbledore knows about the Dark Marks on the Death Eaters’ forearms and they’re getting stronger, but when Harry tells Sirius about Karkaroff showing Snape something on his arm, Sirius has no idea what that’s about. I’m not sure if the characters could have put everything together before all the bad stuff goes down if they’d sat down and had a good info sharing and brainstorming session, but they might have gotten closer.

So Dumbledore figures out that Moody isn’t Moody. Okay, I’m with him so far. But before Moody transforms into Barty Crouch Jr., Dumbledore has Snape go down to the kitchens to get Winky. It’s possible that he just thought whoever Moody was would tell them what happened to Mr. Crouch, but it’s almost like he knows who fake Moody really is before the Polyjuice potion wears off. He certainly doesn’t show surprise at fake Moody’s identity or even that Barty Jr. is still alive. But I just don’t get how he figured it out.

And then I just took a day to finish the whole book and had all the feelings. Oh god this book makes me cry. Every. Single. Time.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This, like Chamber of Secrets, is one of those books that I appreciate a lot more now than I did when I first read it. Harry is so angsty this book, and it’s annoying. But when you read it right after Goblet of Fire, instead of waiting the years we did for it to come out when we were kids, it’s a lot more understandable. It’s only been a month since Voldemort killed Cedric in front of Harry and tried to kill him. In that month, he’s pretty much been totally isolated from the wizarding world—even his friends haven’t been telling him much—and when he comes back to the wizarding world, he’s still being kept in the dark and he’s facing most people not believing him. Not only not believing him, but actively attacking him. And he has serious PTSD, which was illustrated really well by the fact that when he’s attacked by the Dementors, he doesn’t hear his parents’ deaths anymore. He hears Voldemort taunting him in the graveyard. What happened at the end of Goblet of Fire is now Harry’s worst memory.

I have always wondered what a Budgerigar is, but it’s not important to the story, so I usually just keep reading. This time around, I finally googled it. It’s an Australian parakeet. Huh. Now I know why it’s news that a budgerigar learned to water-ski. That’s very important news indeed. Moving on.

Why do some people apparate with a pop and some people apparate with a loud crack? I’m pretty sure this is never explained.

I love how Mrs. Figg uses all the wizard idioms in the one conversation we have with her. It’s great.

This is the first book we don’t get a full summary of how Harry’s parents died and why he’s famous and that he’s a wizard and everything. We get information about the past books, but it’s woven into the action much more seamlessly. I think it makes sense. Up to book 4, you probably could pick up any of the books in the series and follow along reasonably well without having read the other books. But past the point when Voldemort returns, if you don’t already know the story you’re kind of lost anyway.

It always astounds me that characters like Tonks and Luna, who become so important to the series, are only introduced in book 5. I always think they must have come up sooner, but nope. They join the plot in Order of the Phoenix.

So if they can’t take down the screaming picture of Sirius’s mother, have they tried ways to keep the curtains permanently shut so she won’t scream at them constantly? Just my random thought.

Also, I would love to see the scene where Mrs. Weasley finds out that Harry, Ron, and Hermione have been communicating with Sirius in secret for a year. She handled it pretty well when he appeared at the end of Goblet of Fire, as in she stopped screaming when Ron said it was okay, but I imagine that was not the end of that discussion.

It struck me in this book that Dean Thomas is the only one of the students we meet who was raised by muggles but who also holds on to some of his muggle identity. Every year he puts up muggle soccer posters around his bed and in this book it mentions he has pajamas in his soccer team’s colors. Harry, Hermione, and Colin Creevey all pretty much abandon their muggle identities—understandable for Harry, at least, but interesting to think about for the other characters. And it makes me really curious about Dean.

Umbridge is such a great villain. I often rate her higher than Voldemort on my favorite villains list (yes, I have one of those), because while Voldemort is scary, he’s kind of generically scary. Umbridge is the kind of villain you just love to hate. I still remember how viscerally I reacted to her making Harry cut open his own hand and write “I must not tell lies” in his own blood the first time I read the book, and I still have that reaction. It’s smaller, but somehow more sadistic, than Voldemort’s torture.

I think everything with Dumbledore’s Army might just be my favorite part of this book.

Umbridge says the ministry would want Snape to remove the strengthening solution from the potions syllabus. What in the world does that potion strengthen?

I really appreciate how thoughtful and emotionally intelligent Hermione is in this book. It really shows as they’re planning Dumbledore’s Army and talking about Sirius and Harry and Cho. I’m not saying she wasn’t those things in the previous books, but I think it comes out a lot more in this book and shows how she’s matured as a character, especially since the fourth book.

Taking notes like this as I read, I’m noticing just how much changes in the fifth book. I already mentioned we don’t get the “previously on Harry Potter…” bit at the beginning. This is also the first book where nothing happens on Halloween, and we lose Quidditch as an important part of the plot as well (more on that in a second). And these changes persist into the later books. You can definitely tell things are getting darker.

DOBBY!!!

The thing with Harry beating up Malfoy and getting banned from playing quidditch always really bugged me. I wish there had been more internal build-up with Harry’s thoughts and feelings in the moments leading up to him snapping like that. Intellectually, I know it’s probably all the things boiling over at this moment, but we don’t see it, and in the past Malfoy has definitely said worse and Harry’s just brushed it off. I think this is the moment, during this reread of the book, when I lose a lot of sympathy for Harry’s feelings. It’s definitely a good plot point, and Umbridge continues to be the worst—really, the worst—but also, come on Harry, show a little restraint, please. No? No? Okay fine no more Quidditch for you.

I really want to know how Hagrid and Madame Maxime carried a branch of everlasting fire across two countries to bring it to the giants. I know, the answer is probably “magic,” but I want to know how.

So J. K. Rowling does this great thing where she brings something up early in the book and then it comes back in a way that has nothing to do with how it first came up. I particularly love it when she does it for a chapter title. A small amount of explanation before I clarify what I’m talking about. I’m the sort of person who likes to read the table of contents before I jump into a book, because I like chapter titles. I remember, when my older brother got Goblet of Fire the day it came out, and I had to wait a few weeks to get it in Braille, I got him to read me the table of contents out loud. That was what I asked for. Another importans fact is that the Braille editions of Harry Potter are broken into volumes, because Braille is so much bigger than print. The fifth book is thirteen volumes (I have a whole wall of Harry Potter in my bedroom). So at the start of each volume is the table of contents for that volume, so I usually read that before I start on that volume. So earlier in the fifth book, Malfoy brings up St. Mungo’s and the closed ward. And so the chapter titles “St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries” and “Christmas on the Closed Ward” always made me think that Harry was going to be sent to St. Mungo’s. Obviously, that’s not what happened, but I loved the effect Malfoy’s reference to St. Mungo’s and then reading the chapter titles again when I got to them two or three volumes later had on me. This is probably entirely a Jameyanne phenomenon, but it happens a couple other times in the books (can’t think of them right now), so I wanted to share.

Oh wow Harry’s date with Cho is so awkward. So awkward. He isn’t as emotionally stupid as Ron, but he really makes a mess of things. Cho is pretty awful though as well, to be fair. I mean, it’s so obvious that Harry doesn’t like what’s going on and she’s pulling all this on him. It definitely feels realistic to me, but it’s still a painful scene to read.

I will forever love the whole sequence in the Department of Mysteries. It is epic!

I will also forever be mad about the two-way mirror. I know it’s important later, and I guess it makes sense why Harry didn’t open it before, but this is definitely one of those times when a character does something totally stupid and that’s what caused everything to go horribly wrong. And I kind of hate it when authors do that. In this case, it’s not even an important stupid thing. He just never opened it and forgot about it.

All in all, this is a book I appreciate more and more as I get older. It’s not one of my favorites of the series, but it is a good book, and so much great stuff happens.

And that’s it for these three books. I haven’t finished rereading Deathly Hallows yet, but I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows.

The Way of Kings Review

Cover of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson Hello all. I’m back with a full review of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. I read this book last month, I really enjoyed it, and I’m excited to talk about it with you.

The Way of Kings is epic fantasy of the most epic kind. I’ve never read anything quite so expansive. The closest thing I’ve ever read in scope is Lord of the Rings, and even that focused on the same group of characters. This book is a thousand pages long. I listened to the audiobook, which was forty-five and ahalf hours. So this was also the longest book I’ve ever read (or the longest I can remember reading).

The book is set in a world that is regularly ravaged by deadly storms called high storms. Because of the storms, all plant life, down to grass, has the ability to retreat into rock shells. There are also giant crab things that the humans use to pull wagons and such, and all structures are built to withstand the high storms, because if you’re caught outside in a high storm, you’re dead. Despite their danger, the magic of the world also comes from the high storms. Gemstones left out during a storm will become infused with stormlight. These gemstones are used as currency or as light in the richer houses. Gemstones can also be used to transform one form of matter into another, like stone into smoke. And the backstory of the book is that the world is recovering from the desolations, where monsters called voidbringers attacked humanity and were fought off by the heralds and the knights radiant. The almighty, the heralds, and the knights radiant now form the backbone of the major religion of the book. The knights radiant used magical swords and armor, called shardblades and shardplate, which they left behind when they vanished. Because the knights radiant had a glowing aura and glowing eyes, class in this world is based on eye color. Those with light eyes make up the royalty and nobility, while those with dark eyes form the working class. Finally, there are magical creatures called spren that appear around humans a lot, such as pain spren, creation spren, glory spren, and so on. They’re generally just colored lights, but we do get one sentient wind spren and she is awesome.

The book begins with the assassination of the king of one of the most powerful nations in the world, Alethkar. The Parshendi nation take credit for the assassination, so the Alethi wage war on the Parshendi to avenge their fallen king. The book follows four main storylines, with several other smaller vignets scattered throughout.

First, and my personal favorite, we have Kaladin. Kaladin is a darkeyes soldier who was enslaved and sold to the army of one of the eigh princsome of Alethkar. He winds up as part of a bridge crew in High Prince Sadeas’s army on the shattered plains—a bunch of plateaus divided by deep chasms. Its the bridge crews’ job to carry the bridges for the army to cross the chasms to get to battles with the Parshendi, but Kaladin quickly learns it is also the bridge crews’ job to serve as bait and draw the Parshendi fire away from the army. Determined not to die and not to let any of his crew die, Kaladin becomes the leader of his crew and fights first to win their trust and respect and then to train them to survive. He is accompanied by Syl, an extraordinarily sentient wind spren. When their tactics start to work, and the Parshendi start shooting at the soldiers on the approach instead of the bridge crews, Kaladin is given a severe punishment he is not meant to survive. But he does survive, and he realizes he might have some power of his own, and there’s more to his relationship with the spren Syl than he first thought. So he turns that power to planning his bridge crew’s escape from the war camp.

Next, we have Lady Shallan Davar, a young lighteyes noblewoman whose family is in danger after her father’s death. Shallan hatches a daring plan to become apprenticed to the king’s sister, gain her trust, and then steal her soulcaster, the glove encrusted with gemstones that allows the princess to transform one thing into another. But Shallan is soon sucked into the princess’s studies of the origins of the voidbringers and their connection to the old king’s assassination. And soon (relatively speaking), she realizes that she and the princess are hiding the same secret.

Next, we have High Prince Dalinar, uncle to the current king and brother of the old king who was assassinated. Before he was assassinated, the old king pointed Dalinar to a book called The Way of Kings and told him to follow the codes in the book, which lay out strict protocol for war time. The old king also wanted Dalinar to unite the often fractious high princes of Alethkar. While following the codes and striving to form alliances among the high princes, Dalinar also begins having visions of the desolations of the past and the knights radiant during the high storms. He falls under a lot of scrutiny and his own sons begin questioning his sanity, until Dalinar is left trying to choose between following his own instincts or admitting that he is going mad and abdicating his position.

Finally, and perhaps I should have started with this character, we have Szeth-son-son-Vallano, also known as the assassin in white. You guessed it: he killed the old king of Alethkar. Szeth is truthless, which means (I think) that he must obey anyone who carries his oath stone. Like he’s magically forced to. He also carries a shardblade and has the ability to bind objects to each other for short periods of time, which allows him to do some cool things like reverse gravity and run along the ceiling, and otherwise makes him a really good assassin. As the book progresses, Szeth is drawn into a conspiracy that involves a lot of death, and he carries it out, weeping as he kills noble after noble.

Like I said, this was a really long, complex book, and I am only just beginning to scratch the surface with this description. I do hope this gives you enough to decide if this sounds like something you’d be interested in reading. To help with that decision, let’s dive into what I thought of the book.

I think my favorite part of this book was the characters and the world. The characters were all so different, and the world was so alien but so vivid and intricate, and I really loved all that. It was just so easy to get immersed in this story.

On the other hand, it was long. I won’t say it was a slog, but it was a slow, deliberate march. There was a fair amount of exposition, and the plot was sprawling, as you can see from above. There ar some connections that I didn’t make until I looked up the wikipedia summary to get the spellings of characters’ names right (hint: keep an eye on Wit). As much as I liked the book, I had a hard time getting through it because it was so long and so sprawling. I remember being about six hours from the ending and positive that there was no way all of this was going to come together.

But yes, it did come together, and it was pretty spectacular. It was one of those great moments where I actually let out a horrified “Aha! Oh god!” in the middle of the kitchen.

I do wish, after all that, that the ending had been more of a conclusion. I understand that the book is the first in a series, and I also understand that I have been conditioned by a lot of other books to expect the first book in a series to be a complete story that you can continue if you wish. I’m okay with first books not standing on their own. I really am. But this book was just so long that the fact that it wasn’t a complete story bugged me.

On the other hand, oh my god that ending!

One last thing that drove me nuts was that there were two narrators for the audiobook, and they pronounced a couple characters’ names differently. Like come on, people. Communicate on this stuff.

My overall thoughts are that I really, really liked this book. I don’t think I loved it as much as the first Mistborn book,but it was still really good. I’m not convinced it needed to be as long as it was, and while I liked the ending, I wish it had wrapped up more. I loved the world and the characters, and the ending had me dying for the next book. I’m on the waiting list to get the sequel from the library right now, and I’m hoping to get it soon. I have a feeling it is going to be awesome!

In the meantime, have you read The Way of Kings? What did you think?

The Bane Chronicles Review

Cover for The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson Last week, I finished The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and maureen Johnson. This is a collection of short stories about events in the life of Magnus Bane, one of the major characters in Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments, Infernal Devices, and Dark Artifices series (possibly others but these are all I’ve read). I did my best in this post to talk about this book without spoilers, but it was difficult given how closely tied to Clare’s other work this is.

I really liked this book. It’s a lot of fun, but at the same time, it’s not entirely fluffy adventures. There is definitely some dark stuff in these books. What I particularly like is the ability to see several big events in history (centuries apart) from the same point of view character. Over the course of these stories, we see Magnus’s adventures in Peru (which may or may not have led him to be banned from Peru), his attempt to save Marie Antoinette and the royal family during the French Revolution, his stint running a speakeasy in the late 1920s, his discovery of a ring of vampires getting high on humans addicted to drugs in the 1980s, and more. I liked how cohesive this book was, and I had fun putting together what I learned about Magnus in each story.

There was, as I’ve mentioned, some overlap with the existing books in Clare’s shadowhunter universe. In one story, we meet Will Herondale’s father, Edmund, and in another story Magnus encounters James Herondale, Will and Tessa’s son. Later on, we see Magnus’s first interaction with Valentine’s Circle, the story of how he first meets Jocelyn and Clary from Magnus’s point of view, his first date with Alec, and another story about Magnus trying to figure out what to get Alec for his birthday. The final story is all the messages on Magnus’s voicemail after what happened at the end of City of Fallen Angels. While all these stories were interesting, I thought they were on the whole weaker than the stories that were just about Magnus and his adventures, with the exception of the first date with Alec because that is a great story. These stories were burdened by the fact that they were connected so heavily to the plot of the other books. For them to be complete short stories, there had to be a fair amount of exposition that wasn’t necessary in the other stories. At the same time, as I worked my way through these stories, I was definitely looking forward to seeing Magnus’s perspective on the crucial events in the main books of the series. I think I would have been disappointed if there was no overlap at all. And I definitely did enjoy these stories. So while these stories weren’t as strong on their own in my opinion, connected to the broader universe they are great.

If you haven’t read any of Cassandra Clare’s books before, I’m not sure I would recommend this as a starting point. I don’t think it would make a lot of sense. But if you’ve read any of her books, this collection is great fun and I definitely recommend.

Jameyanne Rereads Harry Potter, 2019 edition: Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets

Every year I reread the Harry Potter books. I’m a nerd like that. And every year, I discover something new.

Recently, a friend suggested that I write down my thoughts during my yearly reread and do a blog post about them. She may have been joking, but I’m running with it.

This year, I reread the Harry Potter books starting just after finals in December 2018 and through April 2019 (I’m actually not finished with my reread yet but I’m planning to finish this month). I took my time with this reread, savoring the books instead of hurtling through them at my usual breakneck reading speed. This was a particularly fun reread, because at the same time I was reading the first two books, I was also reading The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, which really made me focus on the food in the series. Also, in my middle grade space adventure novel, my main characters are listening to the audiobooks when they’re having downtime in the plot—the Jim Dale version, of course. This may be cut from the final draft, but right now I’m having a lot of fun interpreting the Harry Potter books from a time when interplanetary space travel is common and the books are considered classics, akin to Shakespeare.

I’m breaking up my thoughts on the Harry Potter books into three posts. This week, I’m talking about Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Next week, I’ll talk about Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix. And the week after that, assuming I’ve finished reading them, I will talk about Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. These posts are not reviews like my other posts. I will write spoiler-free reviews at some point in the future (probably for next year’s reread). These posts will be my thoughts and notes as I read the entire book, so there will be spoilers. All the spoilers. If you have not read the Harry Potter books and plan to in the future and don’t want to be spoiled in what will probably be a very confusing way, these are not the posts for you. If you have no interest in the inner workings of my brain while I’m reading these books, these are also not the posts for you. You have been warned.

Also, I ask a lot of questions in these thoughts. I’m sure there are answers out there on the web, especially on Pottermore, but I’m generally confining these posts to what’s contained in the books themselves. Also last I checked (admittedly a few years ago, thanks law school), Pottermore wasn’t all that accessible with a screenreader.

So without further ado, here is what struck me as I reread Harry potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets this year.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Since I was living in the query trenches for my own novel when I started rereading this book, I was struck by the first chapter of the first book. I never thought much about the first chapter, which I always viewed as more of a prologue. But this time as I was reading it I was really dissecting what the point was. And I’m not sure there is a point other than to be mysterious. Everything that is introduced in the first chapter is introduced again in the subsequent chapters in a much more dynamic and developed way, and the second chapter is a more intriguing place to start the book. We all know that J. K. Rowling was rejected a lot before she got a book deal—this is like the thing that nonwriters quote at me whenever I said I was trying to get an agent—but this is the first time I really considered why that might be the case. When you submit a book, you usually submit a query letter and the first few pages, maybe the first chapter. And I can definitely see, because I’ve done it myself now, why the first Harry Potter book would get rejected so much. Don’t get me wrong, I love the first book to pieces, but the opening could have been a lot stronger.

So Dumbledore has a scar above his knee that’s an exact map of the london underground. Which makes me wonder: Does he reference that?

I really admire how so much of what happens in Diagon Alley isn’t just important for world building but is also setup for later in this book and later in the series. I really admire when a writer puts things together so well, and that’s one of the things I love about this series is just how well everything comes together.

I just love little innocent eleven-year-old Harry.

I don’t think we ever learn what the point of studying astronomy is. I’m all for studying astronomy, but every other class connects in some way to magic and this one doesn’t. Astrology comes up later in divination but that’s always treated as a joke. So what is the point of astronomy?

Why couldn’t Snape just heal his leg with magic after Fluffy bites it? Or go to Madam Pomphrey? Or get Dumbledore to do it if he doesn’t want anyone else to know?

When they’re looking for Nicholas Flammel, my first thought is that muggle-borns nowadays, used to google and smartphones, would be in for a nasty shock when they go to Hogwarts and there isn’t even electricity. I’m not even sure there’s a card catalogue for the Hogwarts library—at least it’s never mentioned. I would totally read the story about a muggle-born going to Hogwarts in 2019 and having to abandon their iPhone.

When I was a kid, it always really impressed me how Ron knew what the winged key would look like by looking for one that matches the handle. It must be a visual thing that keys match locks, which of course I wouldn’t have noticed as a kid, but even then as a twelve-year-old under pressure I don’t think I would have made the connection like that.

I love the potions logic problem. It reminds me of an LSAT logic problem, and I honest to goodness loved those. I try to diagram it every time I read it, but I’ve never managed to get it myself. I always got stuck with how to figure out which one of the end bottles lets you go forward and which one lets you go back. And I know, as someone who was just talking about the wonders of Google, maybe I should have looked it up. But I was determined that one of these days I would figure it out. And this year, I finally got it. In case anybody else has been as mystified as me, here’s how to do it.

First, here’s the riddle:

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,

Two of us would help you, whichever you would find,

One among us seven will let you move ahead,

Another will transport the drinker back instead,

Two among our number hold only nettle wine,

Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.

Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,

To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide,

You will always find some on nettle wine’s left side;

Second, different are those who stand at either end,

But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, both are different size,

Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right,

Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

And here’s how I solved it:

We have seven bottles, lined up on a table from smallest to largest. Three are nettle wine, two are poison, one lets you go forward through the black fire, and one lets you go back through the purple fire. Number the bottles 1 to 7 from left to right (because I’m treating this like at LSAT logic game). We know that neither bottle 1 nor bottle 7 is poison. We know that bottle 2 and bottle 6 are the same. So bottle 2 and bottle 6 could be wine, because there are 2 bottles of wine, but we also know that you will always find poison to the left of the nettle wine. Repeat, always. So if bottles 2 and 6 are wine, that means that bottle 1 is poison, and we know from the third clue that bottle 1 isn’t poison (we’re assuming of course that the poison is deadly, but it doesn’t work if you don’t assume that). So if 2 and 6 can’t be the wine, and they’re identical, they have to each be poison. That means that bottle number 3 has to be wine. What about bottle 7? The second clue seems to indicate that bottles 1 and 7 won’t be your friend if you want to move forward, but forward is danger, as it says in the intro. So let’s come back to that. If 7 is wine, that would allow 6 to be poison, and leaves us with bottles 1, 4, and 5 to contend with. We know that 1 can’t be wine, because no poison to the left of it, and the clues say it isn’t poison. So bottle 1 will either let you go forward or backward. So 1 will let you go forward or back, 2 is poison, 3 is wine, 4 will either let you go forward or back or it’s poison, 5 will either let you go forward or back or it’s poison, 6 is poison, and 7 is wine. But that’s not completely solved, and I’m not seeing another clue to get you the last step.

But there’s another way to do it: 1 will either take you forward or back, 2 is poison, 3 is wine, 4 is poison, 5 is wine, 6 is poison, 7 will take you forward or back. There are three poisons and 2 wines and 7 spots, so one poison automatically won’t be directly to the left of nettle wine. Also, the pairing of the dwarf and giant twice in the second and third clues, particularly the third clue, hints that they have similar qualities—specifically fireproofing qualities. Finally, this is a much neater arrangement that fits with all the clues, and the clues are supposed to lead you to an answer.

So how do you know whether 1 or 7 will take you onward and which one will take you back? The third clue says “if you would move onward, neither is your friend.” Taken figuratively, it means one bottle will take you back, so it’s not your friend, and one bottle will take you into more danger, so it’s not your friend either. And that’s always how I read it. But you can also read it literally: if you want to go on, your friend isn’t coming with you. And so bottle number 1, the smallest bottle that will only hold enough potion for one person, will let you go forward, and bottle 7 will send you back.

Voilá. I solved it. That being said, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable enough with that solution to drink a potion and walk through fire. Given that it took me years to figure it out, I am very, very impressed with Hermione. Of course I always have been. Nobody else I know memorizes all their textbooks.

I love the twist in this book. It does such a great job of setting up Snape as the bad guy, and yet it makes perfect sense that it’s Quirrel. Voldemort sticking out of the back of Quirrel’s head is totally terrifying (like I can’t believe I first read this when I was eight). And how Harry manages to hold him off is great.

And then Neville wins them the house cup! I will always love Dumbledore for that!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

When I first read this book when I was a kid, I didn’t like it that much. I honestly don’t remember why. I mean okay it’s not my favorite in the series, but now when I read it, it’s so intense, and it gives me so many feelings.

The Dursleys are the worst. I wondered when I read the last book, and I feel like especially here it bears repeating, where is child services? Like when Harry and Dudley went to the same school, Harry’s teachers must have been able to tell that Harry was being neglected. He didn’t even have clothes that fit and his glasses were held together by tape. Come on people.

I know that the sixth book comes back to what happened in the second book because of Tom Riddle’s diary, but there’s also a lot of other stuff in this book that becomes important in the sixth book. Basically everything in the scene at Borgan and Burkes—the hand of glory, the opal necklace, even Harry hiding in the vanishing cabinet—are key to the sixth book. Later on, when Harry and Ron are disguised as Crabbe and Goyle, Malfoy reveals his family’s secret chamber under their drawing room floor, which will become important in the seventh book too.

Speaking of Harry hiding in the vanishing cabinet, I have fun imagining the conversation between Harry and McGonigall when he winds up traveling through the cabinets into Hogwarts and showed up at school a month before classes started. I know it’s not how it goes but it would have been a funny scene.

I feel like Harry complains a lot about not having money in the Muggle world. Why doesn’t he change some of his wizard gold for muggle money at any point during the series?

So Harry and Ron definitely cross a line for me when they steal the car to fly to Hogwarts. Like a certain amount of rule-breaking to solve the mystery like in the first book and this book and later on in the series is fine by me. But rule-breaking because the characters are being stupid and don’t think of the obvious solutions, like sending a letter to Hogwarts or waiting for Ron’s parents, kind of annoys me. Yes the car being at Hogwarts is important later, but I’m just kind of meh about how it gets there. (I like it when my characters are fundamentally smart and good.)

I love Colin Creevey. He is so cute, and he is also so brave. Annoying, yes, but it takes guts to approach a stranger and ask them for a photo. Not to mention the guts it takes to stick up for Harry against Malfoy.

Why doesn’t Hogwarts have a stash of spare wands? Or a contact with Olivander? It’s a wizard school. Accidents happen, right? Ron basically goes the whole year without doing magic, and his broken wand is frankly dangerous.

Speaking of Ron going the whole year with a broken wand, he isn’t the only one who misses large chunks of their education this year. Colin, Justin, Penelope Clearwater, Hermione, and even Ginny to some extent miss months of classes. I assume that in the first and second year it probably isn’t hugely important, but Percy’s girlfriend is a sixth year. How does she make that up? And when they cancel all exams at the end of the book, does that cover OWLS and NEWTS? These are just some questions I have.

Spiders continue to be scary, Lockhart continues to be a complete douchebag, and the ending of this book is just great. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

And that’s it for my thoughts on the first two books. I’ll be back next week to chat about the third, fourth, and fifth books.

Ableds Are Not Weird

In the last few weeks, this #AbledsAreWeird hashtag has been going around on Twitter. The hashtag was started by Imani Barbarin to express frustration at all the indignities people with disabilities have to deal with on a regular basis, and it’s gotten so big that it’s made the news. I’m probably inviting some kind of Twitter war with this post, but as you can guess from my title, I disagree.

Let me be totally clear. The experiences people are talking about on this hashtag are at best upsetting to the people who have to experience them, and many of them are worse than horrifying. I have experienced a lot of these things myself. I have been prayed over on the subway because I’m blind. I have been physically prevented from entering buildings or going upstairs. Strangers have grabbed me, my cane, or my guide dog and attempted to pull me where they think I want to go. People have taken my things and asked me personal questions, and I’ve probably been discriminated against while job hunting. And I’m talking about people in the U.S. here. So when I say I disagree with what’s happening on the #AbledsAreWeird hashtag, I’m not saying that because I’m unsympathetic. What people are talking about on this hashtag really happens. It happens on a daily basis, and it’s awful, and it hurts, and we should talk about it.

But I don’t think this is the way to talk about it.

My problem with the hashtag is pretty simple. As far as I’ve seen, and admittedly there’s a lot to scroll through so I may be missing something, the hashtag has turned into a space where people with disabilities are shouting about things people without disabilities have done to them, and then calling people without disabilities weird. Barbarin says she hopes the hashtag will make able-bodied people feel accountable for their actions, but I honestly don’t understand how. This does nothing to solve the problem. It doesn’t even really tell able-bodied people what the problem is. It just accuses them of something that they probably think of as being helpful or honest curiosity. And by accusing them in this form, I feel like it’s just pushing them away.

Ableds aren’t weird. They just don’t know that what they’re doing is insensitive or offensive. Instead of pushing them away with accusations without explanations, we should be reaching out to them with positive messages of what they can do to be helpful and what kind of questions it is appropriate to ask.

But, Jameyanne, why should it be on us to educate people about what we need all the time?

I get it. It’s frustrating to constantly have to educate the public. I’m pretty patient about it, but I definitely have days when someone tells me I can’t bring my dog into their restaurant, and I feel like exploding. But exploding doesn’t help.

When I feel like exploding, I think of a story my younger brother told me. He was with some friends when he saw a woman who was blind walking back and forth along the block across the street, obviously trying to find a specific doorway. He crossed the street, approached the woman, and offered assistance. He grew up with me, so he knows how to do this appropriately. He didn’t grab her. He just asked if he could help her find what she was looking for and offered to give her directions or sighted guide to her destination. (Sighted guide is when a blind person holds a sighted companion’s elbow and walks a half-step behind them, using their movements as a guide rather than a cane or guide dog.) My brother was polite, he used the right terminology, and the woman still exploded at him. And he came away feeling like he would never offer to help another blind person, because he didn’t want to have his head torn off for it. And I’ve heard similar stories from all sorts of other people.

So when I feel like exploding, I think of the damage I would do by exploding, and I don’t. At least not at that person. I maybe explode when I get home and I’m in private or talking to close friends.

The #AbledsAreWeird hashtag is kind of like everybody exploding at once. At best, it’s confusing for the ableds of the world. Saying “random person grabbed me and tried to drag me across the street today” doesn’t mean anything to someone who thinks that’s a helpful response to seeing a blind person on the corner. They don’t know that what they did is the opposite of helpful. They don’t even really think about what they’re doing, because if they thought about it, they’d probably realize that it is never appropriate to grab another human being and drag them across the street. So complaining about what happened on twitter doesn’t solve the problem. If anything, it makes it worse because it pushes the ableds away. And we don’t want to do that. For one thing, think how it would be to find yourself in a situation where, for whatever reason, you really need help, and you can’t find it because people are unwilling to help for fear of doing something wrong. For another, it just makes people with disabilities seem more other to able-bodied people.

It’s probably true that the hashtag has allowed people with disabilities to feel less alone over these experiences. This is certainly a valuable thing, but there are countless facebook groups, email lists, etc for disabled people to get together and gripe about an inaccessible and insensitive world. But Twitter is a public place. The people being griped at can see the griping. In my opinion, if you’re going to have a public conversation about this problem, it shouldn’t start with calling the people on one side of the argument weird. Granted, with only 280 characters to make your point, Twitter isn’t always the best forum for a productive conversation, but words matter, and personally, I think #AbledsAreWeird was a poor choice to label this hashtag.

When someone without a disability does or says something that I find inappropriate or offensive, I stop them and I educate them. When a random stranger on the street corner says “It’s time to cross,” grabs my arm (or my dog’s harness), and attempts to drag me forward, I pull free, step back, and say, “Please don’t grab me or any other blind person without permission. I appreciate that you’re trying to be helpful, but it pulls me off balance, distracts me and my dog, and endangers my safety. Also, I don’t want to go that way.”

Is this easy? No.

Can it be frustrating? Yes.

But is it necessary? Absolutely.

We have to educate people. No one else will do it for us, because they can’t. They don’t know what we need as individuals, stereotypes abound, and unfortunately most people have never interacted with someone with a disability (check out this horrifying study from Perkins School for the Blind if you don’t believe me). We, people with disabilities, know best what we need. We need to be the ones to tell people what we need and don’t need, and we need to do it in a positive way, or we will get nowhere.

Yes, it’s high time that we started publicly talking about the many microaggressions and macroaggressions we face every day as people with disabilities. But there needs to be a next step. If we’re going to say “this is not okay,” we need to say what is okay. In my opinion, this needs to be a conversation, not a one-sided shouting match.

So to start that conversation, here is your periodic reminder that you can ask me questions about what it’s like to be blind and how I do things when I can’t see. I will happily answer. I will answer based on my own experiences, so bear in mind that I am not every blind person, but I will answer. The only reason I won’t is if it’s a totally inappropriate and personal question, in which case I will tell you so. But I will not laugh at you. I will not shout at you. I will not call you weird.

So fire away.

The Final Empire Review

As I mentioned a couple days ago in my March Reading Roundup post, I’m trying out writing individual posts for each book I read and review, rather than one giant post at the end of each month. So here goes.

Cover of The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson Last month, I read The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. This is the first book in the Mistborn series, and since I’m definitely continuing on with the series and planning to write reviews for the next books, I wanted to write a full review of this book. As with all my reviews, this will be as spoiler-free as I can make it.

The Final Empire is epic fantasy. It was originally published as adult fantasy but I think since has been remarketed as young adult. I could see it going either way myself. This was my first Brandon Sanderson book, and I am just so glad I picked it up because it is awesome!

The Final Empire is set in a dystopian world that’s a rough analog to the early 1800s in terms of technology (or so Wikipedia tells me). Ash falls from the sky during the days, and at night supernatural mists terrorize the peasant population. A thousand years ago, the prophecied Hero of Ages fought off something called the Deepness and ascended to become the tyrant and god-king of the empire. He calls himself the Lord Ruler, and he keeps the empire on a tight leash. Only the nobility are allowed to possess magic, and the inquisitors, the police force of literal monsters are vicious in enforcing that, since magic is a genetic trait. And the peasants, or Skaa, are brutally enslaved. This is a world where the bad guy has won.

Not only has he won, but he has been in power for a thousand years. So when a street urchin named Vin is approached by Kelsier, told she can do magic, and asked to join in a plot to overthrow the Lord Ruler, she’s pretty sure he’s crazy. Vin is sixteen, and she has lived in truly desperate circumstances for her whole life. The only person who ever looked out for her, her older brother, also abused her and later abandoned her. She goes with Kelsier because she wants to learn to use her magical powers and because the inquisitors are looking for her and she needs protection, but it takes her a long time before she trusts him and his thieving crew.

Let me take a minute to talk about the magic system in this world. The main kind of magic is called Allomancy. Allomancers can consume pure metals and then burn them within their bodies to gain powers. Each metal does something different, and the metals work in pairs. For example, steel and iron allow a certain amount of telekinesis with metal—one lets you pull metal to you, one lets you push metal away, which you can use to pretty much fly. Tin heightens your senses, and pewter heightens your strength. Bronze helps you sense and strengthen others’ emotions, and copper shields your emotions—and the fact that you’re doing Allomancy at all—from others. You get the idea. There are ten metals total. Most Allomancers can only use one. A rare few Allomancers, which includes Kelsier and Vin, can use all the metals. They are called Mistborn.

Throughout the novel, we follow Vin and Kelsier. Kelsier trains Vin, and also the reader, in how Allomancy works and how to use the magic, and they put their plans against the Lord Ruler into action. Apart from studying her Allomancy, Vin becomes the crew’s spy. She infiltrates the nobility, disguised as the niece of a cooperative nobleman, and plants seeds that the crew hope will grow into a house war to destabilize the highest levels of society. Kelsier helps out with this with a few assassinations, while other members of the crew recruit and train soldiers for a Skaa army. The eventual goal is to topple the government by basically stealing the whole treasury, including all the stores of Allomantic metals. Of course, it isn’t going to be that easy. Anything and everything is going to go wrong, but throughout it all, Vin learns how to trust the new crew that has taken her in, and even how to become friends with them.

When I was in college,I worked as a submissions reader for the Kenyon Review. During one of our annual training sessions on how to read submissions, one editor said that he knew when a story was right for the magazine when reading it caused him physical pain, because the story is so good that it hurts that you didn’t write it. I related this description to my writing group, and writer’s pain became the highest compliment we could give each other’s work.

So when I say that The Final Empire gave me writer’s pain, I want you to understand exactly what I mean. This was so good. It was beyond good. It blew me away. It may be the best book I’ve read in a while. I could go on and on showering it with praise, but instead let’s talk about why.

The plot: The plot in this book is so tight and so compelling. It grabbed me up from page one and did not let go until the end. Arguably, it still hasn’t let go. We’re talking about a book that starts with the idea of a revolution and carries that idea through to its conclusion, and doesn’t even take that long to do it. The book is only 500-ish pages. (Has my feeling on what makes a long book been skewed slightly because of The Way of Kings? Maybe. Probably.) Whether you think 500 pages is long, medium, or short, there’s very little downtime in this book. That’s not to say that it’s all action all the time, though the action scenes are great. There is dancing and socializing and a romantic subplot and so many feelings. Remember I said that Vin is learning how to trust people and make friends and all that? That does not happen while they’re fighting off inquisitors all the time. Which brings me to…

The characters: I just loved them all!Especially Vin. They are so rich and strong and beautiful and flawed and it is wonderful. I love the group chemistry of the thieving crew. I love how they each have their own role but they plan together as a team. I love how they all have these moments when they break. One of my favorite moments in the book is when Vin just snaps at all of them because even though they’re Skaa too, they’ve never known what it’s like to live on the street the way she has, and then when Kelsier goes after her and calms her down and she’s now all embarrassed for flipping out, Kelsier is like “we all say stupid things sometimes, it’s cool, also you’re right.” It’s just a great moment, and the book is so full of great moments like these, largely because of these characters. And the characters’ arcs are perfection. (But in case you didn’t know, I’m a sucker for mistreated orphan finds family and learns to love stories.)

The world building and the magic system: I thought the world was really cool and mysterious, and there’s so much left to explore in the rest of the series. I really appreciated how detailed Sanderson was when describing exactly how the magic worked and what its limitations were. It was refreshing to have everything laid out so clearly.

The ending: Everything came together so well, and it was painful and messy and glorious. And while most everything was wrapped up, and I’m pretty sure you could stop reading after this book if you wanted to, enough was left dangling to entice me into the sequel. Plus i just love the world and these characters so much and I’m not ready to leave them.

No book can be absolutely perfect, and there were a couple things that bothered me. The biggest one is the romantic subplot. Vin falls in love with one of the nobles she’s supposed to be luring into a house war. This complicates the plot and it complicates Vin’s feelings for everyone involved. It wasn’t a bad plot move by any means. I actually quite like it as a natural outgrowth of Vin learning how good feelings work. My problem is with the love interest in particular. In a book populated with so many rich and vivid characters, he was just kind of meh to me. I think this is at least partly because I, like some of the other members of the crew, saw him as distracting Vin from what she was supposed to be doing. But I just didn’t like him too much. He was kind of a well-intentioned and well-read idiot. I’m trying to remain open-minded about him though, because I’m guessing he will be more important in the plot of the second book.

Other than that and a few other small things, this was such a good book. I was crying at the end. A lot. And I am dying to dive in to the rest of the series.

If you haven’t read any Brandon Sanderson before, I think this might be a good place to start. As I said, it was my first Sanderson book, and I know a number of other people who read this as their first Sanderson book as well. It’s significantly shorter than some of his other work, so it’s not as much of a time investment as another book might be.*Coughs The Way of Kings.* I’ve heard The Final Empire compared to V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series. There are certainly similarities. In both, an older magician takes in a street urchin and trains her in magic and brings her into his plans and adventures. And in one book the magician is named Kell and in the other it’s Kelsier. The audiobook narrator for The Final Empire is even the same as the audiobook narrator for the second and third Shades of Magic books. The similarities pretty much end there, in my opinion, but I think it is true that if you liked A Darker Shade of Magic you will probably like The Final Empire. Oh, and they’re both fabulous! In case I hadn’t mentioned that already.

If you haven’t read The Final Empire, I hope this review helps you decide to pick it up. It is so worth it! And if you have read the book, do you agree with my opinions? Do you disagree? Tell me what you think in the comments.

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The delicious

The Disgusting:

The Disasters:

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

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