Warbreaker

     In Warbreaker (破戰者), the magical power is awakening (喚術) . Through the power, mages can give life to objects, and the source of the power is from others' BioChromatic Breath (生體彩息), those who are deprived will become gloomy.
     There are two big cities, Hallandren (哈蘭隼) and Idrian (義卓司). To cease the war, they negotiate a peace treaty and Idrian promises to let a princess marry with the king of Hallandren.
     Vivenna (維溫娜), the older princess of Idrian, spends her whole life preparing for the marriage. However, before the wedding, the king of Idrian decides to send the younger princess, Siri (希麗), who is so different from her sister.
     The story is about the political conflict in the palace of Hallandren, which Siri is faced with. To figure out who is behind the conspiracy to manipulate the king of Hallandren, who is deprived all the ability to communicate with other people, Siri has to cooperate with  some powerful people, which may also pull her into the evil plot.
     The other line of story is about Vivnna. She is afraid that her sister will be killed, so she start her journey to rescue Siri. She also has her partner who is a skillful but suspected mage.
     So, who is behind the conspiracy? Who will stand out for Siri and the king of Hallandren? Who may become a betrayer? Find the answer by yourself.

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At last, it's already the last month in the year and the Christmas is on the corner, so I wanna share a funny Christmas song with you.

The Rithmatist

     This week, I would like to introduce you The Rithmatist (陣學師).The Rithmatist is another series novels by Brandon, which means another masterpiece.
     The story is set in Nebrask (內布拉斯卡), American Isles (合眾島). People here are threatened by wild chalkling, and there are few rithmatists responsible for defending. Rithmatists have powerful skills that they could use chalks drawing different patterns to defend or attack. How well and standard the patterns decide their power. Also, there is a college professionally teaching Rithamatic (陣學).
     Joel is a young man in the college who is addicted to Rithamatic, but he isn't born as a Rithamatist, which means the patterns he drew isn't work. However, he has talent to draw the patterns well. Melody is his good friend as well as a  rithma
tist. One day, the students in the college are disappearing one after another, no one knows where are they or whether they are still alive or not. Joel and Melody find something strange, could they follow the cues to find out the answer? Who is the plotter behind the scheme?
   


    At last, I want to share a song, The Hanging Tree. It's a sound track from The Hunger Games movie. The lyrics are very simple, but I was touched by it in the theater.

(Words: 233)

The Eleventh Metal

     If you have no idea about Mistborn trilogy (迷霧之子三部曲), you could spend a little time to read my posts “The Mistbon Trilogy” in October before you read this post.

                   The Mistborn Trilogy

            

     In the Mistborn trilogy, Kelsier (凱西爾) is the most popular role for readers. However, Brandon didn’t give readers the story of Kelsier in the trilogy, so he write this story to tell us how did Kelsier become the legend and what triggered him to come up with the plan to overthrow Lord Ruler. It’s a kind of the prequel of the Mistborn trilogy.

     This story is about the time between Kelsier escaped from Hathsin (海辛司), the toughest jail in the story, and Kelsier started his plan to overthrow the government. Brandon described Kelsier’s mood about the death of Mare (梅兒), his lover, and process of him to learn the skills of the Allomancy (鎔金術) among this time from Gemmel (蓋爾).

     Trough this prequel, you will gain more information about Kelsier that isn’t mentioned in the Mistborn trilogy, so just let us immerse in the story and feel the charm of Kelsier again.

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Steelheart

Steelheart(鋼鐵心), the first book of the Reckoners sereies(審判者系列). I think its setting of the magical power is a little bit like X-men. This time, Brandon didn’t create another new world, for instead, the story was set in Chicago.

One day, there was a Calamity(禍星) appearing , and some people become Epics(異能者) and got different power. Every epic has his or her own weakness, letting anyone else to know the weakness can be dangerous and even fatal.

Steelheart(鋼鐵心), however, seems like invincible. He could resist any kinds of attack, destroy anything and turn any objects into steel. With his powers, he become the ruler of the Chicago, and turned the whole city into steel and renamed it as Newcago(新芝加哥).

Specially, the leading role in this book, David Charleston, is only a normal person. He doesn’t have any power, but he once saw Steelheart bleeding which makes him always keep in mind that Steelheart must have a weakness. He joined the Reckoners, a group aims at killing all evil epics, and planned to overthrow the new government and kill the Steelheart. Can he find out Steelheart’s weakness successfully? Just wait and see.

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The Emperor's Soul

This week, I’m going to introduce Brandon’s short-term novel, The Emperor’s soul. The novel won the Hugo’s award in 2013. The most special is that the inspiration of the story is from Brandon’s visit to National Palace museum.

The story is set in the same world in the novel Elantris. However, this time Brandon focused on the other magical power called “Forge(仿造)”,and for whom have this skill are called “Forger(仿師)”. Forgers believe that everything has its souls and history, through understanding and guessing the background of the objects, they can carve a “soulstamp(魂印)” and stamp on the objects to convince them become something else.

Again, Brandon has a female leading role. Wan ShaiLu, who is an excellent Forger, was caught because a betrayal in a plan to steal a picture and replace it with the Forgery(仿品) in the palace. Accidentally, she was involved into a fight between different political forces. The emperor was killed, and she was asked to curve the solstamp of Emperor’s spiritual to let him recover from the brain hurt. Also, she has to try her best to survive in the 

insidious political fight. Can she make it? Or she will be 

beaten down? Just find the answer by yourself.

(215words)

Brandon's first novel: Elantris

In this novel, there are several countries ,however, Elantris(伊嵐翠) do not belong to any one of them. Elantris was once a beautiful, glamorous and magical city, and the residents here were also enviable, they had silver outlook, strong power, amazing speed and ability of cure. Everyone can become one of them through “The Shaod”(霞德密法), it randomly happens to someone at night. Unfortunately, all the things were changed when an earthquake occurred, Elantris were no longer attractive. What’s worse? The residents lost there magical power and turned into rotten but ironically immortal. The Shaod are now the evilest curse in the world.

In the story, there are two leading roles and begin with two storyline.

Raoden(瑞歐汀),the prince of the Arelon(亞瑞倫),who ran into The Shaod before his marriage ceremony with a princess he had never seen. He was deported to Elantris, however, he wasn’t beaten by it. He tried his best to find out what took away those magical powers with his wisdom.

Sarene(紗瑞奈), the princess of the Teod, who was Raoden’s fiancée. She never wanted to give up helping the residents in Elantris, although she had to fight against many political forces.

There were only 90 days left and the Elantris will be totally ruined by a heretic group. Can Raoden and Sarene return the glamour to Elantris or Elantris will be uprooted from the world? Just read the book to seek for the answer.

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The Mistborn Trilogy - 2

In most this kind epic fantasy novels, leading roles are usually be men. However, in the Misborn trilogy, we can see a young girl fight against the Final Empire bravely.

Vin(紋), a girl grew in a gang of burglar with her older brother leaving her alone. She uses her “luck” to make herself avoid bullying by other members and help the leader to negotiate with others. When Kelsier(凱西爾) found Vin a Mistborn and the “luck” which she calls is actually allomancy, he tries hard to let Vin become a part of his plan to overthrow the Final Empire.

And about Kelsier, the key man in the trilogy, he is a legendary person to skaas and is always called “Survivor of Hathsin(海司辛倖存者)”. He lost his lover when he prisoned in Hathsin that made him want to overthrow the empire and return freedom to skaas much more strongly. In the story, he teaches Vin how to control Allomancy properly and also lets her know what the “trust” means

There is another role, Elend(依藍德). He is a nobleman but he always question the things that noblemen do is right. With the path of the story, he will become more and more important and he also lets the fantasy story be added romantic ingredients.

There are still a lot of roles like Breeze(微風), Ham(哈姆), etc. I’m not going to talk too much about the characters and the story for fear of ruining the fun of your reading. After reading the trilogy, you must admire the Brandon’s ability to shape all the roles that perfectly, so do the story. So just find free time to enjoy it.

                                          Here is a trailer that a reader made by himself

                                        

The Mistborn Trilogy

In this two or thre weeks, I would like to introduce you the Mistborn trilogy, Mistborn:The Final Empire(迷霧之子:最後帝國),Mistborn: The Well of Ascension (迷霧之子:昇華之井) ,Mistborn: The Hero of Ages (迷次之子:永世英雄).

So let’s start with the settings of the trilogy. In these series, there’s a world which is ruled by the Final Empire with its capital Luthadel created by a man called “Lord Ruler”(統御主) from a thousand years ago. Since then, the mist come out to the world every night and the ash fall from the sky all the time. People in this world are classified into nobility and skaa(司卡). Of course, there must be some magical power in Brandon’s books. In this trilogy, there are three kinds of powers, Allomancy(鎔金術),Feruchemy(藏金術), and Hemalurgy(血金術). For those who have this ability we call him or her Allomancer(鎔金術師), and Feruchemist for Feruchemy. Allomancy is the most important one among three magical powers, Allomancers who can burn only a kind of metals and get different powers depending on what kind of metals he or she could burn are Mistings(迷霧人), however, there are few of people could burn all kinds of metals we call them Mistborn(迷霧之子). If you want to know the details and different kinds of Allomancers, you can get more information from: 

http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E9%8E%94%E9%87%91%E9%87%91%E5%B1%AC#.E9.8E.94.E9.87.91.E8.A1.93.E8.AA.9E

http://mistborn.wikia.com/wiki/Mistborn_Wiki 

The topic of Mistborn trilogy will be continued next week. Before ending, I want to share another book, One Day by David Nicholls. I have watched the movie and Chinese version novel before, and I bought the original version this week at the Eslite bookstore. It's my favorite love story,so I just want to recommend you this book as well even it's not Brandon's novels.

Let's start with Brandon Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson was born in 1975 in Nebraska. When he was a junior high school student, he found it was boring to read the books suggested to him by school. However, everything was changed when his teacher gave him Drangonbane by Barbara Hambly. After that, he started to find out and expose himself to more and more fantasy novels. Also, these novels inspired him to attempt writing some stories.

Drangonbane by Barbara Hambly

When he published his first novel, Elantris, in 2005, he quickly grabbed many fantasy novel lovers’ attention. And the book was also chosen as the best fantasy or science fiction novels of the year by Barnes and Noble.com. With the successful beginning, Brandon wrote more and more fabulous novels, like the Mistborn series, the Legion series, the Reckoners series, Warbreakers, and some short stories. Some of his works also let him be nominated or earned some awards.

Elantris,the fist Brandon's published novel

Mistborn: The Final Empire,
the first book of Mistborn series