Most recent book I've read: Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence

It's not often that I'm surprised by a book.  I haven't read everything by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to know that all stories are basically amalgamations of the books that have come before.  Characters change but their motives don't, so it's hard to really separate apart from the herd when trying to create something new, or at least newish.

Lawrence did just that with "Prince of Thorns," a book that came out late last year to a good amount of fanfare in the tiny (but growing) circle of fantasy nudniks, a bit of praise that I think was extremely appropriate.

The story follows a tale that's been told often, one of a dead parent and a son who wants revenge, but where it steps aside from the conventional path to forage alone in the night is in the characters, or to be specific, the Character: Jorg Ancarath.  Jorg has seen the brutal murders of his mother and brother and that has left him with a slightly skewed and awfully bloody view of the world around him.

The environment that Lawrence has crafted is in this writer's opinion a post apocalypic world that has reverted back to the Middle Ages where any and everything from the time before has been lost and forgotten.  He does a great job of leaving that fact (or maybe not a fact?) to the reader's interpretation, instead devoting the bulk of attentionto Jorg and the journey that the 14 year old prince has undertaken.

The magic system, an area that I usually want to be verbose, big, and grand, is sparse and isn't really well understood but it works for the reader as the reader is just as clueless to how the magic works as Jorg is.  The story isn't driven by the magic like a lot of books nowadays, or by a sense of code or ethics, but more by a lack of a compulsion to do what's right.  Jorg does what he wants and does it in a way that is often scary, dark, and disturbing.  You might think that this would disconnect the reader from the story but it really didn't for me.

There isn't much I'd change or that I didn't like about the book.  It was just long enough, not a volume that took weeks to finish and it was written in a tight, deliberate, and clever manner that had me upset when the book finished only because the sequel's not out yet.

Pick it up, you'll enjoy it.

Point or lack thereof

There have been numerous times where I've either thought about or actually started a blog but they faltered quickly or never even got off the ground.  I'd like to change with that this time around.

Instead of this being a niche based commentary that focuses on some area or avenue of my life that I think is important enough to share with the world via the internet, I think I'm going to have a more enjoyable time writing about my life in general.  I'm at a unique point in my life where a lot of different things are either taking place or the potential of various dominoes may drop over the next couple months and years.

I'm never going to profess to be someone who is so interesting or important that would or could demand attention on the fluctuations of my day.  I just want to write and what better way to work on that goal than to write on a number of different areas and topics that I think are interesting enough to put fingers to keyboard on.

I'd like to chat about what's organic and natural to me and what better way to do that than talk about what interests me and what's in my everyday life.  That may be about the journeys of being a new homeowner, the possibilities of adding to our family, the hobbies of reading, writing, brewing (amongst others), my obsession with any and everything related to Michigan sports, and anything else that crops up in my life over the next couple years.

So bear with me as I give this a whirl and let's see if we can't have a little fun!