Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

"The finest novel of fantasy to be written in many years." ~Orson Scott Card

Brandon Sanderson's debut novel Elantris is a fresh and remarkably cunning approach to fantasy fiction. Prince Raoden, heir to the throne of Arelon, suddenly finds himself taken by the Shaod and cast out to dwell among the cursed of Elantris. He must now restore the city to some semblance of its former glory or else risk being taken by the Heod, a form of madness that afflicts most of the city's population. Sarene, Raoden's bride-to-be, finds herself widowed even before being married and finds herself deeply involved in the political turmoil of her husband's country. She takes it upon herself to lead a small band of nobles to overturn the country's corrupted government and restore glory and honor to the throne. Hrathen is a priest and missionary for his god, a god who has ordered the destruction of Arelon if they do not convert. It is Hrathen's goal to win the conversion of an entire nation before that can happen.

This is the tale of three people whose separate stories interweave intimately with one another as they struggle to bring order out of chaos. The story is filled with political intrigue and magic, dead men and demons, noblemen and traitors. You come to love Raoden and Sarene and to hate Hrathen and his follower Dilaf. Yet, in all cases you empathize with the characters, sympathizing with their dilemmas. Sanderson has built rich characters in this book that drive the story onward to a climax and resolution that leaves you breathless. This is by far one of the best and most enjoyable fantasy novels I've read.

While Elantris stands alone as a single, self-contained novel, this reader hopes that Sanderson will return to the land of Arelon again. Many questions remain to be explored an answered - the origins of the Aons, the tying of the Aons to Arelon, the origin of the lake, and the origins of the Seons, to name just a few - as well as potential conflicts to be faced - Dakhor Monastery, Wyrn. Sanderson has said that a return to Arelon is not necessarily out of the question. In the meantime, I know that I'll be collecting his other books and keeping him at the top of my reading list.

Upcoming Book Reviews: Old Man's War by John Scalzi

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Tags: reviews, speculative fiction

Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

I'm all for musicians rendering their own remixed versions of the Halo Main themes. They're great pieces of music, and it's huge amounts of fun to see how artists impress their own styles, flavors, and tastes onto these familiar tunes. What I would love to see, however, is an expansion into all the other musical themes from these games. Marty O'Donnell has produced a wealth of great musical content with these soundtracks, setting up some wonderful templates for other musicians to reproduce and flavor with their own styles. So, it would be fantastic to see some of these reproductions branch out to the various other tracks to see what kind of new and interesting work can be produced. Heck, with a little collaborative effort with 'the man' himself, I'd even be willing to bet that completely remixed version of these soundtrack albums could be produced and marketed for the musicians industrious enough to take that challenge to task. I know I'd pay money for something like that.

Tags: commentary

Originally published at Writer's Blog. Please leave any comments there.

WordPress has all kinds of nifty little crosspost plugins now. With one click of a button, anything I post here will automatically and simultaneously be posted on Xanga and LiveJournal, as well. So allow me to add another item to my WordPress wishlist - a WordPress to WordPress crosspost plugin. Why would I ever want something like this? Simple - there are selected items I post here that I might want to deliver to an alternate site¹ or I might simply want to mirror my site elsewhere, kind of as a backup in case something goes kerplooey here. What features would such a plugin require? Here's some to start:

1. Preservation of all the post's metadata - title, categories, permissions, date/timestamps, passwords, etc.
2. Ability to crosspost to as many instances of WordPress as desired.
3. Ability to select only certain categories for crossposting.
4. Ability to crosspost to a wordpress.com blog.

I think that'd certainly do for starters. Any coding geniuses out there want to take on a new project?²

1. For instance, I also maintain a Halo blog with somewhat periodic updates but most of what I post here won't necessarily be of interest to those readers. [↩]
2. Darn, but this really makes me wish for the time and energy to learn how to do this sort of stuff for myself. [↩]

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Tags: technology