Paige read and liked Daniel's review of Warbreaker:

"Warbreaker is Brandon Sanderson's fifth novel.

Warbreaker has all of the themes that have been played throughout author Brandon Sanderson's other fantasy novels: epic fantasy, unconventional magic systems defined in almost scientific terms...more Warbreaker is Brandon Sanderson's fifth novel.

Warbreaker has all of the themes that have been played throughout author Brandon Sanderson's other fantasy novels: epic fantasy, unconventional magic systems defined in almost scientific terms, an empire or nation on the edge of collapse, war and/or planetary destruction, and heroes(usually female) that are thrust into saving a man, nation, and world. Oh, and love, too; the heroine always fall in love with the most unlikely of persons.

In Warbreaker, Siri, the youngest daughter of the king , is to marry the semi-immortal God-King of the rival kingdom, Hallendren, in order to stave off war, and certain annihilation, for their people. Siri's sister, Vivienna, eldest daughter of the king and long expected to have been the one sent as the bride, is left behind, but soon follows on a rescue mission. Susebron, the deified king and God to the Hallendren, faces his own challenges from the very priests that worship him and the lower gods that surround him. And among the people of Hallendren travels a dangerous and mysterious stranger carrying a sword, secrets, and a mysterious purpose.

Sanderson specializes in creating page turners, and Warbreaker is no exception. He is careful to leave hints and foreshadowing along the way, and a careful reader should be able to figure out who is who and what is happening before the last pages are read. The story is creative, as are the characters. The setting and background develops with a care that breathes and moves with life.

Unlike a lot of fantasy novels, Warbreaker manages to address issues not unfamiliar to the real world. The reader encounters prejudice, persecution, and poverty, as well as the line dividing the wealthy from the poor, rulers from the ruled. The issues are woven into the story, however, avoiding the complaints that have often beset the Star Trek franchise previous to the most recent movie.

All praise for Sanderson's creative and engaging story aside, his best work is still to come. Stephen King once wrote that every draft should be cut down ten percent before it can be counted a finished work. It's a rule that Sanderson could, and should, apply. Instead of showing us what the characters are learning or how they are changing, Sanderson weighs down his novel, and novels, with excess character explanation that is neither in dialogue or action. Some of this is obviously acceptable, though almost never necessary, but Sanderson seems to cross the line from necessary to luxury. Paragraph after paragraph could be replaced by a single meaningful scene or interaction with another character. Sanderson's novels weigh in at over 400 or 500 pages; I would not complain if he paired them down.

Which leads me to another critique: show versus tell. I like Sanderson's writing, I like his plots, and I like the creativity with which he builds his worlds, but I could use less of the explanation narrative. Show us, don't tell us, that Vivienna is giving up her prejudices. Show us, don't tell us, that Lightsong is becoming "the Bold." It is true that Sanderson knows this rule, because I have seen him apply it; but his desire to make sure the reader gets what he wants them to get seems to drive him to put more in than he needs. In the end, it diminishes the impact of the "show" because there is so much "tell."

For this reason, I had a hard time deciding to rate the book with four or three stars. In the end, I decided that I liked the book and, although it stands alone as a story, I wanted to know what would happen to the characters next. Sanderson has obviously left the door open to future stories and novels about the characters, and I hope he will continue to write those stories. He seems to like the novel format, but the story in Warbreaker would lend itself to spin-offs in novella or short story format.(less) "

Paige liked a trivia question:
In the book Squire by Tamora Pierce who is Keladry of Mindelan's Knight Master? see if you know the answer »

Paige read and liked Greg R.'s review of Children of the Mind (Ender's Saga, Book 4):

"I know several readers, myself included, who were blown away by Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. They then found the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, to be equally as riveting and eagerly reached for Xenocide, book three in the series, with the highest...more I know several readers, myself included, who were blown away by Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. They then found the sequel, Speaker for the Dead, to be equally as riveting and eagerly reached for Xenocide, book three in the series, with the highest of expectations--only to be slammed with disappointment. This otherwise serviceable book, with an original premise and interesting characters, crashes to an unsatisfying and confusing ending that combines the worst attributes of deus ex machina and sequel hooking. Back in the mid-90s, it seemed that only the most devoted of Ender fans dared to approach the fourth book, Children of the Mind. The rest of us avoided it like the descolada virus itself.

This situation may have changed over the ensuing decade as Card has published a number of prequel and sequel books in the Ender universe including a notable series about the life and times of Ender Wiggin's schoolmate, Bean. As the story world has expanded, characters have been fleshed out, political systems have been better defined, and the original quadrology has been reframed into a new context. Xenocide-burned readers may finally be ready to take tentative steps toward CotM--or at least that's my theory, after receiving an endorsement of the book from a friend who described it as "not as bad as everyone thought it would have to be."

So I read the book and it was, indeed, not as bad as everyone thought it would have to be--but it's no Ender's Game, either.

It helps to know that Xenocide and CotM were originally conceived as a single volume, which was divided in half when the page count climbed higher than the publisher was willing to accommodate. CotM's confusing and disjointed opening takes place only moments after Xenocide's confusing and disjointed ending, and neither book feels complete on its own. I'm sure the author did the best he could but the result still reads like a botched operation to separate conjoined twins.

CoTM starts in the middle of the action with no easy recap for those of us who haven't read the previous book in a while, so a better transition would have been appreciated. Perhaps something like I've done in this episode of Book Review Theater...

<book review theater>

EXTERIOR - EXTRASOLAR PLANET WITH THREE MOONS IN AN ORANGE SKY, WHERE PEOPLE STROLL ALONG A BOARDWALK THAT SEPARATES A BEACH ON ONE SIDE FROM URBAN BLIGHT ON THE OTHER - LATE EVENING

A cardboard box appears from nowhere. Peter Wiggin and Si Wang-mu emerge, look around in confusion for a moment, and confront the first man passing by.

PETER: Excuse me, sir?

MAN: Yeah? Whatta you want?

PETER: I'm an extra-universally created simulation of Peter Wiggin, the late Hegemon of the Free People of Earth, under the spiritual control of Andrew "Ender" Wiggin who is and will remain, until his imminent death of old age, reviled and celebrated, respectively, as Xenocide and Speaker for the Dead.

WANG-MU: And I am Wang-mu, a former slave with artificially-enhanced intellectual capacity, ironically named after a Chinese goddess. Also ironically, the so-called free people of my society were in fact enslaved to outside powers by virtue of their genetically-crafted OCD tendencies while peasants and slaves like myself remained actually free.

PETER: With the aid of Jane, a unique artificial intelligence originally created by an alien race that's falsely presumed to be extinct at the hands of my apparent younger brother and puppetmaster, we are travelling from Wang-Mu's home world--

WANG-MU: The Planet Where Everyone Is Chinese.

PETER: Right. From Wang-Mu's home world, The Planet Where Everyone is Chinese, we were meant to find The Planet Where Everyone Is A Pacific Islander by way of The Planet Where Everyone is Japanese.

WANG-MU (looks around): With my advanced intellect, I've determined that this is not any of those worlds.

MAN: Nah. This is The Planet Where Everyone Is From New Jersey. Got a problem with that?

PETER: Not at all, my hairy knuckle-dragging friend. It would seem that Jane is playing a practical joke on us, or perhaps manipulating our journey in the same way that everyone around us seems to be constantly manipulating everyone else in some way or other.

WANG-MU: Including ourselves.

PETER: I'm sorry for taking up your time, but we really must be going. A fleet is approaching The Planet Where Everyone is Brazilian with the intention of blowing the whole thing up, not knowing yet that a cure to the dreaded species-scrambling descolada virus has been found, or that their actions would mean genocide for the last remaining Buggers as well as the native Piggies and Jane herself--who is unique enough to be considered her own species. Did I mention that Jane has the ability to pop people in and out of the universe, allowing them to create impossible objects, bring people back from the dead, and cure brain damage or deformities of the body?

WANG-MU: Which is why we must prevent Congress from shutting Jane down by persuading some influential philosophers that the events of World War II back on Earth are still relevant in space so many thousands of years later.

Peter and Wang-mu step back into the cardboard box, which promptly vanishes.

MAN: What a couple of self-important jerks!

</book review theater>

Something like that would have helped a lot, although the premise does seem rather silly and far-fetched when you try to boil it down to a few short paragraphs of exposition. It also reveals a major weakness of the story world: the assumption that Earth would colonize new worlds on a nation-by-nation basis and that the resulting planetary cultures would not change or evolve noticeably from their progenitors. This detail seems glaringly unrealistic in light of Card's obsession with such anthropological details as food, architecture, and language.

Ender himself hardly appears in this book, and perhaps the most memorable character from Xenocide, OCD-laden genius Han Qing-jao, is missing entirely--only represented in CotM by tantalizing excerpts from her philosophical writings, which serve as thematic chapter headers. But Qing-jao's presence would perhaps have been redundant since she is far from the series's only deep-thinking philosopher and author of impactful works that have changed the lives of billions or trillions of people. In addition to Quing-jao, this would include Ender (author of a trilogy that has stayed continuously in print for over three thousand years), Valentine and Peter (who manipulated world governments through their pseudonymous writings as Demosthenes and Locke), Aimaina Hikari (whose works inspired attempted xenocide), Grace (whose writings inspired Hikari), Malu (whose works inspired Grace), and Plikt (who, as the speaker for Ender's death, has a lock on a future bestseller as well).

Only Ender's stepdaughter, Quara, seems to lack the bug for philosophizing and authorship, so of course the other characters use her as a punching bag for their verbal abuse--which highlights another annoyance I experienced with this book. Every scene is either a dramafest of angst and confrontation or an excuse for long philosophical soliloquies that usually include at least one Shakespeare quotation. Or often, both. Almost without exception, every philosophical theory presented in the book is then subsequently picked apart and discarded as childish and simplistic compared to the unexpressed deeper thoughts that all of our genius characters are keeping to themselves. This makes for one long, emotionally draining, and often pompous book.

Bottom Line: Every reader of thought-provoking science fiction, age 10 through 110, should pick up copies of Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. My prior warning to avoid Xenocide is tempered somewhat, but anyone who continues onward in the series should read Xenocide and Children of the Mind together and be prepared for an exhausting and confusing ride.(less) "

Paige added a quote:
"The man reached into his coat and pulled out a wallet containing an ID card. "Agent Dwight, FBI. Miss Baker, I need you to come with me. You're in danger here."

"In danger?" Robin said. "In danger from what?"

"Not from what. From who," Agent Dwight said, and glanced over at Creek. "You're in danger from him. He's going to kill you, Miss Baker. At least he is going to try."

Robin turned to Creek. "You bastard," she said. "You never said anything about killing me when we made the date."
" — John Scalzi

Paige added a quote:
"Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you." — John Scalzi